HISTORY

OF THE

WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY.

SECTION I.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS, WITH A REView of the CAUSES WHICH LED TO THE CALLING OF THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY.

We are on this occasion called upon, with an innumerable multitude in every quarter of the globe, and of many different denominations, to celebrate the bicentenary anniversary of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. To this body the world is indebted for those standards of faith and practice which have been substantially adopted, not only by the Presbyterian Church in all its branches, but also by the Congregational and Baptist denominations. The return of a second centennial anniversary of this Assembly, invokes the grateful remembrance of all who value these standards, and the blessings of religious and civil freedom with which they have become inseparably connected. If the clear definition and establishment of those doctrines that are of God, alike freed from Antinomian licentiousness on the one hand, and from fanatical extravagance on the other; if the preparation of standards which have served as bulwarks to the truth as it is in Jesus, when error and heresy have come in like a flood upon the church, and which are at this moment venerated, as containing the system of doctrine taught in the word of God, by growing multitudes; and if a devotion to the cause of human rights which no bribery or persecution could extinguish; if, I say, these achievements are sufficient to demand our gratitude, then are we imperatively called upon to hail with exultation this natal day of our spiritual birthright, to consider the days of old and the years of ancient times, and to bring to remembrance the Westminster Assembly.

In order, however, properly to appreciate the debt of gratitude we owe to this General Council of the Church, and to enter heartily into this commemoration, we must recall to mind the circumstances which gave origin to this assembly.* and the nature and influence of its proceedings. It will be our object, therefore, in this discourse to present some general observations relating to the history, character, and results of this body.

*See these minutely given in the Preface to Reid's Lives of the Divines of the Westminster Assembly. Paisley, 1811.

The Westminster Assembly of Divines is to be regarded both as an effect and as a cause. It was at once the result of certain previous movements, and the source of other and momentous consequences to which it gave occasion. Itself the fruit of former vegetation, it became the seed of new productions. From it, as a starting point, the Presbyterian Church commenced her glorious race, freed from the clogs and hinderances with which she had been long previously bound, and is now seen in all the strength of growing maturity, pressing on towards the mark for the prize of her high calling; while upon the foundation of its doctrinal standards millions build the fabric of their everlasting hopes.

To understand the causes which led to the convention of the Westminster Assembly, we must go back to the era of the English Reformation and trace the history and working of the Anglican hierarchy. Unlike the Continental and Scottish reforms, which were originated, and sustained, and completed by the people, the English Reformation was altogether a political movement, and an affair of state. It was forced upon an unprepared and unenlightened people, like any other matter of political legislation. Neither was it a reformation, but rather an adaptation of the existing hierarchy to the views and purposes of a covetous, worldly-minded, and ambitious monarch. While the supremacy of the pope was renounced, the king was recognized as the head of the church, and was thus implicated in that usurpation of the royal prerogative of Christ, and in those encroachments on the rights of the church, which form one of the weightiest charges against the Roman Antichrist. And while the people, in their state of ignorance, spurned from them the established religion-as far as they dared express their feelings-because it was in any way, and to any degree an alteration of the old, that same people, when fully instructed in the knowledge of the gospel, rejected to a great extent this same established religion, because it was but a modification of the corrupted papacy, and altogether unlike the primitive and apostolical church of Christ. It is beyond all controversy certain, that had the great body of the clergy and the laity, in the days of Elizabeth, possessed the liberty of carrying out their views, the Church of England would have been modelled after the same original platform of Presbyterian polity which was preserved to us in the sanctuary of truth, and universally adopted by every reformed church in Christendom.* Coerced into obedience to the powers that ruled over them, and legislated into conformity by the all-convincing arguments of proclamations, penalties, imprisonment, torture, infamy, and

*See the author's Work on "Presbytery, and not Prelacy, the Scriptural and Primitive Polity," for proof.

death, the people of England groaned within themselves, being burdened. Having no refuge in man, they sought relief in God, into whose ear they poured their complaints, and cried with a loud voice, saying, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge our cause, and avenge our sufferings on them that oppress us?"

