References such as these to the State, which was now seen to be necessary for the support of the Church when once it had become a visible body,[1190] are to be met with repeatedly by anyone who follows the history of Lutheranism in its beginnings, more particularly in the years 1525-1528. It was during this period that the union of the new Church with the State, which has been described above, was accomplished. The sovereign arrogated to himself those powers which gradually made him the supreme head of the Church and permanent “emergency-bishop.”[1191] The visibility of the Church, or rather Churches—as all claim to catholicity was abandoned save in the credal formularies—rested on the enactments of the rulers, who, not without Luther’s connivance, soon introduced the compulsory element into religion. To make use of the invisible power of the Gospel and to give advice to consciences as to moral conduct, was indeed left to the ministers of the Word. But it was the State that had to establish “the right form of worship and the right ecclesiastical organisation.”[1192] All heretical communities from the commencement of the Church had looked to the State for help. But no heresiarch ever put himself so completely in the hands of the State in all outward matters as Luther and his fellows did where princes of their own party were concerned. “The common Christian Church” was, according to him, to retain for herself only the true faith and the sacraments which worked by faith. When, in the State Church thus called into being, the authorities proceeded too vigorously against the preachers and treated Luther without due consideration, the latter had himself a taste of the state of servitude into which he had brought the Church. Döllinger says truly that this restriction must have been “doubly irksome to a man who had known the old episcopal, ecclesiastical rule and who now had to admit to himself that it was he who had brought about the destruction of a system which, in spite of all its defects, had dealt with Church matters in an ecclesiastical spirit, and that it was he who had paved the way for the new and quite unecclesiastical order of things.”[1193] Not seldom do we hear Luther reproaching himself bitterly for the changes.