Chapter VI. The Organisation Of Lutheran Churches.(372)

Two conceptions, the second being derived from the first, lay at the basis of everything which Luther said or did about the organisation of the Christian fellowship into churches.

The primary and cardinal doctrine, which was the foundation of everything, was the spiritual priesthood of all believers. This, he believed, implied that preaching, dispensing the sacraments, ecclesiastical discipline, and so forth were not the exclusive possession of a special caste of men to whom they had been committed by God, and who therefore were mediators between God and man. These divine duties belonged to the whole community as a fellowship of believing men and women; but as a division of labour was necessary, and as each individual Christian cannot undertake such duties without disorder ensuing, the community must seek out and set apart certain of its members to perform them in its name.

The second conception was that secular government is an ordinance ordained of God, and that the special rule claimed by the Roman Pontiff over things secular and sacred was a usurpation of the powers committed by God to the secular authority. This Luther understood to mean that the Christian magistracy might well represent the Christian community of believers, and, in its name or associated with it, undertake the organisation and superintendence of the Church civic or territorial.

In his earlier writings, penned before the outbreak of the Peasants’ War, Luther dwells most on the thought of the community of believers, their rights and powers; in the later ones, when the fear of the common man had taken possession of him, the secular authority occupies his whole field of thought. But although, before the Peasants’ War, Luther does not give such a fixed place to the secular magistracy as the one source of authority or supervision over the Church, the conception was in his mind from the first.

Among the various duties which belong to the company of believers, Luther selected three as the most outstanding,—those connected with the pastorate, including preaching, dispensing the sacraments, and so forth; the service of Christian charity; and the duty of seeing that the children belonging to the community, and especially “poor, miserable, and deserted children,” were properly educated and trained to become useful members of the commonwealth.

In the few instances of attempts made before the Peasants’ War to formulate those conceptions into regulations for communities organised according to evangelical principles, we find the community and the magistracy combining to look after the public worship, the poor, and education. Illustrations may be seen in the Wittenberg ordinance of 1522 (Carlstadt), and the ordinances of Leisnig (1523) and Magdeburg (1524).(373) All three are examples of the local authority within a small community endeavouring, at the prompting of preachers and people, to express in definite regulations some of the demands of the new evangelical life.

Luther himself thought these earlier regulations premature, and insisted that the Wittenberg ordinance should be cancelled. He knew that changes must come; but he hoped to see them make their way gradually, almost imperceptibly, commending themselves to everyone without special enactment prescribed by external authority. He published suggestions for the dispensation of the Lord’s Supper and of Baptism in the churches in Wittenberg as early as 1523; he collected and issued a small selection of evangelical hymns which _might_ be sung in Public Worship (1524); during the same year he addressed the burgomasters and councillors of all German towns on the erection and maintenance of Christian schools; and he congratulated more than one municipality on provisions made for the care of the poor.(374) Above all, he had, while in Wartburg, completed a translation of the New Testament which, after revision by Melanchthon and other friends, was published in 1522 (Sept. 21st), and went through sixteen revised editions and more than fifty reimpressions before 1534. The translation of the Old Testament was made by a band of scholars at Wittenberg, published in instalments, and finally in complete form in 1534.

He always cherished the hope that the evangelical faith would spread quietly all over his dear Fatherland if only room were made for the preaching of the gospel. This of itself, he thought, would in due time effect a peaceful transformation of the ecclesiastical life and worship. The Diets of Nürnberg and Speyer had provided a field, always growing wider, for this quiet transformation. Luther was as indifferent to forms of Church government as John Wesley, and, like Wesley, every step he took in providing for a separate organisation was forced upon him as a practical necessity. To the very last he cherished the hope that there might be no need for any great change in the external government of the Church. The Augsburg Confession itself (1530) concludes with the words. “Our meaning is not to have rule taken from the bishops; but this one thing only is requested at their hands, that they would suffer the gospel to be purely taught, and that they would relax a few observances, which cannot be held without sin. But if they will remit none, let them look how they will give account to God for this, that by their obstinacy they afford cause of division and schism, which it were yet fit they should aid in avoiding.”(375) It was not that he believed that the existence of the visible Catholic Church depended on what has been ambiguously called an apostolic succession of bishops, who, through gifts conferred in ordination, create priests, who in turn make Christians out of natural heathen by the sacraments. He did not believe that ordination needed a bishop to confer it; he made his position clear upon this point as early as 1525, and ordination was practised without bishops from that date. But he had no desire to make changes for the sake of change. The Danish Church is at once episcopal and Lutheran to this day.

