51. Constitution of 1792.--The new constitution, adopted by the Pennsylvania Synod in 1792, though granting a modified suffrage to lay delegates in all important questions, left the synod what it had been, a body governed by the clergy. Dr. Graebner says: "It has been pointed out how this [hierarchical] trait plainly appeared already when the Pennsylvania Synod was founded; later on we meet it everywhere and in all synods organized prior to the General Synod. According to the conception generally prevailing a synod had its real foundation, its essential part, not in the congregations, but in the preachers. This idea governed their thinking and speaking. The 'preachers of the State of Ohio united with some of the preachers in Pennsylvania living nearest to them, and established a conference or synod of their own.' Some 'preachers west of the Susquehanna' were granted their petition of being permitted to form a synod. In agreement herewith they preferred to speak of a synod according to its chief and fundamental part, as a 'ministerium.' The constitution of the Pennsylvania Synod began: 'We Evangelical Lutheran preachers in Pennsylvania and the neighboring States, by our signatures to this constitution, acknowledging ourselves as a body, name this union of ours The German Evangelical Lutheran Ministerium in Pennsylvania and the neighboring States, and our individual meetings A Ministerial Assembly.' Lay delegates of the congregations, though admitted to the synodical conventions in Pennsylvania and at other places, were nowhere recognized as members having equal rights with the ministers. It was as late as 1792 that the lay delegates obtained the right to vote in Pennsylvania, and even then only with restrictions. In the affairs of greatest import (doctrinal matters, admission of new members, etc.) they were privileged neither to speak nor to vote. On this point the ministerial order of the Pennsylvania Synod declared: 'Lay delegates who have a right to vote shall sit together at one place in the assembly; they are privileged to offer motions, and to give their opinion and cast their votes in all questions submitted for decision and determination, except in matters pertaining to the learning of a candidate or a catechist, to questions of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, the admission to, and expulsion from, the ministerium, and other, similar cases, for the ministerial assembly has cognizance of such as these.' The constitution of the New York Ministerium contained the same provision, chap. 7, Sec.4: 'Each lay delegate shall have a right to take part in the debates of the House, to offer resolutions, and to vote on all questions, except the examining, licensing, or ordaining of candidates for the ministry, the admission of ministers into the association or their exclusion from it, and the discussion of weighty articles of faith or cases of conscience.' The right of a layman to vote was regarded as grounded in that of the