s. "Mr. Marshall will be most welcome; but if Mr. Nye, the head of
the Independents, be his fellow, we cannot take it well."--Baillie, i. 372.
They both preached before the Assembly. "We heard Mr. Marshall with great
contentment. Mr. Nye did not please. He touched neither in prayer or
preaching the common business. All his sermon was on the common head of
spiritual life, wherein he ran out above all our understandings."--Id.
388.]

[Footnote 3: Baillie, i. 379, 380. Rushworth, v. 467, 470.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. July 20.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. August 27.]

preliminary, the sanction of the kirk. It was useless to reply that this
was a civil, and not a religious treaty. The Scots rejoined, that the two
houses had always announced the reformation of religion as the chief of
their objects; that they had repeatedly expressed their wish of "a nearer
union of both churches;" and that, in their last letters to the Assembly,
they had requested the members to aid them with their prayers and
influence, to consult with their commissioners, and to send some Scottish
ministers to join the English divines assembled at Westminster.[1] Under
these circumstances, Vane and his colleagues could not refuse to admit a
deputation from the Assembly, with Henderson the moderator at its head. 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
wer