Laudator Temporis Acti

Tom Holland, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World (New York: Basic Books, 2019), pp. 330-331, with note on p. 562:

It was precisely because he [John Calvin] knew that many would spurn the gifts of the Spirit that he laboured so hard, not just to gather together a community of the elect, but to bring it into harmony with God's plans. Four offices existed to uphold it. There were ministers to preach the word of God; teachers to instruct the young; deacons to meet the needs of the unfortunate. Then, watchdogs elected to stand guard over the morals of the laity, there were the 'elders': the presbyters. Meeting every Thursday, it was they and the city's ministers who provided the church with its court: the 'Consistory'. Fail to attend a service on Sunday, or transgress the Ten Commandments, or break the laws devised by Calvin to define the doctrines of the Church, and a summons was bound to come—no matter the rank of the offender. Every year, almost one in fifteen Genevans would end up making an appearance before it.³¹ For those in the city who hated Calvin, who rejected his theology, who resented the endless lectures and harangues from the pulpit, it was this that constituted the worst intrusion: the dread that the eyes of the Consistory were always on them, watching, marking, judging.

31. The figure—'somewhere in the range of 7 per cent of the population each year'—is quoted by [Bruce] Gordon, Calvin, p. 295.

Mutatis mutandis, we have our own modern Consistory, watching, marking, judging.