Cromwell's hints from the field in favour of Liberty of Conscience may be regarded as little "Accommodation Orders" in his own name, reminding Parliament and the Westminster Assembly of that formal "Accommodation Order" which he had moved in the House a year before, and which had then been passed (antè, pp. 168-9). What had become of this Accommodation Order? The story may be given in brief:—The Grand Accommodation Committee had immediately appointed a small Sub-Committee, consisting of Dr. Temple and Messrs. Marshall, Herle, and Vines, for the Presbyterians, and Messrs. Thomas Goodwin and Philip Nye for the Independents. The business of this Sub-Committee, called "The Sub-Committee of Agreements," was to reduce into the narrowest compass the differences between the Independents and the rest of the Assembly. The Sub-Committee did their best, and reported to the Grand Committee; but for various reasons the Grand Committee postponed the subject. Meanwhile these proceedings had obtained for the Independents a re-hearing in the Assembly itself. The five original Independents in the Assembly, Messrs. Goodwin, Nye, Bridge, Burroughs, and Simpson, with Mr. William Carter and Mr, William Greenhill now added to their number, presented in writing (Nov. 14, 1644) their Reasons of Dissent from the propositions of Presbytery most disagreeable to them; [Footnote: The increase of the number of avowed Independents in the Assembly at this point from Five to Seven is worth noting. From the very first, however, there must have been a few in sympathy to some variable extent with the leading Five. Thus Baillie, as early as Dec. 7, 1643 (Letters, II. 110), speaks of "the Independent men, whereof there are some ten or eleven in the Synod, many of them very able men," and mentions Carter, Caryl, Phillips, and Sterry, as of the number. (See our List of the Assembly, Vol. II. 516-524,) There had been efforts on the part of the Independents in Parliament to bring more representatives of Independency into the Assembly. Actually, on the 2nd of Nov. 1643, the very day on which the Lords agreed with the Commons in the nomination of John Durie to succeed the deceased Calibute Downing, the Lords on their own account nominated John Goodwin of Coleman Street to ho of the Assembly, and with him "Dr. Homes of Wood Street, and Mr. Horton, Divinity Lecturer at Gresham College" (Lords Journals of date). The Commons, whose concurrence was necessary, seem quietly to have withheld it, and thus the Assembly missed having John Goodwin in it as well as Thomas. "Homes" (Nathaniel Holmes: Wood's Ath. III. 1, 168) was also an Independent, and probably "Horton" leant that way (Thomas Horton: Wood's Fasti, II. 172).] and the Assembly produced (Dec. 17) an elaborate Answer. Copies of both documents were furnished to Parliament; but, without reference to the objections of the Independents, the essential parts of the Frame of Presbyterial Government had been ratified by Parliament in January 1644-5. [Footnote: The Reasons of Dissent by the Seven Independents and the Assembly's Answer were not published till 1648. They then appeared by order of Parliament; and they were republished in 1652 under the title of The Grand Debate concerning Presbytery and Independency.] Affairs then took a new turn in the Assembly. The Independents having often been taunted with being merely critical and never bringing fully to light their own views, one of them was led in a moment of heat to declare that they were quite willing to prepare their own complete Model of Congregationalism, to be contrasted with that of Presbytery. The Assembly eagerly caught at the imprudent offer, and the Seven Independents were appointed to be a committee for bringing in a Frame of Congregational Church Government, with reasons for the same. This was in March 1645; and from that time the Seven, supposed to be busy in Committee upon the work assigned them, had a dispensation from attendance at the general meetings. Spring passed, summer passed, September arrived; and still the Independents had not brought in their Model. The Assembly became impatient, and insisted on expedition. At length, on the 13th of October, the Seven presented to the Assembly— what? Not the Model on which they were supposed to have been engaged for seven months, but a brief Paper of Reasons for not bringing in a Model at all! "Upon these considerations," they said in concluding the Paper, "we think that this Assembly hath no cause to require a Report from us; nor will that Report be of any use: seeing that Reports are for debates, and debates are for results to be sent up to the Honourable Houses; who have already voted another Form of Government than that which we shall present."—It was the astutest policy that the Independents could possibly have adopted; and the Presbyterians, feeling themselves outwitted, were furious. The machinery of the Accommodation Order had again to be put in motion by Parliament (Nov. 14). There were conferences of the Divines with members of the two Houses. What was the upshot? "The Independents in their last meeting of our Grand Committee of Accommodation," writes Baillie, Nov. 25, "have expressed their desires for toleration, not only to themselves, but to other sects." That was the upshot! Army Independency and Assembly Independency had coalesced, and their one flag now was Indefinite Toleration. [Footnote: Hetherington's Hist. of the Westminster Assembly (1843), pp. 220-236; Hanbury's Memorials, II. 548-559, and III. 1-32; Baillie, II. 270-326; Commons Journals, Nov. 14, 1645.]
