To his former pupil, Anton Lauterbach, preacher at Pirna, he sent the following not over-confident instructions: “Hesse’s example of the use of excommunication pleases me. If you can establish the same thing, well and good. But the centaurs and harpies of the Court will look at it askance. May the Lord be our help! Everywhere licence and lawlessness continue to spread amongst the people, but it is the fault of the secular authorities.”[678] The example of Hesse to which Luther referred was the Hessian “Regulations for church discipline,” enacted in 1539 at the instance of Bucer, in which, amongst other things, provision was made for excommunication. So-called “elders,” appointed conjointly by the town authorities and the congregation, were to watch over the faith and morals of all, preachers inclusive; to them, together with the preacher, it fell, after seeking advice of the Superintendent, to pronounce the ban over the obdurate sinner. In the Saxon Electorate, however, so Luther hints, this would hardly be feasible on account of the attitude of the authorities and the utter lawlessness of the people. In 1538 the Elector himself had well put the difficulty which would face any such disciplinary measure: “If only people could be found who would let themselves be excommunicated!” He had, as Jonas related at Luther’s table, listened devoutly to the sermon at Zerbst and then expressed himself strongly on the universal decline in morals, the “outrageous wickedness, gluttony and drunkenness,” etc.; he had also said that excommunication was necessary, but had then uttered the despairing words just quoted.[679] Yet in spite of all Luther still continued at times to hold up the ban and its consequences as a threat: “I shall denounce him from the pulpit as having been placed under the ban”—this of a burgher who had absented himself from the Sacrament for fifteen years—“and will give notice that he is to be looked upon as a dog; if, after this, anyone holds intercourse or has anything to do with him, he will do so at his own risk; if he dies he is to be buried on the rubbish-heap like a dog; we formally make him over to the authorities for their justice and their laws to do their worst on him.”[680]—“As for our usurers, drunkards, libertines, whoremongers, blasphemers and scoffers,” he says, “they do not require to be put under the ban, as they have done so themselves; they are in it already up to their ears.... When they are about to die, no pastor or curate may attend them, and when they are dead let the hangman drag them out of the town to the carrion heap.... Since they wish to be heathen, we shall look upon them as such.”[681]