From its eighth gathering, in 1653, to its thirteenth, it was engaged in careful deliberations that resulted in its valuable and compact work on The Divine Right of the Gospel Ministry, full of learning, chiefly from the pen of Calamy, but ordered to bear the imprimatur of the Moderator, Assessors, and Scribes.1 Hardly, however, was Presbyterianism with difficulty thus set agoing, than it may be said to have begun to end. The scheme, so popular in London, was acceptable nowhere else save Lancashire, and the King had rejected it by proclamation. Strange and untoward things were happening meantime; and we have specially to note the three main causes of its arrest. These were, its own high demands for itself, the rapid spread and growing influence of Independency with innumerable other sects, and the violent quarrel between Parliament and Cromwell's victorious army. Though a Presbyterian Church-order and discipline had been agreed to, there remained the more serious question of Toleration, or whether any dissent, or how much, should be allowed outside the proposed Established Church. The idea of absolute liberty of conscience and unlimited toleration may possibly have dawned on some individual minds in England, but was nowhere entertained by any party as yet. Independents pleaded for a certain limited liberty of conscience for themselves, and a toleration for their own principles of action, and those of some other orthodox Christian sects outside the pale of the new National Church. The Presbyterian idea was this: "Let rulers determine on a Scriptural standard of religious truth and ecclesiastical polity. That is the duty and business of Christian rulers, as we are all agreed. Make provision, as far Scribe's custody." This refers to Dr. Lazarus Seaman, whose autograph follows; and whose valuable library was noted as the first in England sold by auction, and realized the large sum of £700. (Calamy's Account, p. 16, and Continuation, i. 17.) The Joseph Hill who bought the volume is the well-known Presbyterian minister already mentioned in connection with the English Church at Rotterdam, who refused a bishopric in 1660, and died in 1707, aged 83. MINUTES of London Synod, from its 3rd session, 27 November, 1650, till 13th session of the 16th Assembly, 24 April, 1655, are also preserved in briefer form in vol. iii. of the Minutes of the Westminster Assembly in the WILLIAMS' Library. 1 Jus Divinum Ministerii Evangelici; which we have already described in a note at p. 6. as Scripture allows, for accommodating tender Christian consciences within the Church's pale. But if there is to be a National Christian Church at all, the whole nation should be included in it, and must conform to the one National Establishment, and be amenable to its spiritual discipline." TOLERATION for orthodox dissent was the rallying cry of the Independents and Sectaries. ACCOMMODATION for Christian tender consciences inside the Church, was the Presbyterian watchword. Thus we find it expressed in the close of a letter to the Assembly by all the London ministers, from Sion College, 18th December, 1645:"These are some of the many considerations which make a deep impression upon our spirits against that great Diana of Independents, and all the sectaries, so much cried up by them in these distracted times, namely A Toleration, A Toleration. And however none should have been more rejoiced than ourselves in the establishment of a brotherly, peaceable, and Christian Accommodation; yet, this being utterly rejected by them, we cannot dissemble how, upon the forementioned grounds, we detest and abhor the much endeavoured Toleration." The triumph of this strictly logical theory of a National Established Church was dearly bought. It arrayed against Presbytery all who felt they might come under its coercive policy, and especially roused the spirit of divisiveness and sectarianism which had begun to run riot, and which it was designed to curb. What an array of sects the civil commotions had let loose-Antinomians, Antiscripturists, Anti-Trinitarians, Familists, Seekers, Miltonites or Divorcers, Vanists, Traskites, Soul-sleepers, Mortalists, and the like! Thomas Edwards, in his extraordinary three-fold publication, "Gangræna," has no difficulty in tabulating 176 "heresies, errors, and blasphemies." Of John Lilburne the busy pamphleteer, it was wittily said, "if he were left alone by himself in the world, John would then quarrel with Lilburne and Lilburne with John." He was a type of multitudes. Cromwell and the army became the chief centre of all this, with constant echoes of it from the London printing-shops. Presbyters, Assembly divines, and the Scots, were to them priest-biters, dissembly-men, dry-vines, and sots. For the vanity of the army was piqued at their Scotch allies, and national pride was wounded at seeming to follow a Northern guidance! To this patriotic susceptibility Milton, in his bitter disappointment and vindictiveness, gave voice. He had himself taken the Covenant ("That which I saw and was partaker of, your vows and solemn covenants," he says to Parliament in dedicating his "Tetrachordon "), and had hoped much from it at the outset. A largely tolerant Presbyterianism, what might it not have done for England at this crisis! But he has lost all hope from it, with a high-flying and coercive policy. How vehemently he attacks, in his celebrated ode, "The Forcers of Conscience," and assails the Assembly and all concerned, in many a diatribe, "with resounding periods of magnificent abuse." But London resolved to stand by the jus divinum of Presbytery, and even "try a fall" for it with the army itself-with Cromwell's redoubtable "new