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contained in the Confession of Faith … to be the truths of God" and the confession of the signers' personal faith. Despite Dr. Candlish's efforts to explain it away, this obviously means and was intended by the Assembly of 1711, which framed the formula, to mean (in the present Principal Cunningham's words), acceptance of "the whole doctrine" ("every detail and syllable," as he elsewhere exaggeratingly expresses it,) of the Confession, not of its "doctrine as a whole." Instead of being disturbed or infected by the restlessness of these Churches, bound to a confession with a strictness that must wound every tender conscience which finds any phraseology in the document to which it can raise any exception, we should pity them as brethren still in durance, and point out to them the safe pathway through which we escaped more than a century and a half ago. Certainly, so far as there are those among us who are led to believe that the Confession of Faith needs revision, because the foreign Churches are more or less restless under their relation to it, the movement is not only not a spontaneous one among us, but even a spurious one.

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      III.

      What has already been said will suggest some of the reasons why we do not think that the issue of the present overture will be extensive doctrinal change, or even important verbal change, in the Standards of the Presbyterian Church. As discussion goes on, it can scarcely fail to become increasingly plain to all, not only that the Presbyterian Church is satisfied with her Standards, but that she loves them and finds in them the best statement—most moderate and most inclusive as well as most logical and most complete—of the truth of God as she apprehends it, that has ever been framed. Some of the reasons that must, as it seems to us, operate to lead her, not blindly and fanatically, but intelligently and liberally, to refuse to undertake any important revision of these time-honored formularies may be indicated as follows:

      (1). So long as the Church remains as heartily convinced as she at present undoubtedly is, that what is known as the Calvinistic system of doctrine is the truth of God as delivered through the prophets and apostles, she is without grievance in her relation to her Standards. There is always an infelicity in requiring individuals to affirm of any public Confession that it is the confession, in all its parts, of their private faith. A public document by that very fact cannot be in all its parts just the expression of the private faith which every one of its signers would frame for himself. To require a large body of ministers to affirm of any public Confession that they accept its "whole doctrine" as "truths of God" is a strain too great to put upon conscience, and must foster on the one hand a spirit of evasion and subterfuge, and on the other a keen sense of every infelicity in language or conception in the Confession and a restless anxiety to have them removed—hopeless task though this obviously is, seeing that the very phraseology which is oppressive to one is the only tolerable expression ​of the faith of another. The American Church has required of its office-bearers, from the beginning, however, subscription only to "all the essential and necessary articles," or as, in our later formula, to "the system of doctrine" in the Confession, as "good forms of sound words." In our view, this subscription is an ideal one. It does not ask us to affirm that the Westminster Confession is perfect or infallible, or that we adopt every proposition in it; but only that we heartily accept the system of doctrine taught in it, and all the doctrines that are essential to the integrity of that system. The office-bearer in the Presbyterian Church thus is merely asked to affirm that he recognizes in the Confession of Faith an expression—an adequate expression—of the system of truth which he believes God has given to the Church. He is at liberty to believe, if he will, that the Heidelberg Catechism is an equally good or better expression of the same system; or the Canons of the Synod of Dort; or the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England; or any other sound Reformed creed. But he must believe in this system. So long as we are Calvinists, then, we say, the relation that Presbyterian office-holders bear to the Confession is an ideal one; their subscription is just such as must operate, when honestly taken and administered, to keep out all the wrong men and to keep in all the right ones.

      (2). So long as we are Calvinists, we may add, our whole situation with reference to our Creed is one that is incapable of improvement. The individual's relation to the Creed might conceivably be improved, by letting him frame his own creed, which with care might be made an exact transcript of his personal faith; but just in proportion as this individual credo fitted the idiosyncrasies of his personal conceptions and modes of expression, it would be unacceptable in its details and forms to every other individual. No public creed can be framed which every individual of ​some thousands of office-bearers can adopt as the exact expression of his personal faith. We need not go to the extreme of Mr. Taylor Innis, who says that "there is no honest or sane man who will pretend that any proposition in religious truth constructed by others, exactly expresses his own view of that religious truth"; but this is certainly in a measure true of all extended Confessions. However, then, we should alter the Confession of Faith, whether little or much, however we burdened it with Declaratory Statements, whether many or few, to whatever extent we should substitute for it other creeds, whether new or old, whether long or short, we should be at the end of the process exactly where we were in the beginning. We should still be face to face with a creed which we all could accept for system of doctrine, and which no one of us could accept in all its propositions and phrases. If our present Creed is acceptable to us, then, for system of doctrine—and that it is, ought to be evinced by the mere fact that we have all accepted it as such—it is hardly worth while to embark on extensive projects of revision in order to arrive at precisely the same haven from which we started out.

      (3). And so long as we are Calvinists, we may add again, it seems hopeless to expect to improve upon the Westminster Confession in stating the system which we believe. The fact is that the Westminster Confession of Faith registers the high-water mark of the confessional statement of Calvinistic doctrine. Men have spoken of it in these latter days, indeed, as cold, scholastic, logical—standing at an extreme point in the development of Calvinism; and they have repeated these statements until many are ready to believe them. But it is almost impossible to avoid suspecting that such deliverances rest on insufficient acquaintance with the document itself. Logical no doubt it is—is to be logical a fault?—but it is no less devout than logical. The ​product of an age "when" (as Dr. Alex. F. Mitchell describes it) "the Church was still under the happy influence of a marvellous revival, when the Word of God was felt as a living, quickening, transforming power, and preached, not as a tradition but as the very power and wisdom of God," and framed "by men of ripe scholarship and devoted piety, who have remained our models of earnest preaching, and our guides in practical godliness, even until this day," it would be strange, indeed, if it lacked that atmosphere and tone of vital godliness which, as a matter of fact, fills every phrase of it, and enters unawares into the heart of every one who really feeds on it. And it stands at an extreme point in the development of Calvinism, not in the sense that it embodies an extreme Calvinism, but only in the sense that it has skimmed the cream of moderate and tolerant Calvinistic thought. No Calvinism is sweeter, purer, more devout, more catholic, than the Calvinism of the Westminster Standards. The Confession of Faith is, as it has been well phrased, "a model of guarded strength in moderation." Baillie tells us that it was "cried up," at the time, "by many of their greatest opposites, as the best Confession yet extant"; and from that day to this, it has never ceased to command the admiration of even those who could not accept it—as, for example, of the late Dr. Curry, who characterized it as "the ablest, clearest, and most comprehensive system of Christian doctrine ever framed." So intent were its framers on so stating doctrine as to throw the stress on the practical and religious value of it, and so careful were they to state it so moderately as to make it inclusive of all forms of truly Calvinistic thought, that it seems scarcely possible to touch one of their guarded clauses without both hardening and narrowing it. When once some specific revision is seriously attempted, the Church is likely to fall back on Dr. Mitchell's advice: "It will be ​time enough to think of change, when a school of theologians of riper scholarship and more patient study, of higher culture and deeper piety, shall arise among us";—which time is not yet. We will certainly do well to cling to the Westminster Confession until we can better it.

      (4) . In circumstances such as these, the historical integrity of so venerable and noble a document will appeal to the Church as worth preserving. Presbyterians are no relic-worshippers; they claim the right, and have exercised it, of adapting their Creed to their living

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