Page:On the Revision of the Confession of Faith.djvu/16

8 the doctrines taught in the Westminster Confession of Faith, or at least of dissatisfaction with the way in which they are taught in it; and that the movement thus begun is sure to issue in extensive changes of the mode of statement or of the doctrines themselves of the Westminster Standards, if not in the total discarding of them as antiquated relics of a past age and the substitution for them of a new creed more accordant with the living faith of the Church. Nevertheless, no one of these inferences is justified by the facts. The sole legitimate deduction is rather that the Presbyterian Church is so true to its profession that God alone, speaking in His Word, is "Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men," and so jealous of the rights of the Church as over against its subordinate standards, which are its creation, not its mistress: that it keeps constantly before itself the expression of its testimony to doctrine, and thus secures that that testimony shall always remain the living voice of the Church bearing its witness to the truth of God, as it apprehends and lives by it.

The present overture does not contemplate change of doctrine, and does not explicitly propose change even in the statement of doctrine. In its preamble it recites as the ground on which it bases itself:

""Whereas, Overtures have come to this General Assembly from fifteen Presbyteries .... asking for some revision of the Confession of Faith; and whereas, in the opinion of many of our ministers and people, some forms of statement in our Confession of Faith are liable to misunderstanding, and expose our system of doctrine to unmerited criticism.""

Here no dissatisfaction with the doctrine itself is recited; rather it is suggested that criticism of the doctrine is