Page:On the Revision of the Confession of Faith.djvu/52

44 first contention. His whole case, then, is apparently directed against my second contention, and is hung, in the present paper, on three selected instances, which he thinks "fully demonstrate the necessity and practicability of revision."

These three points concern the statement of the doctrine of reprobation, the clause about "elect infants," and the alleged absence from the Confession of sufficient recognition of the universal provision and free offer of salvation in Christ. I cannot deny that Dr. Van Dyke has chosen his points well. The issue made by them is distinct; and it is probably on these three points that the decision of the general question will turn. But if this be true, I cannot but think that as the Church (to use an old rabbinical phrase) "sinks herself down in the book" during the coming months, she will, on this issue, feel constrained to vote for no revision. Certainly, speaking for myself, I do not desire revision at these points, and feel bound to affirm that the Confession stands in no need of revision in any one of them—that the opinion that it does rests on a misapprehension of its teaching—and that the alterations that have been proposed would certainly mar it and leave it a less satisfactory document than it now is. I owe to myself some words in justification of my venturing to differ so materially from so ripe a scholar and so thoughtful a theologian as Dr. Van Dyke.

The third chapter of the Confession, "Of God's Eternal Decree," as it was the occasion of the overture of the Presbytery of Nassau opening the present discussion, so it has borne, thus far, the brunt of objection to the Confession. To me it appears, however, a most admirable chapter—the most admirably clear, orderly, careful, and