tial and necessary for all times;" and it was resolved "that men of better understanding are to be allured privately to the present embracing of the discipline and practice of it, as far as they shall be well able with the peace of the Church." Presbyterianism, in its most earnest efforts for a reformed rule, never ceased to watch over the ecclesiastical unity. The seamless garment was to be cleansed, but by no means to be rent. A Scriptural purity and order were to be aimed at, but it must be without schism.

"Assemblies termed Synods" were now known to the government to be held in more than ten of the

1590.

1591.

shires of England, and Cartwright was reputed to be the chief heresiarch. His committal to the Fleet prison by the High-Commission Court suggested to his old friend, the Archbishop, the policy of lenient treatment, which proved to be not without effect. "On Mr. Cartwright's general promise to be quiet," Whitgift caused him to be discharged, and "henceforward Mr. Cartwright became very peaceable." He was getting old and discouraged. The time was not ripe for such men as he to assert their due place, and he was dissatisfied with the erratic course of some of his associates. The effect of his retirement from public action was seconded by an occurrence of a different character. A conscientious Presbyterian, named Stone, having been

1 Fuller, III. 101, 105–114.

"Mr. Cartwright grew sensible, with sorrow, how all sects and schisms, being opposite to bishops (Brownists, Barrowists, &c.), did shroud and shelter themselves under his protection, whom he could neither reject with credit, nor receive with comfort, seeing his conscience could not close with their enormous opinions, and his counsel could not regulate their extravagant violences, which made him by degrees decline their party. Yet, for all this,

there want not those who will maintain, that all this while Mr. Cartwright was not more remiss, but more reserved in his judgment; being still as sound, but not as sharp, in the cause, out of politic intents; like a skilful pilot in a great tempest, yielding to the violence of a storm, therewith to be carried away, contrary to his intents for the present, but waiting when the wind should soon turn about to the north, and blow him and his a prosperous gale.” (Ibid., 166.)

induced to take an oath in the Star-Chamber Court, made disclosures concerning the condition of his party in Northamptonshire, of which the government did not fail assiduously to avail itself; and "thus, one link being slipped out, the whole chain was quickly broken and scattered. Stone's discovery marred for the future all their former meetings, as classically or synodically methodized. If any of these ministers hereafter came together, it was for visits, not visitations; to enjoy themselves, not enjoin others orders to be observed by them."1

The repose to which, after this alarm was over, the Presbyterians now surrendered themselves for several years, was imputed to their "weariness, because so long they had in vain sought to cast off the yoke of the hierarchy from them. Besides, they did not so much practise for the present, as project for the future, to procure hereafter an establishment of their ecclesiastical government. For they beheld the Queen's old age as a taper of virgin wax now in the socket, ready to be extinguished." It has been before seen with what moderate proposals some of the discontented clergy approached the Scottish Presbyterian King James, on his accession to the throne of England; how sternly they were repulsed; how severe was the treatment of Puritanism that followed, under the administrations of Bancroft and Laud; and how manfully it advanced its position through forty years of indignity and suf fering.

1603.

A precisely organized national Church, a body political as well as religious, patronized and honored by the government, leaning upon it and in turn affording it support, was a traditional idea with Englishmen of condition and culture, and scarcely less so with the mass of their countrymen, in proportion to their capacity of apprehending

1

1 Fuller, III. 116 – 121.

* Ibid., 165.

See Vol. I. 127-132.

it. Accordingly, when study of the Bible had combined in England with the experience of practical evils to dif fuse widely a dissatisfaction with the episcopal system, it was to be expected that great numbers ould recognize an eligible form of national religious unity in that Presbyterian order, which Cartwright and others had recommended with such erudition and zeal; which the great master of reformed theological science had set up;1 which in the sister kingdom had produced such generous fruits of righteousness; and which now offered itself as a bond of intimate fraternity between the Protestant communions of the two united realms, and between the armies allied in the holy war for truth and freedom against a common oppressor. And, in point of fact, so it was that, throughout the early proceedings of the Long Parliament, the Presbyterian was the decidedly prevailing religious interest among the opposers of King Charles. Some of the patriot party would still have been glad to re-establish the doomed fabric of the Episcopal Church; but most of these went over to the king with Falkland and Hyde; and the influential or capable persons, who, in the place of a Church governed by bishops, wanted neither the Presbyterian nor any other religious establishment, if not few in number, did not yet appear numerous enough to constitute a considerable element in the state.

