Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/71

 like New England, where the magistrates were in sympathy with the established church order, synods met by permission of the civil authorities and acted in harmony with them.

If the Independents agreed, however, with the Presbyterians as to the lawfulness and expediency of synods, they dissented from the Presbyterian “subordination of assemblies.” In a nationally organized Presbyterian church there was a succession of representative assemblies, the assembly of the classis above the session of the parish, the provincial synod above the assembly of the classis, and the national synod above all. Essential as such a subordination of assemblies was to the existence of a national church of Presbyterian type, it could not easily be deduced from the New Testament. The Presbyterians, therefore, were forced to defend it as agreeable to the light of reason. The Independents condemned this hierarchy of assemblies as not only dangerous to the civil government, but also unwarranted by the