New England. In that minister's parting harangue, there was a liberality and greatness of sentiment seldom accorded by popular report to these early Puritans, and which all parties of Christians in the present day would do well to study. "The Lord has more truth yet to break forth," he said, "out of his Holy Word. I cannot sufficiently bewail the condition of the Reformed churches, which are come to a period in religion, and will go, at present, no further than the instruments of their reformation. Luther and Calvin were great and shining lights in their times, yet they penetrated not into the whole counsel of God. The Lutherans cannot be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw; and the Calvinists, you see, stick fast where they were left by that great man of God. I beseech you remember risk of death or imprisonment, a congregation of Brownists, with their pastor, John Robinson, had effected their escape from England to Leyden. But they soon found that Holland was not their congenial home. The climate was unsuited to them, the mechanical occupations which they had to follow were unwelcome to men who had been accustomed to agriculture, and with the language and manners of the Dutch they could not become familiar. Though their country had cast them out, still they were and would be Englishmen; and they resolved to make, if they could not find, an England of their own-a country where they could follow their own modes of life, and above all, where they could worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience. Even their children and posterity were to be English, speaking the language of their fathers, and living un-it-'tis an article of your church covenant—that der the dominion of the mother country; and from this patriotic feeling they rejected the kind offers of their Dutch landlords, who would have defrayed the expenses of the enterprise, and accompanied them to their distant place of settle ment. Virginia was the place of their selection, because it was within the pale of English rule, but still sufficiently remote for the purposes of safety; and having obtained the permission of the Virginia Company in London, they made preparations for their departure by converting their scanty property into a common stock, and hiring two small vessels, the Speedwell of sixty, and the Mayflower of 180 tons. "We are well weaned," they said, "from the delicate milk of our mother country, and inured to the difficulties of a strange land. The people are industrious and frugal. We are knit together as a body in a most sacred covenant of the Lord, of the violation whereof we make great conscience, and by virtue whereof we hold ourselves straitly tied to all care of each other's good, and of the whole. It is not with us as with men whom small things can discour-political constitution under which they were to age." Such were those Pilgrim Fathers of the New World, who, with such defective means, but heavenly and heroic purpose, embarked upon an enterprise as bold as that of Cortez and Pizarro -and with what a nobler termination! Every step of this adventure, which forms so important an epoch in English history, is worthy of attention, although we must dismiss the subject with a brief and passing notice. After they had resided above ten years in Leyden, the first embarkation commenced in 1620. Of Robinson's congregation, which numbered about 300 persons, only a minority could, in the first instance, set sail, owing to the smallness of the vessels; but these were to act as the pioneers of the enter prise, and were to be followed by Robinson and the rest as soon as a settlement had been effected in Virginia, that had now obtained the name of you shall be ready to receive whatever truth shall be made known to you from the written Word of God." The vessels sailed, in the first instance, from Holland to England; but, after a short stay there, the Speedwell being declared unserviceable, the Mayflower alone held onward in its course, freighted with 101 passengers, consisting of men, women, and children; and, after a voyage of sixtythree days, they landed at that part of the American coast, on which they founded the towns of Plymouth and Boston. Such was the foundation of the United States of America! A huge mass of dark gray granite was the ground on which they first set foot as they landed; and before the town-hall of Plymouth it is now planted, as a great national monument of the Pilgrim Fathers, the founders of the American Republic. Sick and exhausted with the fatigues of the voyage, they fell upon their knees as soon as they had reached the shore, and blessed the God of heaven who had brought them in safety through perils and tempests, after which they proceeded to draw up the live together as a community. It was as brief and simple as the germ of a great national compact could well be, for it was in the following words: "In the name of God, amen: we whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign, King James, having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honour of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do, by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better order and preservation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof, to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most convenient for the general good of the colony. Unto which we promise all due submission and obedience."1 The rest of the reign of James was spent in a constant but