When he asserts in the above writing, that “Among Christians no authority can or ought to exist, but that everyone should be subject to all,”[911] his intention was not, as has sometimes been erroneously supposed by his opponents, to incite the people against the secular power; the words, though badly chosen, must be understood in connection with his mystical theory of the true believers, i.e. of the invisible Church, being intended to convey, that no authority should rule by enforced commands, but that, on the contrary, all must ‘serve,’ and that even superiors should be mindful of their duty of ‘service.’ It is not, however, very surprising that such a statement, so unwisely expressed in general terms as that, “among Christians there neither can nor ought to be any authority,” when taken out of its context and published abroad among the people, was misapplied by the malcontents, more especially when taken in conjunction with other questionable utterances of Luther’s. His experience with the fanatics, and, still more, the events of the Peasant-War, caused Luther to dwell more and more strongly on the duty and right of the authorities to exercise compulsion towards evil-doers.[912] In the work “Against the Heavenly Prophets,” the first published in the stormy year 1525, he says: “The principal thing” required to protect the people against the devils who were teaching through the mouths of the Anabaptist prophets was, “in the case of the common people,” compulsion by the sword and by law. The authorities must force them to be at least “outwardly pious” (true Christians, of course, do all of themselves); the law with its penalties rules over them in the same way that “wild beasts are held in check by chains and bars, in order that outward peace may prevail among the people; for this purpose the temporal authorities are ordained, and it is God’s will that they be honoured and feared.”[913] The change in his views concerning the treatment of sectarians and heretics will, however, be considered elsewhere.[914]