The history of Montreal dates back to October, 1535, when Jacques Cartier first landed on the island. An Indian village, called Hochelaga, existed here at this time. Its outline was circular; and it was encompassed by three rows of palisades, or rather picket fences, one within the other, well secured and put together. A single entrance was left in this rude fortification, but guarded with pikes and stakes, and every precaution taken against siege or attack. Cartier named the place Mount Royal, from the elevation that rose in rear of the site, a little way back from the river St. Lawrence. It first began to be settled by Europeans in 1542, and exactly one century afterward the spot destined for the city was, with due solemnities, consecrated at the era of Maissoneuve and named Ville Marie, a designation which it retained for a long period. In 1760 it was taken by the English. Since then it has taken great leaps in the way of progress until to-day it is the chief commercial city in Canada and the largest city in the Dominion. Montreal has the further advantage, in its natural situation, of being at the head of ocean navigation. Its population to-day, including suburbs, is in the neighborhood of 350,000.
The history of Montreal dates back to October, 1535, when Jacques Cartier first landed on the island. An Indian village, called Hochelaga, existed here at this time. Its outline was circular; and it was encompassed by three rows of palisades, or rather picket fences, one within the other, well secured and put together. A single entrance was left in this rude fortification, but guarded with pikes and stakes, and every precaution taken against siege or attack. Cartier named the place Mount Royal, from the elevation that rose in rear of the site, a little way back from the river St. Lawrence. It first began to be settled by Europeans in 1542, and exactly one century afterward the spot destined for the city was, with due solemnities, consecrated at the era of Maissoneuve and named Ville Marie, a designation which it retained for a long period. In 1760 it was taken by the English. Since then it has taken great leaps in the way of progress until to-day it is the chief commercial city in Canada and the largest city in the Dominion. Montreal has the further advantage, in its natural situation, of being at the head of ocean navigation. Its population to-day, including suburbs, is in the neighborhood of 350,000.
On the death of Champlain (on December 25, 1635), M. de Montmagny was appointed governor of New France; but so little attention was paid to the wants of the colony that its prosperity was much retarded, the fur trade alone being conducted with any spirit. But great vigor was manifested in religious matters and several institutions were erected. In 1630 the Hôtel Dieu, at Quebec, was founded by three nuns sent out by the Duchesse d'Aiguillon, and Madame de la Peltrie brought out from France at her own charge another body of nuns, who established the Ursuline convent. The peopling and fortifying of the island of Montreal, with the view of repressing the incursions of the Iroquois and the conversion of the Indians, had occupied the entire attention of the first missionaries, and in 1640 the whole of this domain was ceded to a company for that purpose.
Jerome le Royer de la Dauversière, a collector of taxes at La Flêche, in Anjou, and a young priest of Paris, Jean Jacques Olier by name, having met each other, formed the idea of establishing at Montreal three religious communities: one of priests to convert the Indians, one of nuns to nurse the sick, and one of nuns to teach the children of the Indians and of the colonists. It was an easy matter to talk over these plans; but, in order to carry them out, they must first raise some money. For this purpose Olier laid the matter before some of his wealthy penitents, while Dauversière succeeded in securing the Baron de Fanchamp, a devout Christian and a wealthy man, who, considering the enterprise as one calculated to further his spiritual interests, was eager to take part in it. Shortly afterward three others were secured, and the six together formed the germ of the "Société de Notre Dame de Montréal." Among them they raised seventy-five thousand livres.
Previous to this the island of Montreal had been granted to M. de Lauson, a former president of the Company of One Hundred Associates, and his son possessed the exclusive monopoly of the fisheries on the St. Lawrence. After much persuasion Dauversière and Fanchamp succeeded in securing from him a transfer of his title to them; and to make the matter more secure they obtained, in addition, a grant of the island from its former owners, the Hundred Associates. That company, however, reserved the western extremity of the island for themselves, as a site for a fort and stores. The younger Lauzon also gave Dauversière and his company the right of fishery within two leagues of the shores of the island, which favor they were to acknowledge by a yearly donation of ten pounds of fish. These grants were afterward confirmed by the King, and thus Dauversière and his companions became "Lords of the Isle of Montreal."
They now proceeded to mature their plan, which was to send out forty men to take possession of Montreal, intrench themselves, and raise crops, after which they would build houses for the priests and convents for the nuns. It was necessary, however, that some competent person should be secured who should take command of the expedition and act as governor of the newly acquired isle. To fill this important position it was desirable that to the qualities of the statesman should be added the courageof the soldier. One in whom these were combined was found in the person of Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve, a devout Christian, an able statesman, and a valiant soldier. Maisonneuve at once accepted the position, while many wealthy ladies contributed toward defraying the expense of the undertaking and also became members of the "Association of Montreal." In February, 1641, the Associates, with Olier at their head, assembled in the Church of Notre Dame at Paris, and before the altar of the Virgin "solemnly consecrated Montreal to the Holy Family" and to be called "Ville-Marie de Montréal."
