As early as 1540, two great types of the reform of
religion in northern Europe had made themselves manifest. Luther had molded the
one type. Calvin had molded, or begun the molding of, the other. Luther was for
retaining of medieval doctrine, government, worship, many things - whatever
seemed to him desirable and not forbidden in the Word of God. Calvin was for
bringing the Church into conformity with the pattern shown in the Word. He would
have the Church hold the faith taught in the Word, govern itself according to
the principles taught in the Word, and conduct its exercises of worship
according to maxims derivable from the Word. He believed in the sufficiency of
the Scriptures as a rule of faith and practice, and would have had the Church
conform in all respects to Scripture teaching. Lutheranism was the great type of
moderate reform in northern Europe. Calvinism was the great type of
thoroughgoing reform. Owing to the peculiar genius of the German people and to
the peculiar favoring providences, Lutheranism prevailed widely throughout north
Germany and Scandinavia, but not a few in these regions carved a more
thoroughgoing reform. Owing to the peculiar genius of the French, the Dutch, and
south Germans, and to favoring providences, Calvinism prevailed in France, in
the Netherlands, and in certain south German States and cities; amongst these
peoples, however, there were some who had a greater love for features of the
medieval Church and would have retained them. There were, thus, on the Continent
two great types of reform movement, the one dominant in the one quarter, and
other dominant in other quarters. At the same time, in the sphere within which
moderate reform prevailed there was more or less demand for thoroughgoing
reform; and in the sphere within which thoroughgoing reform prevailed there was
more or less desire for merely moderate reform.
In England, also, two types of reform were clearly
manifest from the early days of Queen Elizabeth, the one a moderate, the other a
type tending to thoroughgoing reform, each type indigenous, but each type
strengthened by influences from beyond the Channel. The development of these two
types of ecclesiastical reform in England was mightily influenced by the action
of the crown, the one type being swerved by attraction, the other stimulated by
opposition. In no other country did the throne influence the character of reform
so greatly. This was owing to this fact, amongst other forces, that the head of
the English State had been made the head of the English Church. Henry VIII had,
for personal and, in the main, base reasons, revolted from the Papal rule; and
had secured at the hands of Parliament in 1534 the "Act of Supremacy," which
ordered that the King "shall be taken, accepted and reputed the only supreme
Head in earth of the Church of England, and shall have and enjoy annexed and
united to the Imperial Crown of this realm as well the title and style thereof
as all the honors, jurisdictions, authorities, immunities, profits and
commodities to the said dignity belonging, with full power to visit, repress,
redress, reform, and amendall such errors, heresies, abuses, contempts and
enormities, which, by any manner of spiritual authority or jurisdiction might or
may lawfully be reformed." While Henry vacillated somewhat in his attitude
toward the reform movement, owing to political exigencies, and unwittingly
furthered Protestantism at times, as in authorizing the publication of the
Scriptures in the vernacular, he remained, at heart a Romanist, in revolt
against Papal rule, and was hostile to any representative of reform of either
type who was bold enough steadily to maintain his convictions. During the reign
of his son, Edward, moderate reform was favored. During the reign of Mary, who
succeeded Edward, every type of reform was bitterly and relentlessly persecuted.
