On Ascension Day, May 15, 1539, we are told that “Luther dined with his Elector and assisted at a council. It was there resolved to maintain the bishops in their authority, if only they would renounce the Pope and were pious persons devoted to the Gospel, like Speratus. In that case,” said Luther, “we shall grant them the right and the power to ordain ministers.” When Melanchthon attempted to dissuade him, pointing out that it would be difficult to make sure of them by examination, he replied: “They are to be tested by our people and then consecrated by the laying on of hands, just as I am now a bishop.”[689] Instead of the words “as I am now a bishop” a more likely rendering is, “as we have already done as bishops here at Wittenberg.”[690] The resolution indicated would seem to have been merely provisional and non-committal, possibly a mere project. Nor is it likely that Melanchthon can have been very averse to it. As a matter of fact, Luther had, like a bishop, already ordained or inducted into office such men as had been “called” to the ministry, viz. by the congregations or the authorities; this he did for the first time in 1525 in the case of George Rörer, who had been called to the archdiaconate of Wittenberg. The ordination took place with imposition of hands and prayer. Since 1535 there existed a Wittenberg oath of ordination to be taken by the preachers and pastors who should be appointed, by which they bound themselves to preserve and to teach the “Catholic” faith as taught at Wittenberg.[691] Luther did not think that any consecration at the hands of the existing episcopate was necessary for a new bishop;[692] such necessity was incompatible with his conception of the Church, the hierarchy and the common priesthood; as for the Sacrament of Orders in the usual sense of the word, it no longer existed. A welcome opportunity for setting up a Protestant “bishop” was presented to the Elector of Saxony and to Luther when the bishopric of Naumburg-Zeitz fell vacant (above, p. 165 f.). Johann Frederick, the Elector, not satisfied with his rights as protector, laid claim also to actual sovereignty, and as the innovations had, as stated above, already secured a footing in Naumburg, he determined to introduce a Lutheran preacher as bishop and to seize upon the rights and lands in spite of the Chapter and larger part of the nobility still being true to the Catholic faith. He appealed to the fact that the kings of England, Denmark and Sweden, and likewise the Duke of Prussia, had set their bishops in “order.”[693] The noble and scholarly Julius Pflug, whom wisely the Chapter at once elected to the vacant see, was, as related above, never to be allowed to ascend the episcopal throne. 4. Consecration of Nicholas Amsdorf as “Evangelical Bishop” of Naumburg (1542)