THE Protestant Church, besides the regular meeting of her judicatories for the management of her ordinary business, had had her Grand Councils called together on several pressing emergencies, to consult on matters affecting the general interests of religion. Three of these are especially notable for their character and results, the diet of Augsburg, followed by the solemn alliance of Smalcald in the year 1530, when the Augsburg Confession was agreed to, and the banner of Protestantism was unfurled, the Synod of Dort, which was convened in 1618 to oppose the progress of Arminianism,—and the assembly which met at Westminster, London, on the 1st of July, 1643. Each of these convocations met in troublous times, and stamped its image more or less forcibly on the age in which it occurred. All of them were summoned with the view of settling, if possible, the great controversies of the day-of quieting the commotions of society, stirred to its depths, and lashed into tempest by a long course of religious agitation-and of furnishing a basis of union, by meeting upon which the friends of truth might at once combine against the common enemy, and refute the calumny that Protestantism was another name for schism, heresy, and contention. The plan adopted for accomplishing these objects, by assembling the most eminent divines and illustrious laymen of various countries and different denominations, to "consider of it, take advice, and speak their mind," seems agreeable to reason and to Scripture. But not to speak of this, we may mark in the very attempt the intrepid spirit of truth. Error is timorous; it dreads the result of investigation-recoils from the collision of independent minds. Protestantism, strong in the consciousness of truth, has, on various occasions, collected its lights and concentrated its energies; and, in the hour of peril, the life-blood gathering to the heart, the result has been, that it has been sent with increased energy to the further extremities of the system. These remarks apply with singular truth to the Assembly of Divines, the meeting of which

we are assembled to celebrate. And truly, whether we consider the circumstances under which it was convenedthe object of its convocation-the character of its members-the work which it accomplished-or its bearings and tendencies-if any assembly is worthy of our commemoration, it is that of the divines who met at Westminster.

In a hurried sketch of the incidents and characters connected with that famous assembly, it would be unreasonable to dwell on details of an introductory kind; yet it seems impossible to convey an adequate idea of the need and the value of this Assembly without a brief glance at the previous history.

Let us suppose ourselves, then, carried back two centuries, and set down at the date of November, 1640, when the Long Parliament commenced. The insane attempt of Archbishop Laud to impose an Anglo-Popish Liturgy on the Scots nation in 1637 has failed, and only succeeded in eliciting the ancient Presbyterian spirit,

the old National Covenant of Scotland, or Confession of Faith, has been re-sworn in the Greyfriars churchyard, with a special clause appended, abjuring Prelacy and the five articles of Perth,the Glasgow Assembly of 1638 has been held, and Henderson has pronounced the Bishop's doom, "We have cast down the walls of Jericho;, let him who rebuildeth them beware of the curse of Hiel the Bethelite!" The Bishop's war has been fought; Dunse-law and the Border have witnessed the triumph of the ancient banner,-For Christ's crown and Covenant; and Charles, indignant at his defeat, has sped to England to denounce the Scots as rebels, and to demand from Parliament assistance to crush the rebellion.

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Twelve years had now elapsed, during which England had been governed without a Parliament. And during this period the fates of the three nations may be said to have been in the hands of two men, Strafford and Laud. is not our province to unfold the system of misrule and oppression which issued in rousing the English to assert their civil and religious liberties. Enough to say, the war had now commenced between