Maisonneuve with his party, forty-five in number, reached Quebec too late to ascend the river. On their arrival at that place they were received with jealousy and distrust. The agents of the Company of One Hundred Associates looked on them with suspicion, and Montmagny, the Governor, feared a rival in Maisonneuve. Every opposition was thrown in their way, and Montmagny tried to persuade Maisonneuve to exchange the island of Montreal for that of Orleans. But Maisonneuve was not to be deceived, and he expressed his determination to found a colony at Montreal, "even if every tree on the island was an Iroquois."
During the winter Maisonneuve employed his men in various labors for the future benefit of the colony, but principally in building a boat in which to ascend the river. While staying at Quebec the party gained an unexpected addition to their numbers in the person of Madame de la Peltrie, who joined them, and took with her all the furniture she had lent the Ursulines.
On May 8, 1642, Maisonneuve embarked from St. Michael, and on the 17th his little flotilla, a pinnace, a flat-bottomed craft moved by sails, and two row-boats, approached Montreal, and all on board raised in unison a hymn of praise. Montmagny was there to deliver the island, on behalf of the Company of One Hundred Associates; while here, too, was Father Vimont, superior of the missions. On the following day they glided along the green and solitary shores, now thronged with the life of a busy city, and landed on the spot which Champlain, thirty-one years before, had chosen as the fit site of a settlement. It was a tongue or triangle of land, formed by the junction of a rivulet with theSt. Lawrence. This rivulet was bordered by a meadow, and beyond rose the forest with its vanguard of scattered trees. Early spring flowers were blooming in the young grass, and the birds flitted among the boughs.
Maisonneuve sprang ashore and fell on his knees. His followers imitated his example; and all joined their voices in songs of thanksgiving. Tents, baggage, arms, and stores were landed. Here were the ladies with their servants; Montmagny, no willing spectator; and Maisonneuve, a warlike figure, erect and tall, his men clustering around him—soldiers, sailors, artisans, and laborers—all alike soldiers at need. They kneeled in reverent silence as the host was raised aloft; and when the rite was over the priest turned and addressed them: "You are a grain of mustard-seed that shall rise and grow until its branches overshadow the land. You are few, but your work is the work of God. His smile is on you, and your children shall fill the land." Then they pitched their tents, lighted their fires, stationed their guards, and lay down to rest. Such was the birthnight of Montreal. The following morning they proceeded to form their encampment, the first tree being felled by Maisonneuve. They worked with such energy that by the evening they erected a strong palisade, and had covered their altar with a roof formed of bark. It was some time after their arrival before their enemies, the Indians, were made aware of it, and they improved the time by building some substantial houses and in strengthening their fortifications.
The activity and zeal of Maisonneuve induced him to make a voyage to France to obtain assistance for his settlement. Though his difficulties were great, he yet was enabled to induce one hundred men to join his little establishment on the island. Notwithstanding this addition to his force, the progress of the colony was greatly retarded by the frequent attacks of the Indians. These enemies soon became a cause of great trouble to the colonists, and it was dangerous to pass beyond the palisades, as the Indians would hide for days, waiting to assail any unfortunate straggler. Although Maisonneuve was brave as man could be, he knew that his company was no match for the wily enemy, owing to their ignorance of the mode of Indian warfare; therefore he kept his men as near the fort as possible. They,however, failed to appreciate his care of them, and imputed it to cowardice. This led him to determine that such a feeling should not exist if he could possibly remove it. He therefore ordered his men to prepare to attack the Indians, at the same time signifying his intention to lead them himself. He sallied forth at the head of thirty men, leaving D'Aillebout with the remainder to hold the fort. After they had waded through the snow for some distance they were attacked by the Iroquois, who killed three of his men and wounded several others. Maisonneuve and his party held their ground until their ammunition began to fail, and then he gave orders to retreat, he himself remaining till the last. The men struggled on for some time facing the enemy, but finally they broke their ranks and retreated in great disorder toward the fort. Maisonneuve, with a pistol in each hand, held the Iroquois in check for some time. They might have killed him, but they wished to take him prisoner. Their chief, desiring this honor, rushed forward, but just as he was about to grasp him Maisonneuve fired and he fell dead. The Indians, fearing that the body of their chief would fall into the hands of the French, rushed forward to secure it, and Maisonneuve passed safely into the fort. From that day his men never dared to impute cowardice to him.
