In proportion to its degree of fanaticism, each sect became dangerous and destructive; and as the Independents went a note higher than the Presbyterians, they could less be restrained within any bounds of temper and moderation.

From this distinction, as from a first principle, were derived, by a necessary consequence, all the other differences of these two sects.
The Independents rejected all ecclesiastical establishments, and would admit of no spiritual courts, no government among pastors, no interposition of the magistrate in religious concerns, no fixed encouragement annexed to any system of doctrines or opinions.

According to their principles, each congregation, united voluntarily and by spiritual ties, composed within itself a separate church, and exercised a jurisdiction, but one destitute of temporal sanctions, over its own pastor and its own members.

The election alone of the congregation was sufficient to bestow the sacerdotal character; and as all essential distinction was denied between the laity and the clergy, no ceremony, no institution, no vocation, no imposition of hands was, as in all other churches, supposed requisite to convey a right to holy orders.
The enthusiasm of the Presbyterians led them to reject the authority of prelates, to throw off the restraint of liturgies, to retrench ceremonies, to limit the riches and authority of the priestly office: the fanaticism of the Independents, exalted to a higher pitch, abolished ecclesiastical government, disdained creeds and systems, neglected every ceremony, and confounded all ranks and orders.

The soldier, the merchant, the mechanic, indulging the fervors of zeal, and guided by the illapses of the spirit, resigned himself to an inward and superior direction, and was consecrated, in a manner, by an immediate intercourse and communication with heaven.
The Catholics, pretending to an infallible guide, had justified upon that principle their doctrine and practice of persecution; the Presbyterians, imagining that such clear and certain tenets as they themselves adopted could be rejected only from a criminal and pertinacious obstinacy, had hitherto gratified to the full their bigoted zeal, in a like doctrine and practice: the Independents, from the extremity of the same zeal, were led into the milder principles of toleration.