No less than two hundred and eighty persons were burned at the stake, and many
hundreds of persons were driven into exile. By the ruthlessness of her
opposition Mary did much, however, to fertilize and stimulate the Protestant
cause. She was succeeded, in 1558, by her half-sister, Elizabeth. This last
representative of the House of Tudor, though at heart holding a religion not
very different from the Anglo-Catholicism of her father, so far as she had any
religion, was forced by circumstances to favor Protestantism. Naturally, she
favored moderate reform and fought thoroughgoing reform. This and her lust for
power led her to resist constitutional changes that were proposed in the Church,
just where she pleased. An aristocratic hierarchy, though with noble exceptions,
naturally also, sided with her in repressing both the civil and the religious
liberties of the people. With Elizabeth the Tudor dynasty became extinct. The
Stuart dynasty succeeded to the throne in the person of James, VI of Scotland, I
of England. Brought up under Presbyterian tutelage, but with the blood of
tricksters in his veins, he knew and approved the better, but followed the worse
way. The party of moderate reform was regarded by him as more in harmony with
civil monarchy. Moreover, that party pleased him by approving his fatal theory
of the divine right of kings, and by endless and unseemly flatteries. His son
Charles, who followed him to the throne, swung back toward Roman Catholicism -
to Anglo-Catholicism. During these two Stuart reigns the party of moderate
reform, enjoying the favor of the court, and tending toward Anglo-Catholicism,
united with the court in a bitter effort at repression of the party of
thoroughgoing reform. This persecution, together with the spread of Arminianism
among the moderate reformers, stimulated into large vigor of life the party
tending to thoroughgoing reform.
The party tending to thoroughgoing reform in England in
the age of Bloody Mary finds its rootlets in Ridley, Hooper, Latimer, and
others, and in part of the work of Cranmer. It finds rootlets reaching further
back - to Tyndale, who, prior to this death in 1536, had spread widely his
translation of the New Testament in Scotland as well as in England. Some of its
rootlets reach even further back - to the followers of Wycliffe and to Wycliffe
himself. But while thoroughgoing reform was thus indigenous to England, it
received a mighty impulse from the Continent, and particularly from Geneva. Many
of those driven from England by the Marian persecutions found a congenial exile
at Geneva, and became apt and honest pupils of the great Calvin. At the
beginning of Elizabeth's reign they returned thoroughly imbued with those views
of Scripture truth which he taught with clarity and force elsewhere
unparalleled. The Calvinistic theology became the theology of the great men of
the Anglican Church during the first forty years of Elizabeth's reign. The most
of these great men would willingly have tolerated a more thoroughgoing reform of
the government and worship of the Church. Some of them positively and openly
favored further reform in these departments. But Elizabeth stood in the way. In
1563 the formularies of the Anglican Church were completed, containing
Protestant doctrines along with a medieval hierarchy and partially medieval
cultus. In the following year the queen began the attempt to enforce a rigid
uniformity - an attempt resulting in the expulsion from the Established Church
of many of the godliest ministers of all England. Further trouble arose over the
private meetings for worship in London at which Knox's Book of Common Order was
used instead of the Liturgy, and over the more public meetings known as
prophesyings - gatherings of ministers and pious laymen for the study and
exposition of the Scriptures - very important meetings, as proven in their use
in Zurich, Geneva, and Scotland. Elizabeth commanded their suppression. Before
Elizabeth had been on the throne a score of years a considerable number of
advocates of thoroughgoing reform, "who had been led on to substantially
Presbyterian opinions, but discouraged by friends abroad and debarred by the
authorities at home from overtly seceding from the national church, began to
hold secret private meetings for mutual conference and prayer, and possibly also
for the exercise of discipline over those who voluntarily joined their
associations and submitted to their guidance. It is even said that a presbytery
was formed at Wandsworth in Surrey, wherein eleven lay-elders were associated
with the lecturer of that congregation and certain leading Puritan clergymen.
But if this was really a formal presbytery, it is probable that it was what was
then called the lesser presbytery or session, not the greater presbytery or
classis to which the name is now usually restricted. It is more certain that
when Cartwright, the redoubted leader of this school of Puritans, was arrested
in 1585 and his study searched, a copy was found of a Directory for
church-government, which made provision for synods, provincial and national, as
well as for presbyteries, greater and lesser. This, according to some
authorities, had been subscribed by about five hundred Puritans of this school,
and, for some years . . . had, to a certain extent, been carried out, and a
church within the church virtually formed." These and all other expressions of
thoroughgoing reform Elizabeth did her utmost to stamp out, using the despotic
Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission without regard to the feelings and
convictions of many of the most patriotic, learned, and Christian of her
subjects, but with disastrous failure as the result. Her tyrannical measures
called out and developed love for the more biblical form of religion which she
persecuted. They multiplied the advocates of thoroughgoing reform, or Puritans,
as they came early to be called in England.
