The Presbyterian and Reformed Review

LIBRARY OF PRINCETON

APR 2 6 2000

THEOLOGICAL SE‘ 'INARY

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2016 with funding from
Princeton Theological Seminary Library

https://archive.org/details/presbyterianrefo4161warf

THE PRESBYTERIAN
AND REFORMED REVIEW

No. 16 — October, 1893.

I.

DR. BRIGGS’ HIGHER CRITICISM OF THE
HEXATEUCH EXAMINED.

IN the Presbyterian Review for January, 1883, Dr. Briggs pub-
lished “ A Critical Study of the History of the Higher Criti-
cism with Special Reference to the Pentateuch.” This is now
reprinted in a volume, with a few additions and such verbal correc-
tions as his subsequent change of attitude has rendered necessary,
under the title of The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch* In this
amended form it may consquently be regarded as presenting the
carefully considered views of the author corrected up to date.

There is an obvious distinction between the Higher Criticism de
jure and the Higher Criticism de facto ; and these may differ widely
from each other. Critical investigations may be rightly conducted
and lead to correct conclusions ; or they may be based on wrong
principles, follow wrong methods, and lead to false conclusions. Dr.
Briggs tells us ( Presbyterian Review for 1881, p. 578) that “ Biblical
criticism is represented by two antagonistic parties — evangelical
critics and rationalistic critics.” And he claims to have shown
( Presbyterian Review for, 1883, p. 70) that “evangelical Biblical
criticism was based on the formal principle of Protestantism,
the divine authority of the Scriptures, over against ecclesiastical

* The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch. By Charles Augustus Briggs, D.D.
8vo, pp. 259. The Preface states that “ten years ago the author undertook to
write a little hook upon the Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch, and at that time
he advanced some distance in its preparation. But on reflection he turned aside
from it, with the opinion that the times were not yet ripe for it.” Now “he
presents to the public the result of his studies so far as they have gone.”

34

530

TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

tradition ; that the voice of God Himself, speaking to His people
through His Word, is the great evangelical critical test.” He cannot
then object to the application of this test of his own suggesting to the
Higher Criticism as he expounds and defends it. Is it evangelical
or rationalistic criticism ? Is it Biblical or anti-Biblical ? Are his
critical conclusions in harmony or at variance with the statements
of Scripture?

Dr. Briggs indeed says (p. 3) : *

‘ ‘ The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch vindicates its credibility. It strength-
ens the historical credibility, (1) by showing that we have four parallel narra-
tives instead of the single narrative of the traditional theory ; and (2) by tracing
these narratives to their sources in the more ancient documents buried in them.”

It is difficult to imagine what meaning he can possibly attach to
these words to justify him in making such a statement. It is ob-
vious that taken in their ordinary and natural sense they do not
express the truth. According to the Higher Criticism of Dr.
Briggs, the Pentateuchal narrative is a compilation from four post-
Mosaic documents, J, E, D and P, extracts from which have been
woven together by a series of redactors. The oldest of these docu-
ments, J and E, are somewhat doubtfully assigned to a date from
four to six centuries after the death of Moses (pp. 136, 156). D is
said to belong eight centuries after the same event, and P ten cen-
turies. What conceivable sense is there in saying that the historical
credibility of the Pentateuch is strengthened by its being made up
from four narratives dating respectively four, eight and ten cen-
turies after the Mosaic age, instead of being a single narrative
from the pen of Moses, a principal actor in all that is recorded from
Exodus to Deuteronomy, who was consequently familiar with
the facts, and his word a complete guarantee of the truthfulness and
accuracy of his account ? Would it strengthen the historical credi-
bility of the Gospels if, instead of being written by well-known
contemporaries and eye-witnesses, they proceeded from unknown
authors belonging severally to the ages of Augustine, Charlemagne
and Pope Gregory VII, and were made up from the stories in cir-
culation at these respective periods? And the case is yet more
seriously aggravated by the discrepancies and contradictions that
are alleged between the Pentateuchal documents; discrepancies not
found in the Mosaic narrative, but created by the critical processes
which sunder it into fragments and set these over against one an-
other, making the part equal to the whole, or identifying distinct
transactions, thus arbitrarily producing discord, and making the
several documents nullify each other’s testimony instead of sup-

*Tliis and similar references hereafter are to the volume named in the preced-
ing note.

DR. BRIGGS' HIGHER CRITICISM OF THE HEXATEUCH. 531

porting it. The universal affirmation of those that accept the par-
tition hypothesis is that the history must be reconstructed ; that
the true course of events is not that which lies upon the face of the
narrative, but it must be ascertained by eliminations and fresh com-
binations. And the only difference between the critics is in their
varying estimates of the amount of truth which can be extracted
from the mass of legendary accretions, later codifications and pare-
netic settings.

It is altogether misleading to say that the Higher Criticism, as
handled by Dr. Briggs, only finds in the Pentateuch

"minor discrepancies and inaccuracies such as are familiar to students of the
Gospels ; hut these increase the historical credibility of the writings, as they show
that the writers and compilers were true to their sources of information even
when they could not harmonize them in all respects.”

