the Act of Toleration of 1689 guaranteed liberty and legal protection to such Nonconformists as could subscribe thirty-five and a half of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, omitting those to which the Puritans had conscientious scruples. Though very limited, this Act marked a great progress. It broke up the reign of intolerance, and virtually destroyed the principle of uniformity. The Act of Uniformity of 1662 was intended for the whole kingdom, and proceeded on the theory of an ecclesiastical incorporation of all Englishmen; now it was confined to the patronized State Church. It recognized none but the Episcopal form of worship, and treated non-Episcopalians as disloyal subjects, as culprits and felons; now other Protestant ChristiansPresbyterians, Independents, Baptists, and even Quakers-were placed under the protection of the law, and permitted to build chapels and to maintain pastors at their own expense. The fact was recognized that a man may be a good citizen and a Christian without conforming to the State religion. Uniformity had proved an intolerable tyranny, and had failed. Comprehension of different denominations under one national Church, though favored by William, seemed impracticable. Limited toleration opened the way for full liberty and equality of Christian denominations before the law; and from the soil of liberty there will spring up a truer and deeper union than can be secured by any compulsion in the domain of conscience, which belongs to God alone.

Puritanism did not struggle in vain. Though it failed as a national movement, owing to its one-sidedness and want of catholicity, it accomplished much. It produced statesmen like Hampden, soldiers like Cromwell, poets like Milton, preachers like Howe, theologians like Owen, dreamers like Bunyan, hymnists like Watts, commentators like Henry, and saints like Baxter, who though dead yet speak. It lives on as a powerful moral element in the English nation, in the English Church, in English society, in English literature. It has won the esteem of the descendants of its enemies. In our day the Duke of Bedford erected a statue to Bunyan (1874) in the place where he had suffered in prison for twelve years; and Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Independents united in a similar tribute of justice and gratitude to the memory of Baxter at Kidderminster (1875), where he is again pointing his uplifted arm to the saints' everlasting rest. The liberal-minded and large-hearted dean of Westminster represented the nobler part of the English people when he

canonized those great and good men in his memorial discourses at the unveiling of their statues. Puritanism lives moreover in New England, which was born of the persecutions and trials of its fathers and founders in old England, and gave birth to a republic truer, mightier, and more enduring than the ephemeral military commonwealth of Cromwell. It will continue to preserve and spread all over the Saxon world the love of purity, simplicity, spirituality, practical energy, liberty, and progress in the Christian Church.

On the other hand, it is for the children of the Puritans to honor the shining lights of the Church of England who stood by her in the days of her trial and persecution. That man is to be pitied indeed who would allow the theological passions of an intolerant age to blind his mind to the learning, the genius, and the piety of Ussher, Andrewes, Hall, Pearson, Prideaux, Jeremy Taylor, Barrow, and Leighton, whom God has enriched with his gifts for the benefit of all denominations. It is good for the Church of England-it is good for the whole Christian world-that she survived the fierce conflict of the seventeenth century and the indifferentism of the eighteenth to take care of venerable cathedrals, deaneries, cloisters, universities, and libraries, to culti vate the study of the fathers and schoolmen, to maintain the importance of historical continuity and connection with Christian antiquity, to satisfy the taste for stability, dignity, and propriety in the house of God, and to administer to the spiritual wants of the aristocracy and peasantry, and all those who can worship God most acceptably in the solemn prayers of her liturgy, which, with all its defects, must be pronounced the best ever used in divine service.

While the fierce conflict about religion was raging, there were prophetic men of moderation and comprehension on both sides—

'Whose dying pens did write of Christian union,

How Church with Church might safely keep communion;
Who finding discords daily to increase,

Because they could not live, would die, in peace.'

