MINUTE BOOK OF THE WIRKSWORTH CLASSIS. 137 



The original Minutes of the Sessions of the Assembly of 

 Divines at Westminster, from August ist, 1643, ( lo\vn to March 

 25th, 1652, are contained in three folio volumes at the Williams 

 Library, London, and are in the handwriting of Adoniram Byfield, 

 one of the scribes of the Assembly.* The works that the sessions 

 of this Assembly incubated were the Directory of Public Worship, 

 the Confession of Faith, two Catechisms (the Longer and the 

 Shorter), and a form of Presbyterian Church Government. These 

 were all agreed upon and set forth by the authority of the 

 Assembly, but the last named relating to Church Government) 

 was not formally ratified by the Parliament. Their first work was 

 the Directory, which was confirmed by Parliament in the year 

 after their first assembling. Considering that many copies of this 

 Directory (which superseded the Book of Common Prayer) were 

 circulated in every parish of the kingdom, it is somewhat remark- 

 able how very few are extant at the present time. 



The copy of the Directory that is now lying before us is a small 

 quarto of forty pages, prefaced by the declaration of the Lords 

 and Commons in Parliament assembled, dated March 13th, 1644 

 ordering its printing and publishing under the direction of " Mr. 

 Henry Robrough and Mr. Adoniram Byfield, the Scribes of the 

 Assembly of Divines." The following is a transcript of the title 

 page :— 



The contents of these valuable volumes, so far as they relate to the 

 Confession of Faith and the Catechisms, were transcribed and published in 

 «74 for the Established Church of Scotland, under the editorship of Messrs 

 Mitchell and Struthers— but they contain much that has not yet been 

 analysed. Bound up with the third volume are the rough minutes of the 

 I resbytenan Assembly of London, from Nov. 27th, 1650, to April 24th i6« 

 i.e. from the eighth Assembly of the third Session to the sixteenth Assemi lv 

 of the thirteenth Session. This ought 10 be collated with the minutes for the 

 like period in the volume at Sion College. We found there were certain 

 variations Our thanks are due to the Williams Librarian for so readily riving 

 us eveiy facility for consulting these MSS. ' s & 