Apart from the gratuitous and unwarranted assumption that there
are discrepancies and inaccuracies in the Gospels, this conceals the
fact that the representations of the Pentateuch in regard to the
work of Moses, the revelations made to him and the laws enacted
by him, are in large part discredited. What avails it that “the
writers and compilers were true to their sources of information,”
if these sources, because of distance in time or for other reasons,
are considered unreliable ? It is true that inspiration is attributed
both to the documents and the redactors (pp. 142, 160). But here
again the use of terms out of their ordinary and accepted sense is
calculated to mislead. For it must be borne in mind that inspira-
tion in Dr. Briggs’ view does not preserve its subjects from histori-
cal mistakes. Accordingly it leaves the historic credibility precisely
where it would have been without it.

Dr. Briggs stigmatizes the view which he opposes as “the tradi-
tional theory.” It is no baseless ecclesiastical tradition, but it has
formed a part of the faith of the Church from the beginning,
because accredited by reliable history and by explicit statements of
the Word of God.

The testimony of Holy Scripture regarding the authorship of
the Pentateuch is first reviewed (pp. 6-30); and then the history of
critical opinions adverse to the authorship of Moses (pp. 36-145).
There is this remarkable difference between the two parts of the
discussion. In the former there is a constant attempt to minimize
or evade statements however positive and explicit. In the latter
objections are exaggerated and their validity magisterially affirmed.
Thus by depreciating all that favors, and enhancing ^nd overrating
all that can be made to seem to oppose, the authorship of Moses,
the professor fancies that he makes out a case. Had he come to
the Scriptures to learn what they really teach, and then tested objec-

532 tee PEE SB TTER1AE AND REFORMED REVIEW.

tions fairly to see whether they were of sufficient force to set aside
the teaching of Scripture, the result would have been different.

According to Ex. xxiv. 3, 4, 7, Moses wrote in the Book of the
Covenant all the words of Jehovah, viz., those recorded in chap, xx,
and the judgments, chaps, xxi-xxiii. This is commented upon as
follows (p. 6) :

“ The editor of the Hexateuch designed to give the essential contents of the
Book of the Covenant in that series of pentades and decalogues which seem to
have been the original contents of this code of the Ephraimitic writer. A crit-
ical study of this code shows that there have been omissions, insertions, transpo-
sitions and revisions ; but the substance of this original code of the twelve
decalogues is there.”

This is altogether without warrant. The sacred writer here pro-
fesses to lay before his readers a true copy of the Book of the
Covenant, not merely its “ essential contents ” nor its “ substance.”
It is the code committed to writing by Moses, not a modification of
it drawn up in a later age.* And the unique importance of this
authoritative document, which lay at the basis of the covenant
ratified at Sinai, is of itself a guarantee that it would be sacredly
preserved in its primitive form unaltered. The proof offered
(pp. 211-232) of alterations from the Mosaic original is drawn from
the assumption that this was composed in decalogues and pentades,
which, though still preserved in part, can no longer be traced
throughout, and which, it is hence inferred, must have been
obscured or effaced by omissions, insertions and transpositions. But
this is pure conjecture. The only decalogue, which is expressly
declared to be such, is the ten commandments, Deut. iv. 13, x. 4.
It is quite likely that Ex. xxi. 2-11 may be regarded as a deca-
logue ; and some other groups of ten or five are pointed out with
more or less plausibility. In the majority of instances, however,
the critics vary considerably in their enumeration. The presence
of certain groups of five or ten in this ancient body of laws, how-
ever, does not prove that every subject of legislation here intro-
duced was dealt with after one unvarying pattern, that each was
unfolded in precisely the same number of statutes, none more and
none less, and that no miscellaneous statutes were admitted without
a similar grouping. And especially, when it is found that these
groups of five or ten cannot be made to cover the Book of the

* The professor nowhere states definitely the date to which he would assign
the Covenant code. He says (p. 125) : ‘‘It is not surprising that the school of
Reuss put the Covenant code in the reign of Jehoshaphat. It would be diffi-
cult to find it in ^11 respects in the previous history, and there seems to have
been a progress in the line of the Covenant code up to the reign of Jehoshaphat
and beyond It seems most probable that the greater code of the Cove-

nant represents the Mosaic code, as it had been codified in the northern king-
dom of Israel.” And on p. 124 : ‘‘A theocratic code suits best a prosperous
kingdom and a period where elders and judges were in authority.”

DR. BRIGGS’ HIGHER CRITICISM OF THE HEXATEUCH. 588

Covenant as it now stands, it does not follow that the reason is to
be sought in changes that it has undergone. The assumption that
the verses which the professor finds himself unable to classify are
fragments of former decalogues, and that the original number of
decalogues was twelve to correspond with the twelve pillars erected
by Moses, for which he can imagine no other use than that the dec-
alogues may have been severally written upon them, is unverified
and baseless speculation. And as this is the only semblance of
proof presented to show that the Book of the Covenant has not
been preserved in the form in which it was written by Moses, it
cannot be considered very convincing.

In Ex. xxxiv. 27, Moses is directed to write the words contained
in the preceding verses, which the professor calls the Little Book of
the Covenant, in distinction from chaps, xx-xxiii, the Greater Book
of the Covenant. He agrees with those critics who assign the lat-
ter to the document E, and the former to the document J. This
gives occasion to the remark (p. 7) :

“The question thus arises whether there were two law-codes [in two different
books given within a few weeks of each other, or whether these are two different
codifications of one and the same Book of the Covenant.”

