07093.2 - Westminster Assembly - 2

§93.2. The Westminster Assembly -Part 2. THE SCOTCH COMMISSIONERS.

After the adoption of the international League and Covenant, Scotland sent five clerical and three lay commissioners who admirably represented their Church and country. They formed a group by themselves at the right hand of the Prolocutor. They were the only delegates who were elected by proper ecclesiastical authority, viz., the General Assembly of their Church (Aug. 19, 1643), at the express request of the English Parliament; they declined being considered members in the ordinary sense, but they were allowed by warrant of Parliament to be present and to debate, and practically they exerted an influence disproportionate to their number. They arrived in London in September, fresh from the battle ’with lordly bishops, popish ceremonies, and royal mandates,’ and full of the ’perfervidum ingenium Scotorum. ’

Alexander Henderson , Rector of the University of Edinburgh since 1640, sixty years of age, ranks next to John Knox and Andrew Melville in the history of Scotch Presbyterianism, and was the author of the ’Solemn League and Covenant,’ which linked the Scottish and English nations in a civil and religious alliance for the Reformed religion and civil liberty. Being unmarried, he gave himself entirely to the Assembly from Aug., 1643, to Aug., 1646. He has heretofore been too much ignored. ’My researches,’ says Masson, [SeeNote #1427] ’have more and more convinced me that he was, all in all, one of the ablest and best men of his age in Britain, and the greatest, the wisest, and most liberal of the Scottish Presbyterians. They all had to consult him; in every strait and conflict he had to be appealed to, and came in at the last as the man of supereminent composure, comprehensiveness, and breadth of brow. Although the Scottish Presbyterian rule was that no churchman should have authority in State affairs, it had to be practically waived in his case; he was a cabinet minister without office.’

Robert Baillie (b. 1599, d. 1662), Professor of Divinity and Principal of the University of Glasgow, did not speak much, but was a regular attendant for fully three years, a shrewd observer, and has been called the Boswell of the Assembly and ’the pleasantest of letter gossips.’ His ’Letters and Journals’ (not properly edited until 1842) are among the most graphic books of contemporary memoir to be found in any language. His faculty of narration in his pithy native Scotch is nothing short of genius. Whenever we have an account from Baillie of any thing he saw or was present at, it is worth all accounts put together for accuracy and vividness; so in his accounts of Strafford’s trial, and so in his account of his first impressions of the Westminster Assembly’ (Masson).

George Gillespie , minister of Edinburgh (d. 1648), Was only thirty-one years of age when he entered the Assembly, the youngest, and yet one of the brightest stars, ’the prince of disputants, who with the fire of youth had the wisdom of age.’ He first attracted public attention in his twenty-fourth year by ’A Dispute against the English-Popish Ceremonies obtruded upon the Church of Scotland’ (1637), which helped the revolt against Laud’s innovations. He took a leading part in the debates of the Assembly against Erastianism and Independency. According to Scotch tradition he once made even Selden reel and say, ’That young man, by his single speech, has swept away the labors of ten years of my life.’ This is probably a patriotic exaggeration. The excessive ardor and activity of his mind wore out his frame, and he returned from the Assembly to die in his native land.

Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661), Professor of Divinity and Principal of St. Mary’s College in St. Andrews, was one of the most fervid and popular preachers in Scotland, and highly esteemed for his learning and piety. ’The characteristics of his mind were clearness of intellect, warmth and earnestness of affection, and loftiness and spirituality of devotional feeling.’ His book, ’Lex Rex,’ is considered one of the best expositions of the principles of civil and religious liberty; and his glowing letters of comfort from his prison in Aberdeen (which he called ’Christ’s Palace’) show him to be ’the true saint and martyr of the Covenant.’

Rev. Robert Douglas never sat. Among the lay commissioners, John Lord Maitland (afterwards Earl of Lauderdale) distinguished himself first by his zeal for the Scotch Covenanters, and afterwards by his apostasy and cruelty against them. Sir Archibald Johnstone, of Warristone, was from 1637 a leader among the Scotch Covenanters, a great lawyer, and a devout Christian, who, as Bishop Burnet, his nephew, narrates, often prayed in his family two hours at a time with unexhausted copiousness. The Marquis of Argyle also, who afterwards suffered death for his loyalty to the Scotch Kirk, sat for some time as an elder in the Assembly.

