The “Propositions” themselves, to which the “Directory for Ordination” was adjoined, so as to form a single document, were dealt with very freely by Parliament. Intent only on the practical settlement of the Church while it preserved to itself all ecclesiastical as well as civil authority, Parliament on the one hand, undertook to extract from “The Propositions” only so much of a practical directory as would enable the Church to go on; and on the other, precipitated the Assembly of Divines into what threatened to become endless debates on the jus divinum of the details of the Presbyterian system and the autonomy of the Church and particularly the right of the Church in the exercise of its own spiritual jurisdiction to exclude the scandalous from participation in the Lord’s Supper.⁹ In these debates, and in the whole conduct of its negotiations with Parliament during this dispute, the Assembly manifested the highest dignity, firmness, and courage. If Parliament utterly refused to set up a series of ecclesiastical courts with independent jurisdiction even in purely spiritual matters, and insisted on reserving to itself, or to secular committees established by and directly responsible to it, the review of even such spiritual functions as the determination of fitness to receive the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper,¹⁰ the Assembly on its part respectfully but firmly protested against such an intrusion of the secular arm into spiritual things, and refused to be a party to any ecclesiastical arrangement which denied to the Church what it deemed its divinely prescribed rights and responsibilities. It took for its motto the ringing phrase, “The Crown rights of Jesus Christ,” and declared that on His shoulders the government is, and that all power in heaven and earth has been given Him, and, ascended far above all heavens, He has received gifts for His Church and has given to it officers necessary for its edification and the perfecting of His saints. It showed itself, in the noble words of Warriston, “tender, zealous and carefull to assert Christ and his Church their priviledge and right … that Christ lives and reigns alone over and in his Church, and will have all done therin according to his Word and will, and that he hes given no supreme headship over his Church to any Pope, King, or Parliament whatsoever.”¹¹ On the matter of the spiritual jurisdiction of the Church, the Assembly remained unmoved and insisted that Christ has instituted in the Church a government and governors ecclesiastical distinct from the civil magistrates.¹² Meanwhile, realizing that it was of the first importance to get the framework of the Presbyterian government established and in operation, the Divines under the leadership of Alexander Henderson, passing by these doctrinal matters for the moment, had drawn up a “Practical Directory for Church Government,” which they had presented to Parliament July 7, 1645. In this document, which avoided as far as possible all questions of principle, very full and definite expositions were given of the actual framework of Presbyterian government. It commended itself in this aspect of it to Parliament and was ultimately in large part adopted by it in an ordinance passed on August 29, 1648, and was published in this somewhat diluted shape as “The Form of Church Government to be used in the Church of England and Ireland.”

In Scotland this document was never formally approved, as the earlier “Propositions,” which were approved by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, were never ratified by the English Parliament. Thus neither became of authority in both Churches. The modified Presbyterianism set up by the Long Parliament in England, under the direction of the one document, moreover, was soon swept away; while the other document, approved indeed by the Scottish General Assembly but never ratified by the Estates of the Scottish Parliament, though it has held its place among the formularies of the Scottish churches until to-day, has been largely superseded in the churches deriving their descent from them. The permanent influence of the labors of the Westminster Assembly in the great matter of church organization - supposed at the time, as they were, to be its most important, as they certainly were its most pressing and its most difficult labors - has been largely unofficial and somewhat indirect. It has doubtless been exerted nearly as powerfully, indeed, through such treatises as “The Grand Debate,” already mentioned, or the “Jus Divinum Regiminis Ecclesiastici,” published by some of the ministers of London at the end of 1646, but supposed to incorporate the Assembly’s answers to the jus divinumqueries propounded to it by Parliament, as through their formal advices to Parliament. Indeed, it is questionable whether the really great works of individual members of the Assembly on these topics, such as Gillespie’s “An Assertion of the Government of the Church of Scotland” (1641) and “Aaron’s Rod Blossoming” (1646), Rutherford’s “Due Right of Presbytery” (1644), and Henderson’s “The Government and Order of the Church of Scotland” (1641, and again 1690), must not be conceived the chief vehicles of this influence. The most that can be said for the formal work of the Assembly in this field is that it gave ungrudgingly an immense amount of self-denying labor to preparing advices for the use of Parliament in settling the government of the Church of England on a Presbyterian model, but was prevented by the circumstances in which it did its work from doing full justice in these documents either to its own clear and strong convictions or to the system with which it was dealing.

Next to the elaboration of a new scheme of government for the Church of England which should bring it into harmony with the established government of the Church of Scotland, the most pressing task committed to the Assembly of Divines was the preparation of a new form of worship to take the place of “The Book of Common Prayer” now to be abolished, by which the modes of worship in the Church of England should be conformed “to the example of the best Reformed Churches.” The prosecution of this task was attended with no such difficulties as beset the formulation of the scheme of government. There existed no doubt differences enough in usage and preference among the several parties in the Assembly in this region of church life also; and these differences ranged all the way from a distaste among the Independents to all prescriptions in worship to a predilection in the case of some of the English churchmen for a complete liturgy.¹³ But they were less deeply rooted and more easily conciliated in a middle way than the differences by which they were divided in the matter of church government. The work of formulating forms of worship acceptable to all was, therefore, pushed through comparatively rapidly, and the whole “Directory for the Publique Worship of God throughout the Three Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland” was sent up to Parliament by the end of 1644. By an ordinance of Parliament, dated January 3d, [4th], 1645, it was established in England and Wales to “be henceforth used, pursued, and observed, … in all Exercises of the Publique Worship of God, in every Congregation, Church, Chappell, and place of Publique Worship”; and a month later it was approved and established in Scotland by Acts of Assembly (February 3d) and the Estates of Parliament (February 6th). After some slight adjustments it was printed and put into circulation in both countries during the ensuing spring (the English edition bears on its titlepage the date 1644, but that is “old style”). As is indicated by the title, the book is not “a straight liturgy,” but a body of agenda and paradigms. Some of these paradigms, to be sure, are so full that they are capable of being transmuted into liturgical forms by a mere transposition of their clauses into the mode of direct address, but they were not intended to be so employed and are too compressed to lend themselves readily to such use.¹⁴

The first draft of the document was prepared by a subcommittee of the Great Treaty Committee, and, as in the case of the “Practical Directory for Church Government,” it was largely the work of the Scots.¹⁵ The suggestions for the prayers of the Sabbath-day service, and for the administration of the Sacraments, were in the first instance their work;¹⁶ and they ultimately had the drawing up also of the suggestions for preaching and for catechizing.¹⁷ Naturally, therefore, there is much in the book which is derived from Scottish usage. The Sabbath service, for example, is in its general structure practically identical with that of the “Book of Common Order” (commonly called “Knox’s Liturgy”), and the materials for the consecration prayer in the directory for celebrating the Lord’s Supper are mainly derived from the same source. But, on the other hand, the latter part of this same prayer and the concluding thanksgiving are more reminiscent of the English “Book of Common Prayer.”¹⁸ The book as a whole, in fact, does not so much follow Scottish as offer a compromise between Scottish and Puritan usage. Acquiescence in this compromise must have cost the Scots a great effort, as it was, in effect, a reversal of a deliberate policy which had been adopted by the Scottish Church. After the recovery of its purity of worship consequent upon the outbreak of 1637, the Scottish Church was considerably disturbed by the intrusion of certain “novations” into its worship, which were really Puritan customs, seeping in, no doubt, in part, from England, but mainly brought in by returning Scottish emigrants to Ulster. These “novations” were made the subject of earnest conference at the General Assembly of 1641, and again at that of 1643; and, in order to meet the peril which they appeared to threaten, it was determined at the latter Assembly that “a Directorie for the worship of God” should “be framed and made ready, in all the parts thereof, against the next General Assembly” (that of 1644), Henderson, Calderwood, and Dickson being charged with the drafting of it. This whole undertaking was naturally superseded, however, by the inauguration of the broader attempt to introduce, through the mediation of the Westminster Assembly, a common Directory for the three kingdoms. But the odd effect of this supersession was that the “novations” for the exclusion of which from the Church of Scotland the first undertaking was set on foot, were in large measure constituted the official usage of the Church by the new Directory. By the very conditions of its formulation this Directory became a compromise between the Scottish and the Puritan modes of worship rather than a bar to the introduction into Scotland of Puritan modes of worship.

