The theory that the Evangelical ruler must use force to root out Catholic worship was proclaimed by the Court chaplain Spalatin, a man “standing altogether under Luther’s influence, and who, as a rule, merely voiced his views”;[818] this he did in a letter of May 1, 1525, where he cites the prescriptions of the Mosaic law (Deut. vii.). According to this the secular authorities are bound “by the Law of God to abrogate idolatrous and blasphemous worship”; any further toleration on the part of the Elector of “idolatry” in his lands would be a great sin; on the other hand it would be a “great, consoling and Christian work” were he “to put the Christian bit in the mouth of all the clergy.” “Ah, that would indeed be a noble work!”[819] To the successor of the then Elector who died shortly after this, Spalatin wrote on Oct. 1, 1525: “Dr. Martin also says, that Your Electoral Highness ought in no way to suffer anyone to proceed any longer with the unchristian ceremonies, or to set them up again”;[820] on Jan. 10, 1526, he, together with two Altenburg preachers, backed up the petition to the Elector for the extirpation of “idolatry” by pointing to the example of the pious kings of the Jews.[821] At Altenburg and elsewhere such exhortations were crowned all too speedily with success. “A secular ruler,” Luther himself wrote to the Elector Johann on Feb. 9, 1526, “must not permit his underlings to be led into strife and discord by contumacious preachers, for this may issue in uproar and sedition, but in each locality there must be but one kind of preaching.”[822] On such grounds, however, Protestantism itself might just as well have been denied a hearing, seeing that it had come to disturb the peace, the “one kind of preaching” and the one faith. The princes, however, spurred on by their theologians, seized only too eagerly on this principle, using it in favour of the innovations. The Elector Johann declared as early as Feb. 31, 1526, that he had “graciously taken note of the Memorandum” and would, “for the future, conduct himself in such matters as beseemed a Christian”;[823] and he kept his word.