He
submitted to their consideration the form of a "solemn league and covenant"
which should bind the two nations to prosecute the public incendiaries, to
preserve the king's life and authority in defence of the true religion
and the liberties of both kingdoms, to extirpate popery, prelacy, heresy,
schism, and profaneness, and to establish a conformity of doctrine,
discipline, and church government throughout the island. This last clause
alarmed the commissioners. They knew that, though the majority of the
parliamentarians inclined to the Presbyterian tenets, there existed among
them a numerous and most active party (and of these Vane himself was among
the most distinguished) who deemed all ecclesiastical authority an invasion
of the rights of conscience; and they saw that, to introduce an obligation
so repugnant to the principles of the latter, would be to provoke an open
rupture, and to marshal the two sects in hostile array against each other.
But the zeal of the
[Footnote 1: Journals, vi. 140.]
Scottish theologians was inexorable; they refused to admit any opening to
the toleration of the Independents; and it was with difficulty that they
were at last persuaded to intrust the working of the article to two
or three individuals of known and approved orthodoxy.
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