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 responsible to the State in all civil matters; but the magistrates were responsible to the Church in all religious concerns, especially those affecting faith and conduct. The laws of the State were civil in form, but religious in origin; the laws of the Church were civil in sanction, though spiritual in scope and purpose. Calvin indeed had, as regards civil polity, distinguished between monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, and had indicated their respective excellences and defects, as well as his own personal preferences; but he declined to assert that one of them was absolutely or under all conditions the best. He could not feel as if a similar latitude of judgment were allowed him as regards the Church, where man was not free to follow any order he liked, for in the New Testament a polity was given him to imitate. Our Lord had Himself shown how His Church ought to be governed, and where He had spoken man's duty was to interpret His word and do His will.

The Ordonnances Ecclésiastiques may be described as Calvin's programme of Genevan reform, or his method for applying to the local and external Church the government which our Lord had instituted and the Apostles had realised. These Ordinances expressed his historical sense and gratified his religious temper, while adapting the Church to the city, so that the city might become a better Church. To explain in detail how he proposed to do this is impossible within our limits; and we shall therefore confine ourselves to the most important of the factors he created, the Ministry and the Consistory.

The Reformed ministry had till now been largely the creation of conversion, or inspiration, or chance, and the result could not be termed satisfactory. Convinced men had found their way into it, and had created a conviction as sincere and an enthusiasm as vehement as their own; but along with them had also come hosts of restless men, moved by superficial and often ignoble causes:—discontent, petulance, discomfort, the desire to legitimise illegitimate connexions, dislike to authority, and the mere love of change. And they had proved most mischievous forces in the Protestant Churches, had continued restless, become seditious, impracticable, schismatic, authors of disorder and enemies of peace, who arrested progress and made men ashamed of change. Calvin had had his own experience of these men; and he, as a man of grave and juristic mind, had found the experience disagreeable, and was to find it more disagreeable still. With the insight of genius he perceived that the battle could be won, not by chance recruits, but only by a disciplined army; and, in order that the army might be created, he invented the discipline. The Ordinances may indeed be termed a method for making and guiding a Reformed ministry, a clergy that, without any priestly character, should yet be more efficient than the ancient priesthood. Hence where the Roman placed the Church, Calvin set the Deity, and made a man's right to enter the ministerial office depend on his vocation