It has been said that the chief thing for which the
Puritans all along contended was the "principle that the church has no right to
burden the consciences of her members in matters of faith and worship with aught
that is contrary to or beside (i.e.,in addition to) the express or implicit
teaching of the Word of God," that they would restrict the authority of the
church within narrower limits than their opponents; that they did not at first
perceive the full import of the principle for which they contended; that they
were reluctant to extend it rigidly to the constitution and government of the
church as well as to her articles of faith and forms of worship; but that, as
the contest proceeded, they could not fail to be led on more and more distinctly
to assert it with a fuller consciousness of its far-reaching consequences, and a
more earnest longing to bring back the church in constitution and government as
well as in faith and worship, to what they believed to be the pattern showed in
the mount." The demand for a further reformation of religion had grown great in
England as early as the death of Elizabeth and the succession of James Stuart of
Scotland to the English throne. It had been augmented just at the close of the
sixteenth century by the introduction of Arminianism into England. The demand
was fanned into a flame by the arbitrary and retroactive measures of James I, of
Charles I, and especially by the measures of Charles and his ministers, Laud and
Wentworth.
In 1603, James I, son of Mary Stuart, acceded to the
English throne. He was learned but wanting in common sense. A tyrant in
politics, a bigot in religion, he thought that he had been commissioned of God
to re-establish the Davidic Theocracy in England. He attempted the exercise of
absolute authority in his kingdom, dispensing largely with the use of
Parliaments. Civil rights were trampled under his feet, religious grievances
were multiplied. All this had been presaged in his treatment of the Puritan
Millenary petitioners - by his haughty, arrogant, and brutal treatment of their
representatives, voiced in his maxims set forth at the Hampton Court Conference:
"No bishop, no king"; "A Scottish Presbytery agreeth as well with the monarchy
as God with the devil. Now Jack and Tom and Will and Dick shall meet and at
their pleasure censure me and my council . . . let that alone"; "I will have one
doctrine, one discipline, one religion in substance and ceremony." In order to
win a Spanish, or French, princess for wife to his son Charles, he flattered
Rome and outraged national sentiment. He ordered the publication of the Book of
Sports, enjoining games and other festivities after services on the Lord's Day.
By such means he arrayed against himself the landed gentry, the merchants, the
professional men, and some of the nobility - the classes which stood for
Parliamentary government and amongst whom the Puritan movement had its strength.
They were indignant at his degradation of the morals of the people, his support
of profligates at Court, his development of the Church worship in a Romeward
direction.
Charles I inherited the absolutist views of his father in intensified form. He was heir also to the unrest, dissatisfaction, and abhorrence of Stuart arbitrariness which James' measures had created. The conflict went on. Other provocations were given the lovers of liberty and truth. Charles claimed and exercised the authority to levy and collect taxes - an authority which belonged to the Parliament as the representative of the people. He aspired to rule as did Louis XIV of France. The Huguenots of France and the Lutherans of Denmark were going down before Roman Catholics; and King Charles was showing favor to Romanists, had a Romanist wife, and might give them a Roman Catholic king in the next generation. The king and Archbishop Laud were pressing for uniformity of increasing rigidity. A stress was laid on the divine right of Episcopacy which unchurched all non-Episcopal churches. The communion table was turned into an altar. A doctrine of the real presence, hard for the people to distinguish from the Romish, was advocated. Some of the bishops commended the invocations of the saints. Arminius and Arminians at the time favored the pretensions of the king over against the Parliament, and were beginning the revision of the ceremonial in a Romeward direction. They were becoming numerous and prominent, "so that Bishop Morely being asked what the Arminians hold, replied with truth as well as wit, `They hold the best bishoprics and deaneries in England.'"