In 1644 the island of Montreal was made over to the Sulpicians of Paris, and was destined for the support of that religious order. In 1658 Viscount d'Argenson was appointed governor of Canada, but the day he landed the Iroquois murdered some Algonquin Indians under the very guns of Quebec. The Indians seemed determined to exterminate the French. In addition to keeping Quebec in a state little short of actual siege, they massacred a large number of the settlers at Montreal. D'Argenson having resigned, the Baron d'Avagnon was appointed governor (1661), and on his arrival visited the several settlements throughout the country. He was surprised to find them in such a deplorable condition, and made such representation to the King, as to the neglect of the Company of One Hundred Associates, that M. de Monts, the King's commissioner, was ordered to visit Canada and report on its condition. At the same time four hundred more troops were added to the colonial garrison. The arrival of these troops gave life and confidence to the colonists and relievedMontreal from its dangers. The representations made by M. de Monts, as well as those of the Bishop of Quebec, determined Louis XIV to demand their charter from the Company of One Hundred Associates and to place the colony in immediate connection with the crown. As the profits of the fur trade had been much diminished by the hostility of the Iroquois, the company readily surrendered its privileges. As soon as the transfer was completed, D'Avagnon was recalled and M. de Mesy was appointed governor for three years. Canada was thus changed into a royal government, and a council of state was nominated to coöperate with the Governor in the administration of affairs. This council consisted of the Governor, the Bishop of Quebec, and the intendant, together with four others to be named by them, one of whom was to act as attorney-general.
Official recognition of Presbyterianism in Great Britain marked a distinct departure in ecclesiastical affairs. The Westminster Assembly, whose confession and catechisms, while not accepted in England, became, and still remain, the doctrinal standards of the Scotch and American Presbyterian churches, was one of the most important religious convocations ever held. The Presbyterian form of church government has been adopted by various sects, whose representatives are found in many parts of the world.The great object of the Westminster Assembly was to dictate, dogmatically, articles of faith and a form of worship that should be compulsory. It was mainly owing to the influence of Oliver Cromwell, who stood for toleration and independence, within limits, that the assembly did not have its way.Masson, the great authority on this subject, gives in the following pages a clear and comprehensive account of the religious situation in Great Britain at the time, of the composition of the assembly, and of its labors during the five years and more of its continuance.
Official recognition of Presbyterianism in Great Britain marked a distinct departure in ecclesiastical affairs. The Westminster Assembly, whose confession and catechisms, while not accepted in England, became, and still remain, the doctrinal standards of the Scotch and American Presbyterian churches, was one of the most important religious convocations ever held. The Presbyterian form of church government has been adopted by various sects, whose representatives are found in many parts of the world.
The great object of the Westminster Assembly was to dictate, dogmatically, articles of faith and a form of worship that should be compulsory. It was mainly owing to the influence of Oliver Cromwell, who stood for toleration and independence, within limits, that the assembly did not have its way.
Masson, the great authority on this subject, gives in the following pages a clear and comprehensive account of the religious situation in Great Britain at the time, of the composition of the assembly, and of its labors during the five years and more of its continuance.
At the time of the meeting of the Westminster Assembly there was a tradition in the Puritan mind of England of two varieties of opinions as to the form of church government or discipline that should be substituted for episcopacy.
In the first place there was a tradition of the system of views known as Presbyterianism. From the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, if not earlier, there had been Nonconformists who held that some form of the consistorial model which Calvin had set up in Geneva, and which Knox enlarged for Scotland, was the best for England, too. Thus Fuller, who dates the use of the term "Puritans," as a nickname for the English Nonconformists generally, from the year 1564, and who goes on to say that within a few years after that date the chief of those to whom thatterm was first applied were either dead or very aged, adds: "Behold, another generation of active and zealous Nonconformists succeeded them: of these Coleman, Button, Halingham, and Benson (whose Christian names I cannot recover) were the chief; inveighing against the established church discipline, accounting everything from Rome that was not from Geneva, endeavoring in all things to conform the government of the English Church to the Presbyterian Reformation."
Actually, in 1572, Fuller proceeds to tell us, a presbytery, the first in England, was set up at Wandsworth in Surrey;i.e., in that year a certain number of ministers of the Church of England organized themselves privately, without reference to bishops or other authorities, into a kind of presbyterial consistory, or classical court, for the management of the church business of their neighborhood. The heads of this Presbyterian movement, which gradually extended itself to London, were Mr. Field, lecturer at Wandsworth, Mr. Smith of Mitcham, Mr. Crane of Roehampton, Messrs. Wilcox, Standen, Jackson, Bonham, Saintloe, Travers, Charke, Barber, Gardiner, Crook, and Egerton; with whom were associated a good many laymen. A summary of their views on the subject of church government was drawn out in Latin, under the titleDisciplina Ecclesiæ sacra ex Dei Verbo descripta, and, though it had to be printed at Geneva, became so well known that, according to Fuller, "Secundum usum Wandsworthwas as much honored by some assecundum usum Sarumby others."
