The German Reformation can hardly be said to have begun with the lower classes, as in Switzerland and France; and Luther could scarcely find anywhere that christian people, which should have played so great a part in his new constitution. Ignorant men, conceited townspeople, who would not even maintain their ministers—these were the members of the Church. Now what could be done with such elements?
But if the people were indifferent, the princes were not so. They stood in the foremost rank of the battle, and sat on the first bench in the council. The democratic organization was therefore compelled to give way to an organization conformable to the civil government. The Church is composed of Christians, and they are taken wherever they are found—high or low. It was particularly in high stations that Luther found them. He admitted the princes as representatives of the people; and henceforward the influence of the state became one of the principal elements in the constitution of the evangelical Church.
In the mind of the Reformer, this guardianship of the princes was only to be provisional. The faithful being then in minority, they had need of a guardian; but the era of the Church's majority might arrive, and with it would come its emancipation.
LUTHER'S LETTER TO THE ELECTOR.
We may admit that this recourse to the civil power was at that time necessary, but we cannot deny that it was also a source of difficulties. We will point out only one. When Protestantism became an affair of governments and nations, it ceased to be universal. The new spirit was capable of creating a new earth. But instead of opening new roads, and of purposing the regeneration of all Christendom, and the conversion of the whole world, the Protestants sought to settle themselves as comfortably as possible in a few German duchies. This timidity, which has been called prudence, did immense injury to the Reformation.
The organizing power being once discovered, the Reformers thought of organization, and Luther applied to the task; for although he was in an especial manner an assailant and Calvin an organizer, these two qualities, as necessary to the reformers of the Church as to the founders of empires, were not wanting in either of these great servants of God.
It was necessary to compose a new ministry, for most of the priests who had quitted the Papacy were content to receive the watchword of Reform without having personally experienced the sanctifying virtue of the Truth. There was even one parish in which the priest preached the Gospel in his principal church, and sang mass in its succursal.[90] But something more was wanting: a Christian people had to be created. "Alas!" said Luther of some of the adherents of the Reform, "they have abandoned their Romish doctrines and rites, and they scoff at ours."[91]
GERMAN MASS.
Luther did not shrink from before this double necessity; and he made provision for it. Understanding that a general visitation of the churches was necessary, he addressed the Elector on this subject, on the 22d October 1526. "Your highness, in your quality of guardian of youth, and of all those who know not how to take care of themselves," said he, "should compel the inhabitants, who desire neither pastors nor schools, to receive these means of grace, as they are compelled to work on the roads, on bridges, and such like services.[92] The papal order being abolished, it is your duty to regulate these things; no other person cares about them, no other can, and no other ought to do so. Commission, therefore, four persons to visit all the country; let two of them inquire into the tithes and church property; and let two take charge of the doctrine, schools, churches, and pastors." We naturally ask, on reading these words, if the church which was formed in the first century, without the support of princes, could not in the sixteenth be reformed without them?
Luther was not content with soliciting in writing the intervention of the prince. He was indignant at seeing the courtiers, who in the time of the Elector Frederick had shown themselves the inveterate enemies of the Reformation, rushing now, "sporting, laughing, skipping," as he said, on the spoils of the Church. Accordingly, at the end of this year, the Elector having come to Wittemberg, the Reformer repaired immediately to the palace, made his complaint to the prince-electoral, whom he met at the gate, then without caring about those who stopped him, made his way by force into his father's bedchamber, and addressing this prince, who was surprised at so unexpected a visit, begged him to remedy the evils of the Church. The visitation of the churches was resolved upon, and Melancthon was commissioned to draw up the necessary instructions.