Lords' Committee on Innovations.
We can believe what his biographer says respecting his management of the Committee:—
"The Bishop had undertaken a draught for regulating the government ecclesiastical, but had not finished it. The sudden and quiet dispatch of all that was done already was attributed to the Chairman's dexterity, who could play his prize at all weapons, dally with crooked humours, and pluck them straight; bring all stragglers into his own pound, and never drive them in; foresee a tempest of contradiction the best that ever I knew, and scatter it before it could rise; and won all his adversaries insensibly into a compliance before they were aware. To this day they of the Nonconformists that survive, and were present, will tell you that they admired two things in him, in their phrase—his courtesy and his cunning."[153]
The members met for a week in the Jerusalem Chamber, and were daily entertained by the hospitable Dean. This circumstance Fuller could not record without the witticism, that it was "the last course of all public episcopal treatments—whose guests may now even put up their knives, seeing soon after the voider was called for, which took away all bishops' lands, and most of English hospitality."[154]
Just as Williams was summoning the divines to meet together to enquire into innovations since the Reformation, and to "examine the degrees and perfections of the Reformation itself," Laud wrote down in his diary, "This Committee will meddle with doctrine as well as ceremonies, and will prove the national synod of England to the great dishonour of the Church, and what else may follow upon it, God knows."[155]
1641, March.
Though Laud was wrong in the importance which he attached to this mixed conclave, he was right enough in concluding that it would meddle with doctrines as well as ceremonies. This appeared very early; for it is alleged in the memoranda prepared for the Committee that there were some ministers who preached justification by works, the efficacy of penance, confession, and absolution, and the sacrificial character of the Lord's supper; that prayers for the dead were used, and monastic vows defended; also, "that the whole gross substance of Arminianism was avowed, and original sin absolutely denied:" and together with these notices of Romanist tendencies on the one hand, there appear references to Socinianism on the other. The introduction of these charges could not but lead to doctrinal controversy, and rumours soon got abroad that changes in the theological standards of the Church were under consideration.[156]
Lords' Committee on Innovations.