unsuccessful warfare against the Puritanism of England and the Presbyterianism of Scotland, and hopeless attempts to reduce both kingdoms, as well as all parties, to complete uniformity in their belief and modes of worship; but these attempts only multiplied the divisions of English sectarianism, and threw back the Scots into a more intense adherence upon their own national church. One of his most important movements in this direction was in 1618, when he published his "Declaration to Encourage Recreations and Sports on the Lord's-day," a work better known by the title of the Book of Sports. He saw that Puritanism, by exalting the Sabbath, had made the festivals of the church of little account, and that the weekly fasts, the season of Lent, and the Embering days were generally neglected. He therefore announced it to be his pleasure that the people, "after the end of Divine service, should not be disturbed, letted, or discouraged from any lawful recreations, such as dancing, either of men or women, archery for men, leaping, vaulting, or any such harmless recreations, nor having of may-poles, whitsun-ales, or morricedances, or setting up of may-poles, or other sports therewith used, so as the same may be done in due and convenient time, without impediment or let of Divine service; and that women should have leave to carry rushes to the church for the decoring of it, according to their old customs." As the Puritans were also distinguished by their love of preaching, while the pulpit was their chief engine of conversion, James, in 1622, issued certain injunctions to the clergy, by which the voice of Puritanism was to be abated, or absolutely silenced. By these it was ordained that no preacher under the rank of a bishop or a dean should fall in his sermons into any common-place of divinity not to be found in the Thirty-nine Articles, or the Homilies; and that no mere parish minister should presume to discourse to any popular auditory on the deep points of predestination, election, reprobation, the universality, efficacy, resistibility, or irresistibility of God's grace the themes to which the Calvinism of the Puritans was most frequently directed. All preachers, also, of whatever degree, were prohibited from presuming, in any auditory, to declare, limit, or set bounds to the prerogative, power, or jurisdiction of sovereign princes, or to meddle at all with affairs of state. The punishment decreed for all such offenders was suspension for a year and a day, till his majesty should prescribe some further penalty with advice of the convocation. Bancroft's History of the United States; Marsden's History of the Early Puritans. While James was thus pursuing his favourite mode of warfare, his own religious belief was undergoing certain modifications which could not fail to be influential upon the church at large. He had been nursed in the Calvinistic creed; and he was so devoted to its doctrines, that he was ready to persecute all who contradicted or opposed them. Of this he gave a signal proof in 1611, when he wrote to the states of Holland, demanding the deposition of Vorstius from the professorship of theology at Leyden, because he was an Arminian. But while the abstract doctrines of the Genevese Reformer were so much to his taste, their practical operation, as manifested both in the Presbyterianism of Scotland, and the Puritanism of England, was more odious to him than Popery itself. The sternness of Calvinism, the strict morality it enjoined, and above all, its hostility to splendour and formalism in the church and absolutism in the state, were revolting to the despotic tendencies of James, whom they had thwarted in Scotland, and now continued to oppose in England. On the other hand, the prelates and heads of the English church to whom the Puritan antagonism had endeared the opposite doctrines of Arminius, were distinguished by their devotedness to the Divine right of kings, and the principles of non-resistance and passive obedience. It was not strange, therefore, if the mind of James, influenced by the same causes, and attracted towards such supporters, should abate his hatred to Arminianism, and finally learn to embrace it. This he did; and his Book of Sports, and prohibitions of Calvinistic preaching, were striking indications of the change. But a spirit was abroad which neither king nor prelate could conjure down; a tide was gathering and advancing against which Episcopal bench and kingly throne were weak embankments; and the opposition of Charles I., which was unable to check, served only to hasten the catastrophe. If the hopes of the Puritans had been excited by the accession of James to the English throne, no such expectations could be entertained of his successor. On the contrary, having a Papist for his queen, and Laud for his counsellor in church affairs, they regarded the new sovereign with fear and suspicion, which his proceedings soon tended to justify. The character of the Arminian bishops and clergy by whom Charles was surrounded, and in whom the English church was now impersonated, was a sure indication of the religious measures by which his reign was to be signalized. "They admitted the Church of Rome," a modern ecclesiastical historian thus describes them, "to be a true church, and the pope the first bishop of Christendom. They declared for the lawfulness of images in churches; for the real presence; and 2 Vol. ii. p. 322. that the doctrine of transubstantiation was a school nicety. They pleaded for