OPENING OF THE ASSEMBLY. The Assembly was opened on Saturday, July 1, 1643, in the grand national Abbey of Westminster, in the presence of both Houses of Parliament and a large congregation, by a sermon of Dr. Twisse on John 14:18 : ’I will not leave you comfortless; I will come unto you’-a text which was deemed ’pertinent to these times of sorrow, anguish, and misery, to raise up the drooping spirits of the people of God who lie under the pressure of Popish wars and combustions.’ [SeeNote #1428]

After service the members of the Assembly, ’three score and nine’ [SeeNote #1429] (twenty-nine more than the required quorum), repaired for organization to the Chapel of Henry VII., that ’most gorgeous of sepulchres,’ where the Upper House of Convocation used to meet. The mediæval architecture formed a striking contrast to the Puritan simplicity of worship and dress. The divines appeared in black coats or cloaks, skull-caps, and Geneva bands in imitation of the foreign Protestants, [SeeNote #1430] with the exception of a few Royalists and Episcopalians, who in their canonical gowns seemed ’the only non-Conformists.’ [SeeNote #1431] Add to this apparel their solemn looks, the peaked beards and mustaches, and the broad double ruff around the neck, and we have a spectacle of a synod differing as much from a modern Presbyterian Assembly as from an Episcopal Convocation or a Roman Catholic Council. [SeeNote #1432] Every member had to take the following vow (which was read in the Assembly every Monday morning):

’I do seriously promise and vow, in the presence of almighty God, that in this Assembly, whereof I am a member, I will maintain nothing in point of doctrine but what I believe to be most agreeable to the Word of God; nor in point of discipline, but what may make most for God’s glory and the peace and good of his Church.’ THE ASSEMBLY IN THE JERUSALEM CHAMBER. For several weeks the meetings were held in the Chapel of Henry VII. But when extreme cold weather set in at the close of September, the Assembly repaired to the ’Jerusalem Chamber,’ in the Deanery of Westminster. [SeeNote #1433] ’What place more proper for the building of Sion,’ asks Fuller, ’than the Chamber of Jerusalem, the fairest of the Dean’s lodgings, where King Henry IV. died, and where these divines did daily meet together?’ [SeeNote #1434] This large and venerable hall, furnished with a long table and chairs, and ornamented with tapestry (pictures of the Circumcision, the Adoration of the Magi, and the Passage through the Wilderness), was originally the withdrawing-room of the abbot, and has become famous in romance and history as the cradle of many memorable schemes and events from the Reformation down to the present time.

There, before the fire of the hearth-then a rare luxury in England-King Henry IV., who intended to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, died of a hideous leprosy (March 20, 1413). When informed of the name of the chamber, he exclaimed, ’Laud be to God! even there my life must end.

It hath been prophesied to me many years I would not die but in Jerusalem; Which vainly I supposed the Holy Land. But bear me to that chamber; there I’ll lie: In that Jerusalem shall Harry die.’ [SeeNote #1435]

There Sir Thomas More was confined (1534), and urged by the abbot to acknowledge the king’s ecclesiastical supremacy; and there probably he wrote his appeal to a general council which never met, but may yet meet at some future day.

There, under the genial warmth of the fire which had attracted the dying king, the grave Puritan Assembly prepared its standards of doctrine, worship, and discipline, to be disowned by England, but honored by Scotland and America.

