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 xiv. 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.' [1428]
After service the members of the Assembly, 'three score and nine' [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, [1430] with the exception of a few Royalists and Episcopalians, who in their canonical gowns seemed 'the only non-Conformists.' [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. [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. [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?' [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.' [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. [1436]