l 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.'

From this point of view we may find an interesting parallel to this
exhortation of St. Paul in a passage of Plato's _Laws_, which is, I
believe, one of the few passages in pre-Christian writings where the
virtue of humility is recognized. {161} 'God, as the old tradition
declares, holding in His hand the beginning, middle, and end of all
that is, moves according to His nature in a straight line towards the
accomplishment of His end. Justice always follows Him, and is the
punisher of those who fall short of the divine law. To that law he who
would be happy holds fast, and follows it in all humility and order;
but he who is lifted up with pride, or money, or honour, or beauty, who
has a soul hot with folly and guilt and insolence, and thinks that he
has no need of a guide and ruler, but is able himself to be the guide
of others, he, I say, is left deserted of God; and being thus deserted,
he takes to him others who are like himself, and dances about in wild
confusion; and many think that he is a great man, but in a short time
he pays a penalty which justice cannot but approve, and is utterly
destroyed, and his family and city with him.'

From the point of view of the moral duty of preserving ecclesiastical
unity, it is quite clear that the guilt of Christians has been
exceedingly great, and also that it has been very w