The Presbyterians behaved accordingly. There was an end to their endeavours to reason over the few Independents in the Assembly, or arrange a secret compromise with them; and there was a renewed onset on the Toleration principle by the whole Presbyterian force. As if on a signal given, there was a fresh burst of Anti-Toleration pamphlets from the press. Prynne published one; Baillie sent forth his Dissuasive (antè, p. 142); and Edwards was printing his immortal Gangræna (antè, p. 141). But appeals to the public mind through the press were not enough. The real anxiety was about the action of Parliament. The expectation of the Presbyterians, grounded on recent experience, as that Parliament, even if left to itself, would see its duty clearly, and repudiate Toleration once and for ever. Still it would only be prudent to bring to bear on Parliament all available external pressure. Through December 1645 and January 1645-6, accordingly, the Presbyterians were ceaseless in contriving and promoting demonstrations in their favour. And with signal success:—Only a certain selected number of the parish-clergy of London and the suburbs, it is to be remembered, were members of the Assembly: the mass of them remained outside that body. But this mass, being Presbyterian almost to a man, had organized itself in such a way as both to act upon the Assembly and to obey it. Since 1623 there had been in the city, in the street called London Wall, a building called SION COLLEGE, with a library and other conveniences, expressly for the use of the London clergy, and answering for them most of the purposes of a modern clubhouse. Here, as was natural, the London clergy had of late been in the habit of meeting to talk over the Church-question, so that at length a weekly conclave had been arranged, and Sion College had become a kind of discussion forum, apart from the Assembly, and yet in connexion with it. At Sion College the London Presbyterians could concoct what was to be brought forward in the Assembly, and a hint from the Assembly to Sion College in any moment of Presbyterian difficulty could summon all the London clergy to the rescue. At the moment at which we have arrived such a hint was given; and on the 18th of December, 1645, there was drawn up at Sion College a Letter to the Assembly by all the ministers of the City of London expressly against Toleration. "These are some of the many considerations," they say in the close of the Letter, "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 fore- mentioned grounds, we detest and abhor the much-endeavoured Toleration. Our bowels, our bowels, are stirred within us, &c." The Letter was presented to the Assembly Jan. 1, 1645-6, and the Assembly took care that it should be published that same day.[Footnote: Cunningham's London, Art. Sion College; Hanbury's Memorials, III. 97-99; Stationers' Registers, Jan. 1, 1645-6.]—The Corporation of London was as staunchly Presbyterian as the clergy, and they too were stirred up. "We have gotten it, thanks to God, to this point," writes Baillie, Jan. 15, "that the Mayor, Aldermen, Common Council, and most of the considerable men, are grieved for the increase of sects and heresies and want of government. They have yesterday had a public Fast for it, and solemnly renewed their Covenant by oath and subscription, and this day have given in a strong Petition for settling Church-government, and suppressing all sects, without any toleration." The Petition was to the Commons; and it was particularly represented to that House, by Alderman Gibbs, as the spokesman for the Petitioners, that "new and strange doctrines and blasphemies" were being vented in the City by women-preachers. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 337; Hanbury, III. 99, 100; Commons Journals, January 15, 1645-6.]
Environed by such a sea of Presbyterian excitement, what could the Parliament do? They did what was expected. They shook off Toleration as if it had been a snake. Not only did they assure the Aldermen and Common Council that there would be due vigilance against the sects and heretics; but on the 29th of January, or within a fortnight after they had received the City Petition, they took occasion to prove that their assurance was sincere. The two Baptist preachers Cox and Richardson, it seems, had been standing at the door of the House of Commons, distributing to members printed copies of the Confession of Faith of the Seven Baptist Congregations in London (see antè, p. 148). It was as if they had said, "Be pleased to look for yourselves, gentlemen, at the real tenets of those poor Anabaptists who are described as such monsters." But the Commons were in a Presbyterian panic; Cox and Richardson were taken into custody; and orders were issued for seizing and suppressing all copies of the Baptist Confession that could be found. This alone would prove that as late as the end of January, 1645-6, the Presbyterians, in their character of Anti-Tolerationists, were still masters of the field. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Jan. 29, 1645-6.]
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.