The English Presbyterianism thus asserting itself and spreading found its ablest and most energetic leader in the famous Thomas Cartwright (1535-1603). No less by practical ingenuity than by the pen, he labored for presbytery; and under his direction Presbyterianism attained such dimensions that between 1580 and 1590 there were no fewer than five hundred beneficed clergymen of the Church of England, most of them Cambridge men, all pledged to general agreement in a revised form of the Wandsworth Directory of Discipline, all in private intercommunication among themselves, and all meeting occasionally, or at appointed times, in local conferences, or even in provincial and general synods. In addition to London, the parts of the country thus most leavened with Presbyterianism were the shires ofWarwick, Northampton, Rutland, Leicester, Cambridge, and Essex.
Of course such an anomaly, of a Presbyterian organization of ministers existing within the body of the prelatic system established by law, and to the detriment or disintegration of that system, could not be tolerated; and, when Whitgift had procured sufficient information to enable him to seize and prosecute the chiefs, it was, in fact, stamped out. But the recollection of Cartwright and of Presbyterian principles remained in the English mind through the reigns of James and Charles, and characterized the main mass of the more effective and respectable Puritanism of those reigns. In other words, most of those Puritans, whether ministers or of the laity, who still continued members of the Church, only protesting against some of its rules and ceremonies, conjoined with this nonconformity in points of worship a dissatisfaction with the prelatic constitution of the Church, and a willingness to see the order of bishops removed, and the government of the Church remodelled on the Presbyterian system of parochial courts, classical or district meetings, provincial synods, and national assemblies.
During the supremacy of Laud, indeed, when any such wholesale revolution seemed hopeless, it is possible that English Puritanism within the Church had abandoned in some degree its dreamings over the Presbyterian theory, and had sunk, through exhaustion, into mere sighings after a relaxation of the established episcopacy. But the success of the Presbyterian revolt of the Scots in 1638, and their continued triumph in the two following years, had worked wonders. All the remains of native Presbyterian tradition in England had been kindled afresh, and new masses of English Puritan feeling, till then acquiescent in episcopacy, had been whirled into a passion for presbytery and nothing else. When the Long Parliament, at its first meeting (November, 1640), addressed itself to the question of a reform of the English Church, the force that beat against its doors most strongly from the outside world of English opinion consisted no longer of mere sighings after a limitation of episcopacy, but of a formed determination of myriads to have done with episcopacy root and branch, and to see a church government substituted somewhat after the Scottish pattern.
Two years more of discussion in and out of Parliament had vastly enlarged the dimensions of this revived and newly created English Presbyterianism. The passion for presbytery among the English laity had pervaded all the counties; and scores and hundreds of parish ministers who had kept as long as they could within the limits of mere Low-church Anglicanism, and had stood out, in their private reasonings, for the lawfulness and expediency of an order of officers in the Church superior to that of simple presbyters, if less lordly than the bishops, had been swept out of their scruples, and had joined themselves, even heartily, to the Presbyterian current. Thus, when the Westminster Assembly met (July, 1643), to consider, among other things, what form of church government the Parliament should be advised to establish in England in lieu of the episcopacy which it had been resolved to abolish, the injunction almost universally laid upon them by already formed opinion among the parliamentarians of England, whether laity or clergy out of the assembly, seemed to be that they should recommend conformity with Scottish presbytery. All the citizenship, all the respectability of London, for example, was resolutely Presbyterian, and of the one hundred twenty parish ministers of the city, surrounding the assembly, only three, so far as could be ascertained, were not of strict Presbyterian principles.
Nevertheless, amid all this apparent prevalence of Presbyterianism, there was a stubborn tradition in England of another set of antiprelatic views, long stigmatized by the nickname of Brownism, but known latterly as Independency or Congregationalism.
Independents and Presbyterians are quite agreed in maintaining that the terms "bishop" or overseer, and "presbyter" or elder, were synonymous in the pure or primitive Church, and applied indifferently to the same persons, and that prelacy and all its developments were subsequent corruptions. The peculiar tenet of independency, distinguishing it from Presbyterianism, consists in something else. It consists in the belief that the only organization recognized in the primitive Church was that of the voluntary association of believers into local congregations, each choosing its own office-bearers and managing its own affairs, independently of neighboring congregations, though willing occasionallyto hold friendly conferences with such neighboring congregations, and to profit by the collective advice. Gradually, it is asserted, this right or habit of occasional friendly conference between neighboring congregations had been mismanaged and abused, until the true independency of each voluntary society of Christians was forgotten, and authority came to be vested in synods or councils of the office-bearers of the churches of a district or province.
