Page:On the Revision of the Confession of Faith.djvu/21

Rh 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