In the realm of those ideas, which constitute the western world by their connexion and shake it by their strife, the Independents exhibit views in relation to both religious and political government which, if not entirely new, yet acquired general influence first through them. Religion by its nature aims at a world-embracing community of doctrine and life—an idea on which all great hierarchies are founded, including the Papacy. As the Reformation movement arose chiefly from the oppression which the carrying out of religious unity in a stringent form exerted over single kingdoms and states, it led directly to national unions,—national churches, which no doubt were founded on a creed that claimed universal acceptation, but whose authority could never extend beyond mere provincial limits. Among the formations of this kind the two most strongly organised are doubtless those which were established in Great Britain. We know to what far-reaching contests their opposition led, shaking not merely men's minds, but the very government of the two countries.

The Independents appeared on the frontiers of the Anglican and Scottish Presbyterian Churches just at the outbreak of their quarrel. The faithful, who when oppressed by Laud at first fled before him to the Continent or emigrated to America, now held together in congregations, which through the closer spiritual union of their members satisfied their need of common religious feeling. Something similar took place in Ireland, in the colonies planted there by the Scots, when Strafford tried to subject them to the yoke of Canterbury.