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 [pg 415] 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 [pg 416] 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.
Chapter VII. The Lutheran Reformation Outside Germany.[385]
The influence of Luther went far beyond Germany. It was felt in England, France, Scotland, Holland, Poland, and Scandinavia. England went her own peculiar way; France, Holland, and Scotland, in the end, accepted the leadership of Calvin; the Lutheran Reformation, outside Germany, was really confined to Scandinavia alone.
In these Scandinavian lands the religious awakening was bound up with political and social movements more than in any other countries. The reformation in the Church was, indeed, begun by men who had studied under Luther at Wittenberg, or who had received their first promptings from his writings; but it was carried on and brought to a successful issue by statesmen who saw in it the means to deliver their land from political anarchy, caused by the overweening independence and turbulence of the great ecclesiastical lords, and who were almost compelled to look to the large possessions of the Church as a means to replenish their exhausted treasuries without ruining the overburdened taxpayers.
When Eric was crowned King of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway in 1397, the assembled nobles, representative [pg 418] of the three kingdoms, agreed to the celebrated Union of Kalmar, which declared that the three lands were to be for ever united under one sovereign. The treaty was purely dynastic, its terms were vague, and it was never very effective. Without going into details, it may be said that the king lived in Denmark, and ruled in the interests of that country; that he also may be said to have ruled in Norway; but that in Sweden his authority was merely nominal, and sometimes not even that. In Denmark itself, monarchical government was difficult. The Scandinavian kingship was elective, and every election was an opportunity for reducing the privileges, authority, and wealth of the sovereign, and for increasing those of the nobles and of the great ecclesiastics, who, being privileged classes, were freed from contributing to the taxation.