Presbyterianism underwent a change. The ejected ministers, who had adopted that system, continued to cleave to the idea of an Established Church, and it was long before they gave up all hopes of some comprehensive scheme, which, whilst retaining a modified Episcopacy, should provide for the removal of their own well-known scruples. They manifested an indisposition to enter upon any proceedings which could be termed denominational; yet, preaching the Gospel appeared to them an employment which they ought on no account to relinquish, for they felt that they had received a Divine commission, and that it would be at their peril to draw back from its fulfilment. The personal satisfaction also which they experienced in the discharge of their vocation, and the eagerness of people to listen to their voices, deepened the consciousness of a necessity laid upon them. But, at first, they only preached in their own houses, in the hall of a friend’s mansion, in some sequestered forest nook, or in the retirement of a mountain dell. Like the seventy disciples, like the brethren scattered abroad upon the persecution of Stephen, like the witnesses of the Middle Ages, like Wycliffe’s friars, like the early Methodists, they simply attempted to kindle and keep alight the flame of spiritual piety. Two years after the Act of Uniformity had been passed, although some ministers then “were vehement for an entire separation” from the Establishment, others, including Baxter, Bates, and Heywood, advocated attendance at the parish church--in this respect acting in the same manner as John Wesley did, at least for some time after the institution of Methodism. Yet coming events cast their shadows before them. At the end of 1666, Oliver Heywood baptized a child at Halifax, a significant incident; and, in 1672, the same patriarch of the “old Dissent” “kept a solemn day at Bramhope,” when old Mr. Holdsworth “administered the Supper.”[230] By degrees, and almost unconsciously, the worthy Heywood--and he may be taken as the specimen of a class--made advances towards a determined position outside the enclosure fenced in by law. Celebrating the Lord’s Supper, besides administering Baptism, could not be consistently repeated many times, without involving other acts, inevitably preparing for the institution of distinctive and separate Churches. Admission to the Lord’s table rendered some religious oversight of the communicants necessary, and practically, what amounted to a distinct Christian society, would begin to exist before such an existence became clearly recognized even by those engaged in its creation. When, in the year 1672, the Declaration of Indulgence afforded liberty of action, cautious and hesitating men, who had felt their way, availed themselves of the Royal concession to pursue, practically, the legitimate consequences of their prior proceedings. A minister gathered together such godly neighbours as sympathized in