There is no question at all about the matter to one who puts any
faith in the history related in the Book of Exodus. There are here
not two different codifications of one and the same Book of the
Covenant, one produced in the northern kingdom of Israel and the
other in Judah. The sacred narrative distinctly states when, where
and by whom each was written. One was written by Moses on the
occasion of the original ratification of the covenant at Sinai ; the
other on the renewal of that covenant after it had been broken by
the sin of the golden calf.

In Deut. xxxi. 9, 24-26, Moses is said to have written all the
words of “ this law ” in a book and delivered it to the custody of
the priests. The professor tells us that “ this law ” must be limited
to Deut. xii-xxvi, although in the usage of Deuteronomy this ex-
pression cannot be so restricted.* Deuteronomy recognizes a prior
legislation of Moses binding upon Israel,! and the book of the law
of Moses, by which Joshua was guided, must have been much more

extensive.^

* See Deut. i. 5, iv. 44, xxviii. 58, 61, xxix. 20, 27.

t See Deut. iv. 5, 14, xxix. 1, xvii. 11, xxiv. 8, xxvii. 26.

f Comp. Josh. i. 3-5 a and Deut. xi. 24, 25 ; Josh. i. 56, 6 and Deut. xxxi. 6,

7 ; Josh. i. 12-15 and Num. xxxii ; Josh. v. 2-8 and Ex. xii. 48 ; Josh. v. 10, 11
and Lev. xxiii. 5, 7, 11, 14 ; Josh. viii. 30, 31 and Deut. xxvii; Josh. viii. 34 and
Deut. xxviii ; Josh. xiv. l-3a and Num. xxxiv. 13-18 ; Josh. xiv. 6-14 and Num.
xiv. 24 ; Josh. xvii. 3, 4 and Num. xxvii. 6, 7 ; Josh. xx. and Num. xxxv. 10
sq. ; Josh. xxi. and Num. xxxv. 1-8 ; Josh. xxii. 1-4 and Num. xxxii ; Josh,
xxii. 5 and Deut. x. 12. 13.

584

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

He then goes on to say (p. 8) :

“ This code is in the rhetorical form and not in the form of decalogues and
pentades, as are the Covenant codes. The question, then, arises ■whether this
rhetorical form belongs to the original code, or whether the original code of this
law book has not been put in this rhetorical form by the Deuteronomist.”

The record is explicit that Moses wrote “ the words of this law
in a book until they were finished Dr. Briggs identifies “ this
law ” with Deut. xii-xxvi. And then because this law has a form
of its own, distinct from that of another code prepared on a different
occasion and for a different purpose, he questions whether we really
possess what Moses actually wrote. It is surprising that its rhetori-
cal form should raise such a question in his mind. That is pre-
cisely the form which all the circumstances would lead us to expect.
The great legislator, on the point of surrendering into the hands of
another the leadership which he had held for forty years, is making
his farewell address to the people, under the conviction that their
destiny hinged upon the fidelity with which they clave to the Lord
and obeyed His law. Its rhetorical form belongs to its fitness for
the occasion on which it was delivered. This is one of the indica-
tions of the genuineness of the Book of Deuteronomy which it is
impossible to set aside.

In Deut. xxxi. 22, Moses is said to have written a song, which is
thus commented upon (p. 9) :

“ The song referred to is given in Deut. xxxii, and it is one of the finest pieces

of poetry in the Old Testament Whether the song in its present form

came from the pen of Moses is doubted by many evangelical scholars.”

The professor does not say whether he thinks these doubts well
founded. Their only basis is the circumstance that the song trans-
ports us in thought to the time when the apostasies and penalties
had actually occurred, which are spoken of (xxxi. 16-21, 29) as cer-
tainly foreseen. If such foresight was possible, the poetic dress
which is given to it is altogether natural, and surely gives no valid
ground for disputing the historic truth of the statement respecting
its authorship. The praise of the poetry will scarcely atone for the
suggestion of groundless suspicions concerning its genuineness.

The itinerary in Hum. xxxiii is ascribed to Moses ; and it is note-
worthy that it is so related to the antecedent narrative as to bind
together portions sundered by the critics and seriously to embarrass
the partition hypothesis.

It is not worth while to discuss the question what it is that
Moses is directed to write in Ex. xvii. 14, whether, as Dr. Briggs
contends, simply the words, “I will blot out the remembrance of
Amalek from under heaven,” or, as Dr. Dillmann and the best in-

DR. BRIGGS' HIGHER CRITICISM OF THE HEXATEUCH. 535

terpreters maintain, an account of the preceding transaction, the
affair with Amalek.

The consideration of these several passages is followed by the
remark (p. 11) :

“All that the Pentateuch says as to Mosaic authorship we may accept as valid
and true ; but we cannot be asked to accept such a comprehensive inference as
that Moses wrote the whole Pentateuch from the simple statements of the Pen-
tateuch that he wrote out the few things distinctly specified.”

