Page:On the Revision of the Confession of Faith.djvu/23

Rh 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