1642.

The time for the desired substitution of Presbytery for

1 Cartwright probably visited Geneva, and saw the working of its ecclesiastical system, but not till 1654, several years after Calvin's death. There it is likely that he formed a friendship for Theodore Beza, who, in a letter to Walter Travers, interesting on several accounts, calls him "noster Cart wrightius." (Fuller, III. 26.) Travers, afterwards preacher with Hooker at the Temple (see Vol. I. 281), is called

by Fuller (III. 26) "the neck, allowing Mr. Cartwright for the head, of the Presbyterian party, the second in honor and esteem." He too paid a visit to Geneva in Beza's time. "By the advice of Mr. Melville, he and Mr. Cartwright were solemnly sent for to be Divinity Professors in the University of St. Andrews." (Ibid., 126.) But both preferred to remain in England.

Episcopacy, as the established church of England, seemed to have arrived.1 In the first month of the civil war, an Ordinance of Parliament provided that the epis- 1642. copal jurisdiction should cease after fourteen Sept. 10. months, thus allowing time to mature another discipline to take its place. It was followed after some months by the "Ordinance of the Lords and Commons Houses 1643. in Parliament for the calling of an Assembly of June 12 Learned and Godly Divines and others, to be consulted with by the Parliament for the Settling of the Government and Liturgy of the Church of England, and for vindicating and clearing of the Doctrine of the said Church from False Aspersions and Interpretations." The Ordinance recited that the government of the Church "by archbishops, bishops, .. and other ecclesiastical offiis evil and justly offensive and burdensome to the kingdom, and an impediment to reformation and religion;" and it declared, "that such a government should be settled in the Church as might be most agreeable to God's holy word," and that it should be brought into a "nearer agreement with the Church of Scotland and other reformed churches abroad." "3

cers,

League

This made way for a treaty with the Scots, the fruit of which was the Solemn League and Covenant. That Solemn famous compact, allying the two nations in a defence of the rights and liberties of both, pro- nant. vided that the Kirk of Scotland should be main- Aug. 17.

and Cove

"that in all his Majesty's dominions there might be one confession of faith, one directory of worship, one public catechism, and one form of church government." (Marsden, Later Puritans, 60.) When the King presently began the war, this recommendation was felt with the greater force, as coming from a quarter where twenty thousand trained troops stood ready for the field.

* Rushworth, V. 337.

tained in its existing polity, and that the Church of England should be reformed "according to the word of God, and after the example of the best reformed churches."1 The Scottish Commissioners had insisted on a stipulation for ecclesiastical uniformity in the two kingdoms (which of course meant conformity to their own standard) as the indispensable condition of a treaty. Their prepossessions led them to construe the language which was proposed on the other side as being equivalent to what they desired But two of the six English Commissioners, Vane, seven years before Governor of Massachusetts, and the minister Philip Nye, who was entirely in his confidence, had in mind a different interpretation of the words, to be asserted when the time should be ripe.

The Ordinance provided that the council for Church Reformation, since familiarly known as the Westminster Westminster Assembly, should come together in Henry the Assembly. Seventh's Chapel in Westminster Abbey. It was subject to be adjourned or dissolved by Parliament. It was to entertain no other questions but such as Parliament should propose, and to assume no "jurisdiction, power, or authority, ecclesiastical or otherwise," beyond what were expressly conferred in the Ordinance. Prolocutor, or presiding officer, was to be appointed by the Parliament. In these strict limitations we seem already to discern the marks of hands different from those which would have uplifted the Presbyterian power.

Its

By the Ordinance, the Assembly was constituted of a hundred and twenty-one English ministers, with ten members of the Upper House of Parliament and twenty of the Lower. Four ministers and two laymen of the Scottish Kirk also had seats, and to the number of English ministers twenty-one more were soon added. Only sixty-nine members, however, appeared on

July 1.

1 Rushworth, V. 478, 479.

The ministers were Baylie, Gillespie, Rutherfurd, and Henderson. The

laymen were Maitland, afterwards the notorious Earl of Lauderdale, and Johnstone of Waristown.