The first part of the task in which the Westminster Assembly was engaged, was the framing of a Directory for Public Worship. This having been completed about the close of the year 1644, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland met on the 23d of January, 1645, to take this Directory into consideration, and to give it their sanction, should it be found satisfactory. Baillie and Gillespie were sent to Scotland, to be present at the Assembly, that they might introduce the subject, and give any explanation that might appear necessary, and to do everything in their power to procure for it the desired approbation. In this they were completely successful, and the Assembly passed an act sanctioning the Directory,—that act having been written, as Baillie informs us, by Gillespie. Having accomplished the object of their mission, they returned to London, where Gillespie was speedily engaged in the Erastian Controversy, during which he produced his greatest work. We have already referred to the distinguished ability with which Gillespie encountered and defeated Selden, in the discussion which arose within the Westminster Assembly itself. But the principles of Erastianism were entertained by many who were not members of that Assembly, and were advocated in other quarters, so as to lead to a literary controversy. The Rev. Thomas Coleman, one of the Erastians divines, the other being Lightfoot, preached a sermon before the House of Commons, on the 30th of July, 1645, in which there was a peculiar display of Erastianism of the very strongest kind. This sermon was printed, as were all sermons preached before either House, and excited at once the disapprobation of all the friends of religious liberty. It did not remain long unanswered. On the 27th of August, the same year, Gillespie preached before the House of Lords; and when his sermon was also published, he added to it an appendix entitled, “A Brotherly Examination of some passages of Mr Coleman’s late printed sermon.” In this appendix Gillespie not only answered and refuted Coleman, but turned his arguments completely against himself. Coleman soon afterwards published a pamphlet entitled, “A Brotherly Examination Re-examined.” To this Gillespie replied in another bearing the title, “Nihil Respondes,” in which he somewhat sharply exposed the weak and inconclusive character of his opponent’s argument. Irritated by the castigation he had received, Coleman published a bitter reply, to which he gave the somewhat unintelligible title of “Male Dicis Maledicis,”—intending, probably, to insinuate that Gillespie’s answer was of a railing character. This roused Gillespie, and induced him to put forth his controversial power in a singularly vigorous pamphlet, entitled, “Male Audis,” in which he took a rapid survey of the whole Erastian controversy, so far as Coleman and some of his friends had brought it forward, convicted him and them of numerous self-contradictions, of