Protestantism in France From Death of Francis I to Edict of Nantes - James Aitken Wylie

Bible, and that the depository of it is in the Church
-- "All ye are brethren." Moving between the two
great necessities which their motto indicated,
authority and liberty, they strove to adjust and
reconcile these two different but not antagonistic
forces--Christ's royalty and his people's
brotherhood. Without the first there could not be
order, without the second there could not be
freedom. Their scheme of doctrine preceded their
code of discipline; the first had been accepted
before the second was submitted to; thus all the
bonds that held that spiritual society together, and
all the influences that ruled it, proceeded out of the
throne in the midst of the Church. If they, as
constituted officers, stood between the Monarch
and the subjects of this spiritual empire, it was
neither as legislators nor as rulers, strictly so
called. "One" only was Master, whether as
regarded law or government. Their power was not
legislative but administrative, and their rule was
not lordly but ministerial; they were the fellowservants
of those among whom, and for whom,
their functions were discharged.
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