Fraternity-Testvériség, 1960 (38. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1960-10-01 / 10. szám
16 FRATERNITY activities of the Counter-Reformation these leading laymen had frequently been forced to seek means of meeting together to discuss procedure, and as their discussions became more and more ordered and regular as time went on, they found their properly constituted meetings developing into what was in reality a court of the Church. For example, in the northeast of Hungary the Sárospatak theological college had been gradually drawing together as a kind of advisory council the Reformed land-owners of the district. Because of the troublesome times this particular Conventus came to assume almost supreme authority in the area, and took upon itself the task of contacting the Agent at the royal Court without consulting the ecclesiastical courts at all. When, therefore, as happened in 1715, all ecclesiastical Synods were forbidden by royal decree to meet and conduct their business, the various Conventus throughout the country actually developed into the only representative courts of the Church that there were. Now, at the beginning, it was certainly a sense of loyalty to the Church which they loved and fought for which induced those landlords to take the reins of church government into their hands, and for long they played their part unselfishly and well; however, that may be, we can well understand how, after a time, both the superintendent bishops and the ministers found that their positions of leadership in the Church had been supplanted. Thus, while the Conventus came into being to serve a particular purpose that no other court could meet, its institution sowed the seeds of trouble for the Church in years to come. Another change in church government that took place about this time was the duplication by laymen of all offices in the Church. Not only did the Kirk Session come to have a clerk, but both the Church County, or Presbytery, and the Church District, or Synod area, developed the new offices of lay chairman, or curator, and lay deputy chairman, respectively, who paralleled in office the ministerial moderators of those two courts. Laymen now also took part in Church
