(Continued from page 299.)
IN March, 1654, the Protector invited the leading ministers of the Resolutioners and Protesters to repair to London to discuss “the settlement of the discomposed condition both of the godly people and ministers of Scotland.” For one reason or another Douglas, Blair, and Guthrie did not go, but Patrick Gillespie, John Livingstone, and James Ninian accepted the Protector’s invitation (Consultations of the Ministers of Edinburgh, pp. 70, 71; Baillie’s Letters, iii., 243, 253). The result of this visit, among other things, was the framing of an ordinance for the government of the Church. This ordinance, dated 8th August, 1654, made provision for a new order of things, which was strongly opposed by Resolutioners and Protesters alike. Next year (1655) Gillespie and his party received a Commission from Cromwell for settling the troubled affairs of the Church in accordance with the Ordinance of 1654. In it Cromwell expresses approval of a national establishment of religion. This new move split the Protesters into two parties. Wariston and Guthrie rejected the Commission as an Erastian arrangement. A new development took place under the guidance of Lord Broghill, Lord President of the Privy Council. A Council of Eight had been constituted, and it prevailed upon the Resolutioners to accept of the substance of the Ordinance, and to live peaceably under the Commonwealth Government. The section of the Protesters led by Wariston and Guthrie were not to be won over. Patrick Gillespie and John Livingstone of the Protesters, however, were brought over.
A series of conferences were now entered on between the Resolutioners and Protesters with a view of settling their differences. The first conference took place on 1st June, 1655. The Resolutioners were represented by David Dickson, Robert Douglas, James Wood, Robert Baillie, John Robieson, John Smyth, Robert Ker, James Ferguson, James Sharp, ministers; and the Protesters by Samuel Rutherford, Robert Traill, James Guthrie, Patrick Gillespie, James Nasmyth, William Somerville, ministers, and Sir Archibald Johnston of Wariston, Colonel John Christie, and Colonel Gilbert Ker. Overtures for union were sent by the Resolutioners, but no reply came from the Protesters until 8th November, when another conference had convened, and both by word and writing the matter was fully discussed. It would be impossible to give here the arguments brought forward on either side. But the following headings of the papers which passed between the contending parties will show that they were not idle:—Overtures for Union offered the Dissenting Brethren; Overtures for Union, given by the Dissenters upon 9th November, 1655; Queries proposed by the Brethren for the Assemblies upon the Overtures given in by the Dissenters; Answers to the Queries propounded; Queries from the Protesters upon the Overtures; Queries on the Whole Overture; Answers to the Queries; Overtures by the Brethren for the Assemblies, etc.; Paper given upon 19th November by the Protesters; Answers to this Paper; Representation of Matters conceded to the Protesters by the Resolutioners; Protesters’ Answer to this Representation; Return of the Protesters’ Answer; Protesters’ Reply. The papers occupy ninety-three pages of print in the Consultations. The Conferences came to nothing, and in their last paper the Protesters say:—”We would desire such of our brethren of whom we have a more precious esteem for their ability and godliness and for what they have done in the work of the Lord, to consider well whether it be probable that the house of God in this land would be purged from insufficient and scandalous ministers in most places by presbyteries and synods, as they now are. Sure we are, that before the beginning of our differences, these our worthy brethren had no such expectation nor confidence, and therefore they were arranged amongst the most forward for persuading the General Assembly to appoint and authorise men nominated by the Assembly itself for doing of the work. And is there anything now to be found in most part of presbyteries and synods, that gives them more real cause of a well-grounded expectation that way, than they had before? And we would also desire these our brethren to consider that the men whom they did once know and acknowledged to be neutral and indifferent or backward and unforward in the work of the Lord, and none of the fittest to preach the gospel, nor none of the best friends to those that desire to live godly, are but the same they were before, if not something worse, and that, if they were not a little covered, and strengthened by being joined in one way with these our brethren who were once also unsavoury to them as we are now, the house of the Lord would sooner be rid of such as do not deserve a place therein” (Consultations of the Ministers of Edinburgh, i., 183, 184). The Resolutioners, on learning that the Protesters contemplated sending representatives to London to interview Cromwell, arranged to send one of their number; their choice fell upon James Sharp, which could scarcely have fallen on a more dangerous man, as time was soon to show. The Resolutioners had not suspected Sharp in any way, but Cromwell’s keen discernment recognised that he was Sharp by name and sharp by practice, as he styled him after the Scottish fashion of designating lairds of the same name as their estates: “Sharp of that ilk,” that is, “Sharp of Sharp.” One wonders what was Dr. Owen’s opinion of the wily ecclesiastic as he discussed Scottish Church matters with the great Puritan divine. In January, 1657, the Resolutioners issued their “True Representation of the Rise, Progress, and State of the Present Division in the Church of Scotland.” In February of the same year the representatives of the Resolutioners and Protesters appeared before Cromwell, and in a long letter Sharp gives an account of what took place. This letter concludes the first volume of the Consultations. This is, as we have said already, a work of special interest to the student of Scottish Church history who is anxious for light on the controversy that raged so long and bitterly in the Scottish Church. It is very important to have a real knowledge of the facts that lie in the background if one is to have an intelligent grasp of the significance of James Durham’s noted treatise on Scandal, which is one of the most powerful and persuasive pleas for union which was ever penned by a Scottish divine.
The first volume of the Consultations takes us down to 1657, but there is nothing in the new material published which in any way goes to prove that the Protesters had misjudged the trend of ecclesiastical events. They were by no means perfect; there was a sternness in their contentions that repelled gentler natures, and at times a ruthlessness in ignoring of what broader-minded people might term the proprieties of religious controversy; but the clear, broad, unmistakable facts stand out that the Protesters, with all their faults, were men who had a keener insight into the tangled state of things than their broader-minded and more charitable brethren, the Resolutioners, and the verdict of the future was to be decidedly on the side of the Protesters.