Terms of union now became the absorbing question, and hard debates ensued. The English Commissioners preferred a civil league, and the Scotch were earnest for a religious covenant. The former wished for a bond of reciprocal aid between nation and nation to maintain the interests of civil liberty; the latter longed for a holy confederation between church and church, for the maintenance of Protestant truth and worship, against papal and prelatic superstitions. As Vane and Nye belonged to a party in England which advocated religious toleration, and as the latter avowed himself an Independent, they would both be averse to the establishment of such uniformity as was advocated by Presbyterians, and would be anxious to keep a door open for the admission of congregational liberty. "Against this," Baillie states, "we were peremptory." What was to be done? Succour from the Scotch was indispensable, but the Scotch had determined not to grant it save on their own conditions. The English Commissioners therefore felt compelled to enter into a compromise; and stipulating that it should be a _League_ to meet their own views of it as a civil compact, they yet allowed it to be a _Covenant_ for the satisfaction of those who chiefly valued its religious character and bearings. Without impugning the motives of either party, we must say, now that the lapse of more than two centuries has hushed to silence the tempestuous controversy, that this modification of the compact seems very much like playing at a game of words, and that, after all this hair-splitting, the two contracting powers became equally bound to the whole agreement, however they might choose to interpret the phraseology. The English Commissioners, by accepting the Covenant, pledged themselves to the cause of which the Scotch Presbyterians regarded it as the symbol; and looking at the ecclesiastical opinions of Vane and Nye, we cannot defend their conduct on this occasion against the charge of inconsistency. The Commissioners believed they had accomplished an important object by what they had done; and when the Solemn League and Covenant came before the General Assembly, a hearty affection toward England was "expressed in tears of pity and joy by very many grave, wise, and old men," as the moderator, Mr. Henderson, after making an oration, read over the document twice amidst loud applause. [Sidenote: 1643, August.] Three Scotch Commissioners, with Philip Nye, set sail on the thirtieth of August; but eight days before they started, the English had despatched a ketch, with a duplicate copy of the famous instrument, and on the first of September it reached the Westminster Assembly.