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privilege and prerogative, between Charles and his Parliament, which for many years involved England in turmoil, and deluged it with the blood of her own sons. One thing is clear; the element of religion entered largely into the cause of these unseemly quarrels. Laud may not have been a Papist at heart. This we may concede to his own solemn disclaimers and those of his friends. But with public men, who assume such power as Laud, it is not with their secret intentions we have to do, but with the language of their conduct, and the tendencies of their policy. If Laud was indeed a Protestant, he deceived the Pope as well as the Puritans; for there seems no reason to doubt that he received, once at least, the offer of a cardinal's hat; and Fuller solemnly re-asserts the truth of his story of the lady, "who, turning Papist, and being demanded of the Archbishop the cause of her changing her religion, tartly returned, 'My Lord, it was because I ever hated a crowd.' And being desired to explain her meaning herein, 'I perceived,' said she, that your Lordship and many others are making for Rome as fast as you can, and therefore, to prevent a press, I went before you.'"* Yet, fond as Laud was of his book of sports, his surplices and hoods, his bowings to altars, and other fooleries and ceremonies which looked towards Rome, and tyrannically bent as he was on enforcing conformity to them, by every mode of compulsion short of death, from the slicing of men's noses and digging out of their ears, to the imprisonment of their persons and confiscation of their goods,—it is abundantly evident, from contemporaneous evidence, that it was not from mere love of forms that he persecuted, but from genuine hatred to godliness and evangelical doctrine. Well did he know that it was only "the godly party," or the Puritans, as they then began to be termed in derision, the men of piety, and faith, and prayer, that would make any conscientious resistance to his Popish usages. And thus, while the charge was laid in the Star Chamber, or High Commission, on the score of their nonconformity to the ceremonies which he had got enacted, he succeeded in his main object, which was to discover and extirpate the Puritans. The latent source

*Fuller's Church Hist., iii., 473.

of all this persecution, and which led to all the confusion that followed, was the introduction, chiefly by Laud and his followers, of Arminianism, in its grossest form,-understanding by that term, not anti-Calvinism, but anti-Evangelism,―a doctrine at utter variance with the Gospel of Christ. When the Puritans are mentioned, some are apt to understand a sect of Dissenters as meant; but, in fact, the Puritans were just the Evangelical clergy of the Church of England. Before the time of Laud, the great body of her ministry was strictly Calvinistic, and even at the time when the Westminster Assembly sat down, after all that had been done to pollute the clergy, and drive the best of them as Nonconformists out of the Church and country, they formed a large and influential party. But, to return to the history, setting ourselves down at the date formerly mentioned, when the Long Parliament commenced, we find the scene entirely changed; and as we are carried down the stream, it assumes new aspects at every turn. In 1641, we see Laud and Strafford committed, on the charge of high treason, to the Tower, from which they were soon after dragged forth to execution. The year following, we see the stately and pompous fabric of Episcopacy, with all its titles and jurisdictions, levelled to the ground by Act of Parliament. And on the 12th of June, 1643, there comes forth an ordinance for convening of an Assembly of Divines at Westminster, to deliberate on the Government which was to be substituted in its place. This important document is entitled, "An Ordinance of the Lords and Commons in Parliament, for the calling of an assembly of 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 list of names in this ordinance amounts to 151 in all, namely ten Lords and twenty commoners, as lay-assessors, and 121 divines. may serve to show the wish of the Parliament to act with fairness and impartiality, to state that they named men of all shades of opinion in matters of Church-government. Four bishops were named, while several others of the English Divines were known to be favourable to a moderate Episcopacy,

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others to Presbytery, and others to Independency. There were representatives present from England, Scotland, and even Ireland; so that, to use the language of Fuller, "as Livy calleth the general meeting of Ætolia, Pan Ætolium, this Assembly endeavoured to put on the face of Pan Britannicum; that the walls of the palace wherein they met, might in some sort be like the waves of the sea, within the compass whereof they lived, as surrounding one island and two nations.'

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Loudly, however, did the high-church party protest against an Assembly, which, in the very ordinance which called it, was told to regard the abolition of the hierarchy as a settled question; and many were their objections against it. "The king," they said, "has condemned it by his proclamation;"-but they were significantly reminded, that "there were now two sovereign contending powers in the nation," and that to deny the power of Parliament in this matter was to take for granted a question on which the nation had yet to adjudicate. "But the members of this Assembly," they objected, were not chosen as they should be, by the clergy, but by the Parliament." True, it was answered; but the Assembly was not a synod or a convocation; they were merely a council or committee of divines and others, called for the purpose of giving their advice to Parliament in this singular emergency.† Aye, but these divines were "mostly of a Puritanical stamp, and enemies to the hierarchy." "The divines," it was replied, "(except the Scots, who had no vote,) are all in Episcopal orders, educated in our own universities, and most of them graduates." To this we may add the testimony of Dr. Calamy. "This is certain, they were almost all of them conformable ministers, the laws and bishops having cast out the non-conformists long enough before. They who made up the Assembly at Westminster, and who through the land were the honour of the Parliament's party, were almost all such as had till then conformed, and

*Fuller's Church Hist., iii., 448.

