The settlers of Hertford, having declared themselves to be an independent Colony, and that their dominions extended from sea to sea, voted Haynes to be their Governor, and appointed six councilors to assist him in framing laws and regulating the State. The same spirit of independence dictated their church discipline. They voted Mr. Hooker to be their minister, and six of their church-members to ordain him. Mr. Hooker accepted of their vote, or call, renounced his Episcopal ordination, and was ordained by the six lay church-members, over the church of the Independents in Hertford. Thus, Mr. Hooker, who was born in Leicestershire, educated at Cambridge, ordained by a bishop, silenced by a bishop in 1630, in England, and reordained by six laymen in America, became what he wished to be--the head of the Independents in the Dominion of Hertford, where he had the honor and pleasure of exercising over all who differed from him in opinion that violent spirit of persecution which he and his friends so clamorously decried as too intolerant to be endured in England. Some of the characteristic doctrines of this persecuting fanatic were of the following purport: That Christ’s Church was not universal, but a particular visible church, formed by general consent and covenant; that Christ had committed the power of binding and loosening to believers, without any distinction between clergy and laity; that ruling and preaching elders are duly ordained to their office by the election and the imposition of the hands of the people; that the tables and seals of the covenant, the offices and censures of Christ’s Church, the administrations of all public worship and ordinances, are in the _cœtus fidelium_, or combination of godly, faithful men met in one congregation; that a diocesan, provincial, or national assembly, is incompatible with the nature of Christ’s Church, seeing all and every member of Christ’s Church are to meet every Lord’s-day, in one place, for the administration of the holy ordinances of God; that a multitude of free people may elect and ordain a king over them, although they were not, prior to that act, possessed of kingly power; for the people of Israel imposed their hands on Levites, when they themselves were not Levites (Numbers viii. 10); that Nature has given virtual power to a free people to set up any Christian form of government, both in church and state, which they see best for themselves in the land; but Christ gave the power of his keys to his Church, i. e., to his believing people, and not to Peter or to Paul as ministers, but as professed believers, in conjunction with the rest of true believers; that the Church hath not absolute power to choose whom it will; it hath ministerial power only to choose whom Christ hath chosen, i. e., such as He hath gifted and fitted for the work of the ministry; that neither popes, bishops, nor presbyters, are necessary to ordain ministers of Jesus Christ, because the power of the keys are