dean
Prelacy, as to have been marked out by Laud as a special victim,--had been
condemned to the pillory, and suffered the loss of both his ears by the
sentence of that cruel prelate,--and had been rescued from his sufferings,
and restored to political life and influence, by the Long Parliament. He
was, moreover, both a learned man, an acute lawyer, and an able and subtle
controversialist, and his writings exercised at the time no mean
influence. When such men undertook the advocacy of the Erastian argument,
encouraged as they were by the English Parliament, it may well be
conceived that they would present it both in its ablest, and in its most
plausible form. And it is doing no discredit to Erastians of the present
day, to say that they are not likely to produce anything either more
profound in learning, or more able and acute in reasoning than was done by
their predecessors of the Long Parliament, and the Westminster Assembly.
If, therefore, Gillespie's Aaron's Rod completely defeated the acute and
able men of that day, we may well recommend it to the perusal of those
whose duty it may be to engage in a similar controversy in the present
age.

But while such were Gillespie's labours in the field of controversy, the
value of which could not be easily over-estimated, his memory would be
grievously wronged were we to regard him only as a controversialist. For
although the topics which first engaged the attention of the Westminster
Assembly were those on which the greatest difference of opinion existed,
and to which, almost of necessity, the public mind, both then and ever
since, has been most strongly directed, there was a very large portion of
their duty, and that, too, of the highest importance, and demanding the
utmost care, in which a much greater degree of unanimity prevailed. For a
considerable time after the Assembly commenced its deliberations, its
attention was almost exclusively occupied with the framing of Directories
for public worship and ordination, and with discussions respecting the
form of Church government, including the power of Church censure. These
topics involved both the Independent and the Erastian controversies; and
till some satisfactory conclusions had been reached on these points, the
Assembly abstained from entering upon the less agitating, but not less
important work of framing a Confession of Faith. But having completed
their task, so far as depended upon themselves, they then turned their