There the most distinguished Biblical scholars of the Church of England, in fraternal co-operation with scholars of Dissenting denominations, both nobly forgetting old feuds and jealousies, are now engaged in the truly catholic and peaceful work of revising the common version of the Bible for the general benefit of English-speaking Christendom. [SeeNote #1436] BAILLIE’S DESCRIPTION OF THE ASSEMBLY. The Assembly in actual session in this famous locality, and its order of business, can not be better described than in the graphic language of one of the Scotch Commissioners:

’The like of that Assembly, ’says Professor Baillie, [SeeNote #1437] ’I did never see, and, as we hear say, the like was never in England, nor any where is shortly like to be. They did sit in Henry the Seventh’s Chapel, in the place of the Convocation; but since the weather grew cold, they did go to Jerusalem Chamber, a fair room in the Abbey of Westminster, about the bounds of the College forehall, but wider. At the one end nearest the door and on both sides are stages of seats as in the new Assembly-House at Edinburgh, but not so high, for there will be room but for five or six score. At the upmost end there is one chair set on a frame, a foot from the earth, for the Mr. Prolocutor Dr. Twisse. Before it, on the ground, stand two chairs for the two Mr. Assessors, Dr. Burgess and Mr. White. Before these two chairs, through the length of the room, stands a table, at which sit the two scribes, Mr. Byfield and Dr. Roborough. The house is all well hung and has a good fire, which are some dainties at London. Foranent [in front of] the table, upon the Prolocutor’s right hand, there are three or four ranks of forms. On the lowest we five do sit. Upon the other, at our backs, the members of Parliament deputed to the Assembly. On the forms foranent us, on the Prolocutor’s left hand, going from the upper end of the house to the chimney, and at the other end of the house, and backside of the table, till it comes about to our seats, are four or five stages of forms, whereupon their divines sit as they please, albeit commonly they keep the same place. From the chimney to the door there are no seats, but a void for passage. The Lords of Parliament use to sit on chairs in that void, about the fire. We meet every day of the week but Saturday. We sit commonly from nine to one or two [in the] afternoon. The Prolocutor at the beginning and end has a short prayer. The man, as the world knows, is very learned in the questions he has studied, and very good, beloved by all, and highly esteemed; but merely bookish, and not much, as it seems, acquainted with conceived prayer, [and] among the unfittest of all the company for any action; so after the prayer he sits mute. It was the canny conveyance of those who guide most matters for their own interest to plant such a man of purpose in the chair. One of the Assessors, our good friend Mr. White, has keeped in of the gout since our coming; the other, Dr. Burgess, a very active and sharp man, supplies, so far as is decent, the Prolocutor’s place.

’Ordinarily there will be present above threescore of their divines. These are divided into three committees, in one whereof every man is a member; no man is excluded who pleases to come to any of the three. Every committee, as the Parliament gives order in writing to take any purpose into consideration, takes a portion, and in their afternoon meeting prepares matters for the Assembly, sets down their mind in distinct propositions, [and] backs their propositions with texts of Scripture. After the prayer, Mr. Byfield, the scribe, reads the proposition and Scriptures, whereupon the Assembly debates in a most grave and orderly way. No man is called up to speak; but who stands up of his own accord, he speaks so long as he will without interruption. If two or three stand up at once, then the divines confusedly call on his name whom they desire to hear first: on whom the loudest and maniest [most] voices call, he speaks. No man speaks to any but to the Prolocutor. They harangue long and very learnedly. They study the questions well beforehand, and prepare their speeches; but withal the men are exceeding prompt and well-spoken. I do marvel at the very accurate and extemporal replies that many of them usually do make. When, upon every proposition by itself, and on every text of Scripture that is brought to confirm it, every man who will has said his whole mind, and the replies, and duplies, and triplies are heard, then the most part calls "To the question." Byfield, the scribe, rises from the table and comes to the Prolocutor’s chair, who, from the scribe’s book, reads the proposition, and says, "As many as are of opinion that the question is well stated in the proposition, let them say I;" when I is heard, he says, "As many as think otherwise, say No." If the difference of I’s and No’s be clear, as usually it is, then the question is ordered by the scribes, and they go on to debate the first Scripture alleged for proof of the proposition. If the sound of I and No be near equal, then says the Prolocutor, "As many as say I, stand up;" while they stand, the scribe and others number them in their mind; when they sit down the No’s are bidden to stand, and they likewise are numbered. This way is clear enough, and saves a great deal of time, which we spend in reading our catalogue. When a question is once ordered, there is no more debate of that matter; but if a man will vaige,’ [SeeNote #1438] he is quickly taken up by Mr. Assessor, or many others, confusedly crying, "Speak to order, to order." No man contradicts another expressly by name, but most discreetly speaks to the Prolocutor, and at most holds on the general-The reverend brother, who lately or last spoke, on this hand, on that side, above, or below.

