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 --