“It is the mouth of Christ which must do this.” “Now may I and everyone who speaks the word of Christ freely boast that his mouth is the mouth of Christ.” “Another man, one whom the Papists cannot see, is driving the wheel, and therefore they attribute it all to us, but they shall yet be convinced of it.”[254]
Meanwhile some practical action was necessary, for, as yet, the Evangelicals formed only small groups and unorganised congregations which might at any time drift apart, whilst elsewhere they were scattered among the masses, almost unnoticed and utterly powerless. The mere attacking of Popery was not sufficient to consolidate them. The “meetings” of those who had been touched by the “Word,” Gospel-preaching and a new liturgy, did not suffice. The further growth and permanent organisation of the congregations Luther hoped to see effected by the help of the authorities, by the Town-councillors, who were to play so great a part later, and, better still, by the Princes whom he expected to win over to the new teaching as he had already done in the case of Frederick, the Elector of Saxony. It is true he would have preferred the setting up of churches to have been the work of the newly converted Faithful, i.e. to have taken place from below upwards. Those who had been converted by the Gospel, “the troubled consciences” as he calls them, who were united in faith and charity, were ever to form the nucleus around which he would fain have seen everywhere the congregations growing, without the intervention of the worldly power. The force of circumstances, however, even from the commencement, compelled him to fall back on the authorities.
In short, the ideas he advanced concerning organisation were, not only various, but frequently contradictory. His favourite idea, to which we shall return later, of a community of perfect Christians was utterly incapable of realisation. “To maintain within the Congregation a more select company forming a corporation apart was hardly feasible in the long run.”[255] At the back of his various plans was always the persuasion that the power of the Gospel would in the end do its own work and reveal the right way for the building up of a new organisation, just as of its own power it had shattered the edifice of Antichrist. Instead of searching for the link connecting his discordant utterances, as Protestant[256] theologians have been at pains to do, it will be more practical and more in accordance with history to present them here in disconnected groups. For any lack of clearness which may be the result Luther must be held responsible.