’I thought meet once for all to give you a taste of the outward form of their Assembly. They follow the way of their Parliament. Much of their way is good, and worthy of our imitation: only their longsomeness is woeful at this time, when their Church and Kingdom lies under a most lamentable anarchy and confusion. They see the hurt of their length, but can not get it helped; for being to establish a new Platform of worship and discipline to their nation for all time to come, they think they can not be answerable if solidly and at leisure they do not examine every point thereof.’

DEVOTIONAL EXERCISES. With theological discussion the Assembly combined devotional exercises, and observed with Parliament regular and occasional fasts which are characteristic of the Puritan piety of that age. At the joint meeting of the Parliament and the Assembly in St. Margaret’s Church, for the signing of the Covenant (Monday, Sept. 25, 1643), Mr. White ’prayed near upon an hour,’ Mr. Nye ’made an exhortation of another hour long,’ Mr. Henderson ’did the like;’ then there was the reading of the Covenant, a prayer by Dr. Yonge, ’another psalm by Mr. Wilson,’ and a concluding prayer, when they ’adjourned till Thursday morning, because of the fast.’ [SeeNote #1439]

Baillie describes the fast observed May 17, 1644, at the request of General Essex before his march into the field, as ’the sweetest day’ he saw in England, although it lasted eight hours, from nine to five, without interruption. ’After Dr. Twisse,’ he writes, ’had begun with a brief prayer, Mr. Marshall prayed large two hours, most divinely, confessing the sins of the members of the Assembly in a wonderfully pathetic and prudent way. After, Mr. Arrowsmith preached one hour; then a psalm; thereafter, Mr. Vines prayed near two hours, and Mr. Palmer preached one hour, and Mr. Seaman prayed near two hours; then a psalm. After, Mr. Henderson brought them to a short, sweet conference of the heart confessed in the Assembly, and other seen faults [SeeNote #1440] to be remedied, and the convenience to preach against sects, especially Anabaptists and Antinomians. Dr. Twisse closed with a short prayer and blessing. God was so evidently in all this exercise that we expect certainly a blessing both in our matter of the Assembly and whole kingdom.’ [SeeNote #1441]

We can not read such accounts without amazement at the devotional fervor and endurance of the Puritan divines. And yet, if we consider the length of their prayers and sermons, their austerity in society, dress and manner, their peculiar phraseology and cant, their aversion to the fine arts and public amusements, however innocent, we need not be surprised at the popular rebound to the opposite extreme under the frivolous and licentious Charles II. ’All that was beautiful in Church music, architecture, or ornament, and in personal elegance and refinement, was rigidly proscribed. Even poetry was at a discount; Milton himself, in his lifetime, in more senses than one, "sung darkling;" and the literary style, of the day, unlike either that of the foregoing or the subsequent age, was harsh, stiff, and void of elegance. Even the typography of the period is peculiarly grim and unseemly.’ [SeeNote #1442]

It should not be forgotten, however, that there are times when aesthetics must give way to more important matters, and that radical extremes are unavoidable in critical periods. The Catholic Church itself, in the first three centuries, passed through the gloom of the catacombs, and, in its ascetic abhorrence of heathen art and beauty, strangely misconceived even our blessed Lord’s personal appearance as homely and repulsive in the days of his humiliation. Tertullian, in his way, went farther than the Puritans.