The agents of Charles for carrying out his policies in
Church and State, William Laud and Wentworth, were men of his spirit, narrow
zealots. In enforcing uniformity to his medievalized ritual, Laud used the
scourge, the pillory, the prison, the cropping of ears, the slitting of noses,
and other such gentle persuasives.
The liberties, civil and religious, of England were at
stake. A war in behalf of these liberties was at hand. The war in behalf of a
more biblical form of religion began in Scotland. The Reformation in essentially
the Genevan form had been established in the northern kingdom between 1560 and
1590. The struggle against popery over, a struggle against prelacy, lasting a
hundred years, ensued. Against determined opposition, James and his government
had succeeded in the re-establishment of Episcopacy in 1610. About the middle of
his reign, Charles and Archbishop Laud attempted to conform the Scottish Church
to the Anglican model. They proceeded about the business as if the Scots were
mere wooden men. In 1636, on the authority of the king alone, a body of canons
for the government and discipline of the Scottish Church was issued. The next
year, in the same autocratic way, a new liturgy was assigned to the Scots. It
was the old English Prayer Book revised in a way thought to savor of Romanism.
Popular resentment flamed. The National Covenant (1638) was brought forth and
enthusiastically signed, for the defense of the Reformed religion and resistance
to innovations. The new regulations were declared abolished. Episcopacy was
swept away, and the nation resorted to arms to maintain their liberties.
To get the sinews of war with which to subjugate the
Scots, Charles summoned the English Parliament, without which he had ruled for
eleven years. Parliament at once set itself to avenge grievances. Charles
dissolved it. Almost immediately he was forced to call another. It was in
sympathy with the Scots. It had a large leverage over Charles in the fact that
by a treaty into which the king had entered, the Scottish army was to be paid
before it was disbanded. Parliament knew the value of this lever. It began the
rectification of abuses, impeached, and committed to the Tower, Wentworth
(Strafford) and Laud, passed a bill to prevent its own dissolution or
prorogation except by its own free consent (May, 1641) put religion to the
front, passed an ordinance against Laud's ceremonies and the Sunday sports,
expelled the bishops from the House of Lords (January, 1642), decreed the
hierarchy out of existence (November, 1642), the bill to take effect November 5,
1643, enacted the Grand Remonstrance, a restatement of all past grievances
against the king, followed by a demand for cabinet ministers, and for the
references of Church matters to an Assembly of Divines to be nominated by
Parliament.
Charles flung his standards to the breeze. The House of
Commons accepted the gage of battle. The war began. June 12, 1643, the
Parliament passed an act entitled "An Ordinance of the Lords and Commons in
Parliament for the calling of an Assembly of learned and godly divines and
others, to be consulted with by the Parliament, for the settlement of the
Government and Liturgy of the Church of England, and for the indicating and
clearing of the doctrine of the said Church from false aspersions and
interpretations." The persons who were to constitute this Assembly were named in
the ordinance. They embraced the finest representatives, with two or three
possible exceptions, of the Church of the age. Subsequently about twenty-one
ministers were added to make up for the absence of others. The original list
contained one hundred and fifty-one names - the names of ten lords, twenty
commoners, and one hundred and twenty-one divines - and included, in fair
proportions, Moderate Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Independents, and Erastians.
In the original ordinance four bishops were named. Of
the other Episcopalians called, five afterwards became bishops. But the
Episcopalians mostly refused to attend, partly because the Assembly was not a
regular convocation called by the king, and partly because he had expressly
condemned the Solemn League and Covenant which, after the Assembly was a few
weeks old, became a force determining the character of the work of the Assembly.
