In the days of Charles, the country, through Laud, had been priest-ridden, but not even in religious matters was it presbyter-ridden in the days of Cromwell. [Sidenote: _Cromwell's Establishment not a Church._] One more remark may be made. Conforming to general usage, we have called Cromwell's religious establishment a Church; but, accurately speaking, it was not a Church at all. We do not mean by this what an ecclesiastical polemic means, when he refuses to apply the name to any organization at variance with what he considers to be New Testament principles. By withholding the title from a particular community, he intends to say that it is not a Church according to his idea of what a Church should be. We abstain from all such controversies in these pages. Our meaning is that Cromwell's establishment did not include or recognize any internal organization whatever of an ecclesiastical kind; it had no Church courts, no Church assemblies, no Church laws, no Church ordinances. It repudiated Prelacy without enforcing Presbyterianism or recognizing Congregationalism. While denying the aid of the civil power for carrying out one method of discipline, it gave no direct sanction to any other. It said nothing about rites and ceremonies. Not even the two great sacraments of Christianity were mentioned. What should be the mode of administering the Lord's Supper, and Baptism, and whether the latter should be confined to adults, or should be extended to infants, were open questions. What should be done in these respects was left to the ministers and their congregations to determine. One parish might be constituted a Presbyterian Church; another might contain an Independent Church; a third, a Baptist Church. But each Church, as shewn already, was independent of the parish incumbency; and often, in the case of Congregational Churches, the members met together in private houses. The particular society so organized really stood outside the Establishment. Hence it follows that the Protectorate Establishment was nothing more than an institution for _preaching and teaching_. The ministers were acknowledged by the State only in the capacity of instructors. The title given to State ordinances about religion seems in accordance with this; so were the functions of the Committee of Triers. The former were for the maintenance, the latter for the approbation, of "_public preachers_." [Sidenote: _Cromwell's Establishment not a Church._]