This usurpation of power by synods or councils, it is said, was as much a corruption of the primitive-church discipline as was prelacy itself, or the usurpation of power by eminent individual presbyters, assuming the name of "bishops" in a new sense. Nay, the one usurpation had prepared the way for the other; and, especially after the establishment of Christianity in the Roman Empire by the civil power, the two usurpations had gone on together, until the church became a vast political machinery of councils, smaller or larger, regulated by a hierarchy of bishops, archbishops, and patriarchs, all pointing to the popedom. The error of the Presbyterians, it is maintained, lies in their not perceiving this natural and historical connection of the two usurpations, and so retaining the synodical tyranny while they would throw off the prelatic.
Not having recovered the true original idea of anecclesiaas consisting simply of a society of individual Christians meeting together periodically and united by a voluntary compact, while the great invisible church of a nation or of the world consists of the whole multitude of such mutually independent societies harmoniously moved by the unseen Spirit present in all, Presbyterians, it is said, substitute the more mechanical image of a visible collective church for each community or nation, try to perfect that image by devices borrowed from civil polity, and find the perfection they seek in a system of national assemblies, provincial synods, and district courts of presbyters, superintending and controlling individual congregations. Independency, on the other hand, would purify the aggregate Church to the utmost, by throwing off the synodical tyranny as well as the prelatic, and restoring the complete power of discipline to each particular church or society of Christians formed in any one place.
So, I believe, though with varieties of expression, English Independentsargue now. But, while they thus seek the original warrant for their views in the New Testament and in the practice of the primitive Church, and while they maintain also that the essence of these views was rightly revived in old English Wycliffism, and perhaps in some of the speculations which accompanied Luther's Reformation on the Continent, they admit that the theory of Independency had to be worked out afresh by a new process of the English mind in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and they are content, I believe, that the crude, immediate beginning of that process should be sought in the opinions propagated, between 1580 and 1590, by the erratic Robert Brown, a Rutlandshire man, bred at Cambridge, who had become a preacher at Norwich.
Here and there in England by his tongue during those ten years, and sometimes by pamphlets in exile, Brown, who could boast that he had been "committed to thirty-two prisons, in some of which he could not see his hand at noon-day," and who escaped the gallows only through some family connection he had with the all-powerful Lord Burghley, had preached doctrines far more violently schismatic than those of Cartwright and the majority of the Puritans. His attacks on bishops and episcopacy were boundlessly fierce; and the duty of separationin totofrom the Church of England, the right of any number of persons to form themselves into a distinct congregation, the mutual independence of congregations so formed, and the liberty of any member of a congregation to preach or exhort in it, were among his leading tenets.
At length, tiring of the tempest he had raised around him, he accepted a living in Northamptonshire; and, though he is not known to have ever formally recanted any of his opinions, he lived on in his parsonage till as late as 1630, when Fuller knew him as a passionate and rather disreputable old man of eighty, employing a curate to do his work, quarrelling with everybody, and refusing to pay his rates. Meanwhile the opinions which he had propagated fifty years before had passed through a singular history in the minds and lives of men of steadier and more persevering character. For, though Brown himself had vanished from public view since 1590, the Brownists, or Separatists, as they were called, had persisted in their course, through execrationand persecution, as a sect of outlaws beyond the pale of ordinary Puritanism, and with whom moderate Puritans disowned connection or sympathy. One hears of considerable numbers of them in the shires of Norfolk and Essex and throughout Wales; and there was a central association of them in London, holding conventicles in the fields, or shifting from meeting-house to meeting-house in the suburbs, so as to elude Whitgift's ecclesiastical police. At length, in 1592, the police broke in upon one of the meetings of the London Brownists at Islington; fifty-six of these were thrown into divers jails; and, some of the Separatist leaders having been otherwise arrested, there ensued a vengeance far more ruthless than the government dared against Puritans in general.
Six of the leaders were brought to the scaffold, including Henry Barrowe, a Gray's Inn lawyer—of such note among those early Brownists by his writings that they were also called Barrowists—John Greenwood, a preacher, and the poor young Welshman, John Penry, whose brave and simple words on his own hard case, addressed before his death to Lord Burghley, thrill one's nerves yet. All these were of Cambridge training, though Penry had also been at Oxford. Others died in prison; and of the remainder many were banished.
Among the observers of these severities was Francis Bacon, then rising into eminence as a politician and lawyer. His feeling on the subject was thus expressed at the time: "As for those which we call Brownists, being, when they were at the most, a very small number of very silly and base people here and there in corners dispersed, they are now—thanks be to God—by the good remedies that have been used, suppressed and worn out, so as there is scarce any news of them." Bacon, doubtless, here expressed the feeling of all that was respectable in English society. For not only was it the theory of Brownism intrinsically that the Church of England was a false church, an institution of anti-christ, from which all Christians were bound to separate themselves; but the scurrilities against the bishops that had been vented anonymously by some particular nest of Brownists, or their allies, in the famous series ofMartin Marprelate Tracts(1589), had disgusted and enraged many who would have tolerated moderate Nonconformity.
