PREPARATION AND ADOPTION.
Simultaneously with the Confession, the Assembly prepared first one, and afterwards two Catechisms: a larger one for public exposition in the pulpit, according to the custom of the Reformed Churches on the Continent, and a smaller one for the instruction of children, a clear and condensed summary of the former. [1504] Both are amply provided with Scripture proofs. The questions of Church polity and discipline are properly omitted.
The Catechisms were finished and presented to Parliament for examination and approval in the autumn of 1647. [1505] Parliament ordered six hundred copies to be printed, and then examined and approved the Catechisms, with some slight exceptions (Sept. 15, 1648). The General Assembly at Edinburgh adopted the Larger Catechism, July 20, 1648, and the Shorter Catechism, July 28, declaring both to be 'agreeable to the Word of God, and in nothing contrary to the received doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of this Kirk.' These acts were approved by the Scottish Parliament, Feb. 7, 1649, but repealed under Charles II. in 1661. When the Scottish Parliament, in 1690, established Presbyterian government in Scotland, and ratified the Westminster Confession of Faith, no express mention was made of the Catechisms, but both continued in ecclesiastical use, and the Shorter Catechism was often earnestly enjoined upon ministers, teachers, and parents by the General Assembly. [1506]
GENERAL CHARACTER.
The two Catechisms are, in the language of a Scotch divine, 'inimitable as theological summaries; though, when it is considered that to comprehend them would imply an acquaintance with the whole circle of dogmatic and controversial divinity, it may be doubted whether either of them is adapted to the capacity of childhood. . . . Experience has shown that few who have been carefully instructed in our Shorter Catechism have failed to discover the advantage of becoming acquainted in early life, even as a task, with that admirable "form of sound words."' [1507]
Both Catechisms have the peculiarity that each answer embodies the question, and thus forms a complete proposition or sentence in itself.
Both depart from the catechetical tradition by omitting the Apostles' Creed, which in other orthodox Catechisms is the common historical basis of the exposition of the Articles of Faith. It is, however, annexed to the Shorter Catechism,' not as though it were composed by the Apostles or ought to be esteemed canonical Scripture, as the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer, but because it is a brief sum of the Christian faith, agreeable to the Word of God, and anciently received in the Churches of Christ.' A note is attached to the article on the descent into Hell (better, Hades or Sheol), to the effect that it simply means Christ 'continued in the state of the dead and under the power of death until the third day.' This explanation (like that of Calvin and the Heidelberg Catechism) misses the true sense of the descent, and ignores its peculiar significance in the work of redemption for the world of the departed (comp. Luke xxiii. 43; Acts ii. 31; Eph. iv. 8, 9; 1 Cor. xv. 55, 57; 1 Pet. iii. 18, 19; iv. 6; Rev. i. 18). The eschatology of the Reformation standards is silent or defective on the middle state, and most Protestant versions of the Bible confound Hell and Hades, which represent separate and distinct though cognate ideas.
THE LARGER CATECHISM.
The Larger Catechism occupied, as the Minutes show, a good deal of the Assembly's attention during the year 1647, and was discussed question by question. It was prepared before the Shorter. [1508] It is chiefly the work of Dr. Anthony Tuckney, Professor of Divinity and Vice-Chancellor at Cambridge. [1509] It is a masterpiece of catechetical skill, superior to any similar work, and exhibits in popular form a complete system of divinity, like the Roman Catechism and the Longer Russian Catechism of Philaret. It also serves in part as a valuable commentary or supplement to the Confession, especially on the ethical part of our religion. But it is over-minute in the specification of what God has commanded and forbidden in the Ten Commandments, and loses itself in a wilderness of details. [1510]