By these “novations” the use of “read prayers,”¹⁹ and even of the Lord’s Prayer, in public worship, was discountenanced, as was also the use of the Gloria Patri, and of the Apostles’ Creed in the administration of the Sacraments, and the habit of the minister to bow in silent prayer upon entering the pulpit. No one of these usages, on which the Scots laid much stress, except the use of the Lord’s Prayer, is prescribed by the Directory; but as none of them are proscribed either, the Scots were able to “save their face” by attaching to the Act by which the Assembly adopted the Directory the proviso: “That this shall be no prejudice to the order and practice of this Kirk, in such particulars as are appointed by the Books of Discipline and Acts of General Assemblies, and are not otherwise ordered and appointed in the Directory.” By a supplementary Act of the same Assembly, however, they voluntarily laid aside - “for satisfaction of the desires of the reverend Divines in the Synod of England, and for uniformity with that Kirk, so much endeared to us” - the “lawful custom” of “the Minister’s bowing in the pulpit.”²⁰ Of more importance than any of these usages, at least for the conduct of the public services, was the loss by the Scots, through the Westminster Directory, of the office of “Reader.” From the Reforniation down, the former or liturgical portion of the Scottish Sabbath service - the opening prayer, the lessons from Scripture, and the singing of a Psalm - had been conducted by a “Reader,” the Minister taking charge of the services, and indeed commonly entering the church, only when he ascended the pulpit to preach. The Westminster Divines found no Scriptural warrant for the office of “Reader,” and, much against the wishes of the Scots, enacted that the Minister should conduct the entire service. “Reading of the Word in the Congregation,” they set down in their Directory, “being part of the Public Worship of God (wherein we acknowledge our dependence upon Him, and subjection to Him), and one means sanctified by Him for the edifying of His people, is to be performed by the Pastors and Teachers.”²¹ The only exception they would allow was that they permitted candidates for the ministry occasionally to perform the office of reading, as also that of preaching, on permission of their Presbyteries.

On the other hand, besides the general structure of the services, as already noted, Scottish usage was followed in the Directory in many important points. This was particularly true in the regulations for the celebration of the Sacraments. The Baptismal service, for example - although the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and godparents were omitted - yet followed in general the Scotch order; and it was thought a great gain for the Scots when, in opposition to practically the universal English custom, they got it ordained that Baptism was never to be administered in private, but always in “the place of Public Worship, and in the face of the Congregation.” It was over the mode of celebrating the Lord’s Supper, however, that the most strenuous debates were held. The manner of celebrating that rite prevalent among the Independents, seemed to the Scots to be bald even to irreverence; while many of the details of the Scottish service were utterly distasteful to the extremer Puritans. In the end, things were ordered fairly to the satisfaction of the Scots, although in one matter which they thought of very great importance, they were ultimately compelled to content themselves with an ambiguous rubric. This concerned the place and manner of the reception of the elements. The Scots were insistent for their own custom, in which the communicants arranged themselves at the table and served one another with the elements as at an actual meal. This usage was, after strenuous debate, at last ordered: but the rubric was subsequently so changed that it ultimately read, merely: “The Table … being so conveniently placed, that the Communicants may orderly sit about it, or at it.” Accordingly the Scotch Assembly, in adopting the Directory, added this proviso: “That the clause in the Directory of the Administration of the Lord’s Supper, which mentioneth the Communicants sitting about the Table, or at it, be not interpreted as if, in the judgment of this Kirk, it were indifferent, and free for any of the Communicants not to come to, and receive at the Table; or as if we did approve the distributing of the Elements by the Minister to each Communicant, and not by the Communicants among themselves.” In a supplementary Act the Assembly further laid down a series of details for the administration of this Sacrament. It was in accordance with the Scottish usage, also, that in a concluding section, the Directory abolished all Festival days, and affirmed that “there is no day commanded in Scripture to be kept holy under the Gospel but the Lord’s Day, which is the Christian Sabbath.”²²

A document formed as this was by a series of compromises was not very likely to command the hearty loyalty of any section of its framers. We are not surprised, therefore, that it was much neglected in England, though in Scotland it gradually made its way against ancient custom and ultimately very much molded the usages of the churches. Even in Scotland, however, this gradually perfected assimilation to the Directory has of late suffered from some reaction; and in some of the churches deriving their formularies from the Scottish Church, the Directory was early superseded by new models of their own.²³ At this distance of time we may look upon it dispassionately; and, so viewed, it can scarcely fail to commend itself as an admirable set of agenda, in spirit and matter alike well fitted to direct the public services of a great Church. It is notable for its freedom from petty prescriptions and “superfluities” and for the emphasis it places upon what is specifically commanded in the Scriptures. Its general tone is lofty and spiritual; its conception of acceptable worship is sober and restrained and at the same time profound and rich; the paradigms of prayers which it offers are notably full and yet free from overelaboration, compressed and yet enriched by many reminiscences of the best models which had preceded them; and it is singular among agenda for the dominant place it gives in the public worship of the Church to the offices of reading and preaching the Word.²⁴ To both of these offices it vindicates a place, and a prominent place, among the parts of public worship, specifically so called, claiming for them distinctively a function in inducing and expressing that sense of dependence on God and of subjection to Him in which all religion is rooted and which is the purest expression of worship; and thus justifying in the ordering of the public services of the churches the recognition of the Word as a means, perhaps we should say the means, of grace. It expends as much care upon the minister’s proper performance of the offices of reading and preaching the Word, therefore, as upon his successful performance of the duty of leading the congregation in prayer and acceptably administering to it the Sacraments. The paragraph on the Preaching of the Word is in effect, indeed, a complete homiletical treatise, remarkable at once for its sober practical sense and its profound spiritual wisdom, and suffused with a tone of sincere piety, and of zeal at once for the truth and for the souls which are to be bought with the truth.

One of the sections of the Directory is given to the Singing of Psalms, and declares it “the duty of Christians to praise God publickly, by Singing of Psalms together in the Congregation, and also privately in the family.” This rubric manifestly implied the provision of a Psalm Book, and it was made part of the function of the Assembly in preparing a basis for uniformity of worship in the Churches of the three kingdoms, to supply them with a common Psalm Book. The way was prepared for this by the submitment to the Assembly by the House of Commons on November 20, 1643, of the query whether “it may not be useful and profitable to the Church, that the Psalms set forth by Mr. Rouse, be permitted to be publickly sung.” The result of the Assembly’s examination of Mr. Rouse’s version (first printed in 1643) was to recommend it, after it had been subjected to a thorough revision at its own hands, to Parliament as a suitable Psalm Book for the Church (autumn of 1645). The Commons accordingly ordered the book printed in this revised form (it appeared in 1646, i.e. February, 1647), and (April 15, 1646) issued an order establishing it as the sole Psalm Book to be used in the Churches of England and Wales, though the House of Lords never concurred in this order. The Scotch Assembly subjected the book to a still further and more searching revision, and by an act passed in 1649 (ratified by the Estates of Parliament in 1650) approved it in this new form for use in the Scottish churches. It is in this Scottish revision alone (printed in 1650), in which they can only by courtesy continue to bear the name of Francis Rouse as their author, that these Psalms have passed into wide use.²⁵

