Note 234 — The Proceedings of the late Solemne Assembly, holden at Edinburgh 12 of August 1639. (continued 2)

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.