The Presbyterians formed the great majority of the
Assembly and gained in numbers and influence as time passed. Of these there were
two parties - one party holding to a jure humano theory of Presbyterianism, the
other holding to the jure divino theory, i.e.,that government by Presbytery is
"expressly instituted or commanded" in the New Testament as the proper polity of
the Church. This latter party was powerfully re-enforced by the Scottish
commissioners to the Assembly who became debating, though not voting, members,
after the adoption of the Solemn League and Covenant. The party won an essential
triumph for the jure divino theory, a strong majority of all the Presbyterians
coming to believe that the Lord Jesus is the sole King and Head of the Church,
and has appointed a spiritual government in the hands of chosen representatives.
There were only five prominent Independents in the
Assembly. They maintained that a local church should not be subject to the
jurisdiction of presbyteries and synods, and that such a church has a right to
ordain its own ministers.
The Erastians maintained the ecclesiastical supremacy of
the civil government in all matters of discipline, and made the Church a
department of the State - on the ground that clergymen are merely teachers, and
that power of rule in the Church belongs to the civil magistrate. They were
willing to concede a jure humano Presbyterianism, denied a jure divino form of
Church government of any kind, and claimed for the State the right to give to
the Church any form of government it might please to grant. These constituted a
small party, but exercised vast influence because their views harmonized with
those of Parliament.
It is to be remembered in this connection that the Long
Parliament had the opportunity to select a body for the work of creed
construction, fitter therefore than could have been found in any other age in
England down to this day, perhaps. Puritanism had been doing its work of making
great men in England for a century. It has been aided in that work by all the
mental and moral stimulus coming of geographical discovery, of the Great
Reformation, of progress along every line of civilization, of advance in
national well-being and prestige. The middle of the seventeenth century was,
from a moral and spiritual point of view, the greatest age in the history of
England to the present. Under the providence of God, the Long Parliament had the
noblest age of England to chose the Assembly from; and it chose well as has
appeared.
The Westminster Assembly was set to work, at first, on a
revision of the Thirty-Nine Articles; but, on October 12, 1643, shortly after
the signing of the Solemn League and Covenant, wherein, in order to secure
Scottish aid against the king, Parliament had agreed to make the religions of
England, Scotland, and Ireland as nearly uniform as possible and to reform
religion "according to the Word of God, and the example of the best Reformed
churches," Parliament directed the Assembly to "consider among themselves of
such a discipline and government as may be most agreeable to God's holy word."
Thereupon the Assembly entered at once upon the work of preparing a Directory of
Government, Worship and Discipline. Delayed by much controversy with the
Independent and Erastian members, they did not complete this portion of their
work till near the end of 1644. Then they began work upon the Catechisms and
Confession of Faith simultaneously. After progress with both, the Assembly
resolved to finish the Confession of Faith first an then construct the
Catechisms upon its model. December 3, 1646, they, in a body, presented the
finished Confession to Parliament. Parliament recommitted the work that
Scripture passages might be attached to every part of it. April 29, 1647, they
reported it finished with full Scripture proofs of each separate proposition
attached thereto.
The Shorter Catechism was completed and reported to
Parliament, November 5, 1647, and the larger Catechism, April 14, 1648. March
22, 1648, the two Houses held a conference to compare their opinion about the
Confession of Faith. Rushworth stated the result as follows: "The Commons this
day, at a conference, presented the Lords with a Confession of Faith passed by
them, with some alterations (especially concerning questions of discipline),
viz: That they do agree with their Lordships, and so with the Assembly, in the
doctrinal part, and desire the same may be made public, that this kingdom and
all the Reformed churches of Christendom, may see the Parliament of England
differ not in doctrine."
