special permission from parliament, was allowed to proceed to the discussion of this question. The first step was to propose a vote in the assembly that presbyterian government was _jure divino_. The only opponents of this decree were the small band of independents headed by Goodwin, the lay assessors Selden and Whitelock representing the erastian majority in parliament, whose only clerical supporter seems to have been Lightfoot the Hebraist. Selden, a layman of vast ecclesiastical lore, had a way of touching the sorest points of clerical feeling. In 1618 he had written his great work disproving the divine origin of tithes, and had been brought, in consequence, before the {301} High Commission court. There, with the ordinary suppleness of the erastian conscience, he signed the following recantation: [1] ‘My good lords, I most humbly acknowledge my error in publishing the history of tithes, and especially in that I have at all (by shewing any interpretation of scripture, or by meddling with councils, canons, fathers, or by what else soever occurs in it) offered any occasion of argument against any right of maintenance _jure divino_ of the ministers of the gospel; beseeching your lordships to receive this ingenuous and humble acknowledgment, together with the unfeigned protestation of my grief, that I have so incurred his majesty’s and your lordships’ displeasure.’ [1] [Neal, _Puritans_, i. p. 471.] The consciousness of debasement does not strengthen one’s affection for those who have been the occasion of it, and perhaps Selden’s remembrance of his usage by the ‘old priest’ may not have quickened his friendship for the ‘new presbyter.’ ‘In the debates of the divines,’ says Whitelock, ‘Mr. Selden spoke admirably and confuted divers of them in their own learning. Sometimes when they had cited a text of scripture to prove their assertion, he would tell them, “Perhaps in your little pocket bibles with gilt leaves (which they would often pull out and read) the translation may be thus, but the Greek or the Hebrew signifies thus and thus,” and so would totally silence them.’ [1] Whitelock himself opposed much grave law-logic to the claims of the divines, which he quotes at length in his memoirs, but his most satisfactory argument, to modern ears, is the simple one, ‘If this presbyterian government be not _jure divino_, no opinion of any council can make it to be what it is not; and if it be _jure divino_, it continues so still, although you do not declare it to be so.’ [2] The divines, however, thought otherwise. Presbyterianism was duly voted _jure divino_, and parliament in 1645 was applied to to enforce the _jus divinum_ under pains and penalties. That the presbyterian _jus_ was _divinum_ parliament could never be induced to decide. It was very near doing so on one occasion, when the divines had contrived to bring the question on in a packed house, but by the skill of sergeant Glyn and Whitelock