To the punctual completion of “the third part of uniformity,” that is to say, the preparation of a new Confession of Faith for the contracting Churches, the Divines were urged by no immediately pressing necessity in the situation of the Church of England. The existing Thirty-nine Articles were recognized by them as a soundly Reformed Creed, the doctrine of which required only to be vindicated and cleared from the false interpretations which the reactionary party was already endeavoring to foist upon it. With the internal needs of the Church of England alone in view, they might possibly have felt contented with a simple revision of these Articles, somewhat more thorough than that they had been engaged upon early in their labors.²⁶ The duty of preparing an entirely new Creed was imposed on them solely by the Solemn League and Covenant, by which a common Confession of Faith was made one of the bases of the uniformity in religion which the contracting nations had bound themselves to institute. It was not supposable that either Church would be content simply to accept and make its own the existing Creed of the other. Indeed, neither Church possessed a Creed which it could seriously propose to the other as suitable to the purpose or adequate to the needs of the times. The old Scotch Confession of 1560, breathing as it does the fervor of the Reformation era and full of noble expressions as it is, is too much of an occasional document, too disproportionate in its development of its topics, and too little complete in its scope or precise in its phraseology to serve as the permanent expression of the faith of a great and comprehensive Church; and the new Confession brought forward by the prelatical party in 1616, though sound in doctrine and in parts finely wrought out, suffered from the same defects. The Scots themselves recognized that they had no Creed which they could ask the English to adopt as the common Confession of the unified Churches, and therefore, when contemplating seeking such unification had it in mind to undertake the preparation of a new Creed for the purpose.²⁷ There was greater reason for the English to feel similarly with regard to their own formularies. The Thirty-nine Articles had, in their past experience, proved an inadequate protection against the most dangerous doctrinal reactions. It was therefore that the ecclesiastical authorities had been compelled to put forth, a half-century earlier, those “orthodoxal assertions” which have come down to us under the name of the Lambeth Articles (1595). It had long been the desire of the Puritans that these Articles should be set alongside of the Thirty-nine Articles, as an authoritative exposition of their real meaning. This desire had been given expression at the Hampton Court Conference (1604), and had been met in the Church of Ireland by the incorporation of the Lambeth Articles along with the Thirty-nine Articles into those Irish Articles of 1615, to which we may be sure the Westminster Divines would have turned rather than to the Thirty-nine Articles, had they thought of recommending the simple adoption of an existing Creed as the doctrinal standard of the unified Churches, and which indeed they did make the basis of their own new Creed. Since the necessity of a new Creed was a result of the new conditions brought about by the Solemn League and Covenant, therefore, these conditions imposed an absolute necessity for the preparation of such a document; and as time passed on the demand for the accomplishment of the task became ever more urgent. The “woeful longsomeness” of the Assembly in all its work was bringing the fulfilment of the engagements into which the nations had entered into jeopardy, and the Scots, who had paid the price of the Covenant on the faith of the fulfilment of its provisions, not unnaturally began uneasily to urge their more speedy fulfilment. It was accordingly under pressure from Scotland that the Divines at length entered actively upon the accomplishment of this “third part of uniformity.”²⁸

It must not be inferred, however, from their slowness in entering upon it, that the work of drawing up a Confession of Faith was one uncongenial to the Assembly of Divines; or one for which its members possessed little native fitness or had made little direct preparation; or one which presented for them special difficulties. On the contrary, there was no work committed to them for which they were more eminently qualified, or in which they acquitted themselves with more distinguished success; nor was there any work committed to them in the prosecution of which they were less impeded by differences among themselves. The deep-seated antagonisms which divided them into irreconcilable parties, lay in the region of church organization and government. Doctrinally they were in complete fundamental harmony, and in giving expression to their common faith needed only to concern themselves to state it truly, purely, and with its polemic edges well-turned out towards the chief assailants of Reformed doctrine, in order to satisfy the minds of all. There were indeed differences among them in doctrine, too; but these lay for the most part within the recognized limits of the Reformed system, and there was little disposition to press them to extremes or to narrow their Creed to a party document. To the Amyraldians, of whom there was a small but very active and well-esteemed party in the Assembly (Calamy, Seaman, Marshall, Vines), there was denied, to be sure, the right to modify the statement of the ordo decretorum so as to make room for their “hypothetical universalism” in the saving work of Christ (cf. the Confession, iii. 6, viii. 5, 8). But the wise plan was adopted with respect to the points of difference between the Supralapsarians, who were represented by a number of the ablest thinkers in the Assembly (Twisse, Rutherford), and the Infralapsarians, to which party the great mass of the members adhered, to set down in the Confession only what was common ground to both, leaving the whole region which was in dispute between them entirely untouched. This procedure gives to the Confession a peculiar comprehensiveness, while yet it permits to its statements of the generic doctrine of the Reformed Churches a directness, a definiteness, a crisp precision, and an unambiguous clarity which are attained by few Confessional documents of any age or creed. In its third chapter, for example, in which the thorny subject of “God’s Eternal Decree” falls for treatment, the Westminster Confession has attained, by this simple method, the culmination of the Confessional statement of this high mystery. Everything merely individual and as well everything upon which parties in the Reformed Churches are divided with respect to this deep doctrine, is carefully avoided, while the whole ground common to all recognized Reformed parties is given, if prudent, yet full and uncompromising statement.

The architectonic principle of the Westminster Confession is supplied by the schematization of the Federal theology, which had obtained by this time in Britain, as on the Continent, a dominant position as the most commodious mode of presenting the corpus of Reformed doctrine (so e.g. Rollock, Howie, Cartwright, Preston, Perkins, Ames, Ball, and cf. Dickson’s “Sum of Saving Knowledge” and Fisher’s “Marrow of Modern Divinity,” both of which emanated from this period and were destined to a career of great influence in the Scottish theology). The matter is distributed into thirty-three comprehensive chapters. After an opening chapter “Of the Holy Scripture” as the source of divine truth - which is probably the finest single chapter in any Protestant Confession and is rivalled in ability only by the chapter on Justification in the Tridentine Decrees - there are successively taken up the topics of God and the Trinity, the Divine Decree, Creation, Providence, the Fall and Sin, and then God’s Covenant with Man, and Christ the Mediator of the Covenant, while subsequent treatment is given to the stages in the ordo salutis in the order first of the benefits conferred under the Covenant (Vocation, Justification, Adoption, Sanctification) and then of the duties required under the Covenant (Faith, Repentance, Good Works, Perseverance, Assurance). Then come chapters on the Law, Christian Liberty, Religious Worship, Oaths and Vows, followed by others on the relations of Church and State, the Church and the Sacraments, and the rubrics of Eschatology. All the topics of this comprehensive outline are treated with notable fulness, with the avowed object not merely of setting forth the doctrine of the Churches with such clearness and in such detail as to make it plain to all that they held to the Reformed faith in its entirety,²⁹ but also to meet and exclude the whole mob of errors which vexed the time.³⁰ In the prosecution of their work as practical pastors protecting and indoctrinating their flocks, the Divines had acquired an intimate acquaintance with the prevailing errors and a remarkable facility in the formulation of the Reformed doctrine in opposition to them, which bore rich fruit in their Confessional labors. The main source of their Confessional statements was, thus, just the Reformed theology as it had framed itself in their minds during their long experience in teaching it, and had worked itself out into expression in the prosecution of their task as teachers of religion in an age of almost unexampled religious unrest and controversy. This work, however, had not been done by them in isolation. It had been done, on the contrary, in the full light of the whole body of Reformed thought. It is idle, therefore, to inquire whether they depended for guidance in the scholastic statement of their doctrine on British or on Continental masters. The distinction was not present to their minds; intercourse between the British and the Continental Reformed was constant, and the solidarity of their consciousness was complete. The vital statement of Reformed thought ripened everywhere simultaneously in the perfect interaction which leaves open no question of relative dependence. The Federal mode of statement, for example, came forward and gradually became dominant throughout the Reformed world at about the same time; and the Westminster Confession owes its preeminence among Reformed Confessions, not only in fulness but also in exactitude and richness of statement, merely to the fact that it is the ripest fruit of Reformed creed-making, the simple transcript of Reformed thought as it was everywhere expounded by its best representatives in the middle of the seventeenth century. So representative is it of Reformed theology at its best, that often one might easily gain the illusion as he read over its compressed sections that he was reading a condensed abstract of some such compend as Heppe’s “Dogmatik der evangelisch-reformirten Kirche.”

In giving form and order to their statement of the Reformed faith, however, it was but natural for the Westminster Divines to take their starting point from the formularies in most familiar use among themselves. The whole series of Reformed Confessions, as well as all the best Reformed dogmaticians, were drawn upon to aid them in their definitions, and it is possible to note here and there traces of their use. But it was particularly the Irish Articles of 1615, which are believed to have been prepared by Usher, to which they especially turned. From these Articles they derived the general arrangement of their Confession, the consecution of topics through at least its first half, and a large part of the detailed treatment of such capital Articles as those on the Holy Scripture, God’s Eternal Decree, Christ the Mediator, the Covenant of Grace, and the Lord’s Supper. These chapters might almost be spoken of as only greatly enriched revisions of the corresponding sections of the Irish Articles. Nothing, however, is taken from the Irish Articles without much revision and enrichment, for which every available source was diligently sought out and utilized. There are traces, minute but not therefore the less convincing or significant, for example, of the use for the perfecting of the statements of the Confession, of even the Aberdeen Articles of 1616 and of the Assembly’s own revision of the Thirty-nine Articles. So minutely was every phrase scrutinized and every aid within reach invoked.

