After Luther had set aside Carlstadt’s innovations at Wittenberg, with the approval of the Elector who had forbidden them, he appointed the celebration of the Supper for those of the new faith at Wittenberg on the lines previously followed by Melanchthon; the communion became the principal part of the ceremony, the offertory was omitted and the words of consecration were spoken aloud either with or without certain of the prayers of the Mass. Thus the abuses introduced by Carlstadt were, in his opinion, removed, and the swarms of worldly minded and fanatical nominal Christians, “Christian in name but almost heathen at heart,” were no longer brought in contact with the true Evangelicals; the employment of force towards those weak in the faith, whose convictions Luther did not consider ripe for the purely congregational ritual of Carlstadt, was also put an end to. All the external forms which had been introduced, and to which, Luther feared, the people would have clung in an unevangelical fashion as had formerly been the case in Popery, were removed. In order more particularly to avoid any compromising abuse of the Sacrament of the Altar, Luther sought to establish a Christian congregation in which confession should exist, though not as a compulsory practice, and in which a certain supervision was exercised. In order to proceed cautiously and in accordance with the Elector’s ideas, he refrained from directing the bestowal of the chalice in the order of Divine Service drawn up for the use of his followers; at any rate, this was the case at Easter, 1522, though in the autumn of that same year the chalice was again in general use.[276] In spite of this, up to 1523, a special form of communion with the cup was in use for true Evangelical believers, who were subject to a special form of supervision. This arrangement agreed with Luther’s idea of an “Assembly of true Christians,” on which he was to enlarge in 1523 in his Maundy-Thursday sermon (see below). The special communion was, it is true, speedily abandoned, but the idea of the select Assembly ever remained dear to him.[277] The other factor which called even more urgently for internal organisation was the appointment of pastors. The induction of new pastors could not well take place independently of the authorities, indeed, it imperatively demanded their co-operation. At Wittenberg the later alteration in the liturgy and the final prohibition of the Mass, after it had been insisted on by Luther, was carried out by a threatening mob with the connivance of the Government.[278] Yet, in spite of the impossibility of dispensing with the secular power, until 1525, Luther was for various reasons more inclined to the Congregational ideal, which was less subject to Government interference. This congregational ideal tended to promote his plan of an “Assembly of true Christians.”