house, and backside of the table, till it come about to our seats, are four or five stages of forms, whereupon their divines sit as they please; albeit commonly they keep the same place. From the chimney to the door, there are no seats, but a void for passage. The Lords of Parliament use to sit on chairs, in that void, about the fire.

串

"We meet every day of the week except Saturday. We sit commonly from nine to two or three in the afternoon. The Prolocutor, at the beginning and end, has a short prayer. The man, as the world knows, is very learned in the questions he has studied, and very good and beloved of all, and highly esteemed, but merely bookish, and not much, as it seems, acquainted with conceived prayer; among the unfittest of all the company for any action; so after the prayer he sits mute. It was the canny (prudent) conveyance of those who guide most matters for their own interest, to plant such a man of purpose in the chair. The one assessor, our good friend Dr. BURGESS, a very active and sharp man, supplies, as far as is decent, the prolocutor's place; the other, our good friend Mr. WHITE, has kept in (been confined by) the gout since our coming.

66

Ordinarily there will be present about three score of their divines. These are divided in three committees; in one whereof every man is a member. No man is excluded who pleases to come to any of the three. Every committee as the parliament gives orders in writ (writing) to take any purpose to consideration, takes a portion, and in their afternoon-meeting prepares matters for the Assembly, sets down their minds in distinct propositions, and backs their propositions with texts of Scripture. After the prayer, Mr. BY EFIELD the scribe reads the proposition and scripture, whereupon the Assembly debates in a most grave and orderly way. No man is called up to speak but who stands up of his own accord. He speaks so long as he will, without interruption. If two or three stand up at once, then the divines confusedly

* Dr. TWISSE was Prolocutor or chairman. FULLER says that the schools, not the pulpit, was his proper element. In another place, he calls him "good with trowell, but better with the sword, more happy in polemical divinity than edifying doctrine." WOOD bestows a high character on him; and all agree that he was one of the ablest controversial divines of his time. Age and infirmity prevented his remaining long in the office of Prolocutor.

On whom

No man

call on his name whom they desire to hear first. the loudest and maniest voices call, he speaks. speaks to any but to the Prolocutor. They harangue long and very learnedly. They study the question well beforehand, and prepare their speeches: but withal the men are exceeding prompt, and well spoken. I do marvel at the very accurate and extemporal replies that many of them usually make. When, upon every proposition by itself, and on every text of scripture that is brought to confirm it, every man who will has said his whole mind, and the replies, duplies and triplies, are heard; then the most part calls to the question. BYEFIELD the scribe rises from the table, and comes to the Prolocutor's chair, who, from the scribe's book, reads a proposition, and says, "As many as are in opinion that the question is well stated in the proposition, let them say I' when I is heard, 'As many as think otherwise, say No.' If the difference of I's and No's be clear, as usually it is, then the question is ordered (put in order, or written down) by the scribes, and they go on to debate the first scripture alleged for proof of the proposition. If the sound of I and No be nearly equal, then says the Prolocutor, 'As many as say I, stand up :' while they stand, the scribe and others number them in their minds; when they are set down, the No's are bidden stand, and they likewise are numbered. This way is clear enough, and saves a great deal of time which we spend in reading our catalogue. When a question is once ordered, there is no more of that matter, but if a man will deviate, he is quickly taken up by Mr. Assessor, or many others, confusedly crying, 'Speak to order.' No man contradicts another expressly by name, but most discreetly (civilly) speaks to the Prolocutor, and at most holds on the general, 'The reverend brother who lately or last spoke on this head, on that side, above or below.'

*

"I thought meet, once for all, to give you a taste of the outward form of their Assembly. They follow the way of their parliament. Much of their way is good, and worthy of their imitation; only their longsomeness is woeful at this time, when their church and kingdom lies under a most lamentable anarchy and confusion. They see the hurt of their

* Alluding to the mode of collecting votes in the General Assembly of Scotland.

length, but cannot get it helped; for being to establish a new platform of worship and discipline to their nation for all time to come, they think they cannot be answerable, if solidly, and at leisure, they do not examine every point thereof."

Of this longsomeness, BAILLIE was not the only person who complained. It appears, from some manuscript minutes of the Assembly's proceedings, written by another of the Scotch commissioners, Mr. GEORGE GILLESPIE, preserved among the Wodrow MSS. and quoted by Lord HAILES,* that this longsomeness and other similar sins were complained of by the Assembly itself. They even drew up a catalogue of them, with a view to a solemn fast, to be held on Sept. 13, 1644. This catalogue professed to contain "The sins of the Assembly in nine points: 1. Neglecting attendance in the Assembly, though the affairs be so important; late coming. 2. Absence from prayers. 3. Reading and talking in time of debates. 4. Neglect of committees. 5. Some speak too much, others too little. 6. Indecent behaviour. 7. Unseemly language and heats upon it. 8. Neglect of trying ministers. 9. Members of Assembly drawing on parties, or being frightened with needless jealousies." It will, perhaps, be thought by those who know much of modern assemblies, that a considerable part of these evils might have been remedied by the authority of the chair, and the rest by a small fine, without the solemnity of a fast, and exposure to the world of their puerile or indecent behaviour. *

Lord Hailes's Annals of Scotland, vol. iii. p. 113. Edition 8vo. 1819.

