He had contended for the self-government of the Church, especially in matters of discipline; the principle runs all through the chapters of the fourth book of the _Institutio_. The _Ordinances_ give a certain show of autonomy, and yet the whole authority really rests with the Councils. The discipline was exercised by the _Consistory_ or session of Elders (_Anciens_); but this Consistory was chosen by the _Smaller Council_ on the advice of the ministers, and was to include two members of the _Smaller Council_, four from the _Council of Sixty_, and six from the _Council of Two Hundred_, and when they had been chosen they were to be presented to the _Council of Two Hundred_ for approval. When the Consistory met, one of the four Syndics sat as president, holding his baton, the insignia of his magisterial office, in his hand, which, as the revised _Ordinances_ of 1561 very truly said, "had more the appearance of civil authority than of spiritual rule." The revised _Ordinances_ forbade the president to carry his baton when he presided in The Consistory, in order to render obedience to the distinction which is "clearly shown in Holy Scripture to exist between the magistrate's sword and authority and the superintendence which ought to be in the Church"; but the obedience to Holy Scripture does not seem to have gone further than laying aside the baton for the time. It appears also that the rule of consulting the ministers in the appointments made to the Consistory was not unfrequently omitted, and that it was to all intents and purposes simply a committee of the Councils, and anything but submissive to the pastors.[154] The Consistory had no power to inflict civil punishments on delinquents. It could only admonish and warn. When it deemed that chastisements were necessary, it had to report to the Council, who sentenced. This was also done in order to maintain the separation between the civil and ecclesiastical power; but, in fact, it was a committee of the Council that reported to the Council, and the distinction was really illusory. This state of matters was quite repugnant to Calvin's cherished idea, not only as laid down in the _Institution_, but as seen at work in the Constitution of the French Protestant Church, which was mainly his authorship. "The magnificent, noble, and honourable Lords" of the Council (such was their title) of this small town of 13,000 inhabitants deferred in _words_ to the teachings of Calvin about the distinction between the civil and the spiritual powers, but in _fact_ they retained the whole power of rule or discipline in their own hands; and we ought to see in the disciplinary powers and punishments of the Consistory of Geneva, not an exhibition of the working of a Church organised on the principles of Calvin, but the ordinary procedure of the Town Council of a mediæval city. Their petty punishments and their minute interference with private life are only special instances of what was common to all municipal rule in the