We have seen that the professor, so far from accepting all the
statements of the Pentateuch in regard to Mosaic authorship, has
in every instance sought to belittle them and pare them down, and
suggest doubts as to their accuracy. It should also be observed
that the statement that Moses wrote certain things need carry with
it no implication that he wrote nothing beside ; on the contrary, it
may imply that he wrote much more. Isaiah is expressly said to
have written two things, an inscription upon a roll (Isa. viii. 1) and
a brief prophecy upon a tablet (xxx. 8). Are we to infer that this
was all that he wrote? Jeremiah is said (Jer. xxxvi. 2) to have
written his prophecies up to the fourth year of Jehoiakim. Does
that imply that he wrote none after that date? Moses had been
trained in Egypt, where it was the custom to record the exploits of
kings and all important events. When, now, we are told that he
wrote something in relation to Amalek’s attack upon Israel at Reph-
idim, can it be that this was singled out as alone worthy to be put
on record ? And how does the fact that he preserved a list of the
stations occupied by Israel in their journey through the desert
create any presumption against his having also recorded the events
which made that journey particularly memorable? If he wrote
some of his laws and adopted measures for their careful preserva-
tion, why should he be less concerned to have other laws given by
him reduced to writing, which were even more sacred and equally
imperative?

The attempt is made to evade the testimony of Hos. viii. 12 to
the existence of an extensive written law by giving a hypothetical
sense to the first clause. But the past tense of the verb in the
second clause renders that impracticable. The ten thousand pre-
cepts of God’s law have been counted a strange thing. The people
could not be charged with disregarding a law which they did not
actually possess.

In regard to the book of the law found in the temple in the
reign of Josiah we are told (p. 16) that critical scholars are agreed
that it was the Deuteronomic code. And several pages are quoted
from Prof. Ryle in proof of this position. But while the arguments
adduced go to show that Deuteronomy was contained in the book

536

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

there is no proof that the rest of the Pentateuch was not contained
in it likewise. The statement that the author of the Books of Kings
was not acquainted with any law but that in Deuteronomy cannot
be substantiated.*

The professor has made a number of most unaccountable slips in
the next paragraph (pp. 20, 21). He speaks of—

“The roll of the book concerning the king, Ps. xl. 8. This doubtless points
to the law contained in Deut. xvii. 4 sq., and gives evidence of a knowledge of
the Deuteronomic code by the writer of this exilic psalm.”

If “ in the roll of the book it is written of me ” (Ps. xl. 8) points
to what is written in Deut. xvii. 14 sq., concerning the king, then
the author of this- psalm was a king, and, as the kingdom ceased
with the exile, the psalm could not possibly be exilic. He says
further :

“ ‘ Law ’ in the Psalter is for the most part used in psalms of a very late post-
exilic date.”

Five of the nine psalms in which this term occurs were certainly
preexilic, viz., Ps. i (alluded to by Jer. xvii. 7, 8), xix, xxxvii, xl,
ascribed to David in their titles, which there is no good ground for
disputing ; Ixxviii, composed, according to Dr. Briggs (p. 148), before
J and E were compacted, which, according to all critical authorities,
antedates Deuteronomy (p. 10 1 sq).

The Lord’s injunction by Malachi, “Remember ye the law of
Moses, my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all
Israel,” is said to refer to the Deuteronomic code, though this was
not given at Horeb, but in the plains of Moab.

The plain references in Ezra, Nehemiab, Chronicles and the New
Testament to Moses as the author of the Pentateuch are diligently
explained away, so that one is left to wonder what form of speech

*The plan of Solomon’s temple (1 Kgs. vi) is identical with that of the Mo-
saic tabernacle (Ex. xxvi), the dimensions are precisely duplicated, the apart-
ments are the same, the decorations largely the same, and the furniture of the
same description, only multiplied and enlarged (1 Kgs. vii). There are also
plain allusions to the Priest code in the mention of the altar of gold (vii. 48),
and of brass (viii. 64), the horns of the altar (i. 50, ii. 28), the feast in the
seventh month (viii. 2), and on the fifteenth day of the month (xii. 32), the eve-
ning meal-offering (xviii. 29), and the morning meal-offering (2 Kgs. iii. 20 ;
Ex. xxix. 39-41), new moon and sabbath as times of holy convocation or spe-
cial religious observance (2 Kgs. iv. 23), the blasphemer to be stoned (1 Kgs.
xxi. 13 ; Lev. xxiv. 16), patrimony inalienable (1 Kgs. xxi. 3 ; Lev. xxv. 23),
the laws concerning leprosy (2 Kgs. vii. 3, xv. 5 ; Lev. xiii. 46), the high priest
(2 Kgs. xii. 10, xxii. 4, xxiii. 4), the trespass offering and sin-offering (2 Kgs.
xii. 16), the money of him that passeth the census, and for the person according
to the priest’s estimation (2 Kgs. xii. 4 ; Ex. xxx. 14 ; Lev. xxvii. 2-8), meal-
offering, drink-offering, the brazen altar which was before Jehovah (2 Kgs. xvi.
13-15), unleavened bread the food of priests (2 Kgs. xxiii. 9 ; Lev. vi. 16-18).

DR. BRIGGS’ HIGHER CRITICISM OF 1HE HEXATEUCH. 537

the sacred writers could have employed to express this idea more
distinctly. The admission is made, however, on p. 26 in reference
to several declarations of our Lord and some other inspired state-
ments:

“These passages all represent Moses to be the law-giver that he appears to be
in the narratives of the Pentateuch.”

