After following up the argument advanced by Bridge, he proceeded to show "the inconsistence of presbytery with a civil state." According to Baillie," he was cried down as impertinent;" and according to Lightfoot," he was taken off as speaking nothing to the question, but he would not be taken off, and would not be convinced that he was besides order; whereupon there was some heat, and it was called to try it by vote; but the Lord Saye and others gainsaid it,— so that it was declined: and so we adjourned." Thus ended the discussion of that day. Nye, however, was not to be silenced. The next day, after Gillespie, Young, Selden, and Coleman had spoken, he rose up at the time when the assembly was crowded by strangers, peers and commoners, and repeated his argument with renewed earnestness and amplification. "The ordering of the church by Christ," he observed, "is such as may be without jealousy and suspicion. But power over power in the church, after the presbyterian plan, extends itself by degrees, so at last to be equal with the civil. It is inconvenient to nourish such a vast body in a commonwealth: it is not to be endured. Especially so when such a power, as in a national synod, becomes as great as the civil, and yet has to do with spiritual matters, and bears immediately on the conscience. Then look abroad at the present state of this country! Nothing troubles men more than to think whether the presbytery shall be set up jure divino; and no wonder, for if it be, it will grow so as to become as big as the civil power. When two vast bodies are of equal amplitude, if they disagree it is nought; and if they agree it will be worse. *Lightfoot, Works xiii. pp. 108, 109, slightly altered, in order to make his notes read like a speech. 66 The temper of the presbyterians was sorely tried by this line of reasoning, and after a few more words broke out. 'Here," says Lightfoot, "he read something out of Mr. Rutherford's preface upon his assertion of the Scotch government, and would have fetched something out of it: when it was sharply prohibited, and he cried out of as disorderly and dangerous; and Mr. Henderson cried out that he spoke like Sanballet, Tobiah, or Symmachus; and Mr. Sedgwick wished that he might be excluded out of the assembly and here was a great heat, and it was put to the question, and voted that he had spoken against order."* : Such was the actual scene in the assembly. Baillie's account is to the same effect.† The question of toleration was not introduced into the argument. Nye's great offence consisted in contending that presbyterianism, legitimately carried out, would create a synodical power whose jurisdiction would be co-ordinate with, and detrimental to, that of the civil power. The same line of reasoning is advanced with great power afterwards, by Nye and the other "dissenting brethren," in their "Reasons against certain propositions concerning presbyterial government," printed in 1648.‡ * Ib. Also, Assembly's Answer to the Independents' Reasons, &c. † In his letter to Spang, dated April 2nd, 1644, or more than a month after the event. "The day following," he writes, "when he saw the assembly full of the prime nobles and chief members of both houses, he did fall on that argument again, and very boldly offered to demonstrate that our way of drawing a whole kingdom under one national assembly is formidable, yea, thrice over pernicious to civil states and kingdoms. All cried him down, and some would have had him expelled the assembly as seditious,' &c. See Hanbury ii. pp. 491, 493, 498, 501-504, 508, 509. Nowhere is there a more masterly argument against an established presbyterianism, on civil grounds, than that which is to be found in the pages noted above. But, it may be asked, does not Baillie attribute the famous sentence given a few pages back to Philip Nye? On the contrary, he expressly affirms that Nye and his brethren did not hold the sentiment expressed by it. The following is the passage in which the affirmation occurs: "The Independents here, finding they have not the magistrates so obsequious as in New England, turn their pens as you will see in M.S., to take from the magistrate all power of taking any coercive order with the vilest heretics. Not only they praise your magistrate, who for policy gives some secret tolerance to divers religions,-wherein, as I conceive, your divines preach against them as great sinners, but avow that, by God's command, the magistrate is discharged to put the least discourtesy on any man, Jew, Turk, Papist, Socinian, or whatever, for his religion! I wish Apollonius considered this well. The five he writes to will not say this; but M.S. is of as great authority as any of them." It is plain, then, that "the five," of whom Nye was one, did not hold the sentiment under consideration. Baillie was anxious that Apollonius,† who had engaged to write against "the five," should also write against * In a letter to his cousin Spang, then at Campvere, in Holland, dated May 17th, 1644, more than a month after the letter in which the scene in the assembly is described, and nearly two months after the scene itself. † Apollonius was a presbyterian minister at Middleburgh. He moved the "Wallachrian classes," or presbytery, to write to the assembly against the "Apologetical Narration." The publication was entitled, "Consideratio Quarundam Controversiarum, &c." or "A Consideration of certain Controversies at this time agitated in the Kingdom of England, &c. 1644." John Norton, of Ipswich, in New England, replied to Apollonius in his "Responsio ad totam Quæstionum Syllogen," &c. Fuller, in his Church History, speaks in high terms of Norton's work. those Independents who had become the avowed advocates of unlimited toleration. These were not members of the assembly, but men of great eminence and growing influence, respecting whom Baillie gives the following particulars. "M.S. against A. S.," he writes, "is John Goodwin of Coleman Street. He is a bitter enemy to presbytery, and is openly for a full liberty of conscience to all sects, even Jews, Turks, Papists, and all, to be more openly tolerate than with you. This way is very pleasant to That faction increases mightily in many here. number, hopes, and pride. But if it please God to give us good news from York, we will tell them more of our mind."* Having defined the actual position of the Independents of the assembly, a reference may now be made to the illustrious person whose name occurs in this extract, and to some others rising into note at this period; from which it will become more and more apparent that, while the Independents within the assembly contended against the establishment of presbyterianism, with great ability, but on narrow grounds, the Independents without were the great pioneers in the cause of perfect religious liberty, and the means of urging their more honored, but, in this respect, less enlightened brethren forward to the advocacy of rights which they might not otherwise have known. John Goodwin was born in Norfolk, in 1593, and educated at Cambridge, where he took his degree as master of arts, and was elected a fellow of Queen's * Baillie's letter to Spang, May 10th, 1644. By "good news from York," he means news of the success of the Scotch army. "Honest Baillie !" A. S. was Adam Steuart. He published in 1644 "An Answer" to the "Apologetical Narration." college, in November, 1617. On leaving the University, he appears to have preached occasionally in various parts of the kingdom; but without settling down over any charge until 1632, when he became vicar of Coleman-street, London, by the appointment of the parishioners. The ensuing eight years of his life were spent in the faithful discharge of his ministerial duties, and in the cultivation of his gifted and well-furnished mind. He became a hard student, a profound theologian and politician, and an attentive observer of the eventful and mysterious times in which his lot was cast. With deep sympathy he had watched the growth of puritan principles under circumstances of severe trial; and with ever increasing indignation had marked the advancement of tyranny, step by step, to its culminating horrors under the auspices of Strafford and Laud. When the civil war broke out, he at once took the side of the parliament against Charles and his court. He both preached and wrote in furtherance of its measures. His voice never faltered, his courage never failed him, amidst the varying fortunes of the war. Convinced of the justice of the cause he had espoused, he pursued its aims even to the last extremity; and when a series of military successes had brought the hereditary despot under the power of the people, his voice was heard the loudest, amidst the uproar of contending parties, for simple justice upon the crowned but vanquished delinquent. His peculiar views on some points of christian doctrine led to an estrangement between him and the congregational ministers of his day, as well as to a prejudiced estimate of his character at a later period, down to the present time; but none have ever doubted his ear |