Henry M. Baird · 155 of 379

CHAPTER VIII · Ecclesiastical discipline adopted.

The "Ecclesiastical Discipline" laid the foundation of the organization of the Protestants in France. Thoroughly democratic and representative in its character, it instituted, or rather recognized, a court—the consistory—in each particular congregation, with its popular element in the superintendents (surveillants) or elders, who sat with the pastors to adjudicate upon the inferior and local concerns of the members. It provided for the more direct participation of the people in the control of affairs by making the offices of elder and deacon elective, and not perpetual. It provided a court of appeal in the provincial colloques or synods, to be held at least twice a year, in which each church was to be represented by its pastor and elder. Above all stood the National Synod, the ultimate ecclesiastical authority. The constitution strove to preclude the establishment of a hierarchy, by declaring all churches and ministers equal, and to secure correctness of teaching, not only by requiring the ministers to sign the confession, but by providing for the deposition of those who had lapsed from the faith.

Thus it was that, in the midst of a monarchy surpassed by none for its arbitrary and tyrannical administration, and not many hundred paces from the squares where for a generation the eyes of the public had been periodically feasted with the sight of human sacrifices offered up in the name of religion, the founders of the Huguenot church framed the plan of an ecclesiastical republic, in which the elements of popular representation and decisive authority in an ultimate tribunal, the embodiment of the judgment of the entire church, were perhaps more completely realized than they had ever before been since the times of the early Christians. The few ministers that had met in an upper room, at the hazard of their lives, to vindicate the profession of faith of their persecuted co-religionists, and to sketch the plan of their churchly edifice, as noiselessly retraced their steps to the congregations committed to their charge. But they had planted the seed of a mighty tree which would stand the blasts of many a tempest—always buffeted by the winds, and bearing the scars of many a conflict with the elements—but proudly pre-eminent, and firm as the rock around which its sturdy roots were wound.