His views altered in 1530. After a Mandate had been issued in the Saxon Electorate against the “secret preachers and conventicles, Anabaptists and other baneful novel teaching,” six Anabaptists were executed early in the year at Reinhardsbrunn in the duchy of Saxe-Gotha. The discussion which took place on this event gave Melanchthon occasion to declare in Feb., 1530, that, “even though the Anabaptists do not advocate anything seditious or openly blasphemous” it was, “in his opinion, the duty of the authorities to put them to death.”[878] In the spring of 1530, with the Anabaptists in his mind, Luther, in his commentary on Ps. lxxxii. dealt with the question whether the authorities “ought to forbid strange teachings or heresies and punish them, seeing that no one should or can force men into the Faith.”[879] His detailed reply to the question which it was then impossible any longer to blink, centres round the distinction he makes of two kinds of heretics, viz. those who were seditious, and those who merely “teach the opposite of some clear article of faith.” Of the latter, i.e. the non-revolutionary, he says expressly: “These also must not be allowed but must be punished like public blasphemers.” Of those, who, though holding no office, force themselves in as preachers, and thus imperil the faith and lead to risings, he writes, that their oath of allegiance obliged the burghers not to listen to them but rather to report them either to their parson or to the authorities. If such a one will not desist “then let the authorities hand over knaves of that ilk to their proper master, to wit Master Hans” (i.e. the hangman).[880] As for those Anabaptists who preached open revolt, they had, in his opinion, by that very fact incurred the penalties of the law. At any rate it was not merely on account of their sedition that Luther wished to see the Anabaptists punished. Another statement of his has come down to us from an outside source. Luther’s friend, Lazarus Spengler of Nuremberg, had a little before this, on March 17, 1530, sought to secure from Luther, through Veit Dietrich, some directions on how to deal with heretics. Dietrich verbally obtained from his master the desired instructions and promptly sent them to Spengler by letter.[881] They were to the effect that not merely the heretics who offend against public order were to be punished, but also those who merely do harm to religion, such as the Sacramentarians (Zwinglians) and Papists; as they are to be looked upon as blasphemers, they cannot be suffered. It is noteworthy, that, in Luther’s correspondence in 1530, in a letter from the Coburg to Justus Jonas, we find him congratulating himself on the report (a false one) of the execution of a certain heretic. On receiving the announcement that Johannes Campanus, the anti-Trinitarian, had suffered death as a heretic at Liége, Luther wrote: “I learnt this with joy” (“_lætus audivi_”).[882]