Yet the “two callings,” the secular and the ecclesiastical, were to become more and more closely intermingled. As was inevitable, the weak spiritual authority set up by Luther was soon absorbed by a strong secular authority well aware of its own aims; the secular power treated the former as its sacristan charged with carrying out the services of the Church, and gradually assumed exclusive control, even in matters of doctrine. A moral servitude such as had never been seen at any period in the history of the German Church was the consequence of the State government of the Church, brought about by the consistories. In order to understand Luther’s attitude towards the consistories and to gauge rightly his responsibility, some further particulars of their rise and earliest form are called for. In 1537 the “Great Committee of the Torgau district” demanded, that the Elector should establish four consistories in his lands. On these would devolve the looking after of “all _ecclesiasticæ causæ_, the preaching office, the churches and ministers, their vindication _contra injurias_, all that concerned their conduct and life, and particularly the matrimonial suits.” Some such court was essential in the case of these suits, because, since the dissolution of the bishops’ courts, the utmost disorders had prevailed and nobody even knew by which code the questions pending were to be judged, whether by the old canon law with which the lawyers were familiar, or according to the doctrine and statutes of Luther which were quite a different thing. The disciplinary system too had become so lax that some revision of the Church judiciary appeared inevitable. As for the principles which were to direct the new organisation: Luther was inclined at times to be forgetful of his theory, that his Churches should have no canon law of their own;[662] even at this grave crisis he does not seem to have been distinctly conscious of it; at the same time his jealousy made him unwilling to see all the authority for governing the new Churches conferred directly by the State, though, with his usual frankness, he admitted it was impossible for things to continue as they were. The most influential men of his circle were, however, determined to have so-called ecclesiastical courts introduced by the sovereign, which should then govern in his name; hitherto, they urged, it was the purely secular courts which had intervened, which was a mistake, as had been shown in practice by their failure. Thus, as R. Sohm put it, “did Melanchthon’s ideas, from about 1537, gradually oust those of Luther in the government of the Lutheran Church.”[663] It was from this standpoint that, in his Memorandum of 1538 addressed to the Elector, Jonas, the lawyer and theologian, supported the above-mentioned proposal of the Torgau assembly.