CHAPTER II.

WORK IN PARLIAMENT AND THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY DURING THE SIXTEEN MONTHS OF THE NEW MODEL-THE TWO CONTINUED CHURCH CONTROVERSIES-INDEPENDENCY AND SECTARIANISM IN THE NEW MODEL: TOLERATION CONTROVERSY CONTINUED: CROMWELL'S PART IN IT: LILBURNE AND OTHER PAMPHLETEERS : SION COLLEGE AND THE CORPORATION OF LONDON: SUCCESS OF THE PRESBYTERIANS IN PARLIAMENT-PRESBYTERIAN FRAME OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT COMPLETED: DETAILS OF THE ARRANGEMENT-THE RECRUITING OF THE COMMONS: EMINENT RECRUITERS -EFFECTS OF THE RECRUITING: ALLIANCE OF INDEPENDENCY AND ERASTIANISM: CHECK GIVEN TO THE PRESBYTERIANS: WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY REBUKED AND CURBED-NEGOTIATIONS ROUND THE KING AT NEWCASTLE-THREATENED RUPTURE BETWEEN THE

SCOTS AND THE ENGLISH: ARGYLE'S VISIT TO LONDON: THE

NINETEEN

PROPOSITIONS-PARLIAMENT AND THE ASSEMBLY RECONCILED: PRESBYTERIANIZING OF LONDON AND LANCASHIRE : DEATH OF ALEXANDER HENDERSON.

DURING the sixteen months of those New Model operations in the field which had brought the war so decisively to an end (April 1645-August 1646), there had been a considerable progress in Parliament, in the Westminster Assembly, and in the public mind of England, on the seemingly interminable Church-business and its collaterals.

THE TWO CONTINUED CHURCH CONTROVERSIES.

That the Church of England should be Presbyterian had been formally decided in January 1644-5 (antè, pp. 172— 175). Not even then, however, could the Presbyterians

consider their work over. There were two reasons why they could not. (1) Although the essentials of Presbytery had been adopted, the details remained to be settled. What were to be the powers of the parochial consistories and the other church courts respectively? What discretion, for example, was to be left to each minister and his congregational board of elders in the matter of spiritual censure, and especially in the exclusion of offenders from the communion? Was there to be any discretion; or was the State to regulate what offences should be punished by excommunication? Again, were the various Church-courts, once established, to act independently of the Civil courts and the State; or was there to be an appeal of ecclesiastical questions at any point from Presbytery, or Synod, or the entire National Assembly, to the Civil courts and Parliament? (2) Another great question which remained undetermined was that of Toleration. Should the new Presbyterian State Church of England be established with or without a liberty of dissent from it? A vast mass of the English people, represented by the Army-Independents and some leading Sectaries, demanded an absolute, or at least a very large, freedom of religious belief and practice; the Independent Divines of the Assembly claimed a certain amount of such freedom; nay, Parliament itself, by its Accommodation Order of September 1644, had recognised the necessity of some toleration, and appointed an inquiry on the subject. In the universal belief of the Presbyterians, on the other hand, Toleration was a monster to be attacked and slain. Toleration was a demon, a chimera, the Great Diana of the Independents, the Daughter of the Devil, the Mother and Protectress of blasphemies and heresies, the hideous Procuress of souls for Hell!

Such were the questions for continued controversy between. the Presbyterians and their opponents in England in the beginning of 1645, when the New Model took the field. What progress had been made in these questions, and what changes had occurred in the attitudes of the two parties mainly concerned, during the victorious sixteen months of the New Model?

INDEPENDENCY

AND SECTARIANISM IN THE NEW MODEL: TOLERATION CONTROVERSY CONTINUED: CROMWELL'S PART IN IT: LILBURNE AND OTHER PAMPHLETEERS: SION COLLEGE AND THE CORPORATION OF LONDON: SUCCESS OF THE PRESBYTERIANS IN PARLIAMENT.

