The Life of John Milton Volume 3 1643-1649 / Narrated in Connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of His Time

by David Masson

PRESBYTERIAN FRAME OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT COMPLETED: DETAILS OF THE ARRANGEMENT.

Hardly less successful had the Presbyterians been in their more proper task of perfecting their Frame of Church-government. Here, indeed, they had encountered little or no opposition from the Independents. The essentials of the Presbyterian scheme having been voted by Parliament, the Independents had quietly accepted that fact; and, though they tended, as was natural, more and more to doubts whether there ought to be any National Church at all, they had left Parliament and the Presbyterians of the Assembly to construct the detailed machine of the future English Presbytery very much as they pleased. [Footnote: Absolute Voluntaryism, as we know, was already represented in Roger Williams. The Seekers, his followers, were bound to the same conclusion; and accordingly, I find a little tract of six pages, in 1645, by John Saltmarsh, the Seeker and Antinomian (antè, p. 151-3), entitled "A New Quere, at this time seasonably to be considered, &c.. viz. Whether it be fit, according to the principles of true Religion and State to settle any Church-government over the Kingdom hastily or not." Burton was already in the same mood of hypothetical Voluntaryism (antè, p. 109), and I think it was spreading now among the Independents. Certainly, however, the perception of the necessary identity of the principle of Independency with absolute Voluntaryism, or the doctrine of No State Church, was not universal among them.] It was the Erastians rather than the Independents that were here the clogs upon the thorough-going Presbyterians. Selden especially was their torment. He was quite willing, O yes! that the Church of England should be thenceforward Presbyterian; but then what about the rights of the individual subject and the relations of the Church to the State? The State or central Power in every community must be, in the last resort, the guardian of all the rights and liberties of the individual subjects; there had been but one Sanhedrim in the Jewish Commonwealth, supreme in causes ecclesiastical as well as in causes civil; but the Presbyterian Divines of the Assembly, with the Scots for their advisers, wanted the Church in England to be a separate Sanhedrim, supreme in ecclesiastical causes, and irresponsible to the State! Plying his learning in this fashion, and assisted by Whitlocke, St. John, and the other lawyers in the Assembly and in Parliament, Selden had, throughout 1645, kept up an Erastian obstruction to the Presbyterians. Now, as Prynne out of doors, with all his Presbyterianism, was also lawyer-like, and therefore staunchly Erastian, and as the Independents in Parliament made common cause with the Erastians wherever they could, the obstruction had been very formidable. "The Erastian party in the Parliament is stronger than the Independent, and is like to work us much woe," wrote Baillie in May 1645; "Mr. Prynne and the Erastian lawyers are now our remora" he wrote in September; and he kept repeating the complaint throughout the year. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 277, 315, and also in intermediate and following pages.]

Nevertheless great progress had been made in devising and settling the details of the Presbyterian system. What it was will be best exhibited in a dated series of paragraphs, digesting the proceedings of the Assembly and the Parliament:—

May 1645: Presbyterian Arrangements for all England prospectively, and for London to begin with:—That every English Congregation or Parish have its lay-elders along with its minister, just after the Scottish fashion; That the meetings of the Presbyterians be once a month; That the ecclesiastical provinces of England be about sixty in number (about co- numerous with the shires, and, in most cases, identical with them), and that the Synods of these provinces be held twice a-year, and consist of delegates from the Presbyteries; That the National Assembly be held once a year, and consist of delegates from the sixty Synods, at the rate of three ministers and two ruling elders from each, so as to form a House of about 300 members.—That London, reckoned by a radius of ten miles from its centre, be one of the Synodical Provinces, and that the number of Classes or Presbyteries in the Synod of London be fourteen.— Baillie, II. 271, 272.

Aug. 23: Ordinance of Parliament, calling in all copies of the old Liturgy, enforcing the use of the new Westminster Directory of Worship, and forbidding any use of the Liturgy, even in private houses, under penalties.—Commons Journals.

July-Sept. 1645; Directions for the Election of Ruling Elders in Congregations, and for the Division of the English Counties into Presbyteries. July 23, the Commons resolved that Ruling Elders in congregations should be chosen by the ministers and all members duly qualified by having taken the Covenant and being of full age, save that servants without families were not to have votes: no man to be a ruling elder in more than one congregation, and that in the place of his usual residence. July 25, they appointed a committee of forty-seven of their own body to find out the fittest persons to be a committee for superintending the elections of Elders for the Congregations and Presbyteries of London, and at the same time to prepare a letter to be sent down into the counties by the Speaker, giving instructions for the formation of County-Committees to consider the best division of the counties respectively into Presbyteries. The letter was ready Sept. 17, when it was ordered to be sent down into the counties, with a copy of the Votes and Ordinances on the subject of the election of Elders that had then passed and been concurred in by the Lords.—Commons Journals.

