Another ground for compulsion, to which Spalatin gives expression in a letter to the Elector, was, that: They must not forget how “many a poor man would more readily come to the Evangel, were that wretched system [of Popery and its idolatry] no longer in existence.” In other words, were Catholic worship rooted out, Catholics would more easily be won over to the Evangel.[828] It was on such a standpoint as this that the Augsburg declaration of 1530 made by the theologians of the Saxon Electorate was based. The Emperor had demanded from the Protesting Princes toleration of the Catholic worship for those of their subjects who chose to remain Catholic. The theologians thereupon expressed themselves against such an arrangement, and urged that, in this case, Lutheran proselytism would be hampered: “Were it to be said that the rulers were not to hinder it, though the preachers were to preach against it, it is clear of what [small] good would be all the teaching and preaching of the ministers.”[829] In the Duchy of Saxony, as everybody knows, the introduction of Lutheranism was opposed by Duke George. His severity he justified by appealing to the thousand-year-old law of the one great world-wide Church, the Church of the Apostles, of the Fathers and martyrs and Œcumenical Councils and great missioners of all ages, a law, moreover, sanctioned by the Empire. When, in 1533, a number of Lutherans were banished from the Duchy[830] Luther seized upon this as a pretext for controversy. Roundly scolding the “Ducal tyrant,” he declared this sentence of banishment to be “a devilish and criminal thing.” The authority of the sovereign, so he now wrote, again contradicting himself, “only extends over life and property in secular matters.”[831] But, after George’s death in 1539 and the accession of his brother Henry, Luther’s tone changed, for Henry held Lutheran views. In a letter he sent about that time to the Elector Johann Frederick, he is angry because more than 500 of the Saxon clergy, all of them “venomous Papists,” had not yet been driven out. “For the sake of the poor souls, many thousands of whom live neglected under such parsons,” he urges the Elector to do his best “to help and promote a Visitation.”[832] He demands that Duke Henry, as the sovereign and protector of the bishopric of Meissen, should “put a damper on the blasphemous idolatry” as best he could, for “the Princes who are able to do so should at once abolish Baal and all idolatry.”[833] He also wished that the bishop of Meissen, though a Prince of the Empire, should “at once bow his head to the Evangel”; in this matter there is no need for “much disputing.”