“Ordination alone,” say the Independents, “without the precedent consent of the Church by those who formerly have been advanced by virtue of that power they have received by their ordination, doth not constitute any person a church officer, or communicate office power unto him.” The Presbyterians on the other hand deny that the mere invitation and choice of the people could confer the pastoral office, or that it was even a pre-requisite. The Independents seem to have identified the ministerial function with the pastoral office; and argued that it was absurd to ordain an officer without a province to exercise the office in. Their opponents viewed the Christian ministry more as an order invested with certain inherent powers; a faculty or profession endowed with peculiar privileges, the admission into which required to be jealously guarded; and this power and authority they conceive could be transmitted by those of the order. All approved candidates for the ministerial office among the Presbyterians, are ordained without reference to any local change; among the Independents no probationer is ordained till he has been appointed to the pastoral office. The first Independent or Congregational Church in England was established by a Mr. Jacob, A.D. 1616, though it is asserted that a Mr. Robinson was the founder of this sect, of which Dr. John Owen, Dr. Isaac Watts, Dr. Doddridge, and Job Orton were members. The following extracts are from the discourses of Robert Hall, who, though a Baptist, dissented from most of his brethren on the subject of strict communion. He was a preacher both of Baptist and Independent congregations, but he did not hesitate to avow that “he had more fellowship of feeling for an Independent or a Presbyterian than for a close communion Baptist.” His system of theological tenets was on the model of what has come to be denominated “Moderate Calvinism.” With regard to the distinctive Calvinistic doctrine of Predestination, “I cannot,” says his biographer, “answer for the precise terms in which he would have stated it, but I presume he would have accepted those employed by the Church of England. In preaching he very rarely made any express reference to that doctrine.”