It is plain from the preceding statements that the
Westminster Standards were, in form, the standards of the Long Parliament. The
Westminster Assembly was appointed by the Parliament. It was supported by that
Parliament. Its acts were given validity, so far as political England was
concerned, by enactment of that Parliament. The Westminster Assembly was a body
called to advise that great Parliament as to the Biblical faith, polity, and
worship. It is just as true, however, that the Parliament had taken care to
constitute the Assembly of a body of men of uncommon abilities, learning, and
godliness; just as true that it framed rules in accord with which the Assembly
should do its work. These regulations indicated serious business for the
Assembly, and the utmost freedom of discussion. They provided, amongst other
things, "that every member, at his first entrance into the Assembly, shall make
serious and solemn protestation not to maintain anything but what he believes to
be the truth in sincerity, when discovered unto him"; "that what any man
undertakes to prove as necessary, he shall make good out of the Scripture." The
rules of procedure were read at the beginning of each week or month. So also was
the following vow, framed in accord with one of the regulations: "I do seriously
promise and vow in the presence of Almighty God, that in this Assembly, whereof
I am a member, I will maintain nothing in the point of doctrine but what I
believe to be most agreeable to the Word of God, nor in point of discipline, but
what may make most for God's glory and the peace and good will of His Church."
The Assembly not only enjoyed, it was encouraged to, the fullest freedom of
debate, and to an endeavor to set forth the Bible faith, polity, and worship.
The Assembly had a wide acquaintance with creeds, Greek,
Latin, Continental Reformed; but naturally; in accord with the Anglo-Saxon
genius, it carried on the line of development begun on English soil in the
Thirty-Nine Articles, continued by the framers of the Lambeth Articles (1595),
continued further by Archbishop Usher, in the Irish Articles (1615), who was one
of the greatest doctrinal Puritans of the time. While the creed of the
Westminster Assembly shows striking likeness to the Irish Articles - probably
intending thus to make clear its essential agreement with the doctrines of the
English and Irish Reformation, it is far abler, fuller, and superior to any of
its predecessors, and gives proof that the Assembly was steadily dominated by
its aim to state nothing therein which is not expressly taught in the Word of
God, or derivable therefrom by good and necessary inference. Working thus it
produced not only the most logical and most complete, but the most Biblical and
the noblest creed ever yet produced in Christendom.
As soon as completed the Confession of Faith was brought to Scotland, and most favorably received. It was adopted by the Scottish General Assembly, August 27, 1647. The Scottish Parliament endorsed this action, February 7, 1690. In 1729, the old Synod of Philadelphia the first Presbyterian Synod in North America - in its famous "Adopting Act" adopted the Confession of Faith and Larger and Shorter Catechisms "as the Confessions of our Faith."
Although the Westminster Assembly excluded from their
Confession everything they regarded as savoring of Erastianism, yet their views
as to church establishments led them to concede power to the civil magistrates
concerning religious things, which the fathers of American Presbyterianism would
not concede. Hence in the "Adopting Act," just referred to, the Synod declared
that it did not receive the clauses relating to this subject (some clauses in
the twentieth and twenty-third chapters of the Confession)" in any such sense as
to suppose the civil magistrate hath a controlling power over Synods with
respect to their exercise of ministerial authority; or power to persecute any
for their religion; or, in any sense contrary to the Protestant succession to
the throne of Great Britain." And, when the Synod was revising and amending its
standards in 1787, preparatory to the organization of the General Assembly of
the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., "it took into consideration the last paragraph
of the twentieth chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith; the third
paragraph of the twenty-third chapter, and the first paragraph of the
thirty-first chapter; and, having made some alterations, agreed that the said
paragraphs as now altered be printed for consideration." Thus altered and
amended, the Confession and the Catechisms were adopted as the doctrinal part of
the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, and
so remained till 1861. The Presbyterian Church in the United States in 1861
adopted the Standards of the Presbyterian Church in the United States in
America.
During the course of the years from 1861 to 1973 the Presbyterian Church in the United States made a number of amendments to the Confession and Catechisms. Some of these changes were not acceptable to the group that withdrew to form the Presbyterian Church in America. It was felt that the wisest course to be followed was to return to the original American form of the Confession and Catechisms with the two minor deletions mentioned in the Preface for the constitutional documents of the newly formed Church. In the providence of God, this was the identical form of the Confession and Catechisms adopted by the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod, so that there were no changes in the doctrinal constitution required for that body to join with the Presbyterian Church in America in 1982.
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