confession to a priest, for sacerdotal absolution, and the proper merit of good works. They claimed an uninterrupted succession of the Episcopal character from the apostles through the Church of Rome, which obliged them to maintain the validity of her ordinations, when they denied the validity of those of the foreign Protestants. Further, they began to imitate the Church of Rome in her gaudy ceremonies, in the rich furniture of their chapels, and the pomp of their worship. They complimented the Roman Catholic priests with their dignitary titles, and spent all their zeal in studying how to compromise matters with Rome, while they turned their backs upon the old Protestant doctrines of the Reformation, and were remarkably negligent in preaching, or instructing the people in Christian knowledge." The Puritans, upon whom this semi-Popery was attempted to be imposed, were now strong enough to resist the violation, and it needed no prophetic inspiration, or even extraordinary sagacity, to foresee that a civil war would be inevitable. Charles had not been many weeks upon the throne when he commenced those religious aggressions which were to end in his ruin. The commencement, also, was made with Scotland, whose long-suffering his father had already so severely tried. James in England had never lost sight of his favourite plan of establishing Episcopacy in his native country, and though he had not brought its church entirely to the English model, he had established bishops, through whom the clergy and the church courts were controlled, and the General Assembly itself reduced to little more than an empty form. But this was not enough in the eyes of Charles, and he sent down injunctions to Scotland, by which conformity to the obnoxious articles of Perth was to be enforced with double severity, and the General Assemblies to be no longer permitted to meet. Having thus done what was certain to alienate the affections of the people, his next blunder was to incense the proud nobility of Scotland, by lowering their rank and menacing their property. The first of these measures was to be effected by raising Spotswood, the Archbishop of St. Andrews, to the chancellorship, which would have given him precedence of all the nobles; the second, by resuming those church lands which the nobles had seized at the Reformation, but which were now to be recalled and converted into a fund for the maintenance of the bishops, and the establishment of a more costly form of worship. And that form of worship was to be the same as that of England, instead of the simple Presbyterian form which his father had been obliged to leave untouched. 1 Neal's History of the Puritans, vol. i. p. 490. A Liturgy was therefore prepared for the country, and one more Arminian and Popish than that of England; for Laud, its chief author, who hoped to establish these innovations over the whole united kingdoms, had foolishly imagined that the experiment could be more safely and effectually commenced in Scotland, which he regarded as a mere tributary province. The introduction of this unfortunate service-book into Edinburgh, and the fate it encountered, have been narrated in another chapter. Then came the establishment of the Four Tables, the drawing up and subscription of the Covenant, and the meeting of the famous General Assembly at Glasgow in 1638 -movements by which Episcopacy was swept to the winds, Presbyterianism re-established in all its entireness, and full preparation made to vindicate the national choice by the appeal of battle which was certain to follow. While Laud and his brethren, under the patronage of Charles, had thus been alienating Scotland, and ripening their theological controversy into campaigns and fields of blood, their proceedings in England had been still more unadvised and violent. We need not again advert to the star-chambering of the period-to the fines and mutilations which were inflicted upon the unfortunate Puritans, and the heroic spirit in which they were endured until endurance was no longer wise or safe. The Scottish resistance roused the spirit of England, and the assembling of the Long Parliament in 1640 made the voice of Puritanism be heard. It was Puritanism also no longer checked by its reverence for royalty, but embit tered alike against king and bishop, and demanding such restrictions upon both as had never been previously contemplated. As yet, both Presbyterians and Puritans formed but a minority in the house, while the reform of Episcopacy from Arminianism, rather than its utter extinction, was the first object contemplated. But they warmed and kindled as they proceeded in their work, until the reformation became a revolution. At last, when the bill was passed into a law on the 14th of February, 1642, by which bishops were incapacitated from voting in parliament, Episcopacy was no longer the paramount form of the English church, and afterwards the clergy were free to use the Liturgy in their pulpits, or reject it as they pleased. The cathedral service was also banished and the buildings defaced, the altars and stone tables removed, and the crucifixes, painting, and statuary demolished. When the externals of worship were thus proscribed, and religion itself reduced to principles, the Calvinistic theology, which had now obtained full predominance, was so nearly allied to that of Scotland, that the adoption of Presbyterianism was 2 Vol. ii. p. 444. an easy step, more especially when it formed the | ism of King James-a