knowledge,
can never be secure that she shall not lose the Scripture, and by
consequence her religion; which to preserve she must institute some
method of this knowledge, and some use of such as have acquired it,
which amounts to a national religion.

The commonwealth having thus performed her duty toward God, as a
rational creature, by the best application of her reason to Scripture,
and for the preservation of religion in the purity of the same, yet
pretends not to infallibility, but comes in the third part of the order,
establishing liberty of conscience according to the instructions given
to her Council of Religion, to raise up her hands to heaven for further
light; in which proceeding she follows that (as was shown in the
preliminaries) of Israel, who, though her national religion was always
a part of her civil law, gave to her prophets the upper hand of all her
orders.

But the surveyors having now done with the parishes, took their leave;
so a parish is the first division of land occasioned by the first
collection of the people of Oceana, whose function proper to that place
is comprised in the six preceding orders.

The next step in the progress of the surveyors was to a meeting of the
nearest of them, as their work lay, by twenties; where conferring their
lists, and computing the deputies contained therein, as the number of
them in parishes, being nearest neighbors, amounted to 100, or as even
as might conveniently be brought with that account, they cast them and
those parishes into the precinct which (be the deputies ever since
more or fewer) is still called the hundred; and to every one of these
precincts they appointed a certain place, being the most convenient town
within the same, for the annual rendezvous; which done, each surveyor,
returning to his hundred, and summoning the deputies contained in his
lists to the rendezvous, they appeared and received--

The seventh order, requiring, "That upon the first Monday next ensuing
the last of January, the deputies of every parish annually assemble
in arms at the rendezvous of the hundred, and there elect out of their
number one justice of the peace, one juryman, one captain, one ensign of
their troop or century, each of these out of the horse; and one juryman,
one coroner, one high constable, out of the foot. The election to be
made by the ballot in this manner. The jurymen for the time being are
to be overseers of the ballot (instead of these, the surveyors