The test here also is a test of character and not of belief. But when the intellectual elements had asserted a prominence in Christianity, and when the acceptance of the baptismal formula had been made a test of admission to a Christian community, it gradually became a custom to make the acceptance of that formula also a condition of admission to hospitality.[726] It was, so to speak, a _tessera_ or pass-word. By being a pass-word to hospitality, it became also a form which a man might easily strain his conscience to accept, and in religion no less than in politics there are no such strenuous upholders of current opinion as those who are hypocrites. The importance of the formula as a passport attached not only to individuals, but also to whole communities.[727] The fact that the Teaching of the Apostles makes the test personal and individual, shows that in the country and at the time when that book was written the later system had not yet begun to prevail. This later system was for a community to furnish its travelling members with a circular letter of recommendation. Such a letter served as a passport. The travelling Christian who brought it received an immediate and ungrudging hospitality. But when churches had wide points of difference, they would not receive each other’s letters. The points of difference which thus led to the renunciation of fellowship, related in the first instance to discipline or practice. They came to relate to belief. Points of doctrine, no less than points of discipline, came to be discussed at the meetings of the representatives of the churches in a district, concerning which I spoke in the last Lecture. Doctrine came to be thus co-ordinate with character as the basis on which the churches joined together in local or general confederations, and accepted each other’s certificates. The hierarchical tendency grew with it and out of it. The position of the bishops, which had grown out of the assumed desirability of guarding the tradition of truth, tended to emphasize that tradition. It gave to tradition not only a new importance, but also a new sanction. It rested belief upon living authority. Men were no longer free to interpret for themselves. * * * * *