The work of formulating the Confession of Faith was begun in Committee as early as the midsummer of 1644 (August 20).³¹ But it was not until the following spring (April 25, 1645)³² that any of it came before the Assembly; and not until the next midsummer (July 7, 1645) that the debates upon it in the Assembly began. Time and pains were lavishly expended on it as the work slowly progressed. By the middle of 1646 the whole was substantially finished in first-draft, and the review of it begun. The first nineteen chapters were sent up to the House of Commons on September 25, 1646, and the entire work on December 4. Proof-texts from Scripture were subsequently added, and the book supplied with them was placed in the hands of Parliament on April 29, 1647. Immediately on its completion the book was carried to Scotland, and by an Act of the General Assembly of 1647, ratified by the Estates of Parliament February 7, 1649, it was constituted the official Creed of the Church of Scotland. Meanwhile action on it dragged in the English Parliament. It was not until June 20, 1648, that, curtailed of chapters xxx. and xxxi., on “Church Censures” and “Synods and Councils,” and certain passages in chapters xx. (“of Christian Liberty and Liberty of Conscience”), xxiii. (“of the Civil Magistrate”), and xxiv. (“of Marriage and Divorce”), it was approved by Parliament and printed under the title of “Articles of the Christian Religion”; and not until March 5, 1660, after the interval of the Protectorate, that it was declared by the so-called “Rump Parliament” to be “the public Confession of the Church of England,” only to pass, of course, out of sight so far as the Church of England was concerned in the immediately succeeding Restoration.

The book was not one, however, which could easily be relegated to oblivion. Thrust aside by the established Church of England, it nevertheless had an important career before it even in England, where it became the Creed of the Non-Conformists. The Independents, at their Synod, met in 1658 at the Savoy, adopted it in the form in which it had been published by Parliament (1648), after subjecting it to a revision which in no way affected its substance; and the Baptists, having still further revised it and adjusted it to fit their particular views on. Baptism, adopted it in 1677. By both of the bodies it was transmitted to their affiliated co-religionists in America, where it worked out for itself an important history.³³ It was of course also transmitted, in its original form, by the Scotch Church to the Churches, on both sides of the sea, deriving their tradition from it, and thus it has become the Confession of Faith of the Presbyterian Churches of the British dependencies and of America. In the latter it has been adapted to their free position relatively to the State by means of certain alterations in the relevant chapters, and in some of the Churches it has been subjected to some other revisions. It has thus come about that the Westminster Confession has occupied a position of very widespread influence. It has been issued in something like 200 editions in Great Britain and in about 100 more in America.³⁴ It was rendered into German as early as 1648 (reprinted, somewhat modified, in Böckel’s “Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-reformirten Kirche,” 1847); and into Latin in 1656 (often reprinted, e.g. Niemeyer’s “Collectio Confessionum,” Appendix, 1840, and Schaff, “Creeds of Christendom,” 1878); and into Gaelic in 1725 (often reprinted). More recently it has been translated into Hindustani (1842), Urdu (1848), German (1858), Siamese (1873), Portuguese (1876), Spanish (1880 and again 1896-1897), Japanese (1880), Chinese (1881), Arabic (1883), Gujurati (1888), French (1891), as well as into Benga, Persian, and Korean (as yet in MS.). It thus exists to-day in some seventeen languages³⁵ and is professed by perhaps a more numerous body than any other Protestant creed.³⁶

The labors of the Divines upon the “fourth part of uniformity,” that is to say, in the preparation of a Catechism for the unified Churches, reached a similarly felicitous result. The Westminster Assembly was eminently an assembly of catechists, trained and practised in the art.³⁷ Not only were its members pupils of masters in this work, but not fewer than a dozen of themselves had published Catechisms which were in wide use in the churches (Twisse, White, Gataker, Gouge, Wilkinson, Wilson, Walker, Palmer, Cawdrey, Sedgewick, Byfield, and possibly Newcomen, Lyford, Hodges, Foxcroft). A beginning was made at a comparatively early date towards drawing up their Catechism; but this labor was successfully completed only after all the other work of the Assembly had been accomplished. In the earlier notices of work on the Catechism it is not always easy to distinguish between references to the preparation of the Directory for Catechising or the Directory for Worship and references to the preparation of the Catechism itself. But as early as November 21, 1644, Baillie speaks of “the Catechise” as already drawn up; and on the 26th of December following, as nearly agreed on in private in its first draft. And we learn from the “Minutes” (p. 13) that on December 2, 1644, a committee was appointed “for hastening the Catechism,” and that this committee was augmented on February 7th following (p. 48). On August 5, 1645, the material of this Catechism was under debate in the Assembly itself; and by August 20 it would seem to have been so far nearing completion that a committee was appointed to “draw up the whole draught” of it. Nothing, however, came of this work. It appears, in effect, that one or two false starts were made upon the Catechism before the Divines got down to their really productive work upon it. After midsummer of 1645 we hear nothing about the Catechism for a year, when, writing July 14, 1646, Baillie tells us that all that had been hitherto accomplished was set aside and a new beginning made. “We made, long agoe,” he writes, “a prettie progress in the Catechise; but falling on rubbes and long debates, it wes laid aside till the Confession wes ended, with resolution to have no matter in it but what wes expressed in the Confession, which should not be debated over againe in the Catechise.”

Accordingly, the Confession being now finished and in process of review, the new Catechism³⁸ was taken up (September 11), and from September 14, 1646, to January 4, 1647, was rapidly passed through the Assembly up to the questions which dealt with the Fourth Commandment. This, however, was only another false start. In the prosecution of this work, the Assembly became convinced that it was attempting an impossible feat; as the Scottish Commissioners express it,³⁹ it was essaying “to dress up milk and meat both in one dish.” It therefore again called a halt and “recommitted the work, that tuo formes of Catechisme may be prepared, one more exact and comprehensive, another more easie and short for new beginners.”⁴⁰ Recommencing on this new basis, the “Larger Catechism” began to be debated on April 15, 1647, and was finished on the 15th of the following October, and sent up to Parliament on October 22. The “Shorter Catechism” was taken up on August 5, 1647, seriously taken in hand October 19, began to come into the Assembly on October 21, and was finished November 22 and sent up to Parliament November 25, 1647. The proof-texts for both Catechisms occupied the Assembly from November 30, 1647, to April 12, 1648, and were presented to Parliament April 14, 1648. The “Shorter Catechism” was approved by Parliament on September 22-25, 1648; and issued under the title, “The Grounds and Principles of Religion, contained in a Shorter Catechism (according to the Advice of the Assembly of Divines sitting at Westminster), to be used throughout the Kingdom of England and Dominion of Wales.” The “Larger Catechism,” however, although passed by the Commons on July 24, 1648, stuck in the House of Lords and never received its authorization. In Scotland, both were approved by acts of the General Assembly of 1648, ratified by the Estates of Parliament, February 7, 1649; but no mention is made of them in the reestablishment of Presbytery after the Revolution. In the later history of the Westminster formularies, the “Larger Catechism” has taken a somewhat secondary place; but no product of the Divines has been more widely diffused or has exercised a deeper influence than their “Shorter Catechism.” It at once became in Scotland the textbook in religion in the schools, and has held that position up to to-day; and for a long period it was scarcely less popular in Non-Conformist England than in Scotland. From both sources it was transmitted to their affiliated Churches in America; and in the extension of the mission work of the several Presbyterian Churches in the nineteenth century its use has been diffused throughout the world.

