oceed
to Edinburgh, to be present at the meeting of the General Assembly in
August, and to seek a conference, respecting the best method of forming
the basis of a religious and civil confederacy between the two kingdoms,
in their time of mutual danger. These Commissioners, accordingly, attended
the meeting of the Assembly in Edinburgh, and the result of their
conferences was the framing of that well-known bond of union between the
two countries, THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT--"a document which we may be
pardoned for terming the noblest, in its essential nature and principles,
of all that are recorded among the international transactions of the
world."

As the main object for which the Solemn League and Covenant was framed,
was to secure the utmost practicable degree of uniformity in the religious
worship of both countries; and, as the English Divines had already met at
Westminster to take the whole subject into consideration, and had
requested the assistance of Commissioners from the Church of Scotland, the
General Assembly named some of the most eminent of their ministers and
elders as Commissioners to the Westminster Assembly. These were, Alexander
Henderson, Robert Douglas, Robert Baillie, Samuel Rutherford, and George
Gillespie, ministers; and the Earl of Cassilis, Lord Maitland, and Sir
Archibald Johnston of Warriston, elders; but neither the Earl of Cassilis
nor Robert Douglas went. Three of these, Lord Maitland, Henderson, and
Gillespie, set off for London, along with the English Commissioners,
immediately after the rising of the General Assembly; the other three,
Warriston, Rutherford, and Baillie, followed about a month afterwards. On
the 15th of September the Scottish Commissioners were received into the
Westminster Assembly with great kindness and courtesy; and, on the 25th of
the same month, the Solemn League and Covenant was publicly sworn and
subscribed by both Parliament and Assembly, after addresses by Nyo and
Henderson. It was not, however, till the 12th of October, that the
Westminster Assembly commenced its serious deliberations concerning Church
Government, Discipline, and a Directory of Worship, in the hope of
arriving at such conclusions as might produce religious uniformity in the
Churches of England, Scotland, and Ireland, if not also with the Reformed
Churches of the Continent.

Scarcely had the Westminster Assembly begun its deliberations, when it
became abundantly apparent, that, however sin