And now from these minimizing interpretations of Scripture, we
proceed to the history of critical opinion in the remainder of the
volume, wherein are set forth the method by which conclusions ad-
verse to the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch have been reached,
and the grounds on which they are based. The superficial objec-
tions of Peyrerius and Spinoza, which antedated the hypothesis of
its composite origin, are first stated (pp. 36 sq.), and a validity attri-
buted to them which they can only possess to one who is convinced
for other reasons that the Pentateuch is not the work of Moses.

The hypothesis of different documents in the Pentateuch is sup-
ported by arguments from language, style and parallel narratives.
The proof from language consists of long lists of words drawn out
in formidable array (pp. 70 sq., 168 sq.), as severally characteristic
ot these documents, and affording indubitable evidence of diversity
of writers. This seems plausible at first sight, and is calculated to
make a strong impression on the uninitiated. But it is altogether
delusive, and the apparent force of the argument melts away on a
closer inspection. The difference of diction in different sections of
the Pentateuch is largely to be accounted for by the diversity of
theme or of the character of the composition. The critics claim
that what they call the document P is clearly distinguishable from
JE in respect of language. Now, to P they assign genealogies,
dates, legal sections, and such grand, world- wide events as the crea-
tion and deluge ; but, as a rule, all narratives in the sphere of indi-
vidual life are given to JE, only mere snatches from them, such as
a few disjointed sentences or summary paragraphs, being allowed to
P. It is obvious that a division of this sort must necessarily result
in a diversity of diction. Words are signs of thought, and where
the lines of thought are distinct so must the diction be. Words
and phrases in constant use in ordinary narrative have no place in
genealogies and ritual laws, and vice versa the peculiar diction of
the latter is not to be expected in the former.

J and E, between which the narratives are commonly divided,
are confessedly indistinguishable in diction. The general character
of the composition being the same, the diction is alike. The only
discrimination attempted is here again by means of a diversity of
subject, e. g ., dreams, Moses’ rod, the pillar of cloud, are regularly

538

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

given to E ; Jehovah appearing, or coming down from heaven, and
prostrations are the property of J. It is also significant that when-
ever the critics find themselves obliged to share a narrative between
P and JE, as in Gen. xxxiv, Ex. xvi, Num. xvi, they find it as
difficult to distinguish P from J or E on the score of diction, as
they do to distinguish J from E. In such cases they are obliged to
make the division, if they effect it at all, by other tests than those
of language; and their wide divergence from one another shows how
precarious and arbitrary are their assumed criteria.

It is further to be observed that these documents have no sepa-
rate existence ; and there is not the slightest evidence apart from
alleged critical criteria that they ever did exist as distinct produc-
tions. The criteria are first assumed. The lines of partition are
drawn accordingly. And then the correspondence of the docu-
ments with the criteria by which they were shaped is made the
proof of their reality, when they may be nothing more than the
arbitrary creations of the critics themselves. It is reasoning in a
circle to prove the documents by the criteria, and the criteria by
the documents.

And in spite of all the pains taken to partition the documents in
accordance with the criteria, this is found to be impracticable in
numerous instances. Of these the critics seek to rid themselves by
various suspicious expedients. Sentences and clauses are cut out of
their connection and attached to some remote paragraph. Words
or expressions occurring at variance with the hypothesis are alleged
to have been taken from one document and inserted in the other.
Mixed criteria are attributed to the manipulation of the redactor,
who is ever held in readiness to account for phenomena incompati-
ble with their primary assumptions. And the text is unhesitatingly
corrected into agreement with their hypothesis, the latter being
made the standard to which the former is obliged to conform.

It should be observed likewise that these lists contain much
which is plainly devoid of any significance whatever. Many of the
so-called characteristic words could not be so regarded, even if the
document hypothesis were well founded. The number is largely
swelled by enumerating words of rare occurrence, also words which
though familiar are proper to a given subject and are of course
limited to passages treating of that subject, and synonyms which
though used discriminatingly are counted as the unmeaning differ-
ences of distinct writers.

If different pages of any book or different productions of the
same writer be compared, long lists can be made out of words in
one which do not chance to occur in the other. But it would be
futile to argue from this a diversity of authorship.

DR. BRIGGS’ HIGHER CRITICISM OF THE HEXATEUCH. 539

The argument from style is largely subjective, and is a very pre-
carious ground for assuming the existence of distinct documents in
the absence of more tangible and trustworthy proofs.

Dr. Briggs correctly affirmed in 1883 ( Presbyterian Review ,

p. 100):

“There is nothing in this variation of documents as such to require that they
should he successive and separated by wide intervals, or that would prevent
their being very nearly contemporaneous. There is nothing in this distinction
of documents as such that forces us to abandon the Mosaic age as the time of
their origin.”

Even if it could be shown on purely literary grounds that the
Pentateuch is a composite production, and that the differences of
diction and style are such as to indicate the participation of distinct
writers in its preparation, this would not of itself militate against
its being produced under the superintendence, by the direction, and
with the authority of Moses. It need not be prejudicial to its con-
temporaneousness, its credibility, and its entire truthfulness. The
documentary hypothesis as first proposed by Astruc and further
developed by Eichhorn contemplated merely the Book of Genesis,
and assumed that this was compiled by Moses. There was nothing
in this adverse to its inspiration and divine authority in its fullest
sense. There was even plausibility and force in the contention of
these early advocates of the hypothesis, that it tended to confirm
rather than to disturb the credibility of the sacred record, which
was thus traced back to ante-Mosaic writings instead of drawing its
materials from unwritten tradition.