It ought also to be remembered that Luther and all the Reformers believed and held firmly the doctrine of a visible Catholic Church of Christ, and that the evangelical movement which they headed was the outcome of the centuries of saintly life _within_ that visible Catholic Church. They never for a moment supposed that in withdrawing themselves from the authority of the Bishop of Rome they were separating themselves from the visible Church. Nor did they imagine that in making provision, temporary or permanent, for preaching the word, the dispensation of the sacraments, the exercise of discipline, and so forth, they were founding a new Church, or severing themselves from that visible Church within which they had been baptized. They refused to concede the term _Catholic_ to their opponents, and in the various conferences which they had with them, the Roman Catholics were always _officially_ designated “the adherents of the old religion,” while they were termed “the associates of the Augsburg Confession.”

Luther cherished the hope, as late as 1545, that there might not need to be a permanent change in the external form of the Church in Germany; and this gives all the earlier schemes for the organisation of communities professing the evangelical faith somewhat of a makeshift and temporary appearance, which they in truth possessed.

The Diet of Speyer of 1526 gave the evangelical princes and towns the right, they believed, to reorganise public worship and ecclesiastical organisation within their dominions, and this right was largely taken advantage of. Correspondents from all quarters asked Luther’s advice and co-operation, and we can learn from his answers that he was anxious there should be as much local freedom as possible,—that communities should try to find out what suited them best, and that the “use” of Wittenberg should not be held to regulate the custom of all other places.

It was less difficult for the authorities in the towns to take over the charge of the ecclesiastical arrangements. They had during mediæval times some experience in the matter; and city life was so compact that it was easy to regulate the ecclesiastical portion. The prevailing type exhibited in the number of “ordinances” which have come down to us, collected by Richter and Sehling, is that a superintendent, one of the city clergy, was placed over the city churches, and that he was more or less responsible to the city fathers for the ecclesiastical life and rule within the domains of the city.

The ecclesiastical organisation of the territories of the princes was a much more difficult task. Luther proposed to the Elector of Saxony that a careful visitation of his principality should be made, district by district, in order to find out the state of matters and what required to be done.

The correspondence of Luther during the years 1525-1527 shows how urgent the need of such a visitation appeared to him. He had been through the country several times. Parish priests had laid their difficulties before him and had asked his advice. His letters describe graphically their abounding poverty, a poverty increased by the fact that the only application of the new evangelical liberty made by many of the people was to refuse to pay all clerical dues. He came to the conclusion that the “common man” respected neither priest nor preacher, that there was no ecclesiastical supervision in the country districts, and no exercise of authority to maintain even the necessary ecclesiastical buildings. He expressed the fear that if things were allowed to go on as they were doing, there would be soon neither priest’s house nor schools nor scholars in many a parish. The reports of the first Saxon Visitation showed that Luther had not exaggerated matters.(376) The district about Wittenberg was in much better order than the others; but in the outlying portions a very bad state of things was disclosed. In a village near Torgau the Visitors discovered an old priest who was hardly able to repeat the Creed or the Lord’s Prayer,(377) but who was held in high esteem as an exorcist, and who derived a good income from the exercise of his skill in combating the evil influences of witches. Priests had to be evicted for gross immoralities. Some were tavern-keepers or practised other worldly callings. Village schools were rarely to be found. Some of the peasants complained that the Lord’s Prayer was so long that they could not learn it; and in one place the Visitors found that not a single peasant knew any prayer whatsoever.