In a sermon before the House of Commons, under the arched roof of Westminster Abbey, Richard Baxter uttered this sentence: 'Men that differ about bishops, ceremonies, and forms of prayer, may be all true Christians, and dear to one another and to Christ, if they be prac tically agreed in the life of godliness, and join in a holy, heavenly conversation. But if you agree in all your opinions and formalities, and

yet were never sanctified by the truth, you do but agree to delude your souls, and neither of you will be saved for all your agreement.'1

This is a noble Christian sentiment, echoing the words of a greater man than Baxter: In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision,'-we may add, neither surplice nor gown, neither kneeling nor standing, neither episcopacy nor presbytery nor independency-but a new creature.' 2

§ 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 HETHBRINGTON, 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. Theo logie for 1850, pp. 238-296. (The best account of the Assembly in the German language.)

'Vain Religion of the Formal Hypocrite. Baxter's Works, Vol. XVII. p. 80. Quoted by Stoughton, p. 195. The sermon was preached Apr. 30, 1660, just before the recall of Charles II. See Orme, Life of Baxter, p. 160.

1 Gal. vi. 15.

VOL. I.-A AL

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 Re view' for July, 1876, pp. 387 sqq.

C. A. BRIGGS: Art. Documentary History of the Westminster Assembly, in Pres. Rev. for 1880, pp. 127-164 ALEXANDER F. MITCHELL, D.D. (Prof. of Ch. Hist. at St. Andrews, and ed. of the Minutes of the Assem bly): The Westminster Assembly: its History and Standards. London, 1883. (519 pages.)

IMPORTANCE OF THE ASSEMBLY.

It was after such antecedents, and in such surroundings, that the Westminster Assembly of Divines was called to legislate for Christian doctrine, worship, and discipline in three kingdoms. It forms the most important chapter in the ecclesiastical history of England during the seventeenth century. Whether we look at the extent or ability of its labors, or its influence upon future generations, it stands first among Protestant Councils. The Synod of Dort was indeed fully equal to it in learning and moral weight, and was more general in its composition, since it embraced delegates from nearly all Reformed Churches; while the Westminster Assembly was purely English and Scotch, and its standards even to-day are little known on the Continent of Europe.1 But the doctrinal legislation of the Synod of Dort was confined to the five points at issue between Calvinism and Arminianism; the Assembly of Westminster embraced the whole field of theology, from the eternal decrees of God to the final judgment. The Canons of Dort have lost their hold upon the mother country; the Confession and Shorter Catechism of Westminster are as much used now in AngloPresbyterian Churches as ever, and have more vitality and influence than any other Calvinistic Confession.

It is not surprising that an intense partisan like Clarendon should disparage this Assembly. Milton's censure is neutralized by his praise,

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.

* 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

for, although he hated presbytery only less than episcopacy, he called the Assembly a 'select assembly,'' a learned and memorable synod,' in which 'piety, learning, and prudence were housed.' This was two years after the Assembly had met, when its character was fully shown. He afterwards changed his mind, chiefly for a personal reason-in consequence of the deservedly bad reception of his unfortunate book on 'Divorce,' which he had dedicated in complimentary terms to this very Assembly and to the Long Parliament.1

Richard Baxter, who was not a member of the Assembly, but knew it well, and was a better judge of its theological and religious character than either Clarendon or Milton, pays it this just tribute: The divines there congregated were men of eminent learning, godliness, ministerial abilities, and fidelity; and being not worthy to be one of them myself, I may the more freely speak the truth, even in the face of malice and envy, that, as far as I am able to judge by the information of all history of that kind, and by any other evidences left us, the Christian world, since the days of the apostles, had never a synod of more excellent divines (taking one thing with another) than this and the Synod of Dort.' He adds, however, 'Yet, highly as I honor the men, I am not of their mind in every part of the government which they have set up. Some words in their Catechism I wish had been more clear; and, above all, I wish that the Parliament, and their more skillful hand, had done more than was done to heal our breaches, and had hit upon the right way, either to unite with the Episcopalians and Independents, or, at least, had pitched on the terms that are fit for universal concord, and left all to come in upon those terins that would.' 2 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.

1 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.

'Life and Times, Pt. I. p. 73. Comp. Orme's Life of Baxter, p. 69.