Page:On the Revision of the Confession of Faith.djvu/88

80 consecrate their children to Christ in holy baptism. No one, accordingly, who denies the ordinance of infant baptism to them can possibly be permitted to occupy the position of pastor among them; and our doctrinal standard must be so framed as to protect the people from invasion of their rights in this particular. In a word, a creed, in the sense of a doctrinal standard, as distinguished from a liturgical form, must be extensive enough not only to witness to the essential Christianity of a people, but to enable them, on the one hand, to testify through it to the truth of God as they have attained knowledge of it—for testimony to truth against heresy and error from within is only second in importance to testimony to truth against heathenism and error from without—and to protect them, on the other hand, in their Christian rights in the administration of the Gospel. Two propositions may, in fact, be laid down here which are worthy of our most careful meditation before we yield to present clamors for brief and primary creeds. The people's right to no Christian ordinance is safe which is not guaranteed to them in the standards of the Church. Without this guarantee, the eligible pastors may hold any views and attain to any tyranny in the matter of the administration of ordinances. And the Christian knowledge of no people can he permanently maintained at a higher level than the contents of their doctrinal standards. Continuity and harmony of teaching is only attainable within the limits of the doctrinal standards. With respect to all that is beyond or outside them, successive teachers may and do differ; the people are confused, and grow first doubtful, then agnostic, and then oppositive. If we would have the people pass beyond the first principles of the faith, we must pass just in that proportion beyond them in our Creed—which is not only our official testimony to the truth, and our official text-book of doctrine, but our