412 LIFE OF RICHARD BAXTER. had been hitherto .agreed ; and this was the rock on which was wrecked the cause of civil and religious liberty in England. Cotemporaneouslywith this division of opinions in relation to. ecclesiastical polity, there was drawn, insensibly,between the same parties, another line of distinction, which related to the conduct and the expected conclusion of the war. The Presbyterians seem to have calculated on the continuance of the kingly name, and some- thing of the kingly power: "their plan was to establish their favor- ite uniformity, and to secure it, as had already been done in Scot- land, before entering into any final agreement with the king. To this party naturally adhered all those men ofmoderate feelings and principles, who hoped for a reconciliation. The Independents, on the other hand, saw clearly .that Charles could never be trusted; theyhad no expectation that he could be brought to approve their scheme for the entire disjunction of church and state, and for the establishment of entire religious liberty ; and they thought that if it was lawful to carry on war against the king, it was equally law-, ful to conquer him, and that ifthe nation had been reduced to an- archy by his forfeiture of the trust reposed in him, the nation was in circumstances which justified the adoption of another and a bet- ter form of government. With them were of course allied that class of men, who were in love with the abstractrights of the, peo- ple, and who desired to see the throne and the aristocracy both giving way to the fairer institutions of a republic. The assembly of divines at Westminster has already been re- ferred to ; and as that body is hardly less famous in the history of those times than the parliament itself, some notice of its constitu- tion and character will not be irrelevant in this place. The West- minster Assembly was not a national synod or convocation, nor did it pretend to represent at all either the churches or the minis- ters. It consisted of one hundred and twenty-one divines, with thirty lay-assessors, called together by parliament to give advice on such questions as might be referred to them by the houses ; and to questions thus referred, all their debates and proceedings were expressly confined, by the parliamentary ordinance which brought them together. " The divines there congregated,"says Baxter, "were men of eminent learning, godliness, ministerial abilities, and fidelity; and being notworthy to be one of them myself, 1. may the more freely speak that truth which I know, even in the face of malice and envy, that as far as I am able.to judge by the information of all history of that kind, and by any other evidences left us, the Christian world, since the days of the apostles, had never a synod of more excellent divines, taking one thing with another, than this and the Synod of Dort." The assembly was composed chiefly of those ministers who, like
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