With respect to the theory of church government called Independency or Congregationalism, the state of the case in 1640 may be thus summed up: There was an unknown amount of traditional affection for the theory, even where it could not be articulately stated, in the native and popular antiprelacy of England itself. This vague and diffused Independency had also a few champions in known Separatist ministers, who had managed to remain in England through all difficulties, and perhaps it had well-wishers in a private opinionist or two, like John Goodwin, regularly in orders in the Church of England; but the effective mass of English-born Independency lay wholly without the bounds of England, partly in little curdlings of Separatists or Semiseparatists among the English exiles in some of the towns of Holland, but chiefly, and in most assured completeness both of bulk and of detail, in the incipient transatlantic commonwealth of New England.
One thing, however, was certain all the while. These two effective aggregations of English-born Independency beyond the bounds of England—the small Dutch scattering and the massive American extension—were not dissociated from England, had not learned to be foreign to her, but were in correspondence with her, in constant survey of her concerns, and attached to her by such homeward yearnings that, on the least opportunity, the least signal given, they would leap back upon her shores.
The opportunity came, and the signal was given, in November, 1640, when the Long Parliament met. It was as if England then proclaimed to all her exiles for opinion, "Ye need be exiles no more." Accordingly, between that date and the meeting of the Westminster Assembly in July, 1643, we have the interesting phenomenon of a return of some of the conspicuous representatives of Independency both from Holland and from New England.
The necessity of an ecclesiastical synod or convocation, to coöperate with the Parliament, had been long felt. Among the articles of the Grand Remonstrance of December, 1641, had been one desiring a convention of "a general synod of the most grave, pious, learned, and judicious divines of this island, assisted by some from foreign parts," to consider of all things relating to the Church and report thereon to Parliament. It is clear, from thewording of this article, that it was contemplated that the synod should contain representatives from the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Indeed, by that time, the establishment of a uniformity of doctrine, discipline, and worship between the churches of England and Scotland was the fixed idea of those who chiefly desired a synod. There had been express communications on the subject between the leading English Puritan ministers and the chiefs of the Scottish Kirk. Henderson[35]had strongly taken the matter to heart, and in connection with it he had made a "notable motion" in the Scottish General Assembly of August, 1641. Might it not be well, he had urged, that the Scottish Church should employ itself in "drawing up a confession of faith, a catechism, a directory for all the parts of the public worship, and a platform of government, wherein possibly England and we might agree"?
Henderson's notion was that, if such an authoritative exposition of the whole theory and practice of the Kirk of Scotland could be drawn up for the study of the English, and especially if care were taken in it not to be ultra-Scottish in mere minutiæ, the effect would be to facilitate the religious union of the two nations. The Scottish assembly, at any rate, had warmly entertained the notion, and had deputed the difficult and delicate work to Henderson himself. Henderson, however, had, on more mature thoughts, abandoned the project. He had done so for reasons creditable to his considerateness and good-sense. It had occurred to him that the English might like to think out the details of their church reformation for themselves, that it might do more harm than good to thrust an elaborated Scottish system upon them as a perfection already consummate, and that it might even be becoming in the Scots to hold themselves prepared, in the interests of the conformity they desired, to gravitate toward what might be the English conclusions on nonessential points. At all events, he had come to see that the work was too great for the responsibility of any one man. Possibly, too, he knew by that time (April, 1642) that a general synod of English divines would very soon be called.
Actually, in April, 1642, just when Henderson gave up thebusiness as too great for one man's strength, the English House of Commons were making arrangements for a synod of divines. On the 19th of that month it was ordered by the House, in pursuance of previous resolutions on the subject, "that the names of such divines as shall be thought fit to be consulted with concerning the matter of the Church be brought in to-morrow morning," the understood rule being that the knights and burgesses of each English county should name to the Housetwodivines, and those of each Welsh countyonedivine, for approval. Accordingly, on the 20th, the names were given in; on that day the divines proposed for nine of the English counties were approved of in pairs; and on following days the rest of the English counties—London and the two universities coming in for separate representation—were gone over, pretty much in their alphabetical order, the Welsh counties and the Channel islands coming last, till, on April 25th, the tale of the divines "thought fit to be consulted with" was complete. It included one hundred two divines, generally from the counties for which they were severally named; but by no means always so, for in not a few cases the knights and burgesses of distant counties nominated divines living in London or near it.
