Philip Nye, a man of ability in some respects, and of bustling habits, stands out as chief of the five. Zealous in his commendations of the Covenant, he with equal zeal opposed Presbyterianism: the very thing which, according to the fairest rules of interpretation, it must be held to symbolize. He has been charged with disingenuousness; but experience in the matter of subscription makes charitable people slow to urge the charge. Those who vindicate subscription in "non-natural senses" ought to be the last to fling a stone at Philip Nye; and those who take the opposite side can hardly praise him for consistency of conduct. How the Covenant could be adopted by any one professing Independency is a puzzle, and the puzzle in Nye's case is the greater, because, not content with quietly assenting to it as many others did, he appears to have been a chief instrument in bringing it over the border, and in enforcing it upon his companions. Thomas Goodwin surpassed Nye in learning and in other respects. His writings present him to us as an accomplished theologian, and a many-sided thinker, and shew that scarcely any forms of thought in metaphysical divinity escaped his notice.[419] The breadth and excursiveness of his reflective powers are the more remarkable when viewed in connexion with his rigid Calvinism. He joined Philip Nye in a preface to "Cotton's Keys," and in it expounded ecclesiastical opinions, in accordance with those of the New England churches. [Sidenote: _Members of the Assembly._] William Bridge--once a Norwich clergyman, then a refugee in Holland--won a reputation for learning as well as piety. His library, well stocked with fathers, schoolmen, and critics, so attracted him, that he rose at four o'clock both winter and summer, that he might have time for reading these favourites. Being a man of broad sympathies, he accustomed himself to enquiries beyond the range of his profession, and boldly handled constitutional questions. Adopting the opinion, that "the people formed the first subject and receptacle of civil power;" an opinion which was the mainstay of the Parliament's policy, Bridge shrunk not from declaring, "In case a prince shall neglect his trust, so as not to preserve his subjects, but to expose them to violence, it is no usurpation in them to look to themselves, but an exercise of that power which was always their own."[420] He had suffered under Laud, and knew what it was to walk in paths of confessorship, so that his exhortations had no little power to comfort, when he said to his people in trouble: "Certainly, if God's charge be your charge, your charge shall be His charge, and being so, you have His bond that they shall never want their daily bread." [Sidenote: 1643, September.]