Prelacy is a plain and manifest deviation from the institutions of Christ. As such it appeared to all the reformed churches, and to a large portion of the English people. They sought, therefore, its removal by an appeal to scriptural argument and authority. But prelacy had also become identified with spiritual despotism and arbitrary proceedings. Secular power, external violence, inquisitorial authority, and political tyranny, as well as ecclesiastical jurisdiction, had long been annexed to the hierarchy, had become characteristic of its conduct, and interwoven with all its proceedings. Bishops were not only lords spiritual, but also lords temporal. Their power extended equally to the body and the soul, and to civil as wel! as to ecclesiastical penalties. They domineered over all the ecclesiastical rights of the people in the church, while they lent themselves as the tools of arbitrary monarchs in the state. They had, too, become possessed of extensive power, independent of the crown and parliament; a power which, being based upon a divine right and thus beyond the reach of any human control, could be questioned only by the voice of blasphemous impiety. Their history is filled with treasons, conspiracies, and oppression.* They had ever been found opposed to the laws and liberties of the people, and to the reformation of abuses. Their high-handed proceedings in the Bishops' courts; their illegal powers as members of the High Commission; and the exorbitant prerogative of the crown, which they abetted and sustained, prostrated all freedom, trampled upon the just rights of the citizen, and left men of every quality and degree at the mercy of a rapacious despotism.†

*The collected proofs of these charges, from authentic sources, may be seen given at length by that learned and persecuted man. Counsellor Prynne, in his "Antipathie of the English Lordly Prelacy both to regular Monarchy and civil Unity; or an Historical Collection of the several execrable Treasons, Conspiracies. Rebellions, Seditions, Stateschisms. Contumacies, Oppressions, and Anti-Monarchical Practices, of our English. British, French, Scottish, and Irish Lordly Prelates, against our Kings, Kingdomes. Laws, Liberties; and of the several Wars, and civil Dissensions occasioned by them in. or against our Realm, in former and latter ages." London, 1641. 2 vols, 4to.

By this dreadful tribunal many were reduced to utter poverty by fines, many were imprisoned till they contracted fatal diseases, others were banished, and some were actually sold for slaves.

It was actually decided by the twelve judges of the Star Chamber, "That the King, having the supreme ecclesiastical power, could, without parliament make orders and constitutions for church government; that

the High Commissioner might enforce them, ex officio, without libel: and

This language may appear strong, but it is inadequate to express the true character of the Anglican hierarchy. Take, for example, the case of Leighton, father of the celebrated Archbisop. At the instigation of Laud, and upon the charge of having published a book against prelacy!-he was thrown into prison, where he lay in a filthy cell infested with vermin for fifteen weeks, so that when served with his libel his hair and skin had come off his body, and he was so reduced in strength as to be unable to appear at the bar. This, however, made no difference. Untried and unheard he was condemned to suffer the following sentence, on hearing which pronounced, Laud, we are told, "pulled off his cap and gave God thanks." "The horrid sentence," says the sufferer in his petition to parliament some years afterwards, "was to be inflicted with knife, sword, fire, and whip, at and upon the pillory, with ten thousand pounds fine; which some of the lords of court conceived could never be inflicted, but only that it was imposed on a dying man to terrify others. But Laud and his creatures caused the sentence to be executed with a witness; for the hangman was animated all the night before, with strong drink in the prison, and with threatening words, to do it cruelly. Your petitioner's hands being tied to a stake, besides all other torments, he received thirty-six stripes with a treble cord, after which he stood almost two hours in the pillory in cold, frost, and snow, and then suffered the rest, as cutting off the ear, firing the face, and slitting up the nose. He was made a spectacle of misery to men and angels. And on that day seven nights, the sores upon his back, ears, nose and face, not being cured, he was again whipped at the pillory in Cheapside, and then had the remainder of the sentence executed by cutting off the other ear, slitting up the other nostril, and branding the other cheek!"

Similar punishments were inflicted on Counsellor Prynne, Dr. Bastwick, and Dr. Burton, and for the same atrocious crime of having written against the prelacy!

In short, "the Church of England continued under the Stuarts what she had become under the Tudors: a submissive slave to the higher ranks, a tyrant to the lower."* And the portentous re-appearance, at the present time, and in our own country as well as in England, of the fundamental principle,the prelatical doctrine of Apostolical Succession,-from which these results followed, may well excite alarm; embodying, as it does, the very essence of despotism, civil and religious, and

that subjects might not frame petitions for relief without being guilty of an offence finable at discretion, and very near to treason and felony." Neal, Vol. I. p. 416, 417.

*Hoffman's Anglo-Prussian Bishopric, p. 28.