“Weak consciences are troubled,” he said in 1536, “and know not which sect to follow; in their perplexity they begin to despair of religion altogether.”[646]—“Violent sermons, which promote lawlessness and break down all barriers against the passions, are listened to greedily. Such preaching, more worthy of cynics than of Christians, it is which thunders forth the false doctrine that good works are not called for. Posterity will marvel that there should ever have been an age when such madness was received with applause.”[647]—“Had you made the journey with us,” he writes on his return from a visit to the Palatinate and Swabia, “and, like us, seen the woeful desolation of the Churches in so many places, you would doubtless long with tears and sighs that the Princes and the learned should confer together how best to come to the help of the Churches.”[648]—Later again we read in his letters: “Behold how great is everywhere the danger to the Churches and how difficult their government; for everywhere those in the ministry quarrel amongst themselves and set up strife and division.” “We live like the nomads, no one obeys any man in anything whatsoever.”[649] Two provisions suggested by Luther for the future in lieu of the impracticable synods were, the establishment of national consistories and the use of a sort of excommunication. _Luther’s Attitude towards the Consistories introduced in 1539_ With strange resignation Luther sought to persuade himself that, even without the help of any synods and general laws, it would still be possible to re-establish order by means of a certain supervision to be exercised with the assistance of the State, backed by the penalty of exclusion. Against laws and regulations for the guidance of the Church’s life, he displayed an ever-growing prejudice, the reason for this being partly his peculiar ideas on the abrogation of all governing authority of the Church, partly the experiences with which he had met. “So long as the sense of unity is not well rooted in the heart and mind”—he wrote in 1545, i.e. after the establishment of the consistories—“outward unity is not of much use, nor will it last long.... The existing observances [in matters of worship] must not become laws. On the contrary, just as the schoolmaster and father of the family rule without laws, and, in the school and in the home, correct faults, so to speak only by supervision, so, in the same way, in the Church, everything should be done by means of supervision, but not by rules for the future.... Everything depends on the minister of the Word being prudent and faithful. For this reason we prefer to insist on the erection of schools, but above all on that purity and uniformity of doctrine which unites minds in the Lord. But, alas, there are too few who devote themselves to study; many are just bellies and no more, intent on their daily bread.... Time, however, will mend much that it is impossible to settle beforehand by means of regulations.”[650]