Page:On the Revision of the Confession of Faith.djvu/87

Rh nature of doctrinal standards to learn that they must needs contain much more than the minimum of faith. The attempt to pare down our testimony to truth to the narrowest limits is similar to the attempt to enter heaven on the minimum of morality. And how could a minimum creed serve as a text-book of doctrine, or protect the people in the exercise of their rights as against the misbelief of a pastor? The necessary contents of a doctrinal standard are determined by a threefold test: (1). It must contain our confession of essential Christianity—all the holy truths that lie at the basis of our Christian religion must find their places in it. (2). It must mark our highest attainments in divine truth: whatever we have come clearly to see to be the truth of God must be unwaveringly testified to in it; after Nice no creed is tolerable which does not bear witness to the Trinity; after Chalcedon, none which does not testify to the holy truth of Christ's person; after Augustine, which does not confess to the sovereignty of God; after the Reformation, which does not clearly proclaim justification by faith. To falter in our witness to God's truth after we have once attained to a clear conception of it, is not a venial fault. (3). It must contain, also, much of very subordinate importance per se, which the administrative function of the doctrinal standard renders a necessary part of its contents. For one great use of a doctrinal standard is to determine the fitness of men to exercise, not the office of pastor, but the office of pastor in this or that church. For instance, the Presbyterian people believe that God has commanded the observation of the Lord's Supper "till He come." A Quaker is ineligible to a pastorate in this church, therefore, and our doctrinal standard must be so framed as to protect the people from having their rights invaded in this particular. Again, the Presbyterian people believe that it is not only their privilege, but their duty, to