Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/75

 Yet Independency did not, like Presbyterianism, imply the existence of a ministerial caste. Among Presbyterians, the preaching elders of a presbyterial assembly set a new preaching elder apart for his work by the imposition of hands. The Independents on the contrary assigned the work of ordination to the congregation over which a minister was to preside. More significantly, they insisted that ordination must not be general, but should be to a specific work in a specific place. John Cotton, noted in England as the ablest of Puritan divines, was ordained teacher of the Boston church in New England by imposition of the hands of John Wilson, the pastor, and of Nowell and Leverett, the ruling elders.