Others, not alone from the ranks of such as inclined to fanatism, were also to some extent to blame for the persistence with which he continued to revert to this pet idea. Nicholas Hausmann, pastor of Zwickau, and an intimate friend, approached him at the end of 1526 on the subject of the ban, which he regarded as indispensable for the cause of order. On Jan. 10, 1527, Luther replied, referring him to the Visitation which the Elector had promised to have held. “When the Churches have been constituted (‘_constitutis ecclesiis_’) by it, then we shall be able to try excommunication. What can you hope to effect so long as everything is in such disorder?”[491] Here we reach a fresh stage in the efforts to establish a new system of Church organisation. Luther waited in vain for the birth of the ideal community. Everything remained “in disorder.”[492] The intervention of the State introduced in the Visitation was, however, soon to establish an organisation and thus to improve discipline. _The Church Apart replaced by the Popular Church Supported by the State_ Luther hoped much from the Visitation of 1527; it was not merely to constitute parishes but also to serve the cause of the “assembly of Christians” and of discipline; the segregation of the true believers was to be effected within the parishes, at least when the parishes were not prepared to go over as a whole to the true Church, as, for instance, Leisnig had once promised to do. Luther again wrote, on March 29, 1527, to Hausmann, the zealous Zwickau Evangelical: “We hope that it [the ‘assembly of Christians’] will come about through the Visitation.” Then, he fancies, “Christians and non-Christians would no longer be found side by side” as at the ordinary gatherings in church; but, once they were “separated and formed an assembly where it was the custom to admonish, reprove and punish,” church discipline could soon be applied to individuals too.[493] But the “hope” remained a mere hope even when the Visitation was over. Nothing whatever is known of any further attempt of Luther in this direction, though, as Drews points out, “it is evident that he was unable to understand how Christians who had reached the faith could fail to feel themselves impelled to assemble in communities organised on the Apostolic model.”[494] He had to look on helplessly while the followers of the new preaching formed a great congregation, of which many of the members were, as he had said, “not Christians at all,” and whose prayer-gatherings were no more than “an incentive to faith and Christianity.” (Above, p. 139.)