For the same reason he holds that “every man on this earth” comprises two “practically antagonistic personalities,” for “each one has at the same time to suffer, and not to suffer, everything.”[208] The dualism which Luther here creates is due to his extravagant over-statement of the Christian law. The Counsels of Perfection given by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, with which Luther is here dealing (not to resist evil, not to go to law, etc., Mt. v. 19 ff.), are not an invitation addressed to all Christians, and if higher considerations or some duty stands in the way it would certainly denote no perfection to follow them. Luther’s misinterpretation necessarily led him to make a cleavage between Christian life and life in the world. The dualism, however, in so far as it concerned the authorities had, however, yet another source. For polemical reasons Luther was determined to make an end of the great influence that the olden Church had acquired over public life. Hence he absolves the secular power from all dependence as the latter had itself sought to do even before his time. He refused to see that, in spite of all the abuses which had followed on the Church’s interference in politics during the Middle Ages, mankind had gained hugely by the guidance of religion. To swallow up the secular power in the spiritual had never been part of the Church’s teaching, nor was it ever the ideal of her enlightened representatives; but, for the morality of the great, for the observance of maxims of justice and for the improvement of the nations the principle that religion must not be separated from the life of the State and from the office of those in authority, but must permeate and spiritualise them was, as history proved, truly vital. Subsequent to Luther’s day the tendency to separate the two undoubtedly made unchecked progress. He himself, however, was not consistent in his attitude. On the contrary, he came more and more to desiderate the establishment of the closest possible bond between the civil authorities and religion—provided only that the ruler’s faith was the same as Luther’s. Nevertheless, generally speaking, the separation he had advocated of secular from spiritual became the rule in the Protestant fold.