Unpopularity of the Scotch Army.
New elections contributed to alter the relative position of these parties. New writs were issued by the Speaker of the House of Commons, in August, to fill up vacant seats. Before the end of the year, one hundred and forty-six fresh members took the oath; and within twelve months eighty-nine more did the same, amongst whom were Blake, Ludlow, Algernon Sidney, Ireton, Skippon, Massey, and Hutchinson.
1645.
There was another cause at work in the same direction. The Scotch army had been the main pillar of Presbyterian hope. In almost every letter which the indefatigable Robert Baillie wrote home to his friends this fact appears. No doubt, in the simplicity of his heart, and without any consciousness of inconsistency, he could stand up in any Edinburgh or London pulpit and take for his text, "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal;" and yet, no man was more filled with the idea that the success of Presbyterianism in England depended upon Scotch soldiers. To take one instance from a sheaf of quotations. "If by any means we would get these our regiments, which are called near thirty, to sixteen thousand marching men, by the blessing of God, in a short time we might ruin both the malignant party and the sectaries. The only strength of both these is the weakness of our army. The strength, motion, and success of that army, in the opinion of all here, is their certain and quick ruin.... It's our only desire to have the favour of God, and to hear of the speedy march of our army."[550] But at the time of which we now speak the Scotch soldiers had become very unpopular. Our laborious correspondent expostulates with the authorities of his own country, not only on the dilatoriness of their military movements, but on the demoralized condition of their troops; so that, as he said, if justice were not done "on unclean, drunken, blasphemous, plundering officers," Scotland would "stink in the nose" of England. He was frightened to hear what many told him of ravishers, blasphemers, and Sabbath-breakers, being left unpunished. No one could be more zealous for the discipline of the forces than he who thus discloses his bad opinion of their character and his fear of the ruinous consequences. Letters in the State Paper Office indicate what ground there was for Baillie's apprehensions. These letters complain of the lawless behaviour of Major Blair's men, stationed in Derbyshire, who broke open houses, beat women, and robbed the carriers as they came to Winkworth market. And so it happened, that while the Scotch Presbyterian army, which was meant to be England's saviour, was sinking into had repute, Cromwell's Independents were being praised up to the very skies.[551]
The case stood thus. The Scotch and most of the Presbyterians of the Westminster Assembly were, on the one side, for putting down the sects, and setting up an ecclesiastical rule which should have government support without government direction, and exclude from toleration systems different from their own; and on the other side were the army, the Erastians, and the Independents, who, differing from each other in religious opinion and character, were politically united, forming an irresistible phalanx, which exhibited as its watchwords such mottoes as these: "State Control over a State Church;" "For other Churches full Toleration." Two questions had to be decided. Should not Presbyterianism, established by the civil power, be subject to the interference of that power? Should not freedom of worship and polity be allowed to sects dissenting from the Establishment? There was also a third—Was Presbyterianism of Divine right?
The Power of the Keys.
1645.
Let us see how the three were handled.
I. The question touching "the Power of the Keys" was debated in the Assembly, and then in the House of Commons. According to Presbyterian doctrine, the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven were committed to the ruling officers of the Church. They had power to call before them any member, to enquire into his spiritual state, and to suspend him from the Lord's Supper, if found unworthy of communion. Church censures, however, while independent of the magistrates' authority as to their origin, were, in their execution, if necessary, to be supported by the magistrates' assistance. The Independents agreed with the Presbyterians thus far, that the most careful order ought to be maintained in the Church of Christ; but the Independents contended that discipline was a duty pertaining to the congregation at large, and that no individual should be set aside, or cut off from Christian privileges, except by the votes of the community. At the same time, they excluded all magisterial interference, and could not accept of any enforcement of their own decisions by legal penalties. The Erastians took a very different view, and believed that communion ought to be perfectly open, and that it should be left to every man's conscience to decide respecting his own fitness for receiving the Lord's Supper. Crimes only, they said, deserved social penalties, and these were to be adjudged by civil tribunals. The Presbyterians carried their own point in the Westminster Assembly. The keys, contrary to the Independent idea, were to be in the hands of Church officers, and not to be held by the congregation at large. The keys, contrary to Erastian notions, were to be exclusively under spiritual, not at all under civil control.
When this question passed from the Assembly to the Commons, and the time came for deciding the matter, the conclusion of the Assembly was annulled. The House determined, that if any person found himself aggrieved by the proceedings of a Presbytery, he might not only appeal to a superior Church tribunal, but he might bring his case for final adjudication before the High Court of Parliament. Criminal charges were reserved entirely for the magistrates' decision, whose certificate was necessary for the suspension of offenders. A committee of Lords and Commons also had vested in them a discretionary power to adjudge any cases of scandal unspecified in the rules for suspension which had been drawn up by the Assembly.[552]