The tracing of the sources of the Westminster Catechisms is rendered exceptionally difficult not merely by the amazing fecundity in catechetical manuals of the British Churches of the immediately preceding and contemporary periods, but also by the obvious independence of the Westminster Divines in giving form to their catechetical formularies, and their express determination to derive the materials for them, as far as possible, from their own Confession of Faith. The contents of the first Catechism taken in hand by them - the Catechism of 1644-1645 - have not been transmitted to us. We may infer, however, from the meager details which have found record, that it was probably based on the Catechism of Herbert Palmer, published in 1640 under the title of “An Endeavour of Making Christian Religion Easie” (5th edition, 1645). The matter of the second Catechism prepared by the Assembly - that of the autumn of 1646 - is preserved for us in the Minutes, so far as it was debated and passed by the Assembly.⁴¹ It professedly derives its material as far as possible from the Assembly’s Confession of Faith, but as it covers in large part ground not gone over in the Confession, much of its material must have an independent origin. Palmer’s Catechism still seems to underlie it, but supplies no material for its exposition of the Commandments; and the influence of the manuals of Usher seems discernible. Much the same must be said of the sources of the Catechisms which the Assembly completed, “Larger” and “Shorter.” The doctrinal portion of the “Larger Catechism” is very much a catechetical recension of the Assembly’s Confession of Faith; while in its ethical portion (its exposition of the Ten Commandments) it seems to derive most from Usher’s “Body of Divinity” and Nicholl’s and Ball’s “Catechisms”; and in its exposition of the Lord’s Prayer to go back ultimately through intermediary manuals to William Perkins’ treatise on the Lord’s Prayer. The “Shorter Catechism” is so original and individual in its form, that the question of its sources seems insoluble, if not impertinent. It in the main follows the outline of the “Larger Catechism”; but in its modes of statement it now and again varies from it and in some of these variations reverts to the Catechism of the autumn of 1646. In their striking opening questions both Catechisms go back ultimately to the model introduced by Calvin, possibly but certainly not probably through the intermediation of Leo Judae.⁴²Perhaps of all earlier Catechisms the little manual of Ezekiel Rogers most closely resembles the “Shorter Catechism” in its general plan and order; but there is little detailed resemblance between the two. After all said, the “Shorter Catechism” is a new creation, and must be considered in structure and contents alike the contribution to the catechetical art of the Westminster Divines themselves. No other Catechism can be compared with it in its concise, nervous, terse exactitude of definition, or in its severely logical elaboration; and it gains these admirable qualities at no expense to its freshness or fervor, though perhaps it can scarcely be spoken of as marked by childlike simplicity. Although set forth as “milk for babes” and designed to stand by the side of the “Larger Catechism” as an “easie and short” manual of religion “for newbeginners,” it is nevertheless governed by the principle (as one of its authors - Seaman - phrased it), “that the greatest care should be taken to frame the answer not according to the model of the knowledge the child hath, but according to that the child ought to have.” Its peculiarity, in contrast with the “Larger Catechism” (and the Confession of Faith), is the strictness with which its contents are confined to the very quintessence of religion and morals, to the positive truths and facts which must be known for their own behoof by all who would fain be instructed in right belief and practice.⁴³ All purely historical matter, and much more, all controversial matter - everything which can minister merely to curiosity, however chastened - is rigidly excluded. Only that is given which, in the judgment of its framers, is directly required for the Christian’s instruction in what he is to believe concerning God and what God requires of him. It is a pure manual of personal religion and practical morality.

To whom among the Westminster Divines we more especially owe these Catechetical manuals - and particularly the “Shorter Catechism” - we have no means of determining. It is, of course, easy to draw out from the records of the Assembly the names of the members of the committees to which the preparation of the materials for them was entrusted. But this seems to carry us a very little way into the problem. On the whole, Herbert Palmer, who bore the reputation, as Baillie tells us, of being “the best catechist in England,” appears to have been the leading spirit in the Assembly in all matters concerned with catechetics: and he apparently served on all important committees busied with the Catechisms up to his death, which occurred, however (August 13, 1647), before the “Shorter Catechism” seems to have been seriously taken in hand. We have no direct evidence to connect him with the authorship of this Catechism, only the first - evidently a purely preliminary - report upon which he was privileged to be the medium of making, and the contents of which certainly show much less resemblance to those of his own manual than there is reason to believe was exhibited by the earliest Catechism undertaken by the Assembly. There is still less reason, of course, to connect with its composition the name of Dr. John Wallis, Palmer’s pupil and friend, who attended the committee charged with its review as its secretary (from November 9, 1647), and whose mathematical genius has been thought to express itself in the clear and logical definitions which characterize the document. Dr. Wallis’ close connection with the “Shorter Catechism,” in the minds of the contemporary and following generations, appears to be mainly due to the publication by him at once on its appearance (1648) of an edition of it broken up into subordinate questions according to the model of the treatise of his friend and patron, Palmer. Still less have we evidence to connect the Scotch Commissioners directly with the composition of the “Shorter Catechism.” The record may give us reason to infer that the earliest Catechism undertaken by the Assembly may have been in the first instance drafted by the Scots.⁴⁴ But we lack even such faint suggestions in the case of the Catechisms which were ultimately prepared. Indeed, these Catechisms, and especially the “Shorter,” are precisely the portion of the Assembly’s constructive work, in the composition of which the Scotch Commissioners appear to have had the least prominent part. Henderson had died before the Confession of Faith was finished; Baillie left immediately after its completion; Gillespie in the midst of the work on the “Larger Catechism”; while Rutherford, who alone remained until the “Shorter Catechism” was under way, judged that his presence until the completion of the “Larger Catechism” justified the declaration that the Scots had lent their aid to the accomplishment of all “the 4 things mentioned in the Covenant,”⁴⁵ which is as much as to say that he looked upon the completion of the “Shorter Catechism” as largely a matter of routine work unessential to the main task of the Assembly.⁴⁶ It does not follow, of course, that the Scots had nothing to do with the composition of the “Shorter Catechism.” We do not know how fully its text had been worked out before any of it was brought before the Assembly, or how hard it rested on previous work done in committee or in the Assembly, or to whom the first essays in its composition were due. Of course, the Scots served with all committees up to the moment of their departure, and may have had much to do with the framing of the drafts of documents with which we have no explicit evidence to connect their names. But they appear to have had less to do with giving the Catechisms their final form than was the case with the other documents prepared by the Divines for the use of the united Churches. The Catechisms come to us preeminently as the work of the Assembly, and we are without data to enable us to point to any individual or individuals to whom we can confidently assign their characteristic features.

With the completion of the Catechisms, the work of the Assembly under the engagement of the Solemn League and Covenant was done. The Scots, as we have seen, caused a Minute to this effect to be entered upon the records of the Assembly (October 15, 1647), reciting that some of them had given assistance to the Divines throughout the whole of their labors looking to uniformity. And on the return to Scotland of Rutherford, the last of the Scots to leave London, the Commission of the General Assembly dispatched a letter to the Assembly of Divines (November 26, 1647) - with whom it joins in the address “the Ministers of London, and all the other well-affected brethren of the Ministrie in England” - which accurately reflects the state of affairs relatively to the work of the Divines at the end of the year 1647. In this letter the Scots express their unwavering purpose to abide by the Covenant they had sworn, and exhort their English brethren to do the same, noting at the same time the difficulties they saw besetting the way, and recommending in view of them diligence in the fear of God. In pursuance of its covenant engagement, the letter goes on to declare, the Scottish Church had approved and ratified the “Directory for Worship” “being about tuo yeares agoe agreed vpon by the Assemblies and Parliaments of both kingdomes,” and the “Doctrinal Part of Church Government” - that is, the “Propositions for Church Government” of 1644 - “agreed vpon by the reverend and learned Assemblie of Divines”; and had also approved the “Confession of Faith” “as sound and orthodox for the matter, and agreed vnto on their part that it be a part of the Vniformity, and a Confession of Faith for the Churches of Christ in the three kingdomes”; while it purposed to consider and expected to approve the “Directory of Church Government,” the “Catechism,” and the new “Paraphrase of the Psalms” at the next Assembly, to meet in the summer of 1648. From this statement we perceive how far Scotland had outrun England in fulfilling the terms of their mutual engagement, and how uneasy the northern kingdom was becoming over the ever growing prospect that they would never be fully met in England. Meanwhile all the work of the Divines for uniformity was done; there remained only the completion of the proof-texts for the Catechisms, with the completion of which their entire function, as enlarged and given international significance by the provisions of the Solemn League and Covenant, was performed. We find the Assembly, therefore, on the day on which Rutherford took his leave of it, appointing a committee “to consider of what is fit to be done when the Catechism is finished” (November 9, 1647). For a time the Assembly turned back to the controversies of the great days of its past, with the Independents and the Erastians; to its responses to the jus divinum queries;⁴⁷ and especially to its answers to the reasons of the Dissenting brethren against the Presbyterian system of government, which it now prepared for publication (1648, and again 1652). It had ceased to have any further function, however, than that of a standing advisory board to Parliament; and as the significance of Parliament decreased (“Pride’s purge,” December 6, 1648, was the precursor of the end, which came in 1653) its own importance necessarily fell with it. It became increasingly difficult to get a quorum together; and its work dwindled into the mere task of an examining committee for vacant charges, until it passed out of existence with the Parliament from which it derived its being.

