The popular Church throve, nevertheless, and, soon, owing to the co-operation of numerous factors, became a State institution.
The result was the Lutheran State-Church, to be considered later in another connection, was something widely different from the original idea of its founder; he frequently grumbled about it, without, however, being able to check its development, which, indeed, he himself had been the first to urge.[503] The sovereigns on their side, particularly the Saxon Elector in the very birthplace of the innovations, did their best to make ecclesiastical order, so far as externals, its organisation and control went, depend upon themselves.[504]
The Visitation of 1527, for which Luther himself had asked, furnished the Elector Johann with a welcome pretext for such action.
Even when giving his formal consent to the Visitation the Elector says, speaking of the “erection of parishes”: “We have considered and weighed the matter and have come to the conclusion that it becomes us as ruler of the land to see to the business.”[505] Luther, moreover, for the sake of securing some order in the new Church by the only means at his command, outdid himself in assurances to the Elector, that, he, being the principal member of the Church, must take in hand the adjusting of the parishes and the appointment of suitable clergy; that his very love of his country obliged him to this, and, that, owing to the pressing needs of the time, he was a sort of “makeshift bishop” of the Church. This last title is significant of the reserve Luther still maintained; he was loath to see the Church’s authority simply merged in that of the State; he did, nevertheless, speak of the sovereign as the head of the new congregations and, little by little, allowed him so large a share in their government that, even in his own day, the secular sovereign was to all intents and purposes supreme head of the episcopate.[506]
[9. Public Worship. Questions of Ritual]
The ordering of public worship, particularly at Wittenberg, was a source of much anxiety to Luther. He was not blind to the difficulties which his reformation had to face in this department.
The soul of every religion must be sought in its public worship. Hence, in Catholicism, the bishops, from earliest times, had bestowed the most diligent and pious care on worship. A proof of this is to be found in the grand liturgies of antiquity and the prayers, lessons and outward rites with which they so lovingly surround the eucharistic sacrifice.
To build up a new liturgy from the very foundation was far from Luther’s thoughts. He was not the “creator” of any new form of public worship. He preferred to make the best of the Roman Mass, for one reason, as he so often insists, because of the weak, i.e. so as not needlessly to alienate the people from the new Church by the introduction of novelties.[507] From the ancient rite he merely eliminated all that had reference to the sacrificial character of the Mass, the Canon, for instance, and the preceding Offertory. He also thought it best to retain the word “Mass” in both the writings in which he embodied his adaptation: “Formula missæ et communionis pro ecclesia Wittenbergensi” 1523,[508] and “Deudsche Messe und Ordnung Gottis Diensts” 1526.[509]
By the introduction of the German Mass in the latter year “the whole Pope was flung out of the Church,”[510] to use Spalatin’s words. It is noteworthy that Luther, in announcing this latest innovation to the inhabitants of Wittenberg, admitted that he had been urged by the sovereign to make the change.[511]