What is effective in a voluntary Church is utterly ineffective in one not voluntary; and when the ministers of an establishment aim at extending ecclesiastical discipline over the ungodly by means of civil penalties, they raise at once the cry of despotism, tyranny, oppression, and the like. The threatened delinquents appeal to the State in defence of their personal rights, imperilled, as they say, by the inroads of clerical ambition and the menaces of spiritual pride. This sort of appeal in modern times is always successful; and the secular power, jealous of the ecclesiastical, puts a check on its activity. Consequently, discipline becomes an impossibility. English history proves, so far as a State Church is concerned, that there is no alternative but some sort of High Commission Court, with all the odium it inspires, and all the ruin which it ultimately brings--or the relaxation of discipline altogether. It should, however, be recollected that the London Elders, clerical and lay, in their zeal for discipline only strove to effect what many Episcopalians before and since have declared to be most desirable.[177] And, moreover, the ineffective activity, the fruitless discussions, the inoperative resolutions, and the complimentary votes of the Synod at Sion House, find a strict parallel in the proceedings of like assemblies in many places. Even Convocation cannot be excepted. Indeed that body, in comparison with its pretensions, is signally powerless. No one who maintains the importance and usefulness of the last-mentioned assembly can consistently ridicule or despise the efforts of their Genevan predecessors under the Commonwealth. It will be well if all Englishmen learn from these facts a lesson of moderation and charity; and while pointing out what they conceive to be flaws in systems, and foibles in characters, take care to honour all really good men, whatever their communion or opinions, and not forget to concede purity of motive in all cases where the opposite is not perfectly plain.