Since writing the above, I have found the following curious memorandum, copied by Lord HAILES from Gillespie's MSS. "Mr. Henderson wished that the causes of the Assembly's humiliation might be rather taken from the former corruptions of the church, and their now guiltiness therein, than to lay open their secret disorders now; the one was known and public, but secret faults are to be secretly confessed." Lord HAILES adds, that the most subtle politician of the Hierarchy could not have spoken with more judgment." Lightfoot gives the same account, with some slight variations. HENDERSON was the ablest of the Scotch commissioners, and according to BAILLIE, the author of the Solemn League and Covenant.

After all, it does not appear that any fast was actually held on this subject. In the list of Fasts and Fast Sermons now before me, no mention is made of a fast on the 13th of September, 1644; but there was a fast on the 12th, "set apart upon occasion of that which befell the army in the West." The sermons were preached by MATTHEW NEWCOMEN and THOMAS COLEMAN.

The learned author just mentioned, and others since have lamented that no report of the debates of the Assembly has ever been given to the world. BAILLIE and LIGHTFOOT are the only members whose reports have appeared, the latter very recently, but neither are at any great length, nor, indeed, if I may presume to differ from so curious an inquirer into ecclesiastical history as Lord HAILES, would a full account of their debates be now thought very interesting or useful. The world is pretty well agreed as to the fundamental points on which presbytery rests; and while the Church of England rejects it in toto, full liberty is now allowed to such communities or sects as choose to adopt it in its original, or in any modified form.

BAILLIE has not once mentioned Mr. REYNOLDS, who, it may here be noticed, did not appear in the Assembly until July 14, and delayed taking the covenant until March 1644. On Oct. 28, 1643, his name was given in to the Assembly, as one who had not taken the covenant; but he is said, at this time, to have "been in the country." LIGHTFOOT mentions him four or five times, as a speaker in the Assembly, but these notices are so slight, that it is not easy to collect his opinions. On one occasion only, LIGHTFOOT gives his sentiments at some length, on the subject of not administering the sacrament of the Lord's supper to a certain description of sinners; but there is nothing peculiar or characteristic in what he advances, nor does it appear whether he had the voices of the Assembly in his favour. His sentiments on this ordinance may be gathered more successfully from his "Sacramental Meditations." The principal speakers were, as Baillie says, but few, and REYNOLDS certainly was not one of the few. In what manner he voted, we cannot now learn. The Independents formed a vigorous opposition, but the controlling power of the Scotch commissioners always created an apparent majority. Whatever may have been the force or eagerness of their debates, there is much evidence to prove that while they denied liberty of conscience to the nation at large, they were not themselves free.

Their first object was to agree to certain rules for their meeting; but how ill all rules were observed may appear from the catalogue of sins above mentioned. There seems to

have been, as already observed, no compulsion as to attendance. Their names were to be called over, and those absent marked, but there their power appears to have ended. Many who were nominated or appointed as members never attended, as Drs. Brownrig, Hacket, Hammond, Prideaux, Saunderson, Ward, and Archbishop Usher; and others attended only partially. Neal mentions one hundred and one who gave constant attendance; but this is contrary to the evidence we have already produced. Those who took an active part were few, but they were the leading speakers, and their names occur on most occasions. According to Baillie, four parts out of five did not speak at all; yet he thinks that many of these were much abler men than those that did speak. Whence he, a stranger, derived this knowledge of their individual characters, it would now be useless to inquire.

Although they were called together to establish a free, instead of that tyrannical church of which they and many of their ancestors had grievously complained, their fundamental principles were adverse to every thing that is called freedom. They consented, at first, to a restraint on the press, which has never since been so rigorously imposed. The ordinance by which they were called to form the Assembly, obliged them "not to divulge, by printing, or writing, or otherwise, their opinions or advices touching the matters proposed to them by parliament, without the consent of both or either Houses." That this law was enforced in the strictest manner, soon appeared in the case of the learned Dr. Featly, who was expelled for imparting some of their proceedings to archbishop Usher, and of the latter (who had never sat among them) for receiving, and probably answering such correspondence. This injunction, while it accounts for the silence of Rushworth and other contemporary historians, and for

Lord Clarendon says that Featly had often pleaded, in the Assembly, in favour of the order of bishops and their functions, and against the alienation of church lands, &c. But he must have been a very weak man, if, according to the noble historian, he requested, in his correspondence with Archbishop Usher, that his grace would recommend him to the king for some bishoprick or deanery, as his recompense. It is not credible that one so well acquainted with the state of parties and of the church at this time, could have formed the hopeless expectation of a bishoprick or deanery.