In July 1643, the assembly of divines to the number of one hundred and fifty-one, had convened in the Abbey Church, Westminster. The members, the proceedings and the results of this meeting have combined to invest it with profound interest. A glance at the list of the names is like looking at a scale of mountains. How the blood rises as we read a roll-call, containing such words as Selden, Henry Vane, Oliver St. John, Dr. Goodwin, Dr. Calamy, Dr. Lightfoot, Archbishop Usher, Dr. Gataker, Dr. Hammond, and Samuel Rutherford, men only overtopped in that age of Anakin by three who were not members–Howe, Cromwell, and Milton.. The assembly was the collected pith, essence, and glory of the theology of the age; composed of men full of the ripe spirit of the reformation, and whose hearts were as bold, as their piety was ardent–their learning extensive and their faith firm. The purpose of their meeting, how grand! To settle, and as it were, to crystallize, the chaos of controverting ages and elements–to frame a system of truth which should rule generations yet unborn–to cast Protestantism on a pyramidical pile, on which the waves of infidelity and of superstition should beat in vain; and by doing so to save a church and a kingdom from ruin, distraction, and civil war; this, whatever we think of the success of their accomplishment was unquestionably their aim… whatever many may think about the propriety or value of such documents at all, no candid Christian man will deny, that they contain in them masses of condensed and sublime truth–that some of their individual sentences such as “God alone is Lord of the conscience,” stand out as if written in the stars–that as a clear compact, popular manual of orthodox divinity the Shorter Catechism has never been equalled, and that altogether, had it been possible to stereotype any form or shape of that infinite thing–the truth of God—the Westminster divines would have stereotyped it; and that had it been possible to arrest and fix the elastic energies of that “fire unfolding itself” ! which we call religion—they would have arrested and fixed it forever. This, thank God! was impossible, and this they failed to do; but le them have their praise for the instruction, the delight, the guardian power, the deep moral influences, which their writings have given and exerted over millions, and in a degree, perhaps only inferior to the inspired volume itself. [George Gilfillian]