that of simple presbyters, if less lordly than the bishops, had been
swept out of their scruples, and had joined themselves, even heartily,
to the Presbyterian current. Thus, when the Westminster Assembly met
(July, 1643), to consider, among other things, what form of church
government the Parliament should be advised to establish in England in
lieu of the episcopacy which it had been resolved to abolish, the
injunction almost universally laid upon them by already formed opinion
among the parliamentarians of England, whether laity or clergy out of
the assembly, seemed to be that they should recommend conformity with
Scottish presbytery. All the citizenship, all the respectability of
London, for example, was resolutely Presbyterian, and of the one hundred
twenty parish ministers of the city, surrounding the assembly, only
three, so far as could be ascertained, were not of strict Presbyterian
principles.

Nevertheless, amid all this apparent prevalence of Presbyterianism,
there was a stubborn tradition in England of another set of antiprelatic
views, long stigmatized by the nickname of Brownism, but known latterly
as Independency or Congregationalism.

Independents and Presbyterians are quite agreed in maintaining that the
terms "bishop" or overseer, and "presbyter" or elder, were synonymous in
the pure or primitive Church, and applied indifferently to the same
persons, and that prelacy and all its developments were subsequent
corruptions. The peculiar tenet of independency, distinguishing it from
Presbyterianism, consists in something else. It consists in the belief
that the only organization recognized in the primitive Church was that
of the voluntary association of believers into local congregations, each
choosing its own office-bearers and managing its own affairs,
independently of neighboring congregations, though willing occasionally
to hold friendly conferences with such neighboring congregations, and to
profit by the collective advice. Gradually, it is asserted, this right
or habit of occasional friendly conference between neighboring
congregations had been mismanaged and abused, until the true
independency of each voluntary society of Christians was forgotten, and
authority came to be vested in synods or councils of the office-bearers
of the churches of a district or province.

This usurpation of power by synods or councils, it is said, was as much
a corruption of the primitive-church discipline as was prelacy