In almost all cases the divines named by the knights and burgesses for their several counties were approved of by the House unanimously; but a vote was taken on the eligibility of one of the divines named for Yorkshire, and he was carried by a bare majority of one hundred three to ninety-nine, and exceptions having been taken on the 25th to the two appointed for Cumberland on the 20th, their appointment was cancelled and others were substituted. On the same day on which the list of divines was completed, a committee of twenty-seven members of the House, including Hampden, Selden, and Lord Falkland, was appointed "to consider of the readiest way to put in execution the resolutions of this House in consulting with such divines as they have named." The result was that on May 9th there was brought in a "bill for calling an assembly of godly and learned divines to be consulted with by the Parliament, for the settling of the government and liturgy of the Church, and for the vindicating and clearing of the doctrine of the Church of England from false aspersions and interpretations." On that day the billwas read twice in the Commons and committed; and on the 19th it was read a third time and passed. The Lords, having then taken the bill into consideration, proposed (May 26, 1642) the addition offourteendivines of their own choice to those named by the Commons; and, the Commons having agreed to this amendment, the bill passed both Houses, June 1st, and waited only the King's assent. It was intended that the assembly should meet the next month.
The King had other things to do at that moment than assent to a bill for an assembly of divines. He was at York, gathering his forces for the civil war; and by the time when it was expected the assembly should have been at work the civil war had begun. Nevertheless, the Parliament persevered in their design. Twice again, while the war was in its first stage, bills were introduced to the same effect as that which had been stopped. Bill the second for calling an assembly of divines was in October, and bill the third in December, 1642. In these bills the two houses kept to the one hundred sixteen divines agreed upon under the first bill, with—as far as I have been able to trace the matter through their journals—only one deletion, two substitutions, and three proposed additions.
Still, by the stress of the war, the assembly was postponed. At last, hopeless of a bill that should pass in the regular way by the King's consent, the houses resorted, in this as in other things, to their peremptory plan of ordinance by their own authority. On May 13, 1643, an ordinance for calling an assembly was introduced in the Commons; which ordinance, after due going and coming between the two Houses, came to maturity June 12th, when it was entered at full length in the Lords Journals. "Whereas, among the infinite blessings of Almighty God upon this nation"—so runs the preamble of the ordinance—"none is, or can be, more dear to us than the purity of our religion; and forasmuch as many things yet remain in the discipline, liturgy, and government of the Church which necessarily require a more perfect reformation: and whereas it has been declared and resolved, by the Lords and Commons assembled in parliament, that the present church government by archbishops, bishops, their chancellors, commissaries, deans, deans and chapters, arch-deacons, and other ecclesiastical officers depending on the hierarchy,is evil, and justly offensive and burdensome to the kingdom, and a great impediment to reformation and growth of religion, and very prejudicial to the state and government of this kingdom, and that therefore they are resolved the same shall be taken away, and that such a government shall be settled in the Church as may be agreeable to God's Holy Word, and most apt to procure and preserve the peace of the Church at home, and nearer agreement with the Church of Scotland, and other reformed churches abroad. Be it therefore ordained," etc.
What is ordained is that one hundred forty-nine persons, enumerated by name in the ordinance—ten of them being members of the Lords House, twenty members of the Commons House, and the other one hundred nineteen mainly the divines that had already been fixed upon, most of them a year before—shall meet on July 1st next in King Henry VII's chapel at Westminster; and that these persons, and such others as shall be added to them by Parliament from time to time, shall have power to continue their sittings as long as Parliament may see fit, and "to confer and treat among themselves ofsuch matters and thingsconcerning the liturgy, discipline, and government of the Church of England, or the vindicating and clearing of the doctrine of the same from all false aspersions and misconstructions,as shall be proposed by either or both houses of Parliament, and no other." The words in Italics are important. The assembly was not to be an independent national council ranging at its will and settling things by its own authority. It was to be a body advising Parliament on matters referred to it, and on these alone, and its conclusions were to have no validity until they should be reported to Parliament and confirmed there.
Forty members of the assembly were to constitute a quorum, and the proceedings were not to be divulged without consent of Parliament. Four shillings a day were to be allowed to each clerical member for his expenses, with immunity for non-residence in his parish or any neglect of his ordinary duties that might be entailed by his presence at Westminster. William Twisse, D.D., of Newbury, was to be prolocutor, or chairman, of the assembly; and he was to have two "assessors," to supply his place in case of necessary absence. There were to be two "scribes," whoshould be divines, but not members of the assembly, to take minutes of the proceedings.
