Page:On the Revision of the Confession of Faith.djvu/47

Rh us from all necessity of seeking to conform it in every point to our own individual, and therefore relatively narrow, views. Under these circumstances, it is submitted that the best answer to the overture of the General Assembly which the Presbyteries can give, is that they do not perceive the need of, and therefore do not desire, any revision of the Confession of Faith; and to this answer the present writer has suggested to his own Presbytery that the following reasons be attached, as inter alia, the reasons that determine its action, to wit:

1. Our free but safe formula of acceptance of the Confession of Faith, by which we "receive and adopt it" as "containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures" (Form of Government, XV., xii.), relieves us of all necessity for seeking, each one to conform the Confession in all its propositions to his individual preferences, and enables us to treat the Confession as a public document, designed, not to bring each of our idiosyncrasies to expression, but to express the general and common faith of the whole body—which it adequately and admirably does.

2. Enjoying this free yet hearty relation to the Confession, we consider that our situation toward our standards is incapable of improvement. However much or little the Confession were altered, we could not, as a body, accept the altered Confession in a closer sense than for system of doctrine; and the alterations could not better it as a public Confession, however much it might be made a closer expression of the faith of some individuals among us. In any case, it could not be made, in all its propositions and