Early in October, 1531, agreeably with the Saxon Elector’s Mandate, a number of persons suspected of holding Anabaptist views were taken to Eisenach for punishment and were there put to the torture; it was now judged advisable to obtain a fresh memorandum from the Wittenberg theologians. Accordingly, at the end of 1530, Melanchthon at the instance of the Electoral Court once more took the matter in hand. He drafted a memorandum on the duty of the secular authorities in the matter of religious differences, with particular reference to the Anabaptists. In it he set forth at length the grounds for a regular system of coercion by the sword. Luther, too, set his name to the document with the words: “It pleases me, Martin Luther.” In it the sectarians were reprobated as blasphemers because they reject “the public preaching office [the ministry] and teach that men can become holy without any preaching and ecclesiastical worship.” They ought to be visited with death by the public authorities whose duty it is to “befriend and uphold ecclesiastical order”; and in like manner should their adherents and those whom they have led astray be dealt with, who insist, “that our baptism and preaching is not Christian and therefore that ours is not the Church of Christ.”[883] Nevertheless, we can see from the words Luther adds after his signature that the decision, or at least its severity, aroused some misgivings in him. He says: “Though it may appear cruel to punish them by the sword, yet it is even more cruel of them to condemn the preaching office and not to teach any certain doctrine, to persecute the true doctrine, and, over and above all this, to seek to destroy the kingdoms of this world.” It is quite true that Luther and Melanchthon had an eye on the seditious character of these sects, yet present-day Protestant theologians are not justified when they try to explain and excuse their severity on this ground. On the contrary, as we have already pointed out, the texts plainly show that they were chiefly concerned with the punishment of the sectarians’ offences against the faith. This was made the principal point, as we see in Melanchthon’s memorandum just referred to. He says, for instance: “Though many Anabaptists do not openly teach any seditious doctrines,” yet “it was both sedition and blasphemy for them to condemn the public ministry.” It was therefore the duty of the authorities, above all “on account of the second commandment of the Decalogue, to uphold the public ministry” and to take steps against them. If, to boot, they also taught seditious doctrines then it was “all the easier to judge them,” as we read in another memorandum of the Wittenberg theologians (1536) of which Melanchthon was also the draughtsman.[884]