all, or nearly all, the stanch friends of orthodoxy. So that for the truth of our doctrinal standards we have the universal testimony of the ablest, wisest, and best men, both at the period of the Reformation, and in an age which has been justly styled the glory of England and the golden age of literature.

Equally remarkable is the fact that these bodies, almost to a man Episcopalian by birth and education, should, after long, minute, and impartial investigation, reject the scriptural claims of prelacy, and adopt those principles denominated presbytery, as the truly scriptural and primitive polity. In the main features and principles of this system, there was no difference of opinion, either in the Assembly or in the parliament. That there is but one order of the Christian ministry, called indiscriminately presbyters or bishops, ordained by Christ and his apostles, and found in the truly primitive church, ALL. WITHOUT EXCEPTION, WERE CONSTRAINED TO BELIEVE. On this ground, Presbyterians, Independents, and Erastians all stood without wavering or doubt. On the subject of divine right. the power of presbyteries, synods and assemblies, and of ruling elders, there were, it is true, differences of views, as there are at this moment, in the bosom of the Presbyterian church, as well as out of it. The Erastians denied the spiritual independence of the church, and her right to govern ecclesiastically, free from all interference on the part of the state. The Independents denied the propriety of stated and regular judicatories, though they allowed the Scripturality of Synods and Presbyteries, whenever necessary. But in the great fundamental principle which divides prelatists from all other denominations, every member of the Assembly and every member of the parliament were fully agreed. Is there not, then, great weight in this fact? And when connected with the unanimous judgment of all the reformed churches, and the opinions of some of the greatest divines in every age, from that period up to the time of the apostles, does it not demonstrate that the orders of the hierarchy originated not in Scripture, but in custom and the policy of man?

SECTION IV.

THE POLITICAL SENTIMENTS AND CHARACTER OF THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY AND ITS ADHERENTS.

But we pass on to remark, that in an age of distraction, anarchy, and wild excess, the Westminster Assembly, and the party which adhered to them and to their principles, formed the conservative influence by which peace, order, and truth were maintained, and would have been, if possible, preserved. They were men of liberal views, but they were not latitudinarian.

They were consecrated to the cause of freedom, but they sought it in the establishment of constitutional rights, and not in the destruction of the constitution. They were attached to the British government of kings, lords, and commons, and believing that it only required reform to be stable, just, and free, they regarded as unwise, dangerous, and chimerical, the attempt to establish upon its ruins a system of military despotism, or agrarian democracy. They desired a republic in which the president should be elective or hereditary, with the name of king; and in which the force of the democracy and of the nobility should be equally subject to check. They were, in short, conservatives, and not radicals. They opposed, therefore, to a man, the execution of the king. They openly denounced the usurpation by Cromwell of all prerogative and authority. They protested against the encouragement which was given to error, heresy, and schism. And they aimed at the union of the whole British Empire in a common bond of Protestant harmony.

Looking back upon the eventful history of those times, and the calamitous results of the wild, ungovernable reign of mere popular license which succeeded, we can see that they were correct. The British people were not prepared, either for subjection to a military despotism, for the freedom and selfgovernment of a republic, or for the unrestrained exercise of an unbridled liberty. Had the party connected with the Assembly prevailed, instead of having been early defeated and overwhelmed, the lamentable consequences would not have ensued. A republican monarchy would have been established, which might have ripened, ere this, into a constitutional republic. The reign of anarchy, confusion, and blood, would have been prevented. The nation would not have fallen a prey to intestine feuds, and to the voracious maws of innumerable sects. The tide of liberty, which had been for years swelling in its onward flow, would not have been driven back within the channels of arbitrary power. The sun of freedom, which had shown so brightly, would not have gone down before noonday. A disastrous eclipse would not have so soon obscured the hopes of the nation, and buried them again in the darkness of absolute despotism, civil and ecclesiastical. Those ages of licentiousness, formality, persecution, and cruelty, would not have followed, which converted England into the home of infidelity, scattered her pious children, and drove them into exile, and deluged every mountain-pass and deep ravine of Scotland with the blood of martyred Covenanters. Thanks to God, these efforts of the enemy were unavailing! The precious spark of liberty which the Puritans alone had kindled, was still preserved with the blood of its slaughtered friends, and has burst forht in that freedom which now characterizes the English con

stitution, and which shines forth in unclouded brilliance in this land of liberty. And when it is recollected what Presbytery has done for Scotland, compared with what Prelacy has done for England; and in Ireland what Presbytery has effected for Ulster, compared with what Episcopacy has accomplished for the other provinces of that unhappy country, who, it has been truly asked, will venture to conclude that the evils which now threaten to overthrow the Protestant establishments in Britain, might not have been avoided, had the Presbyterian polity been universally established.*

SECTION V.

THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY AND THE PRESBYTERIANS OF THEIR TIME VINDICATED FROM THE CHARGE OF PERSECUTION.

