It was but natural that such intolerance often led to scenes of brutality; such was the case in the cathedral of Meissen, where the splendid tomb of Benno, the saintly bishop of Meissen, was hewn in pieces, and the statue of the patron, which was an object of veneration to all the people, was set up headless at the church door as a laughing-stock for the Lutherans.[834] Hand in hand with such legal coercion, which he both approved and furthered, went Luther’s declaration—which, though seeming to promote freedom, really constituted a new encroachment on the rights of conscience—viz. that: No one was to be forced to believe in his heart, but that “the people were to be driven to the sermons for the sake of the Ten Commandments, so that they might at least learn the outward works of obedience.”[835] “It would be grand,” so he told Margrave George of Brandenburg, “if your Serene Highness on the strength of your secular authority enjoined on both parsons and parishioners under pain of penalties the teaching and learning of the Catechism, in order, that, as they are Christians and wish to be called such, they may, please God, be compelled to learn and to know what a Christian ought to know, whether he believes it or not.”[836] At his instance attendance at the sermons was imposed on all people in the Saxon Electorate under pain of penalty, whatever they might think of the preaching.[837] God Himself has abrogated “all authority and power where it is opposed to the Evangel,”[838] so, as early as 1522, ran one of the principles he used for the violent suppression of Catholic worship. Of the Catholic foundations he says in the same year: “If the preacher does not make men pious (i.e. does not preach according to Luther’s doctrine), the goods are no longer his.”[839] Violent interference with the Mass was, according to him, no revolt when it came from the established authorities.[840] “It is the duty of the sovereign, as ruler and brother Christian, to drive away the wolves,”[841] and those who do not preach the Evangel are “wolves”; it is “an urgent duty to drive away the wolf from the sheepfold.”[842] The Pope himself, however, deserves the worst fate, for he is the “werwolf who devours everything. Just as all seek to kill the werwolf, and very rightly, so is it a duty to suppress the Pope by force.”[843] “Not only the spiritual but also the secular power must yield to the Evangel, whether cheerfully or otherwise.”[844] Hence it follows that the salvation of his soul requires of a Christian prince the prohibition of the Popish worship.[845] If it is his duty to resist the Turk far more must he oppose the Pope: “What harm does the Turk do?” It is clear that, “as regards both body and soul the government of the Pope is ten times worse than that of the Turk.”[846]