Page:On the Revision of the Confession of Faith.djvu/90

82 Church of Victoria deal. Other objections arise out of real recalcitration from some of the doctrinal statements, or even from some of the doctrines stated in the Confession. A fair example of these is supplied by the overture of the Presbytery of Nassau, praying the American Assembly to revise Chapter III., Of God's Eternal Decree; and others would seek a far more thorough, if not more radical, revision. Lastly, some objectors are objectors because they have consciously drifted into a wholly un-Calvinistic, or even anti-Calvinistic, position. A fair example of this attitude is supplied by Mr. Robert Macintosh, who, in his pamphlet on The Obsoleteness of the Westminster Confession of Faith, constantly speaks of "Calvinism" from the outside, and thinks that the Bible, "but for its occasional language as to election, coincides not with Calvinism, but with evangelical Arminianism." And other examples could be adduced.

That objectors of all these sorts, even of the most radical, have made their voice heard in the course of the last few months, is surely in no wise strange. When the Confession was framed there were those who did not accept its system of doctrine; and it is no wonder that there are such to-day. If those who are wholly out of sympathy with it are to hold office under it, of course it must be "revised," as to have obtained a like result two hundred years ago, it would need to have been very differently framed. The only peculiarity of the present situation is, that the churches seem now troubled by the objections of this small minority whom we have always with us, and who so confidently demand a revolution of our whole scheme of doctrine for their personal comfort and ease of conscience, that they appear at times almost in danger of getting it. Such a