French Church Anti-Hierarchy
Chapter 8, Of Provincial Synods, canon 13, states, “The authority of provincial synods is subordinate to that of national synods.”87 What we do not read is that consistories are subject to colloquies just as congregations are subject to consistories. The idea of the authority here is that of jurisdiction. The broader the assembly, the greater was the number of churches it concerned, thus the broader its jurisdiction or authority. For instance, no colloquy or provincial synod had the authority to change an article of the confession or the church order. They could propose such a change, but only the national synod had the authority to make such changes, since they affected all the churches in common. To call this hierarchical is misleading.
Theodore G. Van Raalte, "The French Reformed Synods of the Seventeenth Century", in Martin Klauber, ed., The Theology of the French Reformed Churches: From Henry IV to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2014), 77