Letter LIX

Summary

IN witnessing the forms of the Presbyterian Convocation, I could not help feeling a greater degree of interest than I should otherwise have done, from the notion that in them, and, indeed, in the whole aspect of the Assembly, not a little might be perceived of the same appearances which characterized, two centuries ago, those more important meetings, in which the Presbyterian party in Church and State took the lead and direction. On the first day of the Assembly, for example, after the Commissioner had delivered his credentials, which consisted of a long pious epistle upon parchment, from the Prince Regent to the Ministers and Elders in General Assembly convened, wherein his Royal Highness stimulates them to a still more zealous discharge of their respective duties, by all manner of devout arguments, and copious quotations from the minor Prophets and Epistles—and after the Moderator had returned thanks for this favour, and intimated the firm resolution of himself and his brethren to profit, as far as the infirmities of their nature might permit, by the faithful admonitions of “the nursing father of our Zion,”—after these ceremonies had been duly gone through, the whole of the forenoon, that is from twelve till five o’clock, was devoted to a succession of extemporaneous or seemingly extemporaneous prayers delivered by the Moderator himself, and after him by various clergymen in different quarters of the house, who appeared to call upon each other for addresses to the Deity, in the same way as the members of less sacred assemblies call upon each other for glees and catches. This reminded me most strongly of the descriptions which Clarendon gives of the opening of the Sessions of the Rump—to say nothing of the committees of major-generals under Cromwell. The long, dreary, dreamy, wandering, threadless discourses, too, which some of the reverend performers took occasion to deliver, reminded me of some of the crafty vaguenesses of old Noll himself, and the more sincere absurdities of Sir Harry Vane.