Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/94

 At the same time that the existence of a division in the Assembly other than that of Presbyterian and Independent was thus revealed, the Presbyterian majority was drifting into open hostilities with the House of Commons. The actual collision was caused by the Assembly’s insistence on the divine authority for the powers it assigned to the presbytery. Without a coercive power in the eldership capable of searching and. controlling the private lives of men, the Presbyterian discipline was worth very little. That power was supplied in the authority of the elders to suspend the ignorant and the scandalous from the Lord’s Supper. The House of Commons was disposed to limit this power in the elderships, either by limiting them to a specific list of offenses, or else by allowing appeals from the discretionary power of the elders to parliamentary committees or to local boards of lay commissioners. So limited, according to Baillie, the power of the presbytery was merely nominal. The decisive battle for the Presbyterian discipline had to be decided at this point.

That battle dragged on for a year, with platforms and declarations from the Assembly, petitions from the Presbyterians in London, and what not. Its results need only be summarized. In June of 1645, the Assembly first advanced its claim of divine right for the power to decide on the sins that should bar from the sacrament. In the next March, it made a similar demand under circum-