could be carried farther, it melted into a larger one.

(3) PRESBYTERIAL GOVERNMENT OR CONGREGATIONALISM:--This controversy,
which had been underlying the whole course of the previous debating,
emerged in express terms before the end of January 1643-4. Then began the
real tug of the verbal war. It is unnecessary to enumerate all the items
of the controversy. The battle was essentially between two principles of
church-organization. Was every individual assembly, or association of
Christians (it might be of hundreds of persons, or it might be of as few
as seven persons, voluntarily drawn together), to be an independent
ecclesiastical organism, entitled to elect its own pastor and other
officers, and to exercise the powers of admonition and excommunication
within itself--any action of surrounding congregations upon it being an
action of mere observation and criticism, and not of power or
jurisdiction; and no authority to belong to meetings of the office-
bearers of congregations of the same city or neighbourhood, or to general
synods of office-bearers, however useful for various purposes such
occasional meetings and synods might be? This was what the Independents
maintained; and to this the Presbyterians vehemently said Nay. It was not
desirable, they said in the first place, that congregations themselves
should be mere gatherings of Christians drawn together by chance
affinities. That would be to put an end to the parochial system, with all
the advantages of orderliness and effective administration that belonged
to it. Let every congregation consist, as heretofore, mainly of the
inhabitants of one parish or definitely marked ecclesiastical territory.
Then let there be a strict inter-connectedness of all these parochial
congregations over the whole land by means of an ascending series of
church-judicatories. Let the congregations of the same town or district
be connected by a Presbyterial Court, consisting of the assembled
ministers and the ruling lay-elders of all the congregations,