DURATION AND CLOSE. The Assembly occupied about five years and six months for the completion of its proper work-the standards of doctrine, worship, and discipline-and held no less than 1163 regular sessions from July 1, 1643, till February 22, 1649, when it ought to have adjourned sine die. It met every day, except Saturday and Sunday, from nine o’clock till one or two-the afternoons being left to committees. After Nov. 9, 1647, we find no mention of the Scotch Commissioners. But the Assembly continued to drag out a shadowy existence, with scanty and irregular attendance, as a standing committee for the examination and ordination of candidates for the ministry, meeting every Thursday, [SeeNote #1443] till March 25, 1652, when it informally broke up before the dissolution of the ’Rump’ Parliament by Oliver Cromwell (April 19, 1653). ’It dwindled away by degrees, though never legally dissolved,’ says Fuller. It vanished with the Long Parliament which gave it birth.

Note #1385

It is characteristic that Dr. Niemeyer published his collection of Reformed Confessions, the most complete we have, at first without the Westminster Standards, being unable to find a copy, and issued them afterwards in a supplement. Dr. Winer barely mentions the Westminster Confession in his Symbolik, and never quotes from it. If German Church historians (including Gieseler) were to be judged by their knowledge of English and American affairs, they would lose much of the esteem in which they are justly held. What lies westward is a terra incognita to most of them. They are much more at home in the by-ways of the remote past than in the living Church of the present, outside of Germany.

Note #1386

Clarendon, who hated Presbyterianism as a plebeian religion unfit for a gentleman, disposes of the Westminster Assembly in a few summary and contemptuous sentences: ’Of about one hundred and twenty members,’ he says, ’of which the Assembly was to consist, a few very reverend and worthy persons were inserted; yet of the whole number there were not above twenty who were not declared and avowed enemies of the doctrine or discipline of the Church of England; some were infamous in their lives and conversations, and most of them of very mean parts in learning, if not of scandalous ignorance; and of no other reputation but of malice to the Church of England.’ These charges are utterly without foundation, and belong to the many misrepresentations and falsehoods which disfigure his otherwise classical History of the Rebellion. The number of members was 151.

Note #1387 In his Fragments of a History of England (1670), Milton speaks both of the Long Parliament and the Assembly in vindictive scorn, and calls the latter ’a certain number of divines neither chosen by any rule or custom ecclesiastical, nor eminent for either piety or knowledge above others left out; only as each member of Parliament, in his private fancy, thought fit, so elected one by one.’ He charges them with inconsistency in becoming pluralists and nonresidents, and with intolerance, as if ’the spiritual power of their ministry were less available than bodily compulsion,’ and the authority of the magistrate ’a stronger means to subdue and bring in conscience than evangelical persuasion.’ On his unhappy marriage and his tracts on Divorce growing out of it, see Masson, Vol. III. pp. 42 sqq.

Note #1388 Life and Times , Pt. 1. p. 73. Comp. Orme’s Life of Baxter , p. 69.

Note #1389 General Rudloff, in his article above quoted, p. 263.

Note #1390

’There must be some laymen in the Synod to overlook the clergy, lest they spoil the civil work; just as when the good woman puts a cat into the milk-house to kill a mouse, she sends her maid to look after the cat, lest the cat eat up the cream.’-Selden, Table-Talk , p. 169. (Quoted by Stoughton and Stanley.)

Note #1391

Laud says of the Assembly: ’The greatest part of them were Brownists, or Independents, or New England ministers, if not worse; or at best enemies to the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England,’ The facts are, that the Independents were a small minority, and that New England was not represented at all.

Note #1392

Masson, Life of Milton , Vol. II. p. 605; Bancroft, History of the United States of America (Centennial ed. 1876), Vol. 1. pp. 331, 332.

Note #1393 See the correspondence in Neal, Vol. 1. pp. 470 sqq. (Harper’s ed.).

Note #1394 Neal, Vol. 1. p. 472.

Note #1395 Comp. the full accounts in Neal, Part III. ch. 4. (Vol. 1. pp. 488 sqq.), Hetherington, Stoughton, and Masson.

Note #1396 Prideaux’s name seems to have been omitted in the final ordinance of June, 1643.

