---
title: 'Franklin Patton’s Tribute to the Westminster Divines'
type: post
author: 'R. Andrew Myers'
date: 2025-06-25
url: https://confessional.org/blog/2025-franklin-pattons-tribute-to-the-westminster-divines
---

# Franklin Patton’s Tribute to the Westminster Divines

“The following vow was taken by all who took their seats as members of the \[Westminster Assembly\], and it was read in the hearing of the assembly once every week: ‘I, ——, do seriously promise and vow, in the presence of Almighty God, that in this assembly of which I am a member, I will maintain nothing in point of doctrine but what I believe to be most agreeable to the Word of God; nor in point of discipline but what I shall conceive to conduce most to the glory of God and the good and peace of his Church.’

They perilled their lives and fortunes when they met as servants of Parliament and in defiance of the king’s command, who by proclamation forbade the assembly. Who can doubt their sincerity? They lived at a time when the Bible was the one book that all England read. The literature that fills our libraries at the present day was not then written. The Word of God was the chief literary treasure of the people. The great battle between the papists and Protestants, between Puritans and Unitarians, Arminians and Calvinists, and on all Church questions, had been ably fought. Almost all possible questions in theology had been fully discussed by theological giants when the convention met at Westminster. Their views on doctrinal and ecclesiastical questions manifest the settled convictions of the wisest and purest men of that age, both in England and on the continent, after more than a century of earnest controversy.” — [**Franklin Patton**](/authors/franklin-patton), *The Genesis of the Westminster Assembly* (1889), pp. 73-75