model," which had just finished the war and brought the King to bay. London had looked askance at this "new model " (new noddle, they called it), and at Cromwell's paroxysm of rage with Lord Manchester and the other Presbyterian officers, whereby he had cunningly outwitted them in the Self-denying Ordinance and got all things his own way. And now that this victorious army, with its Naseby laurels on its brow and the King in its hands, had set Parliament at defiance and had impeached the eleven Presbyterian leaders (who had moved for its disbandment), London rose in tumult, and swarmed to Westminster to have the affront resented. A vast popular association had been formed under the name of "A solemn engagement of the citizens, officers, and soldiers of the trained bands and auxiliaries," etc., to uphold the Covenant, confirm the Presbyterian government, and further a direct treaty between King and Parliament, without interference from the army; and petitions for these ends, signed by tens of thousands, were presented to the Houses. A fast was kept; the fortifications were repaired; the walls manned with pikemen; and the Bridge and other entrances guarded with cannon. Then was felt the want of fit and able leaders that were now no more. The City had to surrender, and the army was master of Presbyterian London. We need not rehearse what negotia 1 tions followed, nor the short, sharp campaign with the yet loyal Presbyterians in the SECOND CIVIL WAR; nor the consternation of the citizens at the result; nor how London came a second time into the grasp of the army; nor the drastic military measure of Pride's purge, 6th December, 1648, which forcibly cleared the House of about 200 Presbyterian members, leaving the RUMP, with its fifty Independents, to resolve, as the army dictated, on the King's death. The last united voice of the London Synod was heard twelve days before the execution, in a bold but becoming protest and remonstrance, "A serious and faithful Representation of the Judgment of the Ministers of the Gospel within the Province of London, in a Letter to the General and his Council of War." But Presbyterian London, now in the grip of an iron hand, was powerful no more. Numerous as were its congregations and adherents, its palmy days were gone. It needed stronger chiefs than Denzil Hollis or Sir Philip Stapleton to disentangle it from the meshes of a military despotism. The Presbyterians were no revolutionary party. The King's death they condemned as a gigantic blunder and crime. Their leaders, alike in Lords and Commons, had been men of moderate counsels politically. They sought constitutional reform in Church and State, but were defeated by royal duplicity and democratic violence. Their quarrel was not against the Crown, but against its slavish maxims and malpractices. This was the temper of Presbyterian London from the beginning to the end. 1 "A Serious and Faithful Representation of the Judgments of the Ministers of the Gospel within the Province of London, contained in a Letter from them to the Generall and his Councell of Warre, delivered to his Excellency by some of the Subscribers, January 18, 1648, published London, January 20." This was followed by, "An Apologetical Declaration of the Conscientious Presbyterians of the Province of London, and of many Thousands of other Faithful and Covenant-keeping Citizens and Inhabitants within the said City and Suburbs thereof, wherein their Firmness, and Faithfulness to their First Principles and to their Solemn League and Covenant is conscientiously Declared; and the Covenant-breaking and Apostasy of others is Disclaimed and Abhorred before God and the whole World." Jan. 24, 1648(9). And by, "A Vindication of the Ministers of the Gospel in and about London, from the unjust Aspersions cast upon their former Actings for the Parliament, as if they had Promoted the Bringing of the King to Capital Punishment, with a short Exhortation to the People to keep close to their Covenant Engagement." Jan. 27, 1648 (9). IV. THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH-ESTABLISHMENT IN AMONG English counties, Lancashire holds quite a position of its own. Whether we consider its physical features, its people, or its history, we find ourselves among very marked and distinctive peculiarities. Lancashire is a province, in fact, rather than a county. Springing from a long reach of indented seaboard, with its once dreary levels of sand and marsh, now richly cultivated plains like the district of the Fylde, the land rises by irregular plateaux to the vast centres of mineral and manufacturing industry. Swelling still farther up, into old forest regions like Pendle and Rossendale, or into far-spreading moorlands with their picturesque cloughs and valleys, now full enough of unpicturesque factories and chimney-stalks, it loses itself among the bare and bleak but boldly outlined hills that form the "back-bone" of England, and that stretch between Lancashire and Yorkshire from Pennygant to the Peak. The manufactures introduced into Manchester and its neighbourhood by the Flemings, under the auspices of Edward III., laid the foundation of Lancashire's prosperity. Thus, from being a wild and sparsely-peopled district, it has become, through its peculiar facilities and suitableness for manufacturing pursuits,-specially because of its rich coal-measures and its abundant water-power, the first county in the kingdom for population, and all but the first for wealth and general importance. Beyond other counties, Lancashire has preserved its native dialect, rough and rugged, in harmony with the vigour of the race, and with a vernacular literature which, if often coarse |