518 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1580.
parity of ministers, congregational lay-elders, and deacons, and a representative synodical government, with strict dis. cipline, and a distinction between nominal and communicant membership. This was attempted in Hesse at the Synod of Homberg (1526) by Lambert (a pupil of Zwingli and Luther), developed by Calvin in Geneva, and earried out in the Reformed churches of France, Holland, Scotland, and the Presbyterian churches of North America. Luther rather discouraged this plan in a letter to Philip of Hesse; but in 1540 he expressed a wish, with Jonas, Bugenhagen, and Melanchthon, to introduce Christian discipline with the aid of elders (seniores) in each congregation. Several Lutheran Church constitutions exclude adulterers, drunkards, and blasphemers from the communion.
4. Congregational independency ; ie., the organization of self-governing congregations of true believers in free association with each other. This was once suggested by Luther, but soon abandoned without a trial. It appeared in isolated attempts under Queen Elizabeth, and was successfully developed in the seventeenth century by the Independents in England, and the Congregationalists in New England.
The last two ways are more thoroughly Protestant and consistent with the principle of the general priesthood of believers; but they presuppose a higher grade of self-governing capacity in the laity than the episcopal polity.
All these forms of government admit of a union with the state (as in Europe), or a separation from the state (as in America). Union of church and state was the traditional system since the days of Constantine and Charlemagne, and was adhered to by all the Reformers. They had no idea of a separation; they even brought the two powers into closer relationship by increasing the authority of the state over the church. Separation of the two was barely men-_ tioned by Luther, as a private opinion, we may say almost as
§ 84. RECONSTRUCTION OF CHURCH GOVERNMENT. 519
a prophetic dream, but was soon abandoned as an impossi bility.
Luther, in harmony with his unique personal experience, made the doctrine of justification the cardinal truth of Christianity, and believed that the preaching of that doctrine would of itself produce all the necessary changes in worship and discipline. But the abuse of evangelical freedom taught him the necessity of discipline, and he raised his protest against antinomianism. His complaints of the degeneracy of the times increased with his age and his bodily infirmities. The world seemed to him to be getting worse and worse, and fast rushing to judgment. He was so disgusted with the immorality prevailing among the citizens and students at Wittenberg, that he threatened to leave the town altogether in 1544, but yielded to the earnest entreaties of the university and magistrate to remain.}
The German Reformation did not stimulate the duty of self-support, nor develop the faculty of self-government. It threw the church into the arms of the state, from whose bondage she has never been able as yet to emancipate herself. The princes, nobles, and city magistrates were willing and anxious to take the benefit, but reluctant to perform the duties, of their new priestly dignity; while the common people remained as passive as before, without a voice in the election of their pastor, or any share in the administration of
1 See his letters to Jonas, Lauterbach, Link, Probst, and others, in De Wette, vol. V. To Lauterbach he wrote, Nov. 10, 1541 (V. 407), “ Ego pone de Germania desperavi, postquam recepit inter parietes veros illos Turkas seu veros illos diabolos, avaritiam, usuram, tyrannidem, discordiam et totam illam Lernam perfidie, malitie, et nequitie, in nobilitate, in aulis, in curiis, in oppidis, in villis, super hec autem contemtum verbi et ingratitudinem inauditam.”? To Jonas he wrote, March 7, 1543 (V. 548), that the German nobility and princes were worse than the Turks, and bent upon enslaving Germany, and exhausting the people. To the same he gives, June 18, 1548 (V. 570), an account of the immorality of Wittenberg, and the indifference of the magistrate, and concludes, ‘‘ Es ist ein verdriesslich Ding um die Welt.” He thought that the end of the wicked world was near (Letter to Probst, Dec. 5, 1544, vol. V. 703).