"That the calling and making of ministers are not _jure divino_, but a minister comes to be so as a merchant, bookseller, carter, and such like." "That all settled certain maintenance for ministers of the Gospel is unlawful." "That all days are alike to Christians, and they are bound no more to the observation of the Lord's day, or first day of the week, than of any other." "That 'tis lawful for women to preach; and why should they not, having gifts as well as men?" ("And some of them," adds Edwards, "do actually preach, having great resort to them.") "That there is no need of humane learning, nor of reading authors, for preachers; but all books and learning must go down: it comes from the want of the Spirit that men writ such great volumes." "That 'tis unlawful to preach at all, sent or not sent, but only thus: a man may preach as a waiting disciple, _i.e._ Christians may not preach in a way of positive asserting and declaring things, but all they may do is to confer, reason together, and dispute out things." "That all singing of Psalms is unlawful." "That the gift of miracles is not ceased in these times." "That all the earth is the Saints', and there ought to be a community of goods." "That 'tis unlawful to fight at all, or to kill any man, yea to kill any of the creatures for our use, as a chicken, or on any other occasion." [Footnote: _Gangræna_, Part I. pp. 15-31.] From this little enumeration it will be seen that we have not, even in the nineteenth century, advanced so far as perhaps we had thought beyond English notions of the seventeenth. But there must be added a recollection of the scurrilities against the Covenant, the Assembly as a body, its chief Presbyterian members, and the whole Scottish nation and its agents. These had not reached their height at the time with which we are at present concerned (Aug. 1644); so that the richest specimens of them have to be postponed. But already there were popular jokes about "Jack Presbyter" the "black coats" of the Assembly, and their four shillings a day each for doing what nobody wanted; and already a very rude phrase was in circulation, expressing the growing feeling among the English Independents and Sectaries that England might have managed her Reformation better without the aid of the Scots and their Covenant. Had England come to such a pass, it was asked, that it was necessary to set up a Synod in her, to be "guided by the Holy Ghost sent in a cloak-bag from Scotland"? The author of this profanity, according to Prynne, was a pamphleteer named Henry Robinson. It was, in fact, an old joke, originally applied to one of the Councils of the Catholic Church; and Robinson had stolen it. [Footnote: Prynne's _Fresh Discovery_, p.27 and p.9; and _Gangræna_, Part I. p.32]