First of all it was called for by the very nature of this “ministry” of those who were to preach and to dispense the sacraments in the name of the congregation; according to Luther’s teaching, the dispensing of the sacraments went hand in hand with preaching, the sacraments being efficacious only through the faith of the recipient, and the dispenser’s duty being confined to making the recipient more worthy of the inpouring of grace through the word of faith which accompanies the visible sign of the sacrament. The ministerial “office” was not conferred by a sacrament as was the case in the priestly ordination of the olden Church, but, as Luther teaches, “ordination, if understood aright, is no more than being called or ‘ordered’ to the office of parson or preacher.” Among the Papists “Baptism and Christ had been weakened and darkened” by the ordinations. “We are born priests and as such we want to be known.” “By Holy Baptism we have become the true priests of Christendom as St. Peter says: ‘You are a royal priesthood.’”[1163] Ministers (i.e. servants) of the Word was the proper title for those who performed all their functions in the name of the common priesthood of the whole people. As soon, however, as it became a question of appointing preachers a visible Church at once appeared on the scene, though one without either Pope or hierarchy. It may be recalled that Luther’s plan was originally to leave it to each congregation to appoint a preacher either from its own body or an outsider, who was then to act in their name and with their authority. There seemed no better way of securing control over the preacher’s doctrine. As for the ecclesiastical penalties, Luther, even in his “Deudsche Messe,” left their use to the congregation as a whole.[1164] At a later date he still clung to the idea of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the congregation. Even to absolve from sin belonged, in his opinion,—and to this he adhered to the end,—to all believers, and such absolution was as valid as had it been pronounced by God Himself (always assuming that faith had already been awakened in the penitent).[1165] On the authority of the congregation was to rest, not only the lower ministry, but also the quasi-episcopate. The scheme he sketched in 1523 in the Latin work he addressed to the Bohemians, “_De instituendis ministris ecclesiæ_,” has already been described.[1166] The many abuses which arose, and indeed were bound to arise, from the independence of the congregations soon compelled him to cast about for a more reliable framework. The phantom of a community of believers united in spirit, of a “brotherhood” minus any social or constitutional cohesion and devoid of any vigorous direction, proved incapable of realisation. Help was to be looked for only from the State.