Protestantism in Scotland - James Aitken Wylie

Church."[8] Apart there sat a little party; they
amounted to ten or eleven divines, the most
distinguished of whom were Philip Nye and
Thomas Goodwin, whom Wood, in his Athenae,
styles "the Atlases and patriarchs of
independency." On the right hand of the
prolocutor, occupying the front bench, sat the
Scottish commissioners. A large share in the debate
on all questions fell to them; and their dialectic
skill and theological learning, having just come
from the long and earnest discussion of the same
questions in their own country, enabled them to
influence Powerfully the issue.
Each proposition was first considered in
committee. There it was long and anxiously
debated. It was next discussed sentence by
sentence and word by word in the Assembly. Into
these discussions it is unnecessary for us to enter.
Laboriously and patiently, during the slow process
of more than five years, did the builders toil in the
rearing of their edifice. They sought to the best of
their knowledge and power to build it on the rock
of the Scriptures. They meant to rear a temple in
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