The Protestant ministry in the United States extends back over three hundred years; the present study covers the first two hundred. For the sake of simplicity the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries are treated successively. A stricter division might terminate the first part of the period with the founding of the College of William and Mary in 1693, or with the establishment of Yale College in 1701; and might end the second part either with the opening of the first theological seminary, or with the early nineteenth century, when the practice of attending the seminaries had become general. These dates, however, fall so close to 1700 and to 1800 that it will suffice to treat the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries successively.