c. The Church and the Pastorate. Orthodoxy regarded word and sacrament and the ministry which administered them as the basis and foundation of the church; pietism held that the individual believers determined the character and existence of the church. In the one case the church was thought to beget, nurse, and nourish believers; in the other believers, constituted, maintained, and renewed the church, accomplishing this best by conventicles, in which living Christianity preserved itself and diffused its influence abroad. The orthodox laid great stress upon clerical ordination and the grace of office; pietists on the person and his faith. Spener had taught that only he who has experienced in his own heart the power of the gospel, _i.e._ he who has been born again, can be a true preacher and pastor. Löscher maintained that the official acts of an unconverted preacher, if only he be orthodox, may be blessed as well as those of a converted man, because saving power lies not in the person of the preacher, but in the word of God which he preaches, in its purity and simplicity, and in the sacraments which he dispenses in accordance with their institution. The pietists then went so far as absolutely to deny that saving results could follow the preaching of an unconverted man. The proclamation of forgiveness by the church without the inward sealing had for them no meaning; yea, they regarded it as dangerous, because it quieted conscience and made sinners secure. Hence they keenly opposed private confession and churchly absolution. Of a special grace of office they would know nothing: the true ordination is the new birth; each regenerate one, and such a one only, is a true priest. The orthodox insisted above all on pure doctrine and the church confession; the pietists too regarded this as necessary, but not as the main thing. Spener decidedly maintained the duty of accepting the church symbols; but later pietists rejected them as man’s work, and so containing errors. Among the orthodox, again, some went so far as to claim for their symbols absolute immunity from error. Spener’s opposition to the compulsory use of fixed Scripture portions, prescribed forms of prayer, and the exorcism formulary occasioned the most violent contentions. On the other hand, his reintroduction of the confirmation service before the first communion, which had fallen into general desuetude, was imitated, and soon widely prevailed, even among the orthodox.