admitted that a man might be ordained to the work of the ministry without having a specific pastoral charge, and that the pastors or bishops of neighbouring churches should concur in the ordination of a new pastor or bishop over a particular congregation. [Sidenote: 1688–1702.] In the chapter relative to the communion of churches, the Independents of the Revolution showed more disposition towards unity than their predecessors had done, and the chapter indicates an approach to Presbyterian government.[510] Seeds of concord between the two denominations bore some fruit in the provinces. An association combining them grew up in Devon and Cornwall, and Flavel preached and presided at its first meeting. In Hampshire and Norfolk the plan met with favour. So it did in Nottinghamshire, and in the neighbourhood of Manchester, where, however, Independents were few. It was warmly taken up in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and at Wakefield a united meeting was held, when Heywood preached from Zech. xiv. 9: “In that day shall there be one Lord, and His name one.” It seems that the townspeople at Wakefield were alarmed at the influx of ministers walking through their streets--the fashionably-dressed people of the reign of William III., in their jaunty costume, looking with curiosity and suspicion upon the Puritan garb and the staid demeanour of their visitors. Yet these reverend gentlemen did not amount in number to more than twenty-four, and “when the service at Mrs. Kirby’s” was over, “they thought it prudent to go apart, and by several ways, to the house at which they dined.”[511] A violent controversy--which, before its close, ran through both Calvinistic and Socinian questions, and gathered up personal entanglements--started into life soon after the Act of Toleration had been passed. The doctrines of Justification, the Atonement, and Christ’s Divinity came successively within its range. Combatant after combatant entered the field, and although the antagonists, for the most part, were Nonconformists, they managed, before they had done, to involve one or two distinguished Churchmen within the coils of their dispute. [Sidenote: NONCONFORMISTS.]