Even the extension of this hypothesis to the entire Pentateuch
need not in friendly and unprejudiced hands have conflicted with its
Mosaic authorship. It is quite conceivable, for example, that
Moses might have directed Joshua and Eleazar, or some other suit-
able persons, to prepare accounts of whatever was memorable in the
journey through the desert, and have made these the basis of his
own final work. A critical analysis of the Pentateuch on purely
literary grounds, supposing these to be sufficient to justify it, might
thus be in entire harmony with the statements of the Pentateuch
itself and of the rest of Scripture.

It is only the unfriendly presuppositions, on which the current
scheme of critical analysis is based, which bring it into irreconcila-
ble conflict with the truth of the Pentateuch, and consequently with
its being the work of Moses. This comes clearly out in the next
argument of Dr. Briggs on its behalf, that of parallel narratives.
It is claimed that in repeated instances variant accounts are given
of the same transaction, which differ so seriously from each other,
that they cannot have proceeded from the same writer. These are,

540

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

it is true, described in the sacred record as distinct events. But
this is attributed to a mistake on the part of the redactor or com-
piler, who, not being able to reconcile the discrepancies in these
narratives proceeding from different sources, imagined that they
must have related to separate times, places and actors, and so repre-
sented them. This assumption, which underlies the current critical
hypothesis, and has been largely influential in the partition of
the text, arbitrarily presupposes the untrustworthiness of the in-
spired history, sets up unsupported conjectures in opposition to its
explicit statements, infers in spite of positive declarations to the con-
trary an identity from certain superficial resemblances which are
outweighed by accompanying diversities, and imputes to the redac-
tor, who is the reputed author of the Pentateuch in its present form,
blunders of a kind that must destroy all confidence in the accuracy
and reliability of his work. Instead of a truthful and reliable his-
tory, we have a record of discordant traditions put together in a way
to mislead by one who misunderstood and misinterpreted them.

There are, we are told (p. 75 sq.), two accounts of the creation,
which conflict in some important particulars; two variant accounts
of the deluge; two versions of the Ten Words, neither of which
records them as they were actually spoken by God Himself and
written on the tables of stone, but both contain additions from several
sources of a much later date. There are three stories of the peril of the
wives of the patriarchs, two referring to Abraham at different courts,
and one to Isaac ; but all may be variations of the same story. The
blessings pronounced upon Abraham at different epochs of his life
are simply different versions of the same divine act. E and J differ
in their account of what Joshua did with the stones taken from the
bed of the Jordan. The redactor has in Num. xvi combined two
distinct rebellions in one account. There are two reports of the
bringing of the water from the rock. The one is in the wilderness
of Sin, early in the wanderings ; the other is in the wilderness of
Zin, forty years after. It is a question whether these are not variant
accounts of the same miracle.

It is obvious from these examples, and “ many other instances
might be given,” how unsettling these so-called parallel narratives
are to the historical truth of the Pentateuch. A mode of dealing
with its statements is here sanctioned which in the hands of other
critics leads to the most appalling consequences. And i t does not
appear how their conclusions are to be resisted, when their premises
are thus freely conceded. Nor does it appear how far Dr. Briggs
may be prepared to follow them. And if his adherence to the faith
in which he has been brought up holds him back from the logical
consequences of bis positions, what assurance is there that those who

DR. BRIGGS’ HIGHER CRITICISM OF THE HEXATEUCH. 541

accept them from him will not pursue them to their natural issue ?
It is this uncertainty, in which Dr. Briggs shrouds himself, which
has so disturbed his friends and alarmed the Church. He boldly
announces startling principles, destructive of what is most surely be-
lieved, and then expects by glittering generalities to restore the con-
fidence which he has so rudely shaken.

The discrepancies, which result from these assumed parallels, do
not merely affect matters of small consequence ; though the constant
recurrence even of minor discrepancies tends to weaken con-
fidence and undermine credibility. So reverent and conscientious a
scholar as Dr. Dillmann, the chief opponent of the Wellhausen school,
is led by the discrepancies thus developed in the patriarchal history
to discredit the real existence of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and to
find in the record of their lives only the experiences of wandering
clans, from which the people of Israel subsequently grew. Matters
of the gravest importance in the Mosaic period, and- such as are
fundamental to the religion of the Old Testament, are similarly in-
volved.

Dr. Briggs finds ten commands in what he calls the Little Book of
the Covenant (Ex. xxxiv. 14-26), of which he says (p. 189):

“There are some critics who hold that this decalogue was written upon the

tables, Ex. xxxiv. 28 If the section Ex. xxxiv. 11-28, stood by itself

we could not escape this conclusion ; but if we go back to Ex. xxxiv. 1, we find
the promise that Yahweh will write upon these tables the same commands that
were upon the former tables destroyed by Moses, and these were certainly the
ten words of Ex. xx. 2-17. This certainly was the opinion of the redactor.”