Sept.-Dec. 1645: Special Presbyterian Arrangements for London. It having been resolved by the Commons (Sept. 23) that there should be a choice of Elders forthwith in London, the aforesaid Committee of forty- seven reported to the House (Sept. 26) the names of the persons judged most suitable to be TRIERS of the ability and integrity of the Elders that should be elected, and of the validity of their election according to the Parliamentary regulations. In each of the twelve London Classes or Presbyteries (there were only twelve as yet) there were to be nine of these Triers—three ministers and six lay citizens; and they were to decide all questions by a majority of votes. Thus there were to be 108 Triers in all in London. Their names are all registered. The machinery being thus ready, the Lord Mayor was requested, Oct. 8, to intimate to all the London ministers the desire of Parliament that Congregations should at once proceed to the election of their Elders.—Dec. 5, it was ordered that the whole world of the lawyers—i.e. the Chapel of the Rolls, the two Serjeants' Inns, and the four Inns of Court—should be constituted into a Presbytery by itself, but divided into two Classes. Triers were also appointed for the Elders in this peculiar Presbytery, one of them being William Prynne.—Commons Journals of dates cited.

Nov. 8, 1645: New Ordinance for the Ordination of Ministers. In this long Ordinance the original identity of Bishop and Presbyter is asserted, and consequently the right of Presbyters, without any so-called Bishop among them, to ordain; nevertheless the ordinations by the late Bishops are recognised as valid. Directions are then given to Presbyters for the examination of candidates for the ministry in future, and for the formalities to be observed in their ordination. Every candidate must be twenty-four years of age at least, and must be tried not only in respect of piety, character, preaching ability, and knowledge of divinity, but also in respect of skill in the tongues and in Logic and Philosophy; and congregations were to have full opportunity of stating exceptions against ministers offered them. From a clause in the Ordinance it appears that certified ordination in Scotland was to be accepted in England.—Lords Journals.

Powers of the Congregational Elderships in suspending from Church- membership, and excluding from the Communion. This was perhaps the most important subject of all, for it involved the mode of the action of the new Presbyterian system at the heart of social life and its interferences with the liberties of the individual. Parliament was naturally slow and jealous on this subject, so that the discussion of it, part by part, extended over the whole year 1645. The briefest sketch of results must suffice here:—The Assembly having sent in to Parliament a Paper concerning the exclusion of ignorant and scandalous persons from the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the Parliament had desired a more particular definition by the Assembly of what they included in the terms ignorant and scandalous. The Assembly having then sent in an explanation, in which, under the head of the ignorance that should exclude from the Lord's Table, they mentioned "the not having a competent understanding concerning the Trinity," the Commons (March 27, 1645) had desired to know what the Assembly considered to be a competent understanding concerning the Trinity, The Assembly having farther declared, under the same head of ignorance, that no persons ought to be admitted to the Lord's Table who had not a "competent understanding" of the Deity, of the state of Man by Creation and by his Fall, of Redemption by Jesus Christ and the means to apply Christ and his benefits, of the necessity of Faith, Repentance and a Godly life, of the Nature and Use of Sacraments, and of the Condition of Man after this Life, the Commons had still demurred about the "competent understanding," and had begged the Assembly to be more precise and business-like (April 1). At length, some resolutions having been come to about the "competent understanding," and there being less difficulty in deciding who should come under the category of the scandalous, the Commons had before them a pretty extensive index of the kinds of persons, whether ignorant or scandalous, whom the Congregational Elderships were to be empowered to suspend or debar from the Communion. The index was not complete, I think, till January 1645-6; by which time, after numerous discussions, it included, in addition to the grossly ignorant in the elementary articles of Christianity, and to murderers, notorious drunkards, swearers, et hoc genus omne, a considerable list of such varieties of offenders as these— makers of images of the Trinity, worshippers of saints, persons sending or accepting challenges, persons playing at games selling wares or unnecessarily travelling on Sunday, persons consulting witches, persons assaulting magistrates or their own parents, persons legally convicted of perjury or bribery, persons consenting to the marriage of their children with Papists, and, finally, the maintainers of errors that subvert the prime Articles of Religion. To provide, moreover, for cases not positively enumerated, there were to be commissioners in every ecclesiastical province authorized to decide on such cases, when represented to them by ministers and the elderships. All this, with much more of the same kind, was partly agreed upon, partly still under Parliamentary consideration, in the beginning of 1646.—Commons Journals, with references there to the Lords Journals.