[225] Burnet, p. 149.
[226] Burnet, p. 154. “Penned” by Hamilton, and “interlined” by Canterbury.—Burnet, p. 153.
[227] Burnet, p. 155.
[228] Burnet, p. 156.
[229] Privy Council Record.
[230] Burnet, p. 158.
[231] Folio MS., from f. 169 to f. 211.
[232] It may be proper to explain that Mr David Dick, whoso name is so often introduced as taking a part in the proceedings of these Assemblies, is the same person as Mr David Dickson, minister of Irvine. This abbreviation of his name appears throughout all the MS. reports we have seen, although, in the list of members, 1638, and other documents, it is given at full length. This abbreviation, we presume, has arisen from some colloquial and conventional usage at the time; but it is right to note the circumstance, in order to prevent mistakes.
[233] The “Large Declaration,” in which Henderson was vilified and depreciated.
[234] It is impossible to peruse this interesting debate without remarking how assiduously the Commissioner, and those to whom he was opposed in the argument, kept in the back ground the main objection to the Assembly exercising judicial functions—namely, that it had no legal power to do so. The Assembly 1638 had not obtained the civil sanction to give any of its proceedings, or those emanating from its instructions, any legal authority—and the declarations of the Assembly 1639, confessedly by the Assembly itself, required the sanction of Parliament ere the Presbyterian Constitution could be in full and legitimate operation. It was, therefore, evidently premature and unwarrantable, to assume, at the very moment that so much anxiety was expressed for that sanction, that it already possessed that judicial character which it could not possibly derive, as an Establishment, from any other source than the supreme legislature of the country. It must be remembered that, by law, Episcopacy was still the established form of national religion; and nothing more preposterous can be conceived than the project of punishing any man merely for adhering to it.