Note #1397

Ussher was a second time appointed by the House of Commons a member of the Assembly when he came to London in 1647, and on his petition received permission to preach in Lincoln’s Inn.-Journals of the House of Commons , Vol. V. p. 423 (quoted by Dr. Mitchell).

Note #1398

’An act for the utter abolishing and taking away of all archbishops, bishops, their chancellors and commissaries,’ etc. Clarendon says that marvelous art was used, and that the majority of the Commons were really against the bill; but the writer of the ’Parliamentary Chronicle’ says that it passed unanimously , and was celebrated by bonfires and the ringing of bells all over London.-Neal, Vol. 1. p. 421. Hallam also follows the latter account.

Note #1399 Neal, Vol. II. pp. 35 sq.

Note #1400 Masson, Vol. II. p. 245. Comp. pp. 356 sqq., and the just estimate of Stoughton, The Ch. of the Civil Wars. p. 129.

Note #1401

Even Whitgift, however, did not go to the extreme ofjure divino Episcopacy, but admitted that the Scripture has not set down ’any one certain form of Church government to be perpetual.’ Cartwright, on the other hand, was an able and earnest, but radical Presbyterian, and with Calvin and Beza advocated the death penalty for heretics.

Note #1402 A fac-simile of this Directory was reproduced in London, 1872 (James Nesbit & Co.), for the tercentenary celebration of the Presbytery at Wandsworth, with an introduction by Prof. Lorimer. On Cartwright and the Elizabethan Presbyterianism, comp. Masson, Life of Milton , Vol. II. pp. 581 sqq., and M’Crie, Annals of English Presbytery , pp. 87-131.

Note #1403 Samuel de la Place and Jean de la March.

Note #1404 The Reduction of Episcopacy unto the Form of Synodical Government received in the Ancient Church , written in 1641, but not fully published till 1658, and brought forward again after the Restoration; in Ussher’s Works by Elrington, Vol. XII. Comp. Masson, Vol. II. p. 230.

Note #1405 The Smectymnuans were Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young (the chief author), Matthew Newcomen, and William Spurstow. The oddity and ugliness of the title, composed of the initials of each author, helped the circulation and provoked witty rhymes, such as ’The Sadducees would raise the question, Who must be Smec at the resurrection.’

Note #1406

One of the dividing questions was that of ruling elders. ’Sundry of the ablest,’ says Baillie (Vol. II. pp. 110 sq.), ’were flat against the institution of any such officer by divine right, such as Dr. Smith, Dr. Temple, Mr. Gataker, Mr. Vines, Mr. Price, Mr. Hall, and many more, besides the Independents, who truly spake much and exceedingly well. The most of the Synod was in our opinion, and reasoned bravely for it; such as Mr. Seaman, Mr. Walker, Mr. Marshall, Mr. Newcomen, Mr. Young, Mr. Calamy. Sundry times Mr. Henderson, Mr. Rutherford, Mr. Gillespie, all three spoke exceedingly well. When all were tired, it came to the question. There was no doubt but we would have carried it by far most voices; yet because the opposites were men very considerable, above all gracious little Palmer, we agreed upon a committee to satisfy, if it were possible, the dissenters.’ He afterwards expresses the hope that the advance of the Scotch army ’will much assist our arguments.’

Note #1407 Quoted by Neal, Vol. 1. p. 493.

Note #1408 The others were Jeremiah Burroughs , William Bridge , and Sydrach Simpson . These five were the signers of the ’Apologetic Narration.’ Afterwards William Carter, William Greenhill, John Bond (perhaps also Anthony Burgess), joined them. Baillie (Vol. II. p. 110) counts ten or eleven, including Carter, Caryl, Philips, and Sterry. Among its lay-assessors lord Viscount Say and Seale and Sir Harry Vane sympathized with the Independents. Neal says: ’Their numbers were small at first, though they increased prodigiously and grew to a considerable figure under the protectorship of Oliver Cromwell.’

