In many localities preachers of the new faith were in request, moreover, many of the older clergy, who had passed over to Luther’s side, had departed this life or had been removed by the Visitors on account of their incapacity or moral shortcomings. Those who had replaced them were often men of no education whatever. The decline of learning gave rise to many difficulties. Schoolmasters were welcomed not only as simple ministers but, as we have heard Luther declare, even as the candidates best fitted for the post of superintendent.[27] How frequently people of but slight education were appointed pastors is plain from the lists of those ordained at Wittenberg from 1537 onwards; amongst these we find men of every trade: clerks, printers, weavers, cobblers, tailors, and even one peasant. Seven years later, when the handicraftsmen had disappeared, we constantly find sextons and schoolmasters being entrusted with the ministerial office.[28] This sad state of things must be carefully kept in mind if we are to understand the ideas which chiefly inspired the above writings, and as these have not so far been sufficiently emphasised we may be permitted to make some reference to them. “We must have men,” says Luther in his first writing, viz. that addressed to the councillors, “men to dispense to us God’s Word and the sacraments and to watch over the souls of the people. But whence are we to get them if the schools are allowed to fall to ruin and other _more Christian_ ones are not set up?”[29] “Christendom has always need of such prophets to study and interpret the Scriptures, and, when the call comes, to conduct controversy.”[30] Similar appeals occur even more frequently in the other writing, viz. that dedicated by Luther to his friend at Nuremberg. Already in his first writing, Luther, as the ghostly counsellor of Germany “appointed” in Christ’s name, boldly faces all other teachers, telling the Catholics, that what he was seeking was merely the “happiness and salvation” of the Fatherland.[31] In the second he expressly states that it is to all the German lands that he their “prophet” is speaking: “My dear Germans, I have told you often enough that you have heard your prophet. God grant that we may obey His Word.”[32] So entirely does he identify the interests of his Church with those of the schools. Well might those many Germans who did not hold with him—and at that time Luther was an excommunicate outlaw—well might they have asked themselves with astonishment whence he had the right to address them as though he were the representative and mouthpiece of the whole of Germany. Such exhortations have, however, their root in his usual ideas of religion and in the anxiety caused by the urgent needs of the time.