What the Divines could do for the institution of the proposed uniformity of religion in the three kingdoms, we see, then, had been done and well done, by the beginning of 1648. The institution of uniformity on the basis formulated by them did not lie within their powers. That was a matter of treaty engagement between the two nations. We have seen that the Scotch were in no way backward in the fulfilment of their part of the engagement. The same cannot be said for England. The political situation was very different at the opening of 1648 from what it had been in midsummer of 1643; and Parliament was now perhaps little inclined, and, to do it justice, was certainly little able, to carry out all it had felt constrained to promise five years before.⁴⁸ The rise of Independency to political power and the usurpation of the army were the supersession of the Covenant and all its solemn obligations: and after the usurpation came ultimately, not the restoration of Parliamentary government and Presbyterianism, but the restoration of monarchy and prelacy. The dream of an enforced uniformity of religion in the three kingdoms on a Presbyterian basis, under the inspiration of which the Divines had done their constructive work, had vanished; and so far as the successful issue of their labors depended on alliance with a friendly state, their work, as regards England at least, had failed. But this alliance was not the strength of the Assembly, but its weakness. Its work was not in character political, but religious; and its product needed no imposition by the civil power to give it vitality. Whatever real authority the formularies it had framed possessed, was inherent in them as sound presentations of truth, not derived from extraneous sources. And by the inherent power of their truth they have held sway and won a way for themselves to the real triumph of the voluntary adhesion of multitudes of Christian men. It is honor enough for the Westminster Assembly that it has provided this multitude of voluntary adherents with a practicable platform of representative government on Scriptural lines, and a sober and sane directory of worship eminently spiritual in tone; and above all, with the culminating Reformed Confession of Faith, and a Catechism preeminent for the exactness of its definitions of faith and the faithfulness of its ethical precepts.

Footnotes

1. Baillie, writing in 1645, says (ii. p. 320): “The bodie of the Parliament, City, and Countrey are for the Presbyterie.” Cf. i. p. 287, of December, 1640: “The farr greatest part are for our discipline.” ↩

2. For example, with respect to the office of ruling elders, Baillie tells us (ii. pp. 110, 111; cf. p. 116) of the procedure thus: “Sundrie of the ablest were flat against the institution of any such officer by divine right… . The most of the synod was in our opinion… There was no doubt but we would have carried it by far most voices; yet because the opposites were men verie considerable, above all gracious and learned little Palmer, we agreed upon a committee to satisfie, if it were possible, the dissenters… . All of them were ever willing to admitt Elders in a prudentiall way… . We trust to carie at last, with the contentment of sundrie once opposite, and silence of all, their divyne and scripturall institution.” Again, more generally (ii. p. 122): “We doubt not to carie all in the Assemblie and Parliament clearlie according to our mind; but if we carie not the Independents with us, there will be ground laid for a verie troublesome schisme. Alwayes” [i.e. nevertheless] “it’s our care to use our outmost endeavor to prevent that dangerous [evil].” ↩

3. Baillie (ii. p. 307) remarks: “The most part of the House of Commons, especiallie the lawyers, whereof they are many, and divers of them very able men, are either half or whole Erastians, believing no Church-government to be of divine right, bot all to be a humane constitution, depending on the will of the magistrates.” Again (p. 336), he tells us that (in 1646) two-thirds of Parliament was made up of worldly men who would have no ecclesiastical discipline if they could avoid it, Erastians, and Erastianizing lawyers, together with a small but influential band of Independents. Cf. also pp. 250, 265, 267, 277, 315. Very properly Baillie remarks therefore, that “the power of the Parliament in ecclesiastick affairs” was the greatest of the questions which were to be determined (ii. p. 205). ↩

4. The position of Parliament laid down in the resolution with respect to the Convocation of 1640, passed December 15, 1640, nullo contradicente, gives a fair expression to its fundamental attitude towards all religious conventions, which was adhered to throughout. “The Clergy of England, Convented in any Convocation, or Synod, or otherwise, have no Power to make any Constitutions, Canons, or Acts, whatsoever, in Matter of Doctrine, Discipline, or otherwise, to bind the Clergy, or the Laity, of this Land, without common Consent of Parliament.” (“Commons’ Journal,” ii. p. 51; cf. “Lords’ Journal,” iv. p. 273, Rushworth, iii. p. 1365.) ↩

5. “The Pope and the King,” says Baillie (ii. p. 360), “were never more earnest for the headship of the Church than the pluralitie of this Parliament.” ↩

6. “Commons’ Journal,” iii. p. 466; “Lords’ Journal,” vi. p. 525. ↩

7. “The Form of Presbyterian Church Government”: “The pastor is an ordinary and perpetual officer in the Church, prophesying of the time of the Gospel.” “Votes passed in the Assembly of Divines,” etc., p. 3 of “Notes of Debates and Proceedings, etc.,” 1846, in Gillespie’s “Works,” ii. 1846: “That there is such an ordinary and perpetual office in the church as a pastor, proved, Jer. iii. 15-17 (prophesying of the time of the gospel), 1 Pet. v. 2-4.” ↩

8. “The Form, etc.” “It belongs to his office, To pray for and with his flock… To read the scriptures publickly… To feed the flock, by preaching of the word… To catechise… To dispense other divine mysteries. To administer the sacraments. To bless the people from God… To take care of the poor. And he hath also a ruling power over the flock as a pastor.” In the “Votes,” p. 3 (Gillespie, ii.): “That which the pastor is to do from God to the people,” is distributed under the heads of “Reading,” “Preaching” and “the dispensation of other divine mysteries”; and then “That which the pastor is to perform in the behalf and name of the people to God” is taken up and distributed into praying, ruling and caring for the poor. Under “Preaching” is subsumed both preaching and catechising; and under the general head of “the dispensation of other divine mysteries” we have the following two specifications: “That it is the office of a pastor to feed the flock by the dispensation of other divine mysteries, proved by i Cor. iv. 1, 2: the administration of the sacraments, Matt. xxviii. 19, 20; Mark xvi. 15, 16; 1 Cor. xi. 23-25, with 1 Cor. x. 16. That he is to bless the people from God, Num. vi. 23-26, with Rev. i. 4, 5 (where the same blessings and persons from whom they came are expressly mentioned), and Isa. lxvi. 21, where, under the names of priests and Levites, to be continued under the gospel, are meant evangelical pastors, who therefore are, by office, to bless the people, Deut. x. S; 2 Cor. xiii. 14; Eph. i. 2:’ The “other divine mysteries” are therefore just the Sacraments and benediction; they are enumerated as other than “reading” and “preaching” the Word. ↩

9. Parliament was in no sense averse to a Presbyterian settlement. What it was unalterably opposed to was a jus divinum settlement of any kind. It was of the strongest conviction, in even its most Puritan element, that the Church derived all its authority and jurisdiction from the State; and it identified the State with itself. As Nathaniel Fiennes, son of Lord Saye, put it in the debates of February, 1641: “By the law of the land not only all ecclesiastical jurisdiction, but also all superiority and pre-eminence over the ecclesiastical state is annexed to the Imperial crown of this realm, and may be granted by commission under the Great Seal to such persons as his Majesty shall think meet.” Parliament, acting as the ultimate source of authority, was to set up a government for the Church: and the government was to be the Parliament’s government through and through. What government the Parliament would set up was from the first determined to be the Presbyterian. “Nor shall we need,” said D’Ewes in May, 1641, “to study long for a new Church government, having so evident a platform in so many reformed churches.” Only, it was Presbyterian government, not jure divino, but “in a prudentiall way” which was steadily contemplated. Accordingly when the “Propositions concerning Church Government” came up to Parliament this was the rock on which it struck. Parliament was very willing to order the churches on the Presbyterian model, but not to erect independent judicatories, founded in a divine right, and exercising their functions uncontrolled by Parliament. “We passed proposition 3, about which there had been some dispute among the divines,” says Whitaker (“Diary,” p. 371), “with this alteration, leaving out the words, ‘that the Scriptures doth hold forth,’ and resolving it thus, that many several congregations may be under one Presbyterial Government.” Cf. “Commons’ Journal,” iv. pp. 20 and 28. And when the question of the administration of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper and the exclusion of the scandalous from it, came up, Parliament absolutely refused to commit to the church officers, in congregational or classical assemblies, the determination of what sins should be accounted scandals excluding from the Sacrament, and insisted upon itself making an enumeration of such scandals, and reserving in all other cases appeal to itself. It thus intruded into the very penetralium of the spiritualia and raised with the Assembly the precise question which Calvin had raised in Geneva in the matter of Berthelier. It was on this point that the sharpest conflict between Parliament and Assembly took place. ↩

