Though you may chase away all the clergy, you will not topple Christ from His throne.  What will happen to you is this: Because you refuse the upright and pious preachers and cannot tolerate them, God will replace them with others, who will govern you with a compulsion and a tyranny worse than the old one.” Therefore our bigwigs and others are on the right path when they put their heads together with the intention of hushing up and putting us under their thumb. They do not realize that there is Another sitting up there who keeps His rule and says: “If you refuse to have the right kind of preachers, then you shall have the devil and his preachers, who preach lies to you. These you will have to accept, and you will have to let them govern you and torment you.” Because the Gospel has been refused and even persecuted in our Germany, the corners are full of sectarians, fanatics, and Anabaptists; and there is nothing anyone can do to prevent it. (Luther’s Works, v. 21, pages 227).

“You see,” people say, “this is how they are trying to re-establish a dominion and to occupy a seat of authority, like the one the pope has been occupying. This would be intolerable, and we would have done better to remain under the pope.” To this I answer: “As a matter of fact, I myself have been afraid that this might happen. But abusing the clergy and trampling them underfoot is not the way to accomplish your purpose of preventing their tyranny, but the way to help bring it about. With the elimination of those whom you are trampling underfoot and chasing away you will still be unable to dispense with clergy or preachers. Christ intends to keep His rule over the world, so that His Gospel, Baptism, and Sacrament may remain. Though there may be no prince willing to protect it, He will do so, because the Father has placed Him at His right hand and wants Him to be Lord. Though you may chase away all the clergy, you will not topple Christ from His throne. (Luther’s Works, v. 21, pages 226-227).

Here is what Christ intends to say: “If you see that someone despises your preaching and tramples it underfoot, have no fellowship with such a person but withdraw from him.” He says the same in Matthew 18:17: “If he refuses to listen to you and the church, let him be to you as a heathen and a tax collector.” In other words, you tell them that they are not Christians but damned heathen, and you want them to hear no preaching and to have no part in our possessions, as Peter says to Simon Magus in Acts 8:21. This is what I do, and what everyone does who takes the preaching of the Gospel seriously, in order not to make ourselves partakers of their sin. God does not want us to be hypocritical with our sectarians, as though their doctrine were correct. We must regard them as our enemies, from whom we are separated by the Gospel, by Baptism, by the Sacrament, and by all their doctrine and life. In the same way we have to say to our own people that if they want to participate in the Gospel, they must not despise us but prove by their fruit that they mean it seriously, or at least that they hold the Word and the Sacrament in esteem and humbly submit to it. (Luther’s Works, v. 21, pages 226).