Such differences of view are hardly separable from what St. Paul glories in--a unity which is consistent with great variety of gifts and character, and great freedom. It is unity in variety which he has as his ideal, such a unity as is always characteristic of a unity of life, like that of nature or of a free people; or a unity, again, like that of a great Gothic Church, or of the Bible. It is quite certain that St. Paul would have deprecated that 'short and easy' method of promoting unity which has constant recourse to the external pressure of dogma and authority. iv. It follows naturally from what has been just said, that St. Paul should look not so much to ecclesiastical enactments as to a right Christian temper for preserving outward unity. 'Making it your moral effort,' so we may paraphrase his exhortation to the Asiatic Christians, 'by means {160} of the virtues which I have just specified of humility, meekness, long-suffering, and forbearance, to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of Christian peace.' The New Testament view of heresy (a self-willed separatism), or schism, is that it is a violation of charity and peace in the interests of pride and impatience and self-will. It is men like 'Diotrephes who loveth to have the pre-eminence,' who violate it. In fact it is written in history that the ecclesiastical schisms of the past have been due mainly either to the impatience and wilfulness of would-be reformers, from Tertullian downwards, or to the arrogance and love of domination in rival individuals or rival sees. 'Nothing,' says Chrysostom on this passage, 'will have power to divide the Church so much as the love of authority, and nothing provokes God so much as that the Church should be divided. We may have done ten thousand good actions, but if we rend the fulness of the Church, we shall suffer punishment with those who rent His body.'