Excerpt from Annals of English Presbytery: From the Earliest Period to the Present Time In these Annals the term "presbytery" has been used in a popular rather than in an ecclesiastical sense. It is not the author's object to vindicate "presbyterianism" as a form of church-government, in distinction from episcopacy or independency. He prefers, therefore, the term "presbytery," in order to embrace all who have distinguished themselves by their adherence to primitive Christianity and to the principles of the Reformation in England, including the saints, bishops, and martyrs of the olden time, without meaning to assert that they were all, in the modern sense, presbyterians. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.