Page:On the Revision of the Confession of Faith.djvu/27

Rh late Dr. Curry, editor of the New York Christian Advocate, who calls it "the ablest, clearest, and most comprehensive system of Christian doctrine ever framed."

So remarkable a product, of course, was not obtained without a providential preparation, by which the framing of the Confession fell upon times and into the hands of men specially fitted for the task. No one who looks back upon the history of early Protestantism can fail to perceive that the times were ripening toward the middle of the seventeenth century, and especially in England, for just such an enterprise. During the century or more that had elapsed since the Reformation, the Reformed Theology had developed into a mature and maturely tested system of truth, tried everywhere by the Scriptures and in the fires of controversy. The multitudes of Confessions which had been produced by the first age of the Reformation had served their purpose of testifying to the essential Christianity and to the Augustinianism of the scattered congregations, and of uniting them in the bonds of a common sympathy and effort; some of them had been rewrought or practically superseded by documents fuller or better adapted to the changing conditions; and all were being collected, compared, harmonized under the pressure of the felt need of a comprehensive and universally acceptable statement of the Reformed faith.

The course of controversy had also reached a stage peculiarly favorable for the confessional statement of truth. The first bitterness of both the Romish and Arminian controversies was over; and while the results of these debates were garnered for the advantage of exact and carefully balanced statement, the sharpness of the anti-Romish polemic