[1521] This is the American formula of subscription required from ministers. On the Scottish subscription formulas, see Innes, pp. 66, 81, 84, 103, 453.

[1521] This is the American formula of subscription required from ministers. On the Scottish subscription formulas, see Innes, pp. 66, 81, 84, 103, 453.

[1522] Articles of the Church of England, Art. XVII.

[1523] Westm. Conf. Ch. VIII. § 8. This last section is the best in the whole chapter.

[1524] Ch. III. 7. This seventh section is the one dark spot in the Confession, and mars its beauty and usefulness. Comp. Larger Catechism, Quest. 13: 'God hath passed by and foreordained the rest to dishonor and wrath to be for their own sin inflicted, to the praise of the glory of his justice.' The Shorter Catechism (Quest. 7) wisely omits the negative part of predestination.

[1525] Matt. xi. 25 ('Thou hast hid these things,' etc.); Rom. ix. 17, 18, 21, 22; 2 Tim. ii. 20; Jude 4; 1 Pet. ii. 8--all quoted in the Confession. The ninth chapter of Romans is the exegetical bulwark of the doctrine of reprobation; but it must be explained in connection with the tenth chapter, which brings out the unbelief of the creature as the cause, and with the eleventh chapter, which opens the prospect of a glorious solution of the problem in the conversion of the fullness of the Gentiles and the people of Israel, and ends with the grand declaration that 'God hath shut up all unto disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all.' We have no more right to limit the all in the second clause than in the first. Comp. the parallelism in Rom. v. 12 sqq.

[1526] John i. 29; iii. 16; iv. 24; 1 John ii. 2; iii. 8, 16; iv. 14; 1 Tim. ii. 4; Titus ii. 11; 2 Pet. iii. 9; Mark xvi. 16.

[1527] Comp. our remarks, pp. 451 sqq.

[1528] The Roman Catholic doctrine, of purgatory is no exception, for this is confined to members of the Catholic Church who were converted in this life but need further purification before they can enter heaven. The Roman creed is more pronounced than the Greek and the Protestant on the impossibility of salvation outside of the visible Church on earth.

[1529] See above, p. 378.

[1530] The Rev. Michael Wigglesworth, of Malden, Mass., a graduate and tutor of Harvard College (d. 1705), published a popular poem, The Day of Doom (1662; 6th ed. 1715; reprinted as a curiosity by the Amer. News Company, New York, 1867), in which God reasons on the judgment-day with reprobate infants, who 'from the womb unto the tomb were straightway carried,' about the justice of their eternal damnation; and in consideration of their lesser guilt, assigns them (like St. Augustine) 'the easiest room in hell!'

[1531] Ch. X. 3: 'Elect infants dying in infancy are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when and where and how he pleaseth. So are all other elect persons who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word.' The Confession nowhere speaks of reprobate infants, and the existence of such is not necessarily implied by way of distinction, although it probably was in the minds of the framers as their private opinion, which they wisely withheld from the Confession. I think the interpretation of Dr. A. A. Hodge, of Allegheny, in his Commentary on this section (p. 240), is fairly admissible: 'The Confession affirms what is certainly revealed, and leaves that which revelation has not decided to remain without the suggestion of a positive opinion upon one side or the other.'. He agrees, as to the salvation of all infants dying in infancy, with his father, who asserts that 'he never saw a Calvinistic theologian who held the doctrine of infant damnation in any sense' (System. Theol., Vol. III. p. 605).

[1532] Dr. Hodge, of Princeton, is of the opinion, which would be preposterous in the Augustinian and Roman Catholic system, that the number of those who are ultimately lost is 'very inconsiderable as compared with the whole number of the saved.' This is the closing sentence of his System. Theol., Vol. III. p. 879. That the number of the saved will far exceed the number of the lost may be fairly inferred from the pollo mallon of Paul (Rom. v. 15, 17); but this inference can not well be harmonized with the declaration of our Lord, Matt. vii. 14, that but few enter the strait gate, unless we assume the universal salvation of infants, and look forward to great progress of the gospel in the future.

[1533] On the subject of Toleration and Persecution, with special reference to England, the reader may profitably consult a series of Tracts on Liberty of Conscience and Persecution, 1614-1661, edited by Edward B. Underhill for the Hansard Knollys Society, London, 1846; W. E. H. Lecky, History of Rationalism in Europe. (4th edition, London, 1870; New York edition, 1875, in 2 vols.), ch. iv.; Masson, Life of Milton, Vol. III. pp. 87 sqq., 383 sqq.; Stoughton, The Church of the Revolution (London, 1874), ch. iv. pp. 114 sqq.; and Marshall's book quoted on p. 754.

[1534] The first dissenting voices came from Anabaptists and Socinians, and from Castellio, who had nothing to gain and every thing to lose from the existing alliance of government and religion.

[1535] And yet, in the face of this fact and the whole history of the seventeenth century, Dr. Hetherington (in his Introduction to Shaw's Exposition of the Confession of Faith, pp. xxviii.) broadly denies any taint of intolerance in the Confession.

[1536] Thomas Edwards, a zealous Presbyterian minister at London, published in 1645 a treatise of 60 pages, dedicated to Parliament, under the title, Gangræna; or, a Catalogue and Discovery of many of the Errors, Heresies, Blasphemies, and Pernicious Practices of the Sectaries of this Time, in which he collects no less than one hundred and seventy-six miscellaneous 'errors, heresies, and blasphemies,' and enumerates sixteen heretical sects--namely: 1, Independents; 2, Brownists; 3, Millenaries; 4, Antinomians; 5, Anabaptists; 6, Arminians; 7, Libertines; 8, Familists; 9, Enthusiasts; 10, Seekers: 11, Perfectists: 12, Socinians; 13, Arians; 14, Antitrinitarians; 15, Antiscripturists; 16, Skeptics. 'The industrious writer,' says Neal, 'might have enlarged his catalogue with Papists, Prelatists, Deists, Ranters, Behemenists, etc., etc., or, if he had pleased, a less number might have served his turn, for very few of these sectaries were collected into societies; but his business was to blacken the adversaries of Presbyterian uniformity, that the Parliament might crush them by sanguinary methods.' See an account of this book in Neal, Part III. ch. vii. (Vol. II. p. 37), and Masson, Vol. III. pp. 143 sqq.

