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JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
ciation were signed by one hundred and thirty-one ministers. In 
the following year Independent ministers were admitted, and an 
address voted to the Lord Protector. There is no record of the 
Assembly's history during the troublous times of Charles and James 
the Second ; but after the Act of Toleration it became the govern- 
ing body of the Presbyterians of the county, examining and 
admitting candidates for the ministry, ordaining them, and 
exercising generally presbyterial powers. These old Noncon- 
formists were heedful to provide a learned ministry as well as a 
spiritual. The ejected were almost universally men of university 
breeding. The exclusion of Nonconformists from the universities 
caused them to establish academies, some of which obtained great 
and deserved repute. Seeker and Eutler were both educated in 
the academy of Mr. Jones, of Tewkesbury. The most famous in 
the West was that of Mr. Warren, at Taunton ; but Mr. Hallet 
had a notable one at Exeter. Into the latter Hallet' s son, who 
corresponded with Whiston, introduced Arian views about the 
year 1708. These were taken up by five or six of the students, 
and eventually spread into the ministry, giving rise to what was 
known as the Western Arian controversy, which raged fiercely 
among the Presbyterians and Congregationalists of the West. 
Matters came to a head in the Assembly in 1716. The orthodox 
party won the day; and Pierce of Exeter, the leader of the Arians, 
and several other ministers, were ejected from the assembly, and 
left to preach, as Fox says, "to the poor remains of a few broken 
congregations, which had good-nature and charity enough to stand 
by their ministers, whose reputation, interest, and usefulness were 
absolutely ruined by the rage, aspersions, and violence of the other 
party." 
Fox, himself inclined to Arianism, credits the orthodox ministers 
of his day with believing that they were specially commissioned 
for the governance of the church ; in fact, with holding the 
doctrine of apostolical succession. The two Plymouth congrega- 
tions were little affected by the first Arian wave. Eut the ex- 
pulsion of that heretical element by no means purged the Assembly. 
Arianism found such favour with the younger ministers that at 
length, in 1753, the Assembly refused to declare against the 
admission of candidates to the ministry who would not profess 
faith in the deity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And so in 
process of time the Assembly became — though there neither were 