The professor states the opinion of certain critics, and of the
redactor, but he gives no intimation of his own. As he puts it, all
depends upon the critical analysis. The redactor connects vs. 11-28
with the promise in ver. 1, which leads to one conclusion ; some
critics interpret these verses by themselves and apart from that
promise, which compels a different conclusion. Which is right?
And what does the difference amount to ? These critics charge that
the redactor has made the same mistake here as in the instances
above cited ; that according to Ex. xxxiv, the ten commands here
given are the ones that were written on the two tables of stone,
whereas Ex. xx gives an entirely different version of them. The
redactor, unable to harmonize these discrepant accounts, converted
them into distinct transactions, and assigned them to separate
occasions.

Wellhausen goes further ; and Dr. Briggs opens the way for him,
not indeed by a positive declaration, but by a query. He raises the
question (p. 7) whether the Little Book of the Covenant and the
Greater Book of the Covenant, Ex. xxi-xxiii, are not “ two differ-

542

TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

ent codifications of one and the same Book of the Covenant.”
Wellhausen says that they are, and thus he finds three parallel nar-
ratives, three variant accounts, of what was transacted at Sinai.
These all agree that God delivered a law to Moses on Sinai, but
differ materially in regard to the contents of that law and the cir-
cumstances of its delivery. In Ex. xx God utters ten command-
ments as there cited, in the audience of the people, amid awful
terrors, and subsequently (xxxi. 16) gives them to Moses on two
tables of stone written with his own finger. In Ex. xxxiv God
gives ten commandments (here reported from a variant tradition) to
Moses alone, which Moses then writes on two tables of stone. In
Ex. xxi-xxiii no mention is made of tables of stone or of ten com-
mandments, but God gives to Moses a series of laws, which he com-
mits to writing and reads to the people (xxiv. 4, 7).

We cannot conceive that Dr. Briggs assents for a moment to this
conclusion. But it illustrates the havoc which this figment of par-
allel narratives, to which he gives his adhesion, is capable of making
in the most central and vital matters of divine revelation. If, as
Dr. Briggs intimates, the Little Book of the Covenant may be only
an altered version of the Greater Book of the Covenant, and the
redactor has erred in assigning them to distinct occasions ; and if,
moreover, the opinion of the redactor, thus suggested to be at fault
in one particular, alone hinders the assumption that the decalogue
of ch. xxxiv, already carried back to the time of the original rati-
fication of the covenant at Sinai, was the ten commandments then
written on tables of stoue, is not Wellhausen’s monstrous hypothe-
sis of three parallel narratives justified by the professor’s inconsid-
erate admissions?

Dr. Briggs finds two parallel narratives “of the same revelation
of the divine name Jahveh ” (p. 165), that of E in Ex. iii and that
of P in Ex. vi. This first disclosure of Himself by the Most High
to Moses, coupled with the original call of Moses to the work of
delivering Israel, took place, according to E, in the desert of Midian
at the burning bush as Moses was keeping the flocks of his father-
in-law. P locates it in Egypt, and says nothing of any burning
bush, or of Moses ever having been in Midian. The redactor has
converted these variant accounts of the same event into two sepa-
rate events by introducing P’s narrative at a later time, as though it
described a second revelation made after Moses found that his inter-
vention on behalf of the people aggravated their burdens instead
of relieving them.

Parallel narratives of the same plague are mistaken by the
redactor for distinct plagues, and are so represented by him (p. 78).
The different narratives also make different representations as to

DR. BRIGGS’ HIGHER CRI1ICISM OF THE HEXATEUCH. 543

the mode in which the plagues were wrought, and what the plagues
were (pp. 147, 148).

There are “several representations of the theophany ” (p. 236) :

“ In E Moses sees God’s face and form habitually. In J he is not permitted to
see God’s face, but only His back parts, and that as the greatest privilege of his
life. In D the prohibition of making images is based on the fact that the people
had seen no form of God in the theophany, but only heard His voice ; whereas
in E, the elders see God standing on a platform, and eat and drink in His pres-
ence. In P the glory of the theophanies lights up the face of Moses every time
he enters into the presence of the glory. Nothing of the kind appears in any
of the other narratives. These representations are sufficiently difficult to har-
monize in different documents of later writers depending on different sources of
information. How could Moses give such various accounts of what he himself
had seen and heard? ” See also p. 146.

On the principle of parallel narratives these are divergent accounts
of the same thing and traceable to “ different documents of later
writers” and their “different sources of information.” But the
redactor, in his simplicity, regarded and represented them as ac-
curate descriptions of what took place on different occasions.

There are divergent representations of the sacred tabernacle in
respect to its location, its elaborate structure and its uses (p. 103).
These variant traditions concerning the same building, which are
found in documents of different ages, are treated by the redactor as
though they were correct accounts of what belonged to the times
and the situations specified in the narrative.