This Saxon Visitation was the model for similar ones made in almost every evangelical principality, and its reports serve to show what need there was for inquiry and reorganisation. The lands of Electoral Saxony were divided into four “circles,” and a commission of theologians and lawyers was appointed to undertake the duties in each circle. The Visitation of the one “circle” of Wittenberg, with its thirty-eight parishes, may be taken as an example of how the work was done, and what kinds of alterations were suggested. The commissioners or Visitors were Martin Luther and Justus Jonas, theologians, with Hans Metzsch, Benedict Pauli, and Johann v. Taubenheim, jurists. They began in October 1528, and spent two months over their task. It was a strictly business proceeding. There is no account of either Luther or Jonas preaching while on tour. The Visitors went about their work with great energy, holding conferences with the parish priests and with the representatives of the community. They questioned the priests about the religious condition of the people—whether there was any gross and open immorality, whether the people were regular in their attendance at church and in coining to the communion. They asked the people how the priests did their work among them—in the towns their conferences were with the _Rath_, and in the country districts and villages with the male heads of families. Their common work was to find out what was being done for the “cure of souls,” the instruction of the youth, and the care of the poor. By “cure of souls” (_Seelsorge_) they meant preaching, dispensation of the sacraments, catechetical instruction, and the pastoral visitation of the sick. It belonged to the theologians to estimate the capacities of the pastors, and to the jurists to estimate the available income, to look into all legal difficulties that might arise, and especially to clear the entanglements caused by the supposed jurisdiction of convents over many of the parishes.

This small district was made up of three outlying portions of the three dioceses of Brandenburg, Magdeburg, and Meissen. It had not been inspected within the memory of man, and the results of episcopal negligence were manifest. At Klebitz the peasants had driven away the parish clerk and put the village herd in his house. At Bülzig there was neither parsonage nor house for parish clerk, and the priest was non-resident. So at Danna; where the priest held a benefice at Coswig, and was, besides, a chaplain at Wittenberg, while the clerk lived at Zahna. The parsonages were all in a bad state of repair, and the local authorities could not be got to do anything. Roofs were leaking, walls were crumbling, it was believed that the next winter’s frost would bring some down bodily. At Pratau the priest had built all himself—parsonage, out-houses, stable, and byre. All these things were duly noted to be reported upon. As for the priests, the complaints made against them were very few indeed. In one case the people said that their priest drank, and was continually seen in the public-house. Generally, however, the complaints, when there were any, were that the priest was too old for his work, or was so utterly uneducated that he could do little more than mumble the Mass. There was scanty evidence that the people understood very clearly the evangelical theology. Partaking the Lord’s Supper in both “kinds,” or in one only, was the distinction recognised and appreciated between the new and the old teaching; and when they had the choice the people universally preferred the new. In one case the parishioners complained that their priest insisted on saying the Mass in Latin and not in German. In one case only did the Visitors find any objection taken to the evangelical service. This was at Meure, where the parish clerk’s wife was reported to be an enemy of the new pastor because he recited the service in German. It turned out, however, that her real objection was that the pastor had displaced her husband. At Bleddin the peasants told the Visitors that their pastor, Christopher Richter, was a learned and pious man, who preached regularly on all the Sundays and festival days, and generally four times a week in various parts of the parish. It appeared, however, that their admiration for him did not compel them to attend his ministrations with very great regularity. The energetic pastors were all young men trained at Wittenberg. The older men, peasants’ sons all of them, were scarcely better educated than their parishioners, and were quite unable to preach to them. The Visitors found very few parishes indeed where three, four, five or more persons were not named to them who never attended church or came to the Lord’s Table; in some parishes men came regularly to the preaching who never would come to the Sacrament. What impressed the Visitors most was the ignorance, the besotted ignorance, of the people. They questioned them directly; found out whether they knew the Apostles’ Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer; and then questioned them about the meanings of the words; and the answers were disappointing.

