The majority of them were simply ministers of the State-Church, in charge of individual parishes and congregations, and consulting each other, if at all, only in informal ways. Among the Independent Sectaries of all sorts thus officiating individually in the State-Church, the difficulty, as far as one can see, must have been chiefly, or solely, with the _Baptists_. How could preachers who rejected the rite of Infant Baptism, maintained the necessity of the rebaptism of adults, and thought dipping the proper form of the rite, be ministers of parishes, or be included in any way among the State-clergy? That such ministers did hold livings in Cromwell's Established Church is a fact. Mr. John Tombes, the chief of the Anti-Pædobaptists, and himself one of Cromwell's Triers, retained the vicarage of Leominster in Herefordshire, with the parsonage of Boss in the same county, and a living at Bewdley in Worcestershire; and there are other instances. Baxter's language already quoted implies nothing less, indeed, than that Anti-Pædobaptists in considerable numbers were presented to Church-livings by the patrons and passed by the Triers; and he elsewhere signifies that he did not himself greatly object to this. "Let there be no withdrawing," he says, "from the ministry and church of that place [i.e. a parish of mixed Pædobaptists and Anti-Pædobaptists] upon the mere ground of Baptism. If the minister be an Anabaptist, let not us withdraw from him on that ground; and, if he be a Pædobaptist, let not _them_ withdraw from _us_." He even suggests that the pastor of a church might openly record his opinion on the Baptism subject, if it were contrary to that of the majority of the members, and then proceed in his pastorate all the same, and that, on the other hand, private members might publicly enter their dissent from their pastor's opinion, and yet abide with him lovingly and obediently in all other things. How far, and in how many places, this method of leaving Pædo-baptism an open question was actually in operation in the Established Church of the Protectorate, and whether Infant Baptism thus fell into complete abeyance in some parishes where Anabaptists of eminence were settled, or whether the Pædobaptist parishioners in such eases quietly avoided that result by having their children baptized by other ministers, are points of some obscurity. On the whole, the difficulty can have been felt but exceptionally and here and there, for it was obviated on the great scale by the fact that most of the real Anabaptists, preachers and people alike, were Voluntaries, disowning the State-Church altogether, and meeting only in separate congregations. Even for such, however, in localities where they were pretty numerous, there seems to have been a desire to make some provision. Thus on March 13, 1655-56, it was ordered by His Highness and the Council "that it be referred to General Desborough, Major-General for the County of