his views; and such persons, owning him as their rightful pastor, entered into covenant--as it was called--“to believe and practise what truths and duties,” he should make manifest to them, “to be the mind of God.”[231] According to the Presbyterian theory, the minister in the order of nature, and generally in the order of time, takes precedence of the Church; he does not spring from the Church, but the Church has its root and beginning in him; nor does the origin of his ministerial power rest in the people, his vocation is bestowed upon him directly from above; and this idea of the origin and relation of the Christian ministry we may see worked out in the history of English Presbyterianism. [Sidenote: DEVELOPMENT OF NONCONFORMITY.] To build upon the platforms of the Westminster Assembly and the Long Parliament, had become impossible. It was a hopeless thing to think of forming classes, of meeting in synods, and of exercising parish discipline, such as had been the ideal of twenty or thirty years before--of instituting schools of virtue and religion in towns and villages, where the pastor should have the rod of the magistrate to enforce the belief of truth, and the practice of goodness. Perhaps, choice without necessity, through what had been taught by experience after the Restoration, would have led some Presbyterian pastors to abandon certain portions of their earlier cherished schemes of parochial order and discipline. No deacons, having authority together with the minister, existed in Presbyterian Churches, and the control of affairs rested chiefly, if not entirely, with one presiding person, except where there might be a plurality of pastors. The question of individual admission to fellowship was decided by the wisdom and the care of the presbyter or bishop, not by the deliberation or vote of the Church; and the decision and administration of discipline would naturally fall into the same hands as those which had opened the door of entrance to the enjoyment of ecclesiastical privileges. One of the last things which the Presbyterians accomplished, in reference to their separate and permanent existence as a religious body, appears, indeed, one of the first things essential to that existence. The ordination of others to succeed in the ministry must be reckoned a primary measure, requisite for the existence of Nonconformist Churches; yet it seems not to have been until the year 1672, that any Presbyterian orders were conferred after the Restoration. The first solemn act of this description, with which I am acquainted, was performed in Manchester, at a house in Deans’-gate, by five presbyters; and it is worthy of notice that those so ordained were not novitiates, but persons who had been engaged for several years in preaching the Gospel.[232] Subsequently, several instances of ordination occur, but the ceremony continued, up to the time of the Revolution, to be observed in private. As in the days of