"They thought it not safe to entrust the clergy with their own choice, of whose general corruption they constantly complained; and therefore adjudged it unfit that the distempered patients should be, or choose, their own physicians.”—Fuller's Church Hist., iii., 446.

Neal's Puritans, iii., 55. Toulmin's Ed.

took those things to be lawful in case of necessity, but longed to have that necessity removed."*

Very different were the feelings with which the tidings of the Westminster Assembly were received in Scotland. A year before this, the Church of Scotland had been assured by communications from a large body of the English clergy, that "the desire of the most godly and considerable part among us is, that the Presbyterian government, which hath just and evident foundation both in the Word of God, and religious reason, may be established among us, and that (according to your intimation) we may agree in one Confession of Faith, one directory of worship, one public catechism and form of government."+ When, therefore, they were invited to send up some of their number as commissioners to assist in the deliberations of the Assembly, they cheerfully consented; and the persons commissioned for this purpose were Messrs. Alexander Henderson, Samuel Rutherfurd, Robert Baillie, and George Gillespie, ministers; with the Earl of Cassilis, Lord Maitland, and Sir Archibald Johnston, of Warristoun, ruling elders. But at this time another incident occurred, which forms a singular and sacred feature in the whole of the reformation which followed,-I refer to the introduction of the Solemn League. Sir Henry Vane, younger, accompanied with two ministers, Messrs. Marshall and Nye, and other commissioners from the Parliament, having come to Scotland to solicit the co-operation of Scotland, proposed a civil league for this purpose; the Scots, however, sensible how much religion was involved in the quarrel, and persuaded of the necessity of some agreement in this to secure a permanent peace between the two nations, insisted on its being made a religious bond. A draught was submitted by Henderson which embraced both objects; and this deed, which was afterwards known as THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT, having been formally adopted with great satisfaction by the Scottish Convention of Estates and the General Assembly, was transmitted to the Parliament of England for their approbation. In this solemn deed, the Covenanters pledged them

*Life of Baxter, i., p. 49.

† Hetherington's Hist. of Westminster Assembly, p. 88.

selves and their posterity to the extirpation, that is the radical, or "root and branch" removal, of Prelatical government,-to the reformation of the English Church,-to the preservation of the reformed religion in Scotland,and to an endeavour to bring the Churches in the three kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in religion, confession of faith, form of Church government, directory for worship and catechising-"that we and our posterity may as brethren live in faith and love, and the Lord may delight to dwell in the midst of us." Such were the objects of the Solemn League ;-and when we consider the state of the nation and the Church at that time, convulsed by intestine strife, and threatened by a common enemy, what, we may well ask, could be more natural and reasonable, than thus to unite in defence of civil and religious liberty, and in the prosecution of reformation, and to consolidate the union by the most solemn ties of religion?

It only remains to be noticed, that the covenant was received with equal approbation in England, and having passed both Houses with singular unanimity, was solemnly sworn and subscribed by them and by the Assembly of Divines on the 25th of September, 1643. A new complexion was thus given to the deliberations of the Westminster Assembly, which, instead of occupying itself, as it had at first, in correcting the Thirty-nine Articles, now began seriously to carry out the purposes of the Solemn

League by promoting uniformity in religion. Such was the effort of our fathers 200 years ago; and we have the result of their labours in those standards which they have left as a rallying-point, we trust, to the three kingdoms, and the Christian world.

