For all “practical purposes Luther threw over the principle of the universal priesthood which the peasants had embraced as a socio-political maxim, and, by a determined effort, cut his cause adrift from the social efforts of the day.… He worked himself up into a real hatred of the mob, of ‘Master Omnes,’ the ‘many-headed monster,’ and indeed came within an ace of the socio-political ideas of Machiavelli, who advised the rulers to treat the people so harshly that they might look upon those lords as liberal who were not extortionate.” After the abrogation of episcopal authority and canon law, of hierarchy and monasteries “there came an urgent call for the establishment of new associations with practical aims and for the construction of the skeleton of the new Christian community; we now hear no more of that ideal community of true believers which, thanks to its heartfelt faith, was to carry on the social work of preventing and alleviating poverty.” The whole of the outward life of the Church being now under the direction of the Protestant sovereign, the system of poor relief began to assume a purely secular character, having nothing but an outward semblance of religion. The new regulations were largely the work of Bugenhagen, who was a better organiser than Luther. The many enactments he was instrumental in drafting for the North German towns embody necessary provisions for the relief of the poor. Officials appointed by the sovereign or town-council directed, or at least supervised, the management, while the “deacons,” i.e. the ecclesiastical guardians of the fund, were obliged to find the necessary money and, generally, to bear all the odium for the meagreness and backwardness of the distribution. The members of the congregation had practically no longer any say in the matter. The parish’s share in the relief of the poor was made an end of even before it had lost the other similar rights assigned to it by Luther, such as that of promulgating measures of discipline, appointing clergy, administering the Church’s lands, etc. Just as the organisation of the Church was solely in the hands of the authorities to the complete exclusion of the congregations, so poor relief and the ecclesiastical regulations on which it was based became merely a government concern.