Page:On the Revision of the Confession of Faith.djvu/39

Rh Shorter Catechism is a most remarkable procedure; and to propose to revise the Confession because it treats the whole subject of the decree together and at the head of God's works, is more remarkable still. Shall we revise all the theologians mentioned above, who adopt the same arrangement of matter, along with the Confession? This quarrel is not with the Confession, but with the whole body and the very conception of Reformed theology.

But "the language of the Confession is supralapsarian." If this were so, it would certainly be remarkable. It is confessed that "the great body of the members" of the Assembly that framed it "were on the other side." It is confessed that the Shorter Catechism, framed by the same body, is infralapsarian. It is confessed that the formularies were formed with the utmost care—and with the utmost care to make them exhibit the accordance of the doctrine of the English Church with the other Reformed Churches, the creeds of none of which, it is confessed, are supralapsarian. It is proven that this very section is based upon and drawn from the Irish Articles, which were prepared by the moderate hand of Ussher, who certainly was no supralapsarian. The publication of the minutes of the Westminster Assembly reveals to us very clearly that those who framed this language intended that it should not be supralapsarian. A number of amendments were made in the original draught (which itself was not supralapsarian) with the expressed purpose of preventing it from even seeming to tend that way. Thus the words "in the same decree," and the words "to bring this to pass God ordained to permit the fall," were stricken out. Their professed purpose was, as Mr. Reynolds expressed it, not to "put disputes and scholastic things into a Confession of Faith"; or as Mr. Calamy said, "that nothing be put in one way or the other." Finally, no one seems previously to have discovered the