The singular attitude adopted by Luther is to be explained, as hinted above, by the fact that, in his work “On the secular power,” he has allowed himself to be so largely influenced by polemical regard for the Catholic authorities, whom he describes as those blind, wretched people, the Emperor and the wise Princes and tyrants generally. He inveighs against the “clever squires who seek to uproot heresy,” and against “our Christian Princes, who defend the faith.” The authorities with whom he is here concerned consist almost exclusively of persons who, “instead of allowing God’s Word to have free course,” would fain impose by compulsion the faith of bygone days upon their subjects, thus creating “liars by constraint.” They “command men to feel with the Pope,” but they act “without the clear Word of God” and must therefore necessarily perish in their “perverted understanding.”[874] In the work in question he nevertheless seeks to establish a general theory, though, partly owing to its being forcibly shaped to meet the special needs of the case, partly because it was based on a certain kind of pseudo-mysticism, the theory remains open to many objections. The secular power (more particularly where it is Catholic) cannot exercise any authority in spiritual matters, hence, he says, “these two governments must be carefully kept asunder, and both be preserved, the one to render men pious, the other to safeguard outward peace and prevent evil deeds.”[875] In speaking as he does here and elsewhere in this work of the “two governments” he is, however, very far from acknowledging an independent ecclesiastical or spiritual government such as had existed in Catholicism. What he called spiritual government was “without law or command,” and merely “the inward sovereignty of the Word,” “Christ’s spiritual dominion” where souls are ruled by the Evangel; there the Word of God is furthered by teaching and the sacraments, by which minds are led and heresy vanquished; “for Christians must be ruled by faith, not by outward works.... Those who do not believe are not Christians and do not belong to Christ’s kingdom, but to the kingdom of the world, and must therefore be compelled and governed by the sword.” “Christians do all what is good without compulsion and God’s Word suffices them.”[876]--Hence it is certain that he does not look upon this kingdom of the Christian as a real government, seeing that it implies no jurisdiction. The power to make and enforce laws in this world belongs only to the secular authorities. They alone form on earth a real government. “Priests and bishops,” too, have neither “supremacy nor power.”[877]