presbyterians

presbyterians were supporters of Calvinism, preaching the doctrine of the elect and advocating church government by a hierarchy of courts—the kirk session, the presbytery in a locality, the synod in a region, and the general assembly, consisting of ministers and elders, governing the whole church. Ultimate authority was the Bible and services gave great prominence to preaching. The leading exponent of presbyterianism in the Elizabethan church was Thomas Cartwright, responsible for the millenary petition to James I in 1603, which objected to surplices, bowing at the name of Jesus, and other ceremonies. They were in strong opposition to Archbishop Laud, and after his imprisonment dominated the Westminster Assembly called by Parliament in 1643 to reform the church. The Westminster Confession which they put forward and which was accepted by Parliament in 1648 was a presbyterian statement and the basis for their domination during the Commonwealth and Protectorate. Bishops were abolished, statues and pictures removed, ceremonies cleansed. In Scotland, presbyterianism, brought by John Knox from Geneva in 1559, made rapid progress and was the core of the Solemn League and covenant, adopted in 1643.

After the Restoration, the fortunes of English and Scottish presbyterianism diverged. In England, hopes of a compromise with the Church of England faded fast and many of the 2,000 ministers forced out by the Act of Uniformity in 1662 were presbyterians. Thereafter, presbyterianism formed a declining dissenting sect, vulnerable to socinian and unitarian arguments in the early 18th cent. and outdistanced by the methodists in the later 18th cent. The Presbyterian Church in England, re-established in 1844, was reported to have only 76 places of worship in 1851—one-fifth the number of quaker meeting-houses. After severe persecution in the reigns of Charles II and James II, the Scottish presbyterians emerged triumphant in 1690, when their church was recognized as the established Church of Scotland. Its special position was guaranteed by the Act of Union of 1707.

J. A. Cannon