if it is put off till they are to be led out to die, they are often so overcome by terror that they can neither receive nor understand any thing.[139] For these functions and for others, great care must be taken in the choice of men for the ‘four orders of offices which the Lord has instituted for the government of his church.’ ‘No one is to intrude into the office of a minister without a call.’ We have seen that the examination turns on doctrine and on morals. There is no room for hesitation in regard to this: but there was in Calvin’s mind some doubt as to the mode of their election. He had always acknowledged that two orders ought to have a share in it: the pastors and the people. But in the _Institution chrétienne_, in which he speaks in general terms, he insists _that the common freedom and right of the church_ (_du troupeau_) _shall be in no respect infringed or diminished_. He desires that ‘the pastor should preside at the elections, in order to lead the people _by good counsel and not for the purpose of cutting out their work for them according to their own views, without regard to others_.’ ‘The pastors,’ he adds, ‘ought to preside at the election in order that the multitude may not proceed in a frivolous, fractious, or tumultuous manner.’[140] Now Calvin in the _Ordinances_ went beyond this rule. He established ‘that the _ministers should in the first instance elect_ the man who was to be appointed to the office; that afterwards he should be presented to the Council; and that if the Council accepted him, he should be _finally_ introduced to the people by preaching, to the end that he might be received by the common consent of the faithful.’[141] Assuredly the right of the church was hereby _curtailed_. Calvin might be mistaken in his estimate, and might suppose that the bold Genevese would dare to reject the elect of two authorities, the spiritual and the temporal. It did not turn out so; the consent of the people was an empty ceremony and was ultimately dispensed with. The source of the evil was the circumstance that church and nation were the same body; and that the nation supplied the church with a great number of members who had neither the intelligence nor the piety necessary to the choice of competent and pious ministers. When the church is composed of men who openly profess the great truths of the Gospel and conform their lives thereto, it is possible to trust to the flock, which does not exclude the natural influence of pastors. But when the church is a vast medley, when perhaps even the incompetent elements predominate in it, it is necessary to assign a larger share in the election to the ministers. Calvin, however, made it too large, for it annulled that of the members of the church. But election in a church by numbers is always a difficult matter. The _Ordinances_ added ‘that for the purpose of introducing the elected minister, it would be proper to adopt the practice of laying on