10. In the Elizabethan Articles of 1563, while it is asserted that “the superiority of government of all estates, and in all causes, as well ecclesiastical as temporal, within this realm” appertains to the throne, yet “the administration of the word and sacraments” is expressly excluded from the sweep of this supremacy. Parliament in 1645 was unwilling to permit even the administration of the Sacraments to remain in the unreviewed power of the ecclesiastical authorities. On the other hand, of course, the Westminster Divines in their insistence on the autonomy of the Church, were claiming far more independence of action for the Church than the Acts of Supremacy no less of the Elizabethan settlement than of that of Henry VIII allowed. The Erastian temper of Parliament, which was inclined to push the traditional control of the Church by the civil powers to extremes, was met thus by an anti-Erastian principle in the Assembly to which the old settlement seemed unendurable. There was no wish on the part of the Westminster Divines, to be sure, to take from the magistrate what is his. “We do not rob the magistrate of that which is his,” says Gillespie (“Aaron’s Rod,” p. xvi.), “by giving unto Christ that which is Christ’s.” “I do not plead against ‘the power of the sword,’ when I plead for ‘the power of the keys.”’ But they were determined that the magistrate should not take from Christ that which is His. “Is it so small a thing,” asked Warriston in his speech of May 1st (see infra), “to have the sworde that they must have the keyes also?” This the Divines could not in conscience acquiesce in. On the Long Parliament’s assumption of the entire ecclesiastical jurisdiction, see Dr. Shaw, “A History of the English Church during … 1644-1660,” i. 1900, pp. 227 sqq. (“the unscrupulous and revolutionary seizure by the Parliament of every part of the domain of ecclesiastical jurisdiction which had hitherto in whole or part belonged peculiarly to the spiritual courts,” p. 236). Dr. Shaw, on the other hand, seems to consider the Parliament justified in refusing to commit to the ecclesiastical courts unreviewed powers in determining the scandals excluding from the Sacrament; which surely is a very remarkable position to take up in these later days - or at least it seems so to “the clerical mind.” ↩

11. Speech of Lord Warriston in the Assembly, May 1, 1646, in the breach of privilege matter, printed in Mitchell and Christie, “Records of the Commissions of the General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland,” i. 1892, pp. 92-98 (see p. 94). Cf. W. Morison, “Johnston of Warriston,” 1901, pp. 97 sqq. ↩

12. “I am confident,” said Warriston (see Mitchell and Christie, p. 97) to the Assembly, ”… yee will all look and hold out the maine, Christs kingdome distinct from the kingdomes of the earth.” This was said May 1, 1646. On the 6th of the previous March, the proposition “that Jesus Christ as King and Head of His Church hath appointed an ecclesiastical government in His Church in the hand of Church Officers distinct from the civil go-rernment” (“Minutes,” p. 193), had been brought in for discussion; and it was vigorously debated with Coleman as the leader of the dissent until his death, at the end of March, and then against Lightfoot through April. On July 7th it was passed with Lightfoot alone dissenting. Ultimately it was made the first paragraph of chapter xxx. of the “Confession of Faith,” in the wording: “The Lord Jesus, as king and head of his church, hath therein appointed a government in the hand of church officers, distinct from the civil magistrate.” This chapter was not accepted by Parliament. ↩

13. Cf. Baillie, ii. pp. 122 sq., 242. ↩

14. See the Preface to the document (Leishman, “The Westminster Directory,” pp. 9-14), and compare Marshall’s explanation in the MS. “Minutes,” ii. folio 2866, as quoted by Mitchell in his Baird Lectures, ed. 2, p. 240. ↩

15. Baillie, ii. pp. 117, 131. ↩

16. Baillie, ii. pp. 131, 140. ↩

17. Baillie, ii. p. 148. ↩

18. The directory for the thanksgiving after Sermon has been attributed to Dr. Edward Reynolds, from whom came also the General Thanksgiving which was added to “The Book of Common Prayer” after the Restoration (cf. E. Cardwell, “Synodalia,” 1842, p. 658; Procter and Frere, “A New History of the Book of Common Prayer,” 1901, p. 428; E. H. Eland, “The Layman’s Introduction to the Book of Common Prayer,” 1896, p. 135; L. Pullan, “The History of the Book of Common Prayer,” 1905, Index, p. 330). ↩

19. On the other hand, extemporary prayers had been prohibited on pain of deprivation in the Canons which had been imposed on the Scottish Church during the tyranny of Charles (1637). This question was a burning one. ↩

20. Leishman, “The Westminster Directory,” 1901, pp. 164, 168-169. The objection (Baillie, “Letters,” ii. pp. 122-123) of the English Puritans (and the Scotch innovators, too; for this was one of “the three nocent ceremonies” objected to by them) to the minister’s private prayer in the pulpit, seems to have been made insistent by an abuse of it by the prelatical party “to bow to the east and the altar” (Baillie, ii. p. 258). It appears, however, to rest ultimately on a maxim widely adopted by the Puritans, “that all private worship in the time and place of public worship is to be discharged.” The Puritans, therefore, consistently objected also to private prayers by the people on assembling for worship, and to private praying by the recipients of the Lord’s Supper before and after participation. Cf. Baillie’s letter to his colleagues in opposition to this sentiment, printed as Appendix E to Dr. Leishman’s edition of “The Westminster Directory,” pp. 188 sqq.; cf. also Dr. Leishman’s notes, pp. 86, 132. Dr. Leishman thinks that the clause in the Directory, “Let all enter the assembly, not irreverently, but in a grave and seemly manner, taking their seats or places without adoration, or bowing themselves towards one place or other” (p. 16), does not forbid the offering of private prayer before the service has begun, but only superstitious recognition of sacred places in the sanctuary (p. 86). But it is clear that private praying on the part of late comers is forbidden in the clause: “If any, through necessity, be hindered from being present at the beginning, they ought not, when they come into the Congregation, to betake themselves to their private devotions, but reverently to compose themselves to join with the assembly in that Ordinance of God which is then in hand” (p. 17). Perhaps we may say the exception proves the rule, and the prohibition of private devotions to late comers, that they may not be inattentive to the public worship, implies the approval of private devotions for early comers, before public worship has begun. But we must have in mind also the general sentiment against such private devotions in public places. In Gillespie’s notes of the debates in the sub-committee concerning the Directory (“Notes of Debates and Proceedings,” etc., p. 102, in “Works,” ii. 1846) we read: “Some debate was about the clause forbidding private adoration at coming into the church,” which seems to imply that the purpose was to forbid all such adoration. But then it is added: “Mr. Marshall, Mr. Palmer, and others said, This is very necessary for this church, for though the minister be praying, many ignorant people will not join in it, till they have said over the Lord’s prayer,” which seems to suggest that late comers were at least conjointly and perhaps chiefly in mind. ↩

21. Leishman, “The Westminster Directory,” 1901, p. 17. The “Teacher” or “Doctor” was a coordinate officer with the “Pastor,” which the Divines (again without the cordial assent of the Scots) found provided for in the Scriptures: “The Scripture doth hold out the name and title of teacher, as well as of the pastor; who is also a minister of the Word, as well as the pastor, and hath power of administration of the sacraments” (“Propositions for Church Government”). With respect to the difference about the “Reader,” Baillie writes (“Letters,” ii. pp. 122-123): “Here came the first question, about Readers: the Assemblie has past a vote before we came, that it is a part of the Pastor’s office to read the Scriptures; what help he may have herein by these who are not pastors, it is not yet agitat. Alwayes [nevertheless] these of best note about London are now in use, in the desk, to pray, and read in the Sunday morning four chapters, and expone some of them, and cause sing two Psalms, and then to goe to the pulpit to preach. We are not against the ministers reading and exponing when he does not preach; bot if all this work be laid on the minister before he preach, we fear it put preaching in a more narrow and discreditable roume than we would wish.” ↩

22. This fact is adverted to by the House of Commons in the short account they gave to the Scotch Commissioners in January, 1644, of what it had already accomplished, that the Assembly in Scotland might be informed: “The Book of Common Prayer, and Festival Days, commonly called Holidays, are, by ordinance of Parliament, taken away; and a Directory for Public Worship established by the same Ordinance” (“Commons’ Journal,” iv. pp. 11, 12). How strong the Scotch feeling on these matters was may be hoserved from Rutherford’s letter of September 23, 1637, to his parishioners at Anworth, in which he exhorts them to stand fast in the faith he had taught them (Bonar’s edition, Letter 68; ed. of 1692, Letter 148 of Part i.). Here he warns them that “no day (besides the sabbath, which is of his own appointment) should be kept holy and sanctified with preaching and the publick worship of God, for the memory of Christ’s birth, death, resurrection Arid ascension; seeing such days so observed are unlawful, wil-worship, and not warranted in Christ’s word.” With respect to the Lord’s Supper he warns them, “that ye should in any sort forbear the receiving the Lord’s Supper, but after the form that I delivered it to you, according to the example of Christ our Lord, that is, that ye should sit as banquetters, at one table with our King, and eat and drink, and divide the elements one to another.” ↩