[1537] Innes (Law of Creeds, pp. 243 and 244) says: 'Toleration was long unknown in the law, as in the history, of Scotland. The intense sentiment of national unity was strongly against it. The nation was one, and the Church became one. The Church claimed to be the Church of Christ in the realm, exclusively and of divine right. . . . The Scottish commissioners went to the Westminster Assembly to work out the "covenanted uniformity in religion," and the new doctrine of the "toleration of sects" which met them there they most earnestly resisted.

[1538] Art. 36. See Vol. III. p. 432.

[1539] Art. 39. See Vol. III. p. 372.

[1540] Art. 37. See Vol. III. p. 512.

[1541] No. 70. See Vol. III. p. 540.

[1542] We exempt the five years of Cromwell's Protectorate (1653-1658), during which the Independents were in the ascendency.

[1543] A recent able writer, who has no sympathy whatever with the faith of Presbyterians, thus describes their persecutions under the Stuarts: 'In Scotland, during almost the whole period that the Stuarts were on the throne of England, a persecution rivaling in atrocity almost any on record was directed by the English government, at the instigation of the Scotch bishops, and with the approbation of the English Church, against all who repudiated episcopacy. If a conventicle was held in a house, the preacher was liable to be put to death. If it was held in the open air, both minister and people incurred the same fate. The Presbyterians were hunted like criminals over the mountains; their ears were torn from the roots; they were branded with hot irons; their fingers were wrenched asunder by the thumbkins; the bones of their legs were shattered in the boots; women were scourged publicly through the streets; multitudes were transported to the Barbadoes; an infuriated soldiery was let loose upon them, and encouraged to exercise all their ingenuity in torturing them.' (Lecky, l.c. Vol. II. p. 48, Amer. ed.)

[1544] The Established Church of Scotland, the Original Secession Church, the English Presbyterian Church, and the Irish Presbyterian Church adhere to the 'whole doctrine' of the Westminster Confession, with a slight qualification of Ch. XXXI. 2. The Reformed Presbyterian Church does the same, but declares in its Testimony that it is 'not pledged to defend every sentiment or expression,' and asserts that 'to employ civil coercion of any kind for the purpose of inducing men to renounce an erroneous creed, or to espouse and profess a sound Scriptural one, is incompatible with the nature of true religion, and must ever prove ineffectual in practice.' The United Presbyterian Church introduces into its Formula of subscription this clause: 'It being understood that you are not required to approve of any thing in these documents which teaches, or is supposed to teach, compulsory or persecuting and intolerant, principles in religion.' The Free Church of Scotland meets the difficulty by a questionable exegesis, declaring (in an 'Act anent Questions and Formula,' June 1, 1846): ' The General Assembly, in passing this Act, think it right to declare that, while the Church firmly maintains the same Scriptural principles as to the duties of nations and their rulers in reference to true religion and the Church of Christ, for which she has hitherto contended, she disclaims intolerant or persecuting principles, and does not regard her Confession of Faith, or any portion thereof, when fairly interpreted, as favoring intolerance or persecution, or consider that her office-bearers, by subscribing it, profess any principles inconsistent with liberty of conscience and the right of private judgment.' See Innes, The Law of Creeds, pp. 453, 461, 463.

[1545] See next section.

[1546] Milton, the independent of Independents and the boldest as well as most eloquent champion of civil and religious liberty in the seventeenth century, was unwilling to tolerate Romanists, because he regarded them as idolaters and as enemies of freedom. See his Areopagitica, of which Lecky (Vol. II. p. 80) says that it is as glorious a monument of the genius of Milton as his Paradise Lost, and that it 'probably represents the very highest point that English eloquence has attained.'

[1547] This is the theory of Lecky.

[1548] The limited toleration in some Roman Catholic countries exists in spite of Romanism, and the liberal opinions and Christian feelings of individual Catholics have no influence on the system, which is the same as ever, as may be inferred from the papal Syllabus of 1864, and from the recent papal protest against even the minimum of religious toleration in Spain (1876). In Protestant countries the Roman Church claims as much liberty as she can get, and advocates toleration in her own interest, but would deny it to others as soon as she attained to power.

[1549] See the 'Fourteenth Proposition' of Barclay, adopted by the Quakers: 'Since God hath assumed to himself the power and dominion of the conscience, who alone can rightly instruct and govern it, therefore it is not lawful for any whatsoever, by virtue of any authority or principality they bear in the government of this world, to force the consciences of others; and therefore all killing, banishing, fining, imprisoning, and other such things, which men are afflicted with, for the alone exercise of their conscience, or difference in worship or opinion, proceedeth from the spirit of Cain, the murderer, and is contrary to the truth; provided always that no man, under the pretense of conscience, prejudice his neighbor in his life or estate, or do any thing destructive to, or inconsistent with, human society; in which case the law is for the transgressor, and justice to be administered upon all, without respect of persons.' This was published in 1675. Bossuet, therefore, was imperfectly informed when at the close of the seventeenth century (1688) he mentioned the Anabaptists and Socinians as the only Christians who did not admit the power of the civil sword 'dans les matières de la religion et de la conscience' (Hist. des Variations, LIV. X. 56).