Charles came to Scotland to try to win over the Covenanters to help him against his Parliament. He would almost go the length of renouncing episcopacy, and he ratified the deeds of the Glasgow Assembly. But the Scots were on good terms with the English Parliament, and were even sanguine of extending the presbyterian covenant into England, where an anti-prelatical spirit was, under the now assertive puritanism, rapidly rising.
On the 1st of July, 1643, an assembly of divines from both countries, convoked by Parliament, met in Westminster Abbey. It was composed of men of learning, of zealous piety and strong purpose; but they were also men of their own time, sharing in its prejudices, its intolerance, and its admixture of dogmatic theology with the politics and the partizanship of the day. The grand truths, that God alone is Lord of the conscience, and that it is as vain to try to fix and arrest opinions as it is to fix the direction of the winds, or to arrest the tides, had not then come to be rooted in the minds of men. For four years the Assembly sat, arguing and discussing all the points in orthodox theology, and the various forms of church government. The fruits of the “great consult,” are in the form of documents which are still the recognised standards of presbyterian faith and worship throughout the world. In August, 1647, the Scottish commissioners reported the results to the Edinburgh General Assembly, and these results were received as the basis of uniformity in faith, to be established throughout the three kingdoms.
In England, the principle of Presbyterian church government was endorsed by Parliament, and a General Assembly and provincial synods were nominally appointed. But, on the one hand, the Anglican Church had many influential supporters; it had now been established for over a century, and had struck its roots deeply in the land; its supporters were by their opponents called _Erastians_, from a German doctor Erastus, who had advocated the subjection of the church to the state. On the other hand were the Independents, who stood out against enforced uniformity, and against any established creed or ritual. To allow of unrestrained latitudinarianism in religious opinions, seemed to the rigid presbyterians disloyalty to the faith,—servility to antichrist. Loudly and rancorously did this controversy rage; the more that the principle of uniformity was pressed, the more did independency branch out into protests against this principle, in new sects—each one more self- assertive than its neighbours. The political destinies of England were now under the arbitrament of the sword, and religious dominancy would be with supremacy in arms.