Luther came back from the Visitation in greatly depressed spirits, and expressed his feelings in his usual energetic language. He says in his introduction to his _Small Catechism_, a work he began as soon as he returned from the Visitation:

“In setting forth this Catechism or Christian doctrine in such a simple, concise, and easy form, I have been compelled and driven by the wretched and lamentable state of affairs which I discovered lately when I acted as a Visitor. Merciful God, what misery have I seen, the common people knowing nothing at all of Christian doctrine, especially in the villages! and unfortunately many pastors are well-nigh unskilled and incapable of teaching; and although all are called Christians and partake of the Holy Sacrament, they know neither the Lord’s Prayer, nor the Creed, nor the Ten Commandments, but live like poor cattle and senseless swine, though, now that the gospel is come, they have learnt well enough how they may abuse their liberty. Oh, ye bishops, how will ye ever answer for it to Christ that ye have so shamefully neglected the people, and have not attended for an instant to your office? May all evil be averted from you! (_Das euch alles unglück fliche_). Ye forbid the taking of the Sacrament in one kind, and insist on your human laws, but never inquire whether they know the Lord’s Prayer, the Belief, the Ten Commandments, or any of the words of God. Oh, woe be upon you for evermore!”

The Visitors found that few books were to be seen in the parsonages. They record one notable exception, the parsonage of Schmiedeberg, where the priest had a library of twelve volumes. It could not be expected that such uneducated men could preach to much edification; and one of the recommendations of the Visitors was that copies of Luther’s _Postils_ or short sermons on the Lessons for the Day should be sent to all the parishes, with orders that they should be read by the pastors to their congregations.

They did not find a trace anywhere of systematic pastoral visitation or catechising.

In their practical suggestions for ending the priestly inefficiency, the Visitors made simple and homely arrangements. To take one example,—at Liessnitz, the aged pastor Conrad was quite unable from age and ignorance to perform his duties; but he was a good, inoffensive old man. It was arranged that he was to have a coadjutor, who was to be boarded by the rich man of the parish and get the fees, while the old pastor kept the parsonage and the stipend, out of which he was to pay fourteen gulden annually to his coadjutor.

The Visitors found that schools did not exist in most of the villages, and they were disappointed with the condition of the schools they found in the smaller towns. It was proposed to make the parish clerks the village schoolmasters; but they were wholly incompetent, and the Visitors saw nothing for it but to suggest that the pastors must become the village schoolmasters. The parish clerks were ordered to teach the children to repeat the _Small Catechism_ by rote, and the pastors to test them at a catechising on Sunday afternoons. In the towns, where the churches usually had a _cantor_ or precentor, this official was asked to train the children to sing evangelical hymns.

In their inquiries about the care of the poor, the Visitors found that there was not much need for anything to be done in the villages; but the case was different in the towns. They found that in most of them there existed old foundations meant to benefit the poor, and they discovered all manner of misuses and misappropriations of the funds. Suggestions were made for the restoration of these funds to their destined uses.

This very condensed account of what took place in the Wittenberg “circle” shows how the work of the Visitors was done; a second and a third Visitation were needed in Electoral Saxony ere things were properly arranged; but in the end good work was accomplished. The Elector refused to take any of the confiscated convent lands and possessions for civil purposes, and these, together with the Church endowments, provided stipends for the pastors, salaries for the schoolmasters, and a settled provision for the poor.

When the Visitation was completed and the reports presented, the Visitors were asked to draft and issue an _Instruction_ or lengthy advice to the clergy and people of the “circle” they had inspected. This _Instruction_ was not considered a regular legal document, but its contents were expected to be acted upon.

These Visitations and Instructions were the earliest attempts at the reorganisation of the evangelical Church in Electoral Saxony. The Visitors remained as a “primitive evangelical consistory” to supervise their “circles.”