Note #1409

Baillie declares ’liberty of conscience and toleration of all or any religion’ (as advocated by Roger Williams against John Cotton) to be ’so prodigious an impiety that this religious Parliament can not but abhor the very naming of it.’-Tracts on Liberty of Conscience [published by the Hansard Knollys Society), p. 270, note. But Baillie was opposed to the employment of ’secular violence’ in dealing with heretics. See M’Crie, p. 191.

Note #1410 Minutes , p. 28.

Note #1411 On the Independent controversy, see Baillie, Gillespie, and Masson (Vol. III. pp. 18 sqq.).

Note #1412 So called from the Swiss professor and physician, Erastus , properly Liebler , or Lieber , who wrote against Bullinger and Beza, and died at Basle, 1583.

Note #1413 The chief books on the Erastian side are Selden’s De Synedriis and Lightfoot’s Journal; on the Presbyterian side, Gillespie’s Aaron’s Rod Blossoming, or, the Divine Ordinance of Church-Government Vindicated (dedicated to the Westminster Assembly; a very learned book of 590 pages), and Rutherford’s Divine Right of Church Government (both published in London, 1646). The Erastian controversy was afterwards transferred to Scotland, and led to several secessions. Comp. Principal Cunningham’s Essay on the Erastian controversy in his Historical Theology , Vol. II. pp. 557-588.

Note #1414 See M’Crie, pp. 189 sqq.

Note #1415 Church of the Civil Wars , p. 453.

Note #1416 For a fall list of members, with biographical notices, the reader is referred to D. Masson, Life of John Milton , Vol. II. pp. 516-524, where they are arranged in alphabetical order; and to Dr. Mitchell, in his Introduction to the Minutes , pp. lxxxi.-lxxxiv., where they are given in the order of the ordinance of Parliament calling the Assembly (dated June 12, 1643), with some twenty members subsequently added to fill vacancies. Meek gives various lists in his edition of Gillespie’s Notes. Neal’s list has several errors. Much information on the leading members may be gathered from Baillie’s Journals , Fuller’s Church History and Worthies of England , Anthony Wood’s Athenæ et Fasti Oxonienses , Neal’s History of the Puritans , Stoughton’s historical works, and Masson’s Milton. Reid gives biographical sketches of the Westminster divines in alphabetical order, with lists of their works.

Note #1417

Worthies of England , Vol. 1. p. 93. Dr. Owen, though he wrote against him, called him, ’the veteran leader, so well trained in the scholastic field; this great man; the very learned and illustrious Twisse.’ M’Crie describes him as ’a venerable man, verging on seventy years of age, with a long, pale countenance, an imposing beard, lofty brow, and meditative eye; the whole contour indicating a life spent in severe and painful study’ (Annals of the English Presbytery , p. 145). The last words of Twisse were, ’Now at length I shall have leisure to follow my studies to all eternity.’

Note #1418

’The presence of such a man in the chair is sufficient to redeem the Assembly from the charge of illiberality or vulgar fanaticism.’-M’Crie, p. 151.

Note #1419 Tulloch, Rat. Theol. in England, Vol. II. (the Cambridge Platonists), pp. 56 sq.

Note #1420 M’Crie, p. 155.

Note #1421

Another edition in two large folio vols. was published in 1676 sq. Darling calls this exposition ’a most elaborate, learned, judicious, and pious work.’

Note #1422

He founded a Congregational church in London in 1640, which continues to this day, and has recently (under the pastorate of Dr. Joseph Parker) erected the City Temple, with a memorial tablet to Goodwin in the vestibule.

Note #1423 His austerity gave rise to the story related by Addison, in the Spectator , that Dr. Goodwin, ’with half-a-dozen night-caps on his head and religious horror in his countenance,’ overawed and terrified an applicant for examination in Oxford by asking him in a sepulchral voice, ’Are you prepared for death?’ His works were published in London, 1681-1704, in 5 vols.

Note #1424 This fact has recently been discovered by Rev. A. B. Grosart (1864). See Masson, Vol. II. p. 520.

