The Directory of Public Worship was approved of and ratified by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held at Edinburgh in February, 1645; the Confession of Faith, by that held in Au gust, 1647; the Larger and Shorter Ca techisms, by that held in July, 1648; and these formularies still continue to consti tute the authorized standards of that establishment. The Directory of Public Worship was ratified by both houses of the English parliament on the 2nd of October, 1644; and also the doctrinal part of the Confession of Faith, with some slight verbal alterations, in March, 1648. On the 13th of October, 1647, the House of Commons passed an order that the Presbyterian form of church government should be tried for a year; but it was never conclusively established in England by legislative authority ; and even what was done by the parliament in partial confirmation of the proposals of the West minster Assembly of Divines, having been done without the royal assent, was all regarded as of no validity at the Restoration, upon which event episcopacy resumed its authority without any act being passed to that effect.
It is remarkable that there is not in existence, as far as is known, any com plete account of the proceedings of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, either printed or in manuscript. The official
record is commonly supposed to has...! perished in the fire of London. Three volumes of notes by Dr. Thomas Goodwin are preserved in Dr. Williams's Library, London ; and two volumes by George Gillespie in the Advocate's Library, Edin burgh. Baillie's Letters, however, con tain very full details of what was done during the period of his attendance; and a Journal kept by Lightfoot has also been printed. Much information is to be found scattered in various works, such as Reid's 'Memoirs of the Westminster Divines ;' Orme's ` Life of Owen ;' and especially Neal's History of the Puritans.' The only work that has appeared professing to be a' History of the Westminster As sembly of Divines' is a 12mo. volume, of 390 pages, with that title, by the Rev. W. M. Hetherington, then minister of Torphichen, published at Edinburgh in the year 1843. The reader is referred for a further account of the sources of information on the subject to Mr. He therington's Preface, and to a note on p. 521 of Aiton's Life and Times of Alexander Henderson,' 8vo.. Edinburgh, 1836.