Nowhere do we find any evidence to show that the theologians made use of the authority on which on other occasions they laid so much stress, or made any serious attempt to check arbitrary action and to point out the way to a just distribution, or to lay down some clear and general rules in accordance with which the graduated claims of the different competitors might have been settled. They might at least have associated themselves with the lawyers in the Privy Council and formulated some rule whereby the rights of the State, of the towns and of the church patrons could have been protected against the worst attacks of the plunderers. But no check of this sort was imposed by the theologians on the prevailing avarice and greed of gain. It is plain that they despaired of the result, and, possibly, silence may not have been the worst policy. No one can be blind to the huge difficulties which attended interference, but who was after all to blame for these and so many other difficulties which had arisen in public order, and which could be solved only by the use of force? When an exceptionally conscientious town-council sent a messenger to Luther in 1544 to ask for advice and instructions how to deal with the property of two monasteries which had been suppressed, the “honourable, prudent and beloved masters and friends” received from him only a short and evasive answer: “We theologians have nothing to do with this ... such things must be decided by the lawyers ... our theology teaches us to obey the worldly law, to protect the pious and to punish the wicked.”[730] If, however, the lawyers were to follow the jurisprudence in which they had been trained, then they could but insist upon the property being restored to its rightful owners, who had never ceased to claim it for the Church, and had even appealed to the imperial authority. Luther’s reply constituted a formal retreat from the domain of moral questions, questions indeed which had become burning largely through the action of his theologians. It was an admission that their theology was of no avail to solve an eminently practical question of ethics coming well within its purview which was the safeguarding of the moral law, and for which, indeed, this theology was itself responsible. In this, however, as in so many other instances, they sowed the wind, but when the whirlwind came they ran for shelter to their theological cell.[731] Still, the question of church property caused Luther so much heart-burning in his old age that his death was hastened thereby.