WESTMINSTER STANDARDS.
I. The Westminster Confession. History in England and Scotland II. The Westminster Catechisms.
Origin of the Confession (§ 1). (§ 3).
History and Character (§ 1).
Description and Sources (§ 2). History in America (§ 4). The Shorter Catechism (§ 2).
The Westminster Standards—i.e., the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Westminster Catechisms—are the doctrinal formulas prepared by the Westminster Assembly of Divines (1643-49), and have been adopted by the churches of English, Scotch, and Scotch-Irish origin which follow the Presbyterian system.
I. The Westminster Confession: In its original form, as it left the assembly and was presented to parliament, the Westminster Confession consisted of thirty-three chapters. On giving up the attempt to revise the Thirty-nine Articles (q.v.), the assembly, at the injunction of parliament (Aug. 20, 1644),
appointed a committee to “ prepare a joint Con-
fession of Faith,” the committee including such men as Thomas Gataker, Joshua Hoyle, William Gouge (qq.v.), and the Scotch commissioners in a body. Its progress was delayed by a contention between parliament and the assembly over the right of office-bearers to withhold the communion from those who seemed to them to be ignorant or scandalous, and on July 22, 1646, an order was sent to the assembly “ desiring that it hasten the perfecting of the Confession of Faith and the Catechism because of the great use they might be for the suppressing of errors and heresies and for informing
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the ignorance of the people.’’ Nineteen heads were completed and sent to the house of commons Oct. 9, 1646, of which 500 copies were or- 1. Origin dered printed by the house. On Dec. of the 4, 1646, the whole work was finished Confession. and sent to the commons, and three days later to the lords, the assembly being authorized to have 600 copies printed. On Apr. 29, 1647, the house of commons ordered Scripture proofs added. and 600 copies of these were ordered struck off. Finally, in 1648, the Confession was approved by parliament with the exception of chapters xxx. and xxxi., and parts of chapters xx. and xxiv., these portions bearing on church censures, synods, marriage and divorce, and liberty of conscience. Thus amended, the document was printed in London under the title Articles of Christian Religion approved and passed by both Houses of Parliament after advice had with the Assembly of Divines. In spite of the action of parliament, the Confession has been uniformly printed in Great Britain as well as in America in the form in which it left the assembly, and in this form it was adopted by the Scotch assembly in 1647, and by the Scotch estates of parliament in 1649, the latter ordering that it and the two catechisms be published and printed.
The Confession opens with a definition of the Bible as the only rule of faith and practise, and with the proofs by which it attests its authority, and closes with a chapter on the last judgment. It is the clearest, strongest, most logical, and most careful symbolical statement of the Calvinistic scheme of Christian doctrine, and represents the rigorous philosophical type of creedal statement as compared with the Heidelberg Catechism and Bullinger’s Second Helvetic Confession, or with the Thirty-nine
Articles, while, on the other hand, it 2. Descrip- is not so rigid as the Canons of the tion and Synod of Dort. It proceeds from the
Sources. idea of God’s sovereignty and his de-
crees, and does not by distinct treatment give sufficient prominence to the fatherhood and love of God. Its definitions, starting with the divine foreknowledge and election, may easily be interpreted to nullify the free offer of the Gospel to all men and to deny the readiness of God to redeem all sinners willing to repent. These objections have been met by the Declaratory Statements of the Scotch Churches and the Revision of the American Presbyterian Church (North).
For a long time it was the received opinion that the Westminster Confession bore the stamp of Dutch Theology and of Turretini (q.v.). Even the younger McCrie (Annals of English Presbytery, London, 1872, p. 177) took this fposition, but Mitchell (Westminster Assembly, Philadelphia, 1897, pp. 370 sqq.), Schaff (Creeds, i. 762 sqq.), and Briggs (Presbyterian Review, Jan., 1880) have shown this view to be untenable. The Confession is based upon a thorough study of the Scriptures, the Continental Reformed theology, the earlier English and Scotch confessions, and more particularly upon the Trish Articles of Archbishop Ussher (q.v.), several sections, such as those on the Scriptures, the Trinity, the decrees, the Lord’s Supper, and the civil
magistrate, being drawn largely from the Irish statement, as well as such expressions as ‘“ the man of sin,” applied to the pope. It must be also remembered that a large number of English catechisms, strongly doctrinal, had proceeded from Presbyterian and Puritan sources, and that William Twisse (q.v.), Gataker, and other members of the Westminster assembly were trained theological disputants and writers. As for subscription to the Confession, it remains a matter of doubt whether the English section of the Westminster divines intended anything more than that the document should be a norm of teaching. On the other hand, the Scotch insisted upon subscription, a course adopted by American Presbyterianism, though in a relaxed form.
In England, where parliament formally established Presbyterianism in 1647, the Confession was modified under the Protectorate, and was set aside when episcopacy, with the Thirty-nine Articles and the Book of Common Prayer, were restored under Charles II., in 1660. In Scotland the parliament of 1690 again “ratified and established the Confession of Faith as the public and avowed confession of this Church,” and in the Act of Union of the two kingdoms in 1706-07 the Confession was declared “forever confirmed in the Church of Scotland,” even as ‘the Presbyterian government ’”’ was declared to be “‘ the only government of the Church within the realm of Scotland.” The Scotch assem-
blies of 1690, 1699, 1700, 1704, etc.,
3. History required all ministers and probationers
in England of the Gospel having license to preach, and and all ruling elders, to subscribe to
Scotland. the Confession without amendment;
and this remained law in the churches of Scotland till 1879, when the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland took the initiative in adopting an explanatory statement, or Declaratory Act, intended to ‘‘ set forth more fully and clearly ’’ some doctrines of Holy Scripture in regard to whose statement in the Confession a demand had been made that they be freed from certain real or apparent inconsistencies with the Scriptural scheme. The act included seven clauses emphasizing (1) God’s love to all mankind and the free offer of salvation to men without distinction; (2) that the doctrine of decrees is to be held in connection with the statement that God desires that all men should come to repentance, and that “he has provided a salvation sufficient for all, adapted to all, and offered to all in the Gospel”’; (3) that the doctrine of native inability does not imply that men in the state of nature are not responsible to God’s law and to the Gospel; (4) that it is not to be held that God may not extend his grace to persons outside the pale of the preached Word, or that all who die in infancy may not be saved; (5) that all intolerant and persecuting principles of action within the Church or by magistrates are disavowed, and that any statement in the standards teaching such principles need not be approved; (6) that the Church is to preach the Gospel to every creature; and (7) that liberty of opinion is to be allowed in matters which are not of the substance of the faith, such as the interpretation of the six creative days. The United Presbyterian Church was followed by the Free Church
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