in talking against time the danger was averted. At length, however, under pressure from the Scots and city of London, it established a presbyterian régime. This régime, {302} never carried out save in London and Lancashire, was the same in kind as that existing in Scotland, except that the ‘kirk session’ was called a parochial presbytery, and the combination of parochial presbyteries not a presbytery as in Scotland, but a ‘classis.’ This was referred to in Milton’s lines, ‘To ride us with a classic hierarchy Taught ye by mere A.S. and Rutherford.’ [3] It was established, however, with such erastian limitations that while it excluded the independents, it gave no satisfaction to the Scots. The independent principle was violated on two points; both by the subjection of the independent congregation to the ‘classis,’ and by the method of ordination adopted which recognised the presbyter as of a distinct order, to be set apart by other presbyters, instead of as a simple officer appointed by a single congregation. The thoroughgoing presbyterians were alienated by the refusal to the church of the absolute power of the keys. The offences for which the presbyteries were allowed to suspend from the sacrament or excommunicate were distinctly enumerated, and an ultimate appeal, in all ecclesiastical cases, was given to the parliament. The whole system, moreover, was declared for the present merely provisional. The restrictions at once raised an outcry among the Scots and the presbyterians of the city, and the assembly itself was bold enough to vote a condemnation of the clause giving a final appeal to parliament. A seasonable threat of a _praemunire_, however, from the commons, laid the rising dust in the assembly; but the mounting spirit of the new forcers of conscience was shown in the opposition made to the petition which the independents offered to parliament, that their congregations might have the right of ordination within themselves, and that they might not be brought under the power of the ‘presbyterian classes.’ It would be tedious to follow the war of committees, sermons, pamphlets, which this request, modest in itself, and more modest in form, excited. The assembly, the city, the Scotch parliament, urged the maintenance of an absolute uniformity. No plea of conscience was to be listened to. To admit one was to admit all. The independent claim was schismatic, and, as such, excluded by the covenant. In the words of a pamphlet of the time; ‘to let men serve God {303} according to conscience is to cast out one devil that seven worse may enter.’ The new synod of the city clergy, meeting at Sion House, petitioned the assembly to oppose with all their might ‘the great Diana of the independents,’ and not to suffer their new establishment ‘to be strangled in the birth by a lawless toleration.’ The language of the Scotch parliament, addressed through their president to the two houses at Westminster, was specially high and irritating.