from the armoury of the Word; they would have approved themselves worthy of their position, and acquired strength for future conflicts.  But whilst they did not altogether neglect an appeal to Scripture, they were tempted in an evil hour to think of sequestrating their own freedom that they might overwhelm heresy with the vigour of an ecclesiastical despotism.  By investing their chairman with arbitrary power and by making communion with this functionary the criterion of discipleship, they at once sanctioned a perilous arrangement and endorsed a vicious principle.  From this date we may trace the commencement of a career of defection.  The bishop and the Church began to supplant Christ and a knowledge of the gospel.  Bigotry advanced apace, and conscience found itself in bondage.

The establishment of the hierarchical system, though imparting, as was thought, greater unity to the structure of the Church, did not really invigorate its constitution.  The spiritual commonwealth is very different from any merely earthly organization, for it has no statute-book but the Bible, and it owes explicit obedience to no ruler but the King of Zion.  Freedom of conscience, in obedience to the Word, is the heritage of all its members; and every one of them is bound to exercise the privilege, and to resist its violation.  Its unity appears, not in adhesion to any visible head, but in cordial submission to its one great Lord and Sovereign.  When a change was made in its primitive framework, its essential unity was impaired.  After the elders had handed over a considerable share of their authority to their president, they could not be expected to take such a deep interest in its government as when they were themselves individually responsible for its official administration.  They still, indeed, acted as his counsellors, but as they no longer held the independent footing they had once occupied, they could neither speak nor act so freely and so energetically as before.  Thus, whilst one member of the ecclesiastical body was permitted to attain an unnatural magnitude, others ceased to perform their proper functions, and the whole eventually became diseased and misshapen.  And the new arrangement entirely failed in checking the growth of the errorists.  After its adoption heresies sprung up as rapidly as ever, and the multitude of its sects continued to be the scandal of Christianity even in the time of Constantine. [654:1] Their suppression is to be attributed, not to the potency of Prelacy, but to the stern intolerance of the Imperial laws.  By the rigid enforcement of conformity the Catholic Church at length reigned without a rival.