The Saxon Visitations became a model for most of the North German evangelical territorial Churches, and the Instructions form the earliest collection of requirements set forth for the guidance of pastors and Christian people. The directions are very minute. The pastors are told how to preach, how to conduct pastoral visitations, what sins they must specially warn their people against, and what example they must show them. The care of schools and of the poor was not forgotten.(378)

The fact that matrimonial cases were during the Middle Ages almost invariably tried in ecclesiastical courts, made it necessary to provide some legal authority to adjudicate upon such cases when the mediæval episcopal courts had either temporarily or permanently lost their authority. This led to a provisional arrangement for the government of the Church in Electoral Saxony, which took a regular legal form. A pastor, called a superintendent, was appointed in each of the four “circles” into which the territory had been divided for the purpose of Visitation, to act along with the ordinary magistracy in all ecclesiastical matters, including the judging in matrimonial cases.(379) This Saxon arrangement also spread largely through the northern German evangelical States.

A third Visitation of Electoral Saxony was made in 1532, and led to important ecclesiastical changes which formed the basis of all that came afterwards. As a result of the reports of the Visitors, of whom Justus Jonas seems to have been the most energetic, the parishes were rearranged, the incomes of parish priests readjusted, and the whole ecclesiastical revenues of the mediæval Church within Electoral Saxony appropriated for the threefold evangelical uses of supporting the ministry, providing for schools, and caring for the poor. The doctrine, ceremonies, and worship of the evangelical Church were also settled on a definite basis.(380)

The Visitors pointed out that hitherto no arrangement had been made to give the whole ecclesiastical administration one central authority. The Electoral Prince had always been regarded as the supreme ruler of the Church within his dominions, but as he could not personally superintend everything, there was needed some supreme court which could act in all ecclesiastical cases as his representative or instrument. The Visitors suggested the revival of the mediæval episcopal consistorial courts modified to suit the new circumstances. Bishops in the mediæval sense of the word might be and were believed to be superfluous, but their true function, the _jus episcopale_, the right of oversight, was indispensable. According to Luther’s ideas—ideas which had been gaining ground in Germany from the last quarter of the fifteenth century—this _jus episcopale_ belonged to the supreme secular authority. The mediæval bishop had exercised his right of oversight through a _consistorial court_ composed of theologians and canon lawyers appointed by himself. These mediæval courts, it was suggested, might be transformed into Lutheran ecclesiastical courts if the prince formed a permanent council composed of lawyers and divines to act for him and in his name in all ecclesiastical matters, including matrimonial cases. The Visitors sketched their plan; it was submitted for revision to Luther and to Chancellor Brück, and the result was the Wittenberg Ecclesiastical Consistory established in 1542.(381) That the arrangement was still somewhat provisional appears from the fact that the court had not jurisdiction over the whole of the Electoral dominions, and that other two Consistories, one at Zeitz and the other at Zwickau, were established with similar powers. But the thing to be observed is that these courts were modelled on the old mediæval consistorial episcopal courts, and that, like them, they were composed of lawyers and of theologians. The essential difference was that these Lutheran courts were appointed by and acted in the name of the supreme secular authority. In Electoral Saxony their local bounds of jurisdiction did not correspond to those of the mediæval courts. It was impossible that they should. Electoral Saxony, the ordinance erecting the Consistory itself says, consisted of portions of “ten or twelve” mediæval dioceses. The courts had different districts assigned to them; but in all other things they reproduced the mediæval consistorial courts.

The constitutions of these courts provided for the assembling and holding of Synods to deliberate on the affairs of the Church. The General Synod consisted of the Consistory and the superintendents of the various “circles”; and particular Synods, which had to do with the Church affairs of the “circle,” of the superintendent, and of all the clergy of the “circle.”

Such were the beginnings of the consistorial system of Church government, which is a distinctive mark of the Lutheran Church, and which exhibits some of the individual traits of Luther’s personality. We can see in it his desire to make full use of whatever portions of the mediæval Church usages could be pressed into the service of his evangelical Church; his conception that the one supreme authority on earth was that of the secular government; his suspicion of the “common” man, and his resolve to prevent the people exercising any control over the arrangements of the Church.

