§ 93. The Westminster Assembly.
Literature.
I. Original Sources.
The Westminster Standards--see § 94.
Minutes of the Sessions of the Westminster Assembly of Divines (from Nov. 1644 to March, 1649). From Transcripts of the Originals procured by a Committee of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, ed. by the Rev. Alex. F. Mitchell, D.D., and the Rev. John Struthers, LL.D. Edinb. and Lond. 1874. (The MS. Minutes of the Westm. Assembly from 1643 to 1652, formerly supposed to have been lost in the London fire of 1666, were recently discovered in Dr. Williams's library, Grafton St., London, and form 3 vols. of foolscap fol. They are mostly in the handwriting of Adoniram Byfield, one of the scribes of the Assembly. A complete copy was made for the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and is preserved in Edinburgh. They are, upon the whole, rather meagre, and give only the results, with brief extracts from the speeches, without the arguments.)
Robert Baillie (Principal of the University of Glasgow, and one of the Scotch delegates to the Assembly of Westminster, b. 1599, d. 1662): Letters and Journals ed. from the author's MSS. by David Laing, Esq. Edinb. 1841-42, 3 vols. (These Letters and Journals extend from Jan. 1637 to May, 1662, and exhibit in a lively and graphic manner 'the stirring scenes of a great national drama,' with the hopes and fears of the time. Vol. II. and part of Vol. III. bear upon the Westm. Assembly.)
John Lightfoot, D.D. (Master of Catharine Hall and Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, one of the members of the Westm. Assembly, b. 1602, d. 1675): Journal of the Proceedings of the Assembly of Divines from Jan. 1, 1643 to Dec. 31, 1644. In Vol. XIII. pp. 1-344 of his Whole Works, ed. by John Rogers Pitman (Lond. 1825, in 13 vols.).
George Gillespie (the youngest of the Scotch Commissioners to the Assembly, d. 1648): Notes of Debates and Proceedings of the Westminster Assembly, ed. from the MSS. by David Meek, Edinb. 1846. Comp. also Gillespie's Aaron's Rod Blossoming (a very able defense of Presbyterianism against Independency and Erastianism), Lond. 1646, republ. with his other works and a memoir of his life by Hetherington, Edinb. 1844-46, 2 vols.
Journals of the House of Lords and the House of Commons from 1643 to 1649.
John Rushworth (assistant clerk and messenger of the Long Parliament, and afterwards a member of the House of Commons, d. 1690): Historical Collections of remarkable Proceedings in Parliament. Lond. 1721, 7 vols.
(The 'fourteen or fifteen octavo vols.' of daily proceedings which Dr. Thomas Goodwin, the eminent Independent member of the Assembly, is reported by his son to have written 'with his own hand,' have never been published or identified. They must not be confounded with the three folio vols. of official minutes in Dr. Williams's library.)
Historical.
The respective sections in Fuller (Vol. VI. pp. 247 sqq.), Neal (Part III. chaps. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10), Stoughton (Vol. I. pp. 271, 327, 448 sqq.), Masson (Life of Milton, Vols. II. and III.), and other works mentioned in § 92.
W. M. Hetherington: History of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. Edinb. 1843; New York, 1844.
James Reid: Memoirs of the Lives and Writings of those eminent Divines who convened in the famous Assembly at Westminster. Paisley, 1811 and 1815, 2 vols.
Gen. von Rudloff: Die Westminster Synode, 1643-1649. In Niedner's Zeitschrift für die histor. Theologie for 1850, pp. 238-296. (The best account of the Assembly in the German language.)
P. Schaff: Art. Westminster Synode, etc., in Herzog's Real-Encykl. Vol. XVIII. pp. 52 sqq., and Art. on the same subject in his Relig. Encycl. N. Y. 1884, Vol. III. pp. 2499 sqq.
Thos. M'Crie: Annals of English Presbytery from the Earliest to the Present Time. Lond. 1872.
J. B. Bittinger: The Formation of our Standards, in the 'Presbyterian Quarterly and Princeton Review' for July, 1876, pp. 387 sqq.
C. A. Briggs: Art. Documentary History of the Westminster Assembly, in Pres. Rev. for 1889, pp. 127-164.
Alexander F. Mitchell, D.D. (Prof. of Ch. Hist at St. Andrews, and ed. of the Minutes of the Assembly): The Westminster Assembly: its History and Standards. London, 1883. (519 pages.)