difficult to deal with, unless extreme necessity compelled them. The Elector, however, readily assented to this project, and purposed to propose it as a model for other churches in his dominions. At this point, however, a wider field of action opened out, the details of which could not be comprehended at a single glance, and which seemed to require a higher care, and the guidance and support of higher powers and authorities. In many places, nothing as yet, or at all events nothing of a stable and well-ordered kind, had been done towards a reconstruction of the Church and the satisfaction of spiritual requirements in an evangelical sense. There was no collective Church, and no ecclesiastical office existing by whose influence and authority reforms might have been made, and a new organisation established. This was a grievous state of need where, perhaps, the existing clergy and the majority or the flower of their congregations were already unanimous and decided in their confession of evangelical doctrine. And in a number of congregations, indeed, among the great mass of the country people, there prevailed to a peculiar degree, that want of understanding, of ripe thought, and of inward sympathy, which Luther noticed even among many of his Wittenbergers. The bishops, in their visitations in Saxony under the Elector Frederick, had been unable to check any longer the progress of the new teaching, and did not venture on any further interference. And yet this teaching, as Luther knew better than anyone, had not yet succeeded, in spite of all its popularity, in penetrating the souls of men. To a large extent, the masses seemed to be still stolid and indifferent. Even among the clergy, many were so unstable, so obscure, and so incompetent, that they failed to make any progress with their congregations. There were even some among them who were ready, according to circumstances, to adopt either the old or the new Church usages. In some places the new practices were opposed as innovations, especially by various nobles, and by the priests, who were dependent on the nobles: if such opposition was to be broken, it could only be done by the authority and power of the local sovereign. Lastly, and apart from all this, the new Church system was threatened with imminent disturbance and dissolution from the insufficiency or misuse of the funds required for its support. The customary revenues were falling off; payments were no longer made for private masses; and many of the nobles, including even those who remained attached to the old system, began to secularise the property of the Church. 'Unless measures are taken,' said Luther, 'to secure a suitable disposition and proper maintenance for ministers and preachers, there will shortly be neither parsonages nor schools worth speaking of, and Divine Worship and the Word of God will come utterly to an end.' The first question was to establish the principles on which a new organisation of the Church should be based.