5. United Original Secession Church. — In common with all true Protestants, the Synod of United Original Seceders acknowledges the Scriptures of the old ami New Testaments to i»- the supreme and only rule of faith and practice. They claim to he a branch oi the Reformed ami Covenanted Church of Scotland, and adhere to the n hole of the Westminster standards
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHES 529 PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHES
and four teachers in addition to the missionary, and one catechist ; the children are instructed in English, Urdu, and Hindi. The synod is desirous of obtaining, and has ample funds for maintaining, another ordained mission- ary in India. The synod supports a divinity hall, which is carried on under the superintendence of the Rev. Prof. W. F. Aitken, A.M., and the Rev. Prof. James Spence. The library in connection with the hall has 1400 vol- umes. Under the editorship of the Rev. John Sturrock a bimonthly magazine is published having a circulation of 1200 copies.
6. Presbyterian Church in England. — In the reign of queen Elizabeth there were two well -defined parties — the Prelatists, favored by the queen, who were satislied with the reforms begun by king Edward ; and the Presbyterians, who desired a simpler form of worship and government, like that set up by Calvin in Geneva. The first adherents of this form of Church government in England were those Protestants who returned from Frankfort, to which place they had fled for refuge in the reign of queen Mary. There they became acquaint- ed with the Geneva platform, and, returning to their na- tive country in the time of Elizabeth, they at first met in private houses, and afterwards more publicly, on which occasions the worship was conducted agreeably to the forms of the Geneva service-book. These latter were called Nonconformists, from their aversion to the established liturgy and hierarchy, and Puritans, from their anxiety for purity of life and worship. At the Convocation in 1562, the proposition to dispense with all ceremonies that had not the clear warrant of Script- ure was lost by only one vote. Hallam says that the Puritan party outnumbered either the Roman Cafholic or the Church of England, and that they composed the majority of Parliament under Elizabeth and her two successors (Const. Hist. Engl. eta. iv, n.). See Puritans. They were taken up at the time with questions of doc- trine and discipline, and with resistance to power ex- ercised, as they believed, contrary to the Word of God. But they felt so much the constraint of circumstances, that they paid little heed to the development of their principles in Church government, and certainly had no thought of attempting to constitute a Church on the principles which they maintained, resting satisfied in giving effect to these principles by mere resistance in particular cases in which their consciences were ag- grieved. Yet in 1572 a presbytery was formed at Wandsworth, in Surrey, by ministers of London and its neighborhood, separating from the Church of England ; and other presbyteries were soon formed, notwithstand- ing the extreme hostility of queen Elizabeth. Synods were now held occasionally. The court, looking to the episcopate as the support of its own supremacy, strove with all its might to maintain it unweakened, and en- forced with reckless energy the bloody laws enacted against the Catholics on one side and the radical Prot- estant sects on the other. The king having established a liturgy calculated to set limits to the arbitrary freedom of Puritan worship, the Presbyterians set it down as a (i worship of Baal" and a quenching of the Spirit of God. The dissension threatened to take the form of civil war, for the Presbyterians of England united with those of Scotland. On July 1, 1643, in obedience to a summons from Parliament (which summons had been issued in consequence of a remonstrance of the Presbyterian di- vines against prelacy), the Westminster Assembly met in Westminster Abbey. This Assembly was composed of 121 English divines, 10 lords, 20 commoners, with 5 ministers and 5 elders representing the Church of Scot- land. They drew up a Confession of Faith, commonly known as the Westminster Confession, a Form of Church Government, a Directory for Public Worship, and two Catechisms, the Larger and the Shorter, which were all approved by Parliament in 1648. Parliament then en- acted an ordinance making Presbyterianism the estab- lished religion of England, but without attaching any penalties to nonconformitv. A loud crv has been raised YIIL-L l
against the English Presbyterians on the alleged ground that, at this period of their history, their whole efforts were directed towards the attainment of Church power. " Now, what was this Church power," says the younger M'Crie, "which the Presbyterians were so anxious to secure, and which Neal would represent as ' a civil au- thority over men's persons and properties?' Will it be believed that it was neither more nor less than the power of keeping back scandalous and unworthy per- sons from the ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper? This was, in fact, the great point in dispute between them and the Parliament; for the Parliament had insisted on having the supreme power in ecclesias- tical matters, and had passed a law to the effect that if any person were refused admission to sealing ordinances by the Church courts, he might appeal to Parliament, which might, by virtue of its authority, compel the Church courts to receive him, whatever his character might be. The Presbyterians, as Neal himself admits, 'were dissatisfied with the men in power, because they would not leave the Church independent of the State".' And would Mr. Neal, himself an Independent, have had the Church to be dependent on the State? Would he have had the Presbyterians tamely submit to see the royal prerogatives of Christ assumed by a Parliament, after they had succeeded in wresting them out of the hands of a monarch against whom, for this very reason, the nation had long been engaged in a bloody war?"