The reformers were in great perplexity. The synod of Lausanne, at which the Bernese had opposed the hearing of the representatives of the Genevese Church, could not bind the latter. Their resistance to the introduction of new usages, which was ordered by the council without awaiting the decision of the synod of Zurich, was legitimate. If matters of that kind are left to the decision of the civil power, the natural order of things is inverted, the autonomy of the Church is disowned; and who knows whether, in a turbulent democracy, religion may not fall into the hands of an excited people who will, according to the saying of a celebrated but scoffing writer, take it up ‘to play at ball with it, and make it bound upwards as readily with the foot as with the fist.’[620] However, Calvin could not help asking himself whether the actual question, the acceptance of unleavened bread which the Jews used to eat at the time of the Passover, was of a sufficiently weighty kind to put an end to his ministry at Geneva. He did not think it was. ‘If we have at heart,’ he said, ‘union and peace, let us seek after a unity of minds in doctrine, rather than insist in a too scrupulous manner on a conformity of the most exact kind to this or that ceremony. There are some points on which the Lord leaves us freedom, in order that our edification may be the greater. Not to be careful about this edification, and to seek instead of it a slavish conformity, is unworthy of a Christian.’[621] Such were Calvin’s views on the question about leavened or unleavened bread.