The New Model itself, as we know, had been a great chagrin to the Presbyterians. Fairfax, indeed, was understood to be Presbyterian enough personally; but the Army was full of Independents and Sectaries, it was largely officered by Independents, and its very soul was the Arch-Independent Cromwell. For a while, accordingly, it was the secret hope of the Presbyterians that this Army might fail. But, when evidently it was not to fail, when NASEBY was won (June 14, 1645), and when all the while the Scottish Presbyterian army in England was doing so ill in comparison, a sense of departing superiority sank on the spirits of the Presbyterians. "Honest men served you faithfully in this action," were Cromwell's words to Speaker Lenthall in his letter from Naseby field: "Sir, they are trusty; I beseech you, in the "name of God, not to discourage them. I wish this action may "beget thankfulness and humility in all that are concerned in "it. He that ventures his life for the liberty of his country, "I wish he may trust God for the liberty of his conscience, "and you for the liberty he fights for." This immediate use by Cromwell of the victory of Naseby as an argument for Toleration did not escape the notice of the Presbyterians. "My Lord Fairfax," writes Baillie, June 17, "sent up, the last "week, ane horrible Anti-Triastrian [Anti-Trinitarian]: the "whole Assembly went in a body to the Houses to complain "of his blasphemies. It was the will of Cromwell, in his "letter of his victory, to desire the House not to discourage those who had ventured their life for them, and to come out expressly with their much-desired Liberty of Conscience. "You will see the letter in print, by order, as I think, of the "( Houses." "2 The horrible Anti-Trinitarian here mentioned 2 Baillie, II. 280.

1 Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 176.

was Paul Best (see antè, p. 157). He was accused of "divers prodigious blasphemies against the deity of our Saviour and the Holy Ghost." Parliament, informed thereof by the Assembly, had been appalled, and had committed the culprit to close confinement in the Gatehouse to await his trial (June 10). The next day (June 11) the impression had been deepened by a complaint in the Commons against another culprit on similar grounds, and the House had instructed Mr. Millington, member for Nottingham, to prepare an ordinance on the subject of blasphemy generally.' All this only a day or two before Naseby; and now from the field of Naseby, in Cromwell's hand, a pleading of that victory on behalf of Toleration Would Cromwell tolerate a Paul Best?

What Cromwell and the Army-Independents would have said about Paul Best must be left to conjecture. What they were saying about the state of things in general we learn from the Presbyterian Richard Baxter. Being at Coventry at the time of the battle of Naseby, Baxter, then a pious preacher of twenty-nine years of age, with a lean cadaverous body, and the gauntest hook-nosed face ever seen in a portrait, paid a visit of curiosity to the field immediately after the battle, and went thence to the quarters of the victorious army at Leicester, to seek out some of his acquaintances. When "I came to the army, among Cromwell's soldiers," he says, "I found a new face of things which I never dreamt of: "I heard the plotting heads very hot upon that which inti"mated their intention to subvert both Church and State. "Independency and Anabaptistry were most prevalent; "Antinomianism and Arminianism were equally distributed; "and Thomas Moor's followers (a weaver of Wisbeach and "Lynn, of excellent parts) had made some shifts to join these "two extremes together. Abundance of the common troopers, "and many of the officers, I found to be honest, sober, orthodox men, and others tractable, ready to hear the Truth, and "of upright intentions; but a few proud, self-conceited, hot"headed sectaries had got into the highest places, and were "Cromwell's chief favourites, and by their heat and activity 1 Commons Journals of dates given. Paul Best's case lasted two years. VOL. III.

C C

"bore down the rest, or carried them along with them, and

were the soul of the Army. . . . They said, What were the "Lords of England but William the Conqueror's colonels, or "the Barons but his majors, or the Knights but his captains? They plainly showed me that they thought God's provi"dence would cast the trust of Religion and the Kingdom "upon them as conquerors." They were full of railings and jests, Baxter adds, against the Scots or Sots, the Presbyterians or Priest-biters, and the Assembly of Divines or Dry-vines; and all their praises were of the Separatists, Anabaptists, and Antinomians.--Grieved at what he found, and thinking he might be of some use by way of antidote, Baxter at once gave up his charge at Coventry, to become chaplain to Col. Whalley's regiment. He had the more hope of being useful because he had some previous acquaintance with Cromwell. But his reception was far from satisfactory. "As soon as "I came to the army," he says, "Oliver Cromwell coldly "bid me welcome, and never spoke one word to me more "while I was there, nor once all that time vouchsafed me "an opportunity to come to the headquarters, where the "councils and meetings of the officers were." Baxter never forgave that coolness of Cromwell to him. Hugh Peters, who was constantly with Cromwell as his chaplain, and would make camp-jokes at Baxter's expense, was never forgiven either.'

Not only in the New Model Army was there this ferment of Anti-Presbyterianism, Anti-Scotticism, Independency, and Tolerationism, passing on into a drift of universally democratic opinion. Through English society, and especially in London, there was much of the same.

Since the publication of Edwards's Antapologia in July 1644 the war of pamphlets on the questions of Independency and Toleration had been increasingly virulent. The pamphleteers were numberless; but the chief of them, on the side of Presbyterianism and Anti-Toleration, were perhaps Prynne, Bastwick, and John Vicars, and, on the side of Independency and Toleration, Henry Burton, John Goodwin, and 1 Baxter's Autobiography (Reliquiæ Baxterianæ), 1696: pp. 50, 51.