23. E.g. the American Presbyterian Churches, for whose Directory and its rnlations to the Westminster Directory, see L. F. Benson, in The Presbyrvri¢n and Reformed Review, viii. 1897, pp. 415-443. ↩

24. In this it had a worthy forerunner in Cartwright’s “Directory,” a copy of which was found in his study in 1585 when he was arrested. It was reprinted in 1644 and a modern edition has been published by Principal Lorimer. ↩

25. On the Scottish Psalter see especially J. Laing in the Appendix to his edition of Baillie’s “Letters,” iii. 1842, pp. 525-556. ↩

26. Compare what they say in the Preface to their revision of the Articles (“Minutes,” pp. 541-542). ↩

27. Baillie’s “Letters,” i. p. 365, cf. p. 376; ii. pp. 1, 2, 24. ↩

28. Lightfoot, xiii. p. 305 - August 20, 1644; Baillie, ii. pp. 220, 221 - August 18, 1644; “Minutes,” p. 77, of April 9, 1645. ↩

29. “It being necessary that the Protestant Churches Abroad, as well as the People of this Kingdom at Home, may have Knowledge how that the Parliament did never intend to innovate Matters of Faith” (“Lords’ Journal,” viii. p. 558). ↩

30. An order sent to the Divines from the House of Commons July 22, 1646, urges the hastening of the Confession, and Catechism, “because of the great use there may be of them in the Kingdom, both for the suppressing of errors and heresies, and for informing the ignorance of the people.” The Divines themselves say in a petition presented to Parliament, in October, 1646: “The Confession being large, and as we conceive, requisit so to be, to setle the orthodox doctrine according to the Word of God and the Confession of the best Reformed Churches, so as to meet with common errouris” (” Records of the Commissions of the General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland,” 1646-1647, edited by A. F. Mitchell and James Christie, p. 82). Cf. the speech of George Gillespie in the General Assembly, August 6, 1647 (Baillie’s “Letters,” ed. Laing, iii. Appendix, p. 451): “The Confession of Faith is framed, so as it is of great use against the floods of heresies and errors that overflow that land; nay, their intention of framing of it was to meet with all the considerable Errors of the present tyme, the Socinian, Arminian, Popish, Antinomian, Anabaptistian, Independent errors, etc. The Confession of Faith sets them out, and refutes them, so far as belongs to a Confession.” ↩

31. Lightfoot, xiii. 1824, p. 305; “Minutes,” pp. lxxxvi. sq. ↩

32. Baillie, ii. p. 266. ↩

33. Cf. Williston Walker, “The Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism,” New York, 1893; Underhill, “Confessions of Faith … illustrative of the History of the Baptist Churches of England in the 17th Century,” London, 1854; The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, Philadelphia, xiii. 1902, pp. 380 sqq. (pp. 368 sqq. of this volume). ↩

34. Presbyterian and Reformed Review, October, 1901, xii. pp. 614-659; January, 1902, xiii. pp. 60-120; October, 1902, xiii. pp. 551-587. ↩

35. Cf. Presbyterian and Reformed Review, April, 1902, xiii. pp. 254-276 (pp. 361 sqq. of this volume). ↩

36. Cf. the statistics in the article “Puritaner, Presbyterianer,” in Herzog.³ Also J. N. Ogilvie, “The Presbyterian Churches,” 1897 and 1925; Henry Cowan, “The Influence of the Scottish Church in Christendom,” Baird Lecture for 1895, London, 1896. ↩

37. Cf. Mitchell, Baird Lectures on “The Westminster Assembly,” ed. 2, p. 419, and the passage quoted from Heppe, p. 81. ↩

38. An order from the Commons to hasten the Catechism had come in on July 22, 1646. ↩

39. Writing to the Commission of the General Assembly. See the published records of the Commission, i. p. 187. ↩

40. Do,: cf. “Minutes” for January 14, where the order for preparing the two Catechisms is noted and it is added that in the preparation of them, eye is to be had “to the Confession of Faith, and to the matter of the Catechism already begun” (p. 321). Cf. also Gillespie’s account in his speech in the General Assembly, August, 1647 (Baillie’s “Letters,” iii. Appendix, p. 452). ↩

41. It has been extracted and printed in consecutive form by W. Carruthers in his “The Shorter Catechism of the Westminster Assembly of Divines… with Historical Account and Bibliography,” London, 1897. ↩

42. Leo Judae: “Q. Dic, sodes, ad quem finem homo creatus est? R. Ut optimi maximi ac sapientissimi Dei Creatoris majestatem ac bonitatem agnoscamus, tandemque illo Æternum fruamur.” ↩

43. Accordingly the course of salvation alone is traced in questions 20-38 with no reference whatever to the career or end of those not elected to everlasting life. The theory is that the catechumen is interested, or ought to be, exclusively in what has been done for him and what he is to expect. This is the account to give of the fact which seems strange to some (see Mitchell, Baird Lectures, ed. 2, p. 450) that there is no reference here to the future retribution of the lost. This is only a portion of a larger fact. The Catechism proceeds on the presumption that the catechumen is a child of God and gives only what the child of God needs to know of the dealings of God with him and the duties he owes to God. ↩

44. How far this first draft may be represented by “The New Catechisme according to the forme of the Kirk of Scotland,” published by the Scots in 1644 (reprinted in Mitchell’s “Catechisms of the Second Reformation,” 1886) we have no means of determining: but there is reason to believe that if this document was prepared by the Scots as a draft for the consideration of the Assembly, it was much departed from in the Assembly’s work, which seems rather to have taken its start from Palmer’s Catechism. ↩

45. “Minutes,” October 15, 1647. Before he actually took his leave (November 9), the Shorter Catechism, which ran rapidly forward, was on the point of completion. See the “Minutes” for November 8, when the Commandments, Lord’s Prayer, and Creed were ordered to be added to the Catechism. ↩

46. It would seem that the Shorter Catechism was not seriously taken in hand until October 19, 1647, and that as late as September 29, 1647, it could still seem doubtful in Scotland whether the Divines would not content themselves with the Larger Catechism. On that date the Commission at Edinburgh, acting on the assumption that there might be no Shorter Catechism prepared by the Divines, appointed a committee of its own to draw up a primary Catechism for use in Scotland. (See “Records of the Commissions of the General Assemblies, etc.,” edited by Mitchell and Christie, i. 1892, p. 306.) The Assembly of Divines was already disintegrating and it was hard to get together a quorum. ↩

47. These queries had been laid aside “till the Confession and Catechise were ended” (Baillie, “Letters,” ii. pp. 379, 388), so that to return to them at this point was only to carry out a long-determined plan. ↩

48. What was done by Parliament, however, was not little, though it was done slowly and proved not lasting. This is how it is sketched by a not very friendly hand: “The years 1640-60 witnessed the most complete and drastic revolution which the Church of England has ever undergone. Its whole structure was ruthlessly demolished - Episcopacy, the Spiritual Courts, Deans and Chapters, Convocation, the Book of Common Prayer, the Thirty-nine Articles, and the Psalter; the lands of the Bishops and of the Deans and Chapters were sold, and the Cathedrals were purified or defiled. On the clean-swept ground an entirely novel Church system was erected. In place of Episcopal Church Government a Presbyterian organization was introduced, and a Presbyterian system of ordination. For the Spiritual Courts were substituted Presbyterian Assemblies (Parochial, Classical and Provincial), acting with a very real censorial jurisdiction, but in final subordination to a parliamentary committee sitting at Westminster. Instead of the Thirty-nine Articles the Confession of Faith was introduced, and the Directory in place of the Book of Common Prayer. New Catechisms and a new metrical version were prepared, a parochial survey of the whole country was carried out, and extensive reorganization of parishes effected. Finally, the equivalent of a modern ecclesiastical commission (or let us say of Queen Anne’s Bounty Scheme) was invented, a body of trustees was endowed with considerable revenues for the purpose of augmenting poor livings, and for years the work of this ecclesiastical charity and reorganization scheme was earnestly pursued. There is hardly a parallel in history to such a constitutional revolution as this… .” (W. A. Shaw, “A History of the English Church during … 1640-1660,” i. 1900, pp. vii.-viii.). ↩