Volume 3 / Book 3 — WORK IN PARLIAMENT AND THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY DURING THE SIXTEEN MONTHS OF THE NEW MODEL—THE TWO CONTINUED CHURCH CONTROVERSIES—INDEPENDENCY AND SECTARIANISM IN THE NEW MODEL: TOLERATION CONTROVERSY CONTINUED: CROMWELL'S PART IN IT: LILBURNE AND OTHER PAMPHLETEERS: SION COLLEGE AND THE CORPORATION OF LONDON: SUCCESS OF THE PRESBYTERIANS IN PARLIAMENT— PRESBYTERIAN FRAME OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT COMPLETED: DETAILS OF THE ARRANGEMENT—THE RECRUITING OF THE COMMONS: EMINENT RECRUITERS—EFFECTS OF THE RECRUITING: ALLIANCE OF INDEPENDENCY AND ERASTIANISM: CHECK GIVEN TO THE PRESBYTERIANS: WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY REBUKED AND CURBED— NEGOTIATIONS ROUND THE KING AT NEWCASTLE—THREATENED RUPTURE BETWEEN THE SCOTS AND THE ENGLISH: ARGYLE'S VISIT TO LONDON: THE NINETEEN PROPOSITIONS—PARLIAMENT AND THE ASSEMBLY RECONCILED: PRESBYTERIANIZING OF LONDON AND LANCASHIRE: DEATH OF ALEXANDER HENDERSON.

During the sixteen months of those New Model operations in the field which had brought the war so decisively to an end (April 1645—August 1646), there had been a considerable progress in Parliament, in the Westminster Assembly, and in the public mind of England, on the seemingly interminable Church-business and its collaterals.

THE TWO CONTINUED CHURCH CONTROVERSIES.

That the Church of England should be Presbyterian had been formally decided in January 1644-5 (antè, pp. 172—175). Not even then, however, could the Presbyterians consider their work over. There were two reasons why they could not. (1) Although the essentials of Presbytery had been adopted, the details remained to be settled. What were to be the powers of the parochial consistories and the other church courts respectively? What discretion, for example, was to be left to each minister and his congregational board of elders in the matter of spiritual censure, and especially in the exclusion of offenders from the communion? Was there to be any discretion; or was the State to regulate what offences should be punished by excommunication? Again, were the various Church-courts, once established, to act independently of the Civil courts and the State; or was there to be an appeal of ecclesiastical questions at any point from Presbytery, or Synod, or the entire National Assembly, to the Civil courts and Parliament? (2) Another great question which remained undetermined was that of Toleration. Should the new Presbyterian State Church of England be established with or without a liberty of dissent from it? A vast mass of the English people, represented by the Army-Independents and some leading Sectaries, demanded an absolute, or at least a very large, freedom of religious belief and practice; the Independent Divines of the Assembly claimed a certain amount of such freedom; nay, Parliament itself, by its Accommodation Order of September 1644, had recognised the necessity of some toleration, and appointed an inquiry on the subject. In the universal belief of the Presbyterians, on the other hand, Toleration was a monster to be attacked and slain. Toleration was a demon, a chimera, the Great Diana of the Independents, the Daughter of the Devil, the Mother and Protectress of blasphemies and heresies, the hideous Procuress of souls for Hell!

Such were the questions for continued controversy between the Presbyterians and their opponents in England in the beginning of 1645, when the New Model took the field. What progress had been made in these questions, and what changes had occurred in the attitudes of the two parties mainly concerned, during the victorious sixteen months of the New Model?