was in a languid state; and for the rest of the country, and indeed for non-Presbyterians in London and Lancashire too, the Church or Public Ministry was practically on the principle of the Independency of Congregations.  Each parish had, or was to have, its regular minister, recognised by the State, and the association of ministers among themselves for consultation or mutual criticism was very much left to chance and discretion.  Ministers and deacons, however, did draw up Agreements and form voluntary Associations in various counties, holding monthly or other periodical meetings; and, as it was the rule in such associations not to meddle with matters of Civil Government, they were countenanced by the Protectorate.  Baxter tells us much of the Association in Worcestershire which he had helped to form in 1653, and adds that similar associations sprang up afterwards in Cumberland and Westmorland, Wilts, Dorset, Somersetshire, Hampshire, and Essex.  These Associations are to be conceived as imperfect substitutes for the regular Presbyterian organization, and most of the ministers belonging to them were eclectics or quasi-Presbyterians, like Baxter himself, making the most of untoward circumstances, while the stricter Presbyterians, who sighed for the perfect model, held aloof.  Perhaps the majority of the State-clergy all over the country consisted of these two classes of Presbyterians baulked of their full Presbyterianism,—­the Rigid Presbyterians, who would accept nothing short of the system as exemplified in London and Lancashire, and the Eclectics or Quasi-Presbyterians grouped in voluntary Associations.  But among the State-clergy collectively there were several other varieties.  There were many of the old Church-of-England Rectors and Vicars, still Prelatic in sentiment, and, though obliged to disuse the Book of Common Prayer, maintaining some sweet remnant of Anglicanism.  Some of these, not of the High Church school, did not scruple to join the quasi-Presbyterian Associations that were liberal enough to admit them; but most found more liberty in keeping by themselves.  Then there were the Independents proper, drawn from all those various Evangelical Sects, however named separately, whose principle of Independency stopped short of absolute Voluntaryism, and therefore did not prevent them from belonging to a State-Church.  The more moderate of these Independents might easily enough, in consistency with their theory of Congregationalism, join the quasi-Presbyterian Associations, and some of them did so; but not very many.  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