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.' [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 [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.' [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.' [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, [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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[1388] Life and Times, Pt. I. p. 73. Comp. Orme's Life of Baxter, p. 69.
[1389] General Rudloff, in his article above quoted, p. 263.
[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.)
[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.
[1392] Masson, Life of Milton, Vol. II. p. 605; Bancroft, History of the United States of America (Centennial ed. 1876), Vol. I. pp. 331, 332.
[1393] See the correspondence in Neal, Vol. I. pp. 470 sqq. (Harper's ed.).
[1394] Neal, Vol. I. p. 472.
[1395] Comp. the full accounts in Neal, Part III. ch. iv. (Vol. I. pp. 488 sqq.), Hetherington, Stoughton, and Masson.
[1396] Prideaux's name seems to have been omitted in the final ordinance of June, 1643.
[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).
[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. I. p. 421. Hallam also follows the latter account.
[1399] Neal, Vol. II. pp. 35 sq.
[1400] Masson, Vol. II. p. 245. Comp. pp. 356 sqq., and the just estimate of Stoughton, The Ch. of the Civil Wars. p. 129.
[1401] Even Whitgift, however, did not go to the extreme of jure 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.
[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.
[1403] Samuel de la Place and Jean de la March.
[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.
[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.'
[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.'
[1407] Quoted by Neal, Vol. I. p. 493.
[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.'
[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.
[1410] Minutes, p. 28.
[1411] On the Independent controversy, see Baillie, Gillespie, and Masson (Vol. III. pp. 18 sqq.).