Note #1425 See Baillie, Vol. II. p. 120; Vol. III. pp. 532 sqq.; and the Minutes of the Westminster Assembly, pp. 131, 163, 418.

Note #1426 Opera omnia , ed. Dav. Wilkins, London, 1726, 3 vols. in folio.

Note #1427 Vol. III. p. 16.

Note #1428 From the Parliamentarian newspaper No. 25, for July 3-10, 1643, quoted by Mitchel, p. 11. Lightfoot reports in his Journal (p. 3) that ’a great congregation’ was present besides the members of the Assembly and of Parliament.

Note #1429 This is about the average attendance of the Lower House of the Convocation of Canterbury,-Stanley, Memorials of Westminster Abbey , p. 507.

Note #1430 Neal and Stoughton.

Note #1431

Fuller.

Note #1432

M’Crie and Mitchell compare it to a synod of Huguenots as pictured on the title-page of the first volume of Quick’s Synodicon. But there the Frenchmen wear broad-brimmed hats.

Note #1433 The origin of the name is uncertain. Some derive it from the tapestries or pictures of Jerusalem on the wall. Dr. Stoughton, who is well informed in English history and archaeology, informs me (by letter of May 4, 1876) that it probably arose ’from the fact of its adjoining the sanctuary, the place of peace;’ and he quotes a passage from the account of King John’s death: ’Nec providet quod est Romæ ecclesia Jerusalem dicta, id est, visio pacis; quia quicunque illuc confugerit, cuiuscunque criminis obnoxius, subsidium invenit ’ (William of Malmesbury, De gestis Angl. Lib. II. p. 67).

Note #1434 Church Hist. Vol. VI. p. 253.

Note #1435 Shakspere, Second Part of King Henry IV., Acts 4:1-37. sc. 4.

Note #1436 For a fuller description of the Jerusalem Chamber, see Dean Stanley’s Memorials of Westminster Abbey , pp. 417 sqq. I may be permitted to add from personal experience an interesting recent incident in the history of that chamber. At the kind invitation of the Dean of Westminster, the delegates to the International Council of Presbyterian Churches, then meeting in London for the formation of a Presbyterian Alliance, repaired to the Jerusalem Chamber on Thursday afternoon, July 22, 1875, and, standing around the long table, were instructed and entertained by the Dean, who, modestly taking ’the Moderator’s chair,’ gave them a graphic historical description of the chamber, interspersed with humorous remarks and extracts from Baillie. He dwelt mainly on the Westminster Assembly, promising, in his broad-Church liberality, at some future time to honor that Assembly by a picture on the northern wall. Dr. McCosh, as Moderator of the Presbyterian Council, proposed a vote of thanks for the courtesy and kindness of the Dean, which was, of course, unanimously and heartily given. The writer of this expressed the hope that the Jerusalem Chamber may yet serve a still nobler purpose than any in the past, namely, the reunion of Christendom on the basis of God’s revealed truth in the Bible; and he alluded to the fact that the Dean had recently (in the ’Contemporary Review,’ and in an address at Saint Andrews) paid a high compliment to the Westminster Confession by declaring its first chapter, on the Holy Scriptures, to be one of the best, if not the very best symbolical statement ever made.

Note #1437 In a letter to his cousin, William Spang, dated London, Dec. 7, 1643. See Letters and Journals , Vol. II. pp. 107-109. I have retained the Scotch words, but modernized the spelling. Extracts from this letter are quoted by Neal, Hetherington, Stanley, Stoughton, Mitchell.

Note #1438 Probably ’wander’ (from ’vague’).

Note #1439 Lightfoot, Journal , p. 16.

Note #1440 Probably a misprint for ’heart-confessed and other seen faults in the Assembly.’

Note #1441 Letters and Journals , Vol. II. pp. 184 sq.

Note #1442

M’Crie, Annals of English Presb. p. 173. The last remark applies also to the early editions of the Westminster standards and controversial pamphlets.

Note #1443 The sessions held after Feb. 22, 1649 (1648), are not numbered. The last regular meetings were likewise devoted merely to executive business. See Minutes , p. 539.