Westminster Confession

About the Author

The Westminster Assembly of Divines was originally a group of English clergy and lay commissioners assigned to revise the doctrine and practices of the Church of England further away from Catholicism. In addition to drawing up a statement of faith, they were charged with reforming church government and public worship. They initially drew from a diversity of factions in the Church, including Anglicans, but as the proceedings continued, they were dominated by Reformed Presbyterian and Congregational divines. Many members came from the universities, and three ministers of French Reformed churches in London were members.

The English members were joined by Scottish lay and clerical delegates following the adoption of the Solemn League and Covenant. The English members were chosen by Parliament and the Scots by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Leaders of the Assembly included the prolocutor, or president, of the Assembly, the philosopher and theologian William Twisse (1578–1646); John Selden (1584–1654), a layman and England’s leading Hebrew scholar; and Stephen Marshall (ca. 1594–1655), one of the greatest preachers of the day.

The Scottish commissioners included the eminent theologian Samuel Rutherford (ca. 1600–1661), the Presbyterian leader Alexander Henderson (ca. 1583–1646), and the brilliant polemicist George Gillespie (1613–1648). One of the Scottish commissioners, Robert Baille (1602–1662), was only a minor actor in the Assembly, but his gossipy letters are one of our principal historical sources for the making of the Westminster Confession. Despite disagreements over particular points, the Assembly had a broadly Reformed consensus, and there were no openly expressed disagreements over fundamentals. The Assembly did not follow a rigid set of procedures. Much of its work, including the drafting of parts of the Westminster Confession, was entrusted to committees, but some sections were presented to the whole by men who were not members of the relevant or, indeed, of any committee.