spiritual republic stripprice of Scottish co operation and assistance. ped of its independence, and subject to state control. But independently of this symptom of its insufficiency and feebleness to brave the storms that were gathering around it, there was another circumstance from which its speedy decay and downfall might have been easily predicted. It was not the spontaneous growth of the English soil, nor even the object of its affectionate adoption. The Scottish nation, in consequence of its primitive Culdee teachers, had possessed a Presbyterianism of its own from the earliest introduction of Christianity. In this its childhood and youth had been nursed, and from this it had mainly derived that heroic independence of spirit which formed for ages such a striking feature of the national character; and when the Reformation arrived, it was not otherwise to be expected, than that Scotland should at once embody it in the congenial Presbyterian form. Thus the subscription of the Covenant in the church of Greyfriars', Edinburgh, was a very different deed from the subscription of the same Covenant in St. Margaret's, Westminster. In the former, it was the rising of a whole people for the recovery of that which they valued more than life-a new Bannockburn for something nobler than mere political liberty; while in the latter case, it was a confession of weakness, and badge of national humiliation and submission. In these considerations alone we see cause enough for the weakness of English Presbyterianism, and the facility with which it was overthrown. And now the Westminster Assembly was an inevitable sequence. As it was the parliament that needed the aid and co-operation of the Scots against the king, it was by the authority of the two Houses of Parliament alone that this important assembly was convened. It consisted of 121 divines, to whom twenty-one more were soon afterwards added-four ministers and three lay assessors from Scotland-ten English peers, and twenty members of the House of Commons. The condition of Episcopacy in its present state was mournfully indicated by the presence of about twenty clergymen of the Established church, a small minority, and utterly unfit to stem the tide that was advancing so resistlessly against their cause. But they were speedily saved from such a hopeless struggle; for in consequence of the king's proclamation forbidding the assembly, and declaring its acts illegal, these churchmen retired. The place of meeting was Westminster Abbey, and the sittings commenced on the 1st of July, 1643. The majority of the divines belonging to the Westminster Assembly, although they had received Episcopal ordination, were Presbyterians; and when it was called together for the purpose of settling such a govern ment for the church "as might be most agreeable to God's Holy Word," an intimation was added, "that it should be brought into a nearer agreement with the Church of Scotland and other Reformed churches abroad." Then followed the subscription of England to the Solemn League The state of parties into which the Westminand Covenant, through its national representa- ster Assembly was divided is explanatory, not tives, in the church of St. Margaret, Westminster, only of the reluctant assent which was given to on the 15th of September, 1643. But still, the the present decision, but also of the discordPresbyterianism thus established was not the ance of its future sittings. These parties were Presbyterianism of Scotland. The distinguish- originally four in number, but after the secession ing feature of the latter was its independence of of the Episcopalians they were reduced to three, the civil power, and its sacred right of self-gov- viz., Presbyterians, Independents, and Erastians. erument as managed by sessions, presbyteries, Of these the Presbyterians were by far the most synods, and general assemblies. As Andrew numerous, and might be considered as the repreMelvil had distinctly announced to King James, sentatives of English Puritanism through all its Christ alone was head of the church, and in it preceding stages. In the words of Fuller, "they his majesty was neither a king, nor a head, nor either favoured the Presbyterian discipline, or in a lord, but a member. On this account, every process of time were brought over to embrace it." question of the church was settled, and every law | The nature of that discipline has been sufficiently for its government enacted, by the church courts explained already in our various notices of the alone, while the General Assembly was the high- Scottish church. Among their leaders in the est and last court of appeal. In England, a simi- assembly were those learned and eloquent dilar frame-work was to be set up, consisting of four vines, Calamy, Gataker, Hildersham, Sperstowe, church courts, termed the parochial, classical, Corbet, and Vines; while, in the House of Comprovincial, and national. But what was to be mons, their political influence was strong in the last tribunal of appeal? Here the parliament Waller, Denzil Hollis, Clotworthy, and other stepped in, and claimed for itself the full right leading members of the day. The Independents, to decide and terminate, let the church courts de- who were but a small party compared with their liberate and decree as they might. Thus, it was rivals, whom they were so soon to overthrow, nothing better than the shackled Presbyterian- | were supposed, at the time, to be nearly assimi of the king. But the great work of