Let us then follow to London our Scottish commissioners, who were conveyed thither "in a strong ship," in high hopes, though with some fears; "for," says Baillie, "the weather is uncertain, the way dangerous, pirates and shoals not scant; yet, trusting in God, we must not stand on any hazard to serve God and our country." They arrived, however, safely in London, and the same writer, finding how matters stood, urges his friends in Scotland by every argument to "put their hand to that huge and honourable work" of reformation. "You must not look to expenses," he says, "when presently we are either to win the horse, or tyne the saddle." At last, they are introduced to the Assembly, and take their seats, not as members, but as commissioners from the Church of Scotland. "Without an order in writing from the Houses no mortal man," says Baillie, "may enter to see or hear, let be to sit; and when we were brought in, Dr. Twisse had one long harangue for our welcome, after so long and hazardous a voyage, by sea and land, in so unseasonable tyme of the year. When he ended, we satt down in those places which since we have keeped."

(To be continued.)

the systematic neglect or omission of distinct statements on these discriminating points; and by the substitution, in their room, of a high and beautiful morality, unsupported by Gospel motives, and suited to the tastes of men, who cannot do without a form of religion, but who take care to have it reach the conscience and touch the affections as little as possible. In this point of view, it is just the old school of Scottish Moderatism, transplanted to the soil of New England, and somewhat modernized. For instance, the writings of Mr. Wright, formerly minister at Borthwick, and deposed by the Assembly in 1841, might have been preached from any of their pulpits, and his " Morning and Evening Sacrifice" and his "Living Temple," the Unitarians of Boston greatly admire. It will be in the memory of many how much the Scottish Moderates sympathized with Mr. Wright during the process against him in the Assembly; and how, on the motion of Dr. Hill, a Professor of Theology, they divided the house against his immediate deposition, on the ground that his statements might admit of satisfactory explanation.

It seems that there have of late been revivals of religion among the Boston Unitarians, and a demand, in consequence, for more frequent services, and for evening meetings, to which, from the greater excitement they are supposed to produce, the Unitarians have generally been hostile. The effect of such revivals is not only to quicken their conviction of the excellence of Christianity as a religion from heaven, and to elevate their standard of morality, but also to shake their system to the centre, and detach from it the more earnest or sincere. Since the death of Dr. Channing, it has certainly been on the decline in Boston, and it will, in all likelihood, quit the Churches by degrees as it entered them. For here, as in England, Unitarianism has taken wondrous pleasure, and exhibited quite a knack, in insinuating itself into places which it did not build, and in occupying pulpits to which it had no honest title, especially when attracted by funds which it was worth while to divert from their just appropriation. Many of the churches in Boston, now in their hands, were once in the possession of orthodox men; and the manner in which the transfer took place is most instructive.

Towards the close of the last century, there was a manifest decay of vital godliness, and an increase of formality and indifference in New England. It seems, indeed, to have suffered from that blight, which fell so widely on the religion of Protestant Christendom about that memorable period. A preference was in consequence given to a ministry which prophesied smooth things, and thus prepared the way for the change in question. Add to this, that the long struggle for national independence so engrossed the minds of the people-as to leave them little room for serious reflection. The revolutionary wars, too, produced effects upon their character that were most disastrous, while the increased intimacy and intercourse of the Americans with the French nation made matters greatly worse. Laxity of discipline began to show itself; then Arminianism in doctrine; Pelagianism followed: and, in course of time, Unitarianism was avowed and prevailed. This last, however, was not till the beginning of the present century; for at first there was much of concealment and artifice, and not a little of the Newman doctrine of "reserve." The style of preaching adopted by many did, indeed, excite suspicion, and various circumstances indicated the presence and secret spread of error. Still it was difficult to fasten the charge of unsoundness upon individuals, and everything of the kind was repelled by suspected parties with the most virtuous indignation, and loudly denounced as unfounded calumny. But in the year 1812, the life of Theophilus Lindsay was published in London, by the well-known Unitarian writer, Thos. Belsham. It contained letters from several leading ministers in Boston, who avowed themselves to be Unitarians, and described the silent spread of their system, and the artful means which they had used to promote it. The mask was thus torn from their faces; and, their dishonesty being unwittingly disclosed by one of their friends in England, they had nothing left for it but to avow their guilt, and brazen it out, and glory in their shame.

Their subsequent progress was rapid, and in this respect it is in striking contrast with the course of the same heresy in Scotland. There it also made its appearance towards the close of last century, as witness the history of Dr. M'Gill, of Ayr. But our Presbyterian form of government and the West