Gradually all the Lutheran Churches have adopted, in general outline at least, this consistorial system; but it would be a mistake to think that the Wittenberg “use” was adopted in all its details. Luther himself, as has been said, had no desire for anything like uniformity, and there was none in the beginning. All the schemes of ecclesiastical government proceed on the idea that the _jus episcopale_ or right of ecclesiastical oversight belongs to the supreme territorial secular authority. All of them include within the one set of ordinances, provisions for the support of the ministry, for the maintenance of schools, and for the care of the poor—the last generally expressed by regulations about the “common chest.” The great variety of forms of ecclesiastical government drafted and adopted may be studied in Richter’s collection, which includes one hundred and seventy-two separate ecclesiastical constitutions, and which is confessedly very imperfect. The gradual growth of the organisation finally adopted in each city and State can be traced for a portion of Germany in Sehling’s unfinished work.(382)

The number of these ecclesiastical ordinances is enormous, and the quantity is to be accounted for partly by the way in which Germany was split up into numerous small States in the sixteenth century, and also partly by the fact that Luther pled strongly for diversity.

The ordinances were promulgated in many different ways. Most frequently, perhaps, the prince published and enacted them on his own authority like any other piece of territorial legislation. Sometimes he commissioned a committee acting in his name to frame and publish. In other cases they resulted from a consultation between the prince and the magistrates of one of the towns within his dominions. Sometimes they came from the councils and the pastors of the towns to which they applied. In other instances they were issued by an evangelical bishop. And in a few cases they are simply the regulations issued by a single pastor for his own parish, which the secular authorities did not think of altering.

Although they are independent one from another, they may be grouped in families which resemble each other closely.(383)

Some of the territories reached the consistorial system much sooner than others. If a principality consisted in whole or in part of a secularised ecclesiastical State, the machinery of the consistorial court lay ready to the hand of the prince, and was at once adapted to the use of the evangelical Church. The system was naturally slowest to develop in the imperial cities, most of which at first preferred an organisation whose outlines were borrowed from the constitution drafted by Zwingli for Zurich.

Once only do we find an attempt to give an evangelical Church occupying a large territory a democratic constitution. It was made by Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, who was never afraid of the democracy. No German prince had so thoroughly won the confidence of his commonalty. The Peasants’ War never devastated his dominions. He did not join in the virulent persecution of the Anabaptists which disgraced the Lutheran as well as the Roman Catholic States during the latter half of the sixteenth century. It was natural that Luther’s earlier ideas about the rights of the Christian community (_Gemeinde_) should appeal to him. In 1526 (Oct. 6th), when the Diet of Speyer had permitted the organisation of evangelical Churches, Philip summoned a Synod at Homberg, and invited not merely pastors and ecclesiastical lawyers, but representatives from the nobles and from the towns. A scheme for ecclesiastical government, which had been drafted by Francis Lambert, formerly a Franciscan monk, was laid before the assembly and adopted. It was based on the idea that the word of God is the only supreme rule to guide and govern His Church, and that Canon Law has no place whatsoever within an evangelical Church. Scripture teaches, the document explains, that it belongs to the Christian community itself to select and dismiss pastors and to exercise discipline by means of excommunication. The latter right ought to be used in a weekly meeting (on Sundays) of the congregation and pastor. For the purposes of orderly rule the Church must have office-bearers, who ought to conform as nearly as possible to those mentioned in the New Testament Scriptures. They are bishops (pastors), elders, and deacons; and the deacons are the guardians of the poor as well as ecclesiastical officials. All these office-bearers must remember that their function is that of servants, and in no sense lordly or magisterial. They ought to be chosen by the congregation, and set apart by the laying on of hands according to apostolic practice. A bishop (pastor) must be ordained by at least three pastors, and a deacon by the pastor or by two elders. The government of the whole Church ought to be in the hands of a Synod, to consist of all the pastors and a delegate from every parish. Such in outline was the democratic ecclesiastical government proposed for the territory of Hesse and accepted by the Landgrave.(384) He was persuaded, however, by Luther’s strong remonstrances to abandon it. There is no place for the democratic or representative element in the organisation of the Lutheran Churches.