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 consistorial courts modiBishops in the mediaval

revival of the mediæval episcopal fied to suit the new circumstances. 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 mediaval bishop had exercised his right of oversight through a consistorial court composed of theologians and canon lawyers appointed by himself. These medieval 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 1542.1 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 mediaval consistorial episcopal courts, and that,

1 The ordinance establishing the Wittenberg Consistory will be found in Richter, Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des sechszehnten Jahrhunderts (Weimar, 1846), i. 367; and in Sehling, Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen des 16ten Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1902), I. i. 200. Selling sketches the history of its institution, I. i. 55.

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 medieval 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.1

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.2

Some of the territories reached the consistorial system

1 The first half of the first part of Sehling's Die evangelischen Kirchen. ordnungen des 16 Jahrhunderts appeared in 1902, and the second half of the first part in 1904.

2 Cf. article on "Kirchen-Ordnung" in the 3rd edition of Herzog's Realencyclopädie für protestantische Theologie.

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.1 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.

1 Richter, Die evangelischen Kirchenordnungen, etc. i. 56 ff.