Every member of the assembly, on his first entrance, was to make solemn protestation that he would not maintain anything but what he believed to be the truth; no resolution on any question was to be come to on the same day on which it was first propounded; whatever any speaker maintained to be necessary he was to prove out of the Scriptures; all decisions of the major part of the assembly were to be reported to Parliament as the decisions of the assembly; but the dissents of individual members were to be duly registered, if they required it, and also reported to Parliament. The Lords wanted to regulate also that no long speeches should be permitted in the assembly, so that matters might not be carried by "impertinent flourishes"; but the Commons, for reasons that are not far to seek, did not agree to this regulation.
Notwithstanding a royal proclamation from Oxford, dated June 22d, forbidding the assembly and threatening consequences, the first meeting duly took place on the day appointed—Saturday, July 1, 1643; and from that date till February 22, 1648-1649, or for more than five years and a half, the Westminster Assembly is to be borne in mind as a power of institution in the English realm, existing side by side with the Long Parliament, and in constant conference and coöperation with it. The number of its sittings during these five years and a half was one thousand one hundred sixty-three in all; which is at the rate of about four sittings every week for the whole time. The earliest years of the assembly were the most important. All in all, it was an assembly which left remarkable and permanent effects in the British islands, and the history of which ought to be more interesting, in some homely respects, to Britons now, than the history of the Council of Basel, the Council of Trent, or any other of the great ecclesiastical councils, more ancient and ecumenical, about which we hear so much.
Such was the famous Westminster Assembly, called together by the Parliament of England to consider the entire state of the country in matters of religion. The business intrusted to it was vast and complex. It was to revise and redefine the national creed, after its long lapse into so-called Arminianism and semi-popisherror, and to advise also as to the new system of church government and the new forms of worship that should come in place of rejected episcopacy and the condemned liturgy. For it was still, be it remembered, the universal notion among English politicians that there must be a national church, and that no man, woman, or child within the land should be permitted to be out of the pale of that church. It was still the notion that it was possible to frame a certain number of propositions respecting God, heaven, angels, hell, devils, the creation of the universe, the soul of man, sin and its remedy, a life beyond death, and all the other most tremendous subjects of human contemplation, that should be absolutely true, or at least so just and sure a compendium of truth that the nation must be tied up to it, and it would be wrong to allow any man, woman, or child, subject to the law of England, to be astray from it in any item. This was the notion, and those one hundred forty-nine persons were appointed to frame the all-important propositions, or find them out by a due revision of the old articles, and to report to Parliament on that subject, as well as on the subjects of church organization and forms of worship.
The appointment, among the original one hundred forty-nine or one hundred fifty members of assembly, of such persons as Archbishop Usher, Bishops Brownrigge and Westfield, Featley, Hacket, Hammond, Holdsworth, Morley, Nicolson, Saunderson, and Samuel Ward—all of them defenders of an episcopacy of some kind—seems hardly reconcilable with the very terms of the ordinance calling the assembly. That ordinance implied that episcopacy was condemned and done with, and it convoked the assembly for the express purpose of considering, among other things, what should be put in its stead. It may have been thought, however, that it would impart a more liberal and eclectic character to the assembly to send a sprinkling of known Anglicans into it; or it may have been thought right to give some of the most respected of these an opportunity of retrieving themselves by acquiescing in what they could not prevent. As it chanced, however, the refusal of most of these to appear in the assembly at all, and the all but immediate dropping-off of the one or two who did appear at first, saved the assembly much trouble. It became thus a compact body, fit for its work,and in the main of one mind and way of thinking on some of the problems submitted to it.
In respect of theological doctrine, for example, the assembly, as it was then left, was practically unanimous. They were, almost to a man, Calvinists, or anti-Arminians, pledged by their antecedents to such a revision of the articles as should make the national creed more distinctly Calvinistic than before. Moreover, they were agreed as to their method for determining doctrine. It was to be the rigid application of the Protestant principle that the Bible is the sole rule of faith. The careful interpretation of Scripture—i.e., the collecting on any occasion of discussion of all the texts in the Old and New Testaments bearing on the point discussed, and the examination of these texts singly and in their connection and in the original tongues when necessary, so as to ascertain their exact sense—this was the understood rule with them all. Learning was, indeed, in demand, and the chief scholars, especially the chief Hebraists and rabbinists, of the assembly, were much looked up to: there might be references also to the fathers and to councils; no kind of historical lore but would be welcome: only all must subserve the one purpose of interpreting Scripture; and fathers, councils, and whatnot, could be cited, not as authorities, but only as witnesses. This understanding as to the determination of doctrine by the Bible alone, accompanied as it was by a nearly unanimous preconviction that it was the Calvinistic body of doctrines alone that could be reasoned out of the Bible, was to keep the assembly, I repeat, pretty much together from the first in matters of creed and theology. For perplexing questions as to the extent and limits of the inspiration of the Bible had not yet publicly arisen to invalidate the accepted method.