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The Reformation · 1523
On Secular Authority
Martin Luther · 1483–1546
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What it is
God rules the world through two governments, spiritual and temporal, and no prince has authority over the soul — heresy cannot be beaten down with iron.
Why it lasted
The foundation of the Lutheran two-kingdoms doctrine, containing both an argument for freedom of conscience and the seeds of later political quietism.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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