But it is said this Presbyterian party were intolerant and persecuting. Doubtless it is so decreed, for their enemies alone have been their historians, and vilification and abuse their only monument. But have they received justice at the hands of posterity? Far from it. Their true history has yet to be written. Not that they were free from fault-they were men. Not that they had imbibed those views of universal toleration which are the glory of the present age-they lived in the seventeenth century. Not that we can palliate, much less justify, whatever in their course was inconsistent with the most perfect liberty of opinion and practice. We make no such apology. But we demand an arrest of judgment. We ask that they shall be tried by the standard of their own age, and the opinions of the men of that age. Trained within the precincts of a state church, they retained much of its spirit, and acted, as axiomatically true, upon many of its evil maxims. By these false principles they were misled-some of them far and widely. They admitted the right and power of the magistrate to interfere with the church, to establish and control her external movements, and thus to establish a uniformity of worship. And hence believing, as they did, that Presbytery was by divine right the polity of the church of Christ, they sought that the civil power should give its sanction of EXCLUSIVE approbation to this system. They protested against the state, after having bound itself to the cause of Presbyterianism by solemn league and covenant,-recognizing and encouraging the innumerable sects which then sprung into existence, from the prolific hotbed of superstition and ignorance, exposed to the full influence of a licentious and unrestrained license. They could not believe that it was proper that all men should have unlimited free*Presb. Review, March, 1836, p. 27.

dom to proclaim sentiments however blasphemous and revolting, and to practice, as acts of worship, immoralities and indecencies too gross to be detailed.* Against a positive and judicial sanction to these things, on the part of government, they did solemnly protest. It being ON ALL HANDS AGREED that it was the province of the state to adjudicate on this matter, the Presbyterian party argued that it was one thing "not to compel men to come in, and another thing to open the door for the encouragement of error, and to inscribe over it "all kinds of heresies, schisms, and blasphemies, publicly allowed and tolerated here." And who will deny that this conclusion follows inevitably FROM THE PREMISES THEN UNIVERSALLY ADMITTED? For if it is the right and duty of the state to establish and defend religion, then is the state bound to enforce only that system which is true, and to discountenance and condemn all other forms of religion. And since the parliament had established the Presbyterian faith and discipline, it was consistently required to patronize it alone. The error was in the principle acted upon, which, however, all avouched as correct, and not in the conclusion deduced from it, and which was reprobated only by the party it excluded. The Assembly having been constituted the advisory council of the parliament, and having been led to the conclusion that the Presbyterian system was by divine right, were of necessity impelled to seek the recognition of that divine right on the part of the parliament.

But there was another privilege and right which they claimed for the church, and that was her spiritual independence, in all ecclesiastical matters, upon all civil authority whatsoever. This doctrine has ever been dear to Scottish Presbyterians. The history of that country for nearly a century and a half after the overthrow of Popery, presents a series of struggles unexampled in severity and number, to protect and to rescue it from Erastian encroachments. To surrender it to these was deemed no less than treason to Christ, and the taking of the crown from his head. The sense entertained of its importance, and the ardor of the people's attachment to it were such, that many submitted to bonds, and to the loss of goods and of life, for its sake. The names of the Scottish martyrs, from the era of the Reformation downwards, are one and all associated with its maintenance. The very peasantry of the land understood it— defended it-died for it. And during those twenty-eight years of national suffering which preceded the memorable revolution, the fundamental question in the great controversy upheld by our ancestors against the fearful odds of unprincipled and cruel despotism, was no other than the Headship of Christ,

*McCrie's Scott. Hist. p. 307, 308, 310. Hetherington, Hist. of Ch. of Scot., p. 340.

and the liberty and spiritual independence of the Church of Scotland. "The day," says that great man, John Welsh of Ayre, when writing from his prison at Blackness, "on which I should be offered up as a sacrifice for these truths, now the special cause of our imprisonment,-that Christ is Head of His Church, and that she is free of all jurisdiction but His-I should consider the most glorious day and gladdest hour I ever saw in my life.*

Now this was the great fundamental principle for which the Assembly and the Presbyterian party contended, as even Neal admits. And to show that they were in earnest in maintaining it, they nobly determined, like their present followers, the Free Church of Scotland, that they would not comply with the existing establishment until it was delivered from the yoke of the civil magistrate.

Such were the views embodied in the Westminster Confession of Faith; imbedded in the Covenants; and which constituted the rallying motto on the banners of the blue. Such was that church power which the Presbyterians were so anxious to secure, and which has been magnified into a civil authority over men's persons and properties. It had nothing to do with either. It was purely ecclesiastical and spiritual. It is what every church in this country at this moment possesses, the power of conducting its own affairs and exercising its own discipline, according to its own rules and the dictates of Scripture. Now the claim of this power and the consequent right to keep back scandalous and unworthy persons from the ordinances of baptism and the Lord's supper, was the very head and front of their offending. This constituted the great point

*Mr. Thomas Forrester, in 1674, when minister of Alva, gave in a paper to the brethren of the exercise, wherein he stated that the "two powers, civil and ecclesiastic, are distinct toto genere, both as to the original, the subjectmatter, and the manner of working, and the nearest end designed,-consequently, that THEY ARE CO-ORDINATE, NOT SUBORDINATE ONE TO ANOTHER. That these were kept also distinct-distinct limits being put betwixt them, both in the Old and New Testaments; under the law, a standing priesthood and spiritual sanhedrim established, who were to meddle with matters of the Lord, distinct from matters of the king: that the judgment on Saul and Uzzias was for going beyond their limit: and that, under the New Testament, the Lord Jesus, the king, head, and lawgiver of his church, hath a visible kingdom which he exerciseth in and over the church visible by its spiritual office-bearers given to it as a church; and therefore distinct from, and independent upon, the civil power, the keys of the kingdom of heaven being by him committed not to the magistrate, but to the apostles' successors in the work of the ministry. That as it is clear that this spiriual power was at first committed to church officers, when no magistrate was so much as a member thereof, and consequently to be exercised then independently upon him, so it is as clear that our Lord hath commanded the exercise of this power as intrinsic in the church, whether the magistrate be friend or enemy, upon moral perpetual grounds, till he come again."—Wodrow's History, II., 254.

Mr. Forrester was deposed. He survived the revolution, however; and became Principal of the new College of St. Andrews.