True believers are subject to “no laws and no sword,”[878] for they stand in need of none. For this reason Christ commands us not to make use of the sword and to refrain from violence. “The words of Christ are clear and peremptory: ‘resist not evil’” (Matt. v. 39). These words and the whole passage concerning the blow on the cheek, the Sophists (i.e. the Schoolmen) had indeed interpreted as a mere “counsel.” In reality, however, they constitute a command, though only for “Christians”; “the sword has no place among Christians, hence you cannot use it upon or among Christians, since they need it not.”[879] He is here addressing Duke Johann, the Elector’s brother, who sympathised with his cause and to whom, in the Preface, the work is dedicated. He goes on to tell him that the Christian ruler nevertheless must not lay aside the sword on account of what has just been said, for in point of fact there are few such “Christians,” wherefore the sword was still “useful and necessary everywhere.” “The world cannot and will not do without” authority. Even with the sword you still remain “true to the gospel,” he tells this Christian Prince, and still hold fast to Christ’s Word, “so that you would gladly offer the other cheek to the smiter and give up your cloak after your coat, if the matter affected yourself or your cause.”[880] Every Christian likewise must comply with the command to relinquish his rights, “allow himself to be insulted and disgraced,” but in his neighbour’s cause he must insist upon what is just, even to having recourse to the sword of authority.[881] In this way he fancies, as he says in the Dedication, that he is the first to instruct “the Princes and secular authorities to remain Christians with Christ as their Lord, and yet not to make mere counsels out of Christ’s commands”; but the “Sophists” “have made a liar of Christ and placed Him in the wrong in order that the Princes may be honoured.... Their poisonous error has made its way throughout the world, so that everyone looks upon Christ’s teaching as counsels for the perfect and not as obligatory commands, binding on all.”