the Westminster Assembly-and one for which all its errors and shortcomings, were they even as great and many as its enemies allege, might be forgivenwas the drawing up of the Confession of Faith, that clearest and ablest compend of Christian doctrine which has ever yet been presented, and which still continues to be the revered standard of the Kirk of Scotland. After the Confession of Faith was finished, the Larger and Shorter Catechisms were constructed on its model, for private and family religious instruction; and although the Larger, which was intended for adults, has been gradually lost sight of amidst the more attractive voluminous treatises of modern theology, the Shorter Catechism is still the text-book, not only of the religious education of the young in Scotland, but among many of the Dissenting communities of England. But notwithstanding its intrinsic worth, the Confession of Faith, which was completed in 1646, did not secure, even for lated in their form of church government to the Presbyterians; but it is too well known how such a resemblance, among different sects of religionists, instead of producing concord and brotherly affection, more commonly leads to jealousy, hatred, and strife. Abandoning the name of Brownists, they had now adopted the name of Independents, thus changing it from that of their founder to the principle by which their church was regulated. This was, that every separate congregation has the entire right of government within itself, under the management of its own elders. They admitted, indeed, a connection with the other congregations of their community in judging of the offence committed by any individual church; but all that their collective ecclesiastical power could effect, in the way of punishing the offending congregation, was to exclude it from their communion, and allow it, thus isolated, to follow its own devices. The third party, that of the Erastians-who derived their title from their founder, Dr. Erastus, a physician of Germany-its doctrinal parts, the concurrence of the whole held, in opposition both to Presbyterians and Independents, that no form of ecclesiastical government is laid down in the Divine Word-that the minister is simply a lecturer or teacher of religion, and nothing more-and that all offences, ecclesiastical as well as civil, are punishable by the magistrate alone. Thus, in their eyes, the church was but the creature of the state, and the minister, even in his spiritual capacity, the subject of the civil ruler. Their sentiments in the Westminster Assembly, where they were chiefly represented by these learned Oriental scholars, Coleman and Lightfoot, and the lay assessors, Selden, Whitelock, and St. John, although equally disapproved by the two other parties, were in high favour with the statesmen and the House of Commons, whose authority they enforced and aggrandized.' The assembly continued its sittings, with occasional interruptions, till 1649, a space of six years, after which it was changed into a committee that met weekly, for the trial and examination of ministers; but we can only give a brief enumeration of the chief of its manifold proceedings. It adopted the English metrical version of the Psalms by Mr. Rous, as the authorized version for the Churches of England and Scotland; and though this translation was soon disused in the former country, it has continued in the latter to our own day. It drew up the Directory for Public Worship, to serve instead of the Book of Common Prayer, which was suppressed. This Directory, while it was sanctioned by the parliament, and the use of it in the churches enforced by heavy fines, was prohibited by a proclamation Neal's History of the Puritans; Baxter, Life; Hetherington's Hist. West. Assem. assembly; and in the state of parties we can easily perceive that such an unanimity of religious opinion was impossible. But their discord was at the height upon the important question of the form of discipline and government for the English church. The Presbyterians and Independents were agreed that the form of a church was laid down in the New Testament, but this the Erastian party stoutly denied. Again, while the Erastians agreed with the Presbyterians that the form of church government proposed by the latter was the fittest to be established by the civil power, they denied its claim to Divine origin and authority, in which denial they were, of course, joined by the Independents. Presbyterianism was thus adopted only by a majority in the assembly; but while its claim to Divine right was supported by the common council and the city ministers of London, it was refused by the parliament, which also retained to itself the right to judge and punish in ecclesiastical offences. Another trying subject was the question of toleration. Several years earlier not less than eighty congregations, of different sectaries, had been enumerated by Bishop Hall in the House of Lords, and since that period they had been on the increase throughout the kingdom. And what course were they to adopt with these formidable recusants? By the subscription of the Covenant, they were bound to labour for the extirpation of Popery, prelacy, superstition, heresy, schisms, and profaneness; and they had promised to discover all malignants and incendiaries who should hinder the reformation of religion, divide the king from his subjects, or excite any factions among the people, contrary to the League and Covenant, and bring them to public trial and |