NONCONFORMITY. 803 



may understand it, we must exclude much that is allied with 

 it only by outward form and circumstance. Though in most 

 cases a separating sect espouses some unauthorized version of 

 the accepted creed ; and though the nature of the espoused 

 version is occasionally not without its significance ; yet the 

 thing specially to be noted is the attitude assumed towards 

 ecclesiastical government. Though there is always some 

 exercise of individual judgment ; yet in early stages this is 

 shown merely in the choice of one authority as superior to 

 another. Only in late stages does there come an exercise of 

 individual judgment which goes to the extent of denying 

 ecclesiastical authority in general. 



The growth of this later attitude we shall see on comparing 

 some of the successive stages. 



643. Ancient forms of dissent habitually stand for the 

 authority of the past over the present ; and since tradition 

 usually brings from more barbarous ages, accounts of more 

 barbarous modes of propitiation, ancient forms of dissent 

 are habitually revivals of practices more ascetic than those 

 of the current religion. It was shown in 620, that 

 the primitive monachism originated in this way; and as 

 Christianity, with the higher moral precepts on which it 

 insisted, joined renunciation of ordinary life and its aims 

 (said to be derived from the Essenes), there tended to be 

 thereafter a continual re-genesis of dissenting sects charac 

 terized in common by austerities. 



Kinds of dissent differing from these and differing from 

 modern kinds of dissent, arose during those times in which 

 the early church was spreading and becoming organized. 

 For before ecclesiastical government had established itself 

 and acquired sacredness, resistance to each new encroach 

 ment made by it, naturally led to divisions. Between the 

 time when the authority dwelt in the Christian congregations 

 themselves, and the time when the authority was centred in 

 the pope, there necessarily went successive usurpations of 

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