The meetings of this body were solemnized alternately from place to place, and were attended with the most happy consequences. Before the venerable body, whose members were uniformly distinguished for integrity, candour, and piety, all difficult cases were brought for consideration and adjustment. Here divisions were reconciled, schisms healed, and such differences as appeared likely to disturb the general peace removed. Here, also, religious and benevolent enterprises were projected and recommended to the churches for their action and consideration. The authority of the General Conference was subject to several limitations, which will be perceived by attending to the form and government of the Sabbatarian fraternities. Every church is in itself a distinct body, capable of transacting its own concerns, of receiving or expelling members, of appointing its own pastor and other officers, fixing their salaries, and suspending their ministrations in case of impiety or gross immorality. The internal regulations of these churches are simple and democratic, every member being equally entitled to a vote, and the pastor, except by the superior respect attached to his station, having no more voice, and exercising no more influence in business affairs, than a private individual. It could not be expected that these churches, after having experienced the benefits of their equal and impartial government, would accede to the establishment of any ecclesiastical organization that might tend to subvert their independence, or to centralize in an extraneous body the authority which was then disseminated through and exercised by the members of the churches themselves. Accordingly, we find that the right to choose, elect, and ordain their own deacons was still retained by the churches, as well as the privilege of specifying from their numbers such candidates for the ministry as appeared eligible for that sacred office, which specification and appointment, being submitted to the Presbytery (a board of ministers appointed for that purpose), by whom the qualifications, talents, and character, of the candidate is examined, which examination proving satisfactory, he is forthwith ordained by the laying on of hands. Neither has the Conference any right to institute a judicial investigation of any difficulties that may arise between individual members and the churches to which they belong, nor to attempt any interference with dissensions between sister churches, except by special and particular invitation, and unless the subject has been previously laid before the respective churches, and their delegates to the Conference instructed to take cognizance of the matter.