Page:On the Revision of the Confession of Faith.djvu/51

Rh to prevail. It was intended to urge the following points, viz.: (1) Revision is not necessary in order to ease the consciences of our office-bearers in accepting the Confession; (2) it is not needed in order to correct any serious infelicities in expressing the doctrines we profess; and (3) it will throw difficulties in the way of the realization of hopes of church union, already being entertained by the Church. In all this there is certainly no claim to perfection and infallibility for the Confession; there is no arraignment of the right or power of the Church to undertake a revision of it. The question is a question of expediency. The point is, Does the Confession need revision in order to ease the consciences of our office-bearers in accepting it as a test of soundness, or in order to fit it to be our testimony to the truth of God as taught in His word, and our text-book of doctrine? And the propositions which are defended are (1) that as we accept it, as office-bearers, only for "system of doctrine," and it confessedly brings the system we profess to adequate expression, it does not need revision for the first of these reasons; and (2) that as its statements of the truths that enter into this system are exact, full, complete, moderate, catholic, inclusive, and devout, it does not need revision for the second reason. If I properly understand Dr. Van Dyke, he does not take issue with the first of these propositions. He criticises my mode of stating it, indeed, as if it implied that advocates of revision desired change in the system of doctrine. This "for himself and as many as will adhere to him," he repudiates. The object of those for whom he speaks "is not to change the system of doctrine taught in the Confession, nor to repudiate or modify or dilute any one doctrine of that system." Surely, then, we may say that Dr. Van Dyke agrees that no change in the system of doctrine which the Confession teaches, or in "any one doctrine of that system," is needed. And that is just my