The Biblical narrative and the critical conception of what were
the real facts are thus in antagonism throughout. If the former is
to be surrendered and the latter accepted, the truth can only be
ascertained by a complete reconstruction of the history by critical
methods. And the serious aspect of the case, then, is that the
documents, which are the only available sources, are conflicting and
overlaid by traditional accretions, and the well-meant, but mistaken,
attempts of the redactor to unify and harmonize them prove very
confusing, so that it is well-nigh impossible to attain to a well-
grounded certainty in respect even to the most fundamental facts of
the religion of the Old Testament. To show that this is not the
exaggeration of an “ anti-critic,” but a sober view of the actual
situation from a critical standpoint, I cite here the words of Kittel,
whose authority on such a matter will not be questioned : *

“A profound and almost impenetrable obscurity rests upon the occurrences at

* Geschichte der Hebrder, Vol. i, p. 212. A competent scholar and an inti-
mate friend of Dr. Briggs gives the following estimate of this work in the Pres-
byterian Review for 1889, p. 138: “The spirit of the book is rigidly scientific.
It is in the interest of historical research that the author writes. But he writes
as a profound believer in the supernatural. He treats the historical materials he
uses with deep respect. He is a critic, but a reverent and constructive one. He
is a representative of sober, thorough historical study, un warped by prejudice,
who cannot be made light of. He has done a great service in this volume.”

514

TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

Sinai, so far as regards their course in particular. There is scarcely any point
of the entire Old Testament tradition concerning which the accounts are so in-
volved and confused to such a degree as they have been here by the effort of the
redactor to unify this most important piece of the national history

“But, tangled as the individual threads of the narrative may be at this point,
one thing comes plainly out from all the accounts as the core of the whole. The
centre of all the events which take place here is the revelation of Jahve at Sinai in
a law regulating the life of the people. But in respect to its contents and com-
pass the several narrators diverge with regard to this law still more seriously,
I may almost say, than with reference to the external course of the giving of
the law.”

There is no obscurity whatever in the Biblical narrative respect-
ing the events at Sinai or the laws given there ; but critical recon-
struction throws everything into a tangle. The record of the laws
given at Sinai is parceled between the different narrators, J, E and
P. Dr. Briggs tells us (p. 156) of J, “ The only legislation it at-
tributes to Moses is the moral law of the Ten Words, the decalogue
of worship (the Little Book of the Covenant) and a special law of
the Passover.” Of E he says, “ Its law code, the Greater Book of
the Covenant, was the Mosaic law in its Ephraimitic codification.”
The Sinaitic legislation according to P was the ritual law from Ex.
xxv to Num. x. In critical estimation these are divergent repre-
sentations. No two of the authorities are agreed what laws were
given at Sinai. And the redactor by “ his effort to unify ” and by
reducing these variant statements to a continuous and consistent
account, as we now find it in the Pentateuch, has simply confused
the whole matter. The authorities are at variance, and it is impos-
sible to ascertain what were the real facts. The only thing that is
plain is that Jehovah did reveal a law at Sinai. But what that
law was we have no means of knowing. What is to be thought of
such a method of dealing with the inspired volume by professed
believers in divine revelation?

The chapter on the date of Deuteronomy, with the exception of
a couple of paragraphs from Dr. Driver, is repeated from the Presby-
terian Review of 1883, with a few verbal changes and the insertion
of a few clauses indicative of the change of sentiment which the
professor has since undergone. It recites verbatim the identical
arguments for the late date of Deuteronomy, which were then pro-
nounced inconclusive, as well as what were then declared to be “ in-
superable obstacles to the composition of Deuteronomy in the age
of Josiah.” Only now a different conclusion is drawn from the very
same premises. Of the explicit testimony of Deut. xxxi. 9-11,.
24-26, the professor then said ( Presbyterian Review , p. 105) :

“ This seems to imply clearly the Mosaic authorship and composition of the
Deuteronomic code.”

DR. BRIO OS' HIGHER CRITICISM OF THE HEXATEVCH. 545

He now says (p. 89) :

‘‘This seems to imply the Mosaic authorship and composition of a code of
law, but was that code the Deuteronomic code in its present form? .... All
that is said may be true if we suppose that an ancient Mosaic code was discov-
ered in Josiah’s time, and that this code was put in a popular rhetorical form as
a people’s law book for practical purposes with the authority of the king,
prophet and priest.”

No amount of special pleading can obscure the fact that the only
possible alternatives are that the Deuteronomic code is from Moses
or it is a pious fraud. The previous toleration of high places has
no force against the existence of the Deuteronomic code except on
the assumption that it proves the non-existence of a law restricting
sacrificial worship to a single altar. And yet this is acknowledged to
be the law by which the reforms of Josiah were directed, reforms pro-
fessedly based on the law book found in the temple. The insertion
of this novel statute under the name of recodification, and enforcing
it on the authority of Moses, who by hypothesis gave no such law,
but one directly opposite, is as palpable a fraud and as impossible to
carry into effect without detection as though the entire statute book
was then manufactured and the attempt made to palm it on the peo-
ple and the kings as the production of the great law-giver.

Having traced the literary analysis of the Pentateuch as succes-
sively proposed by the documentary and the supplementary hypo-
theses, and discussed the date of Deuteronomy, the professor proceeds
to the consideration of the development hypothesis of Reuss as
further championed and popularized by Graf, Kuenen, Wellhausen
and others. Of this he correctly remarks (p. 95) :

“It is evident that the school of Reuss propose a revolutionary theory of the
literature and religion of Israel.”

It revolutionized preexisting critical opinion, reversing the order
and the character of the so-called documents, making that last
which had been held to be the first, and that least reliable which
had been esteemed the most accurate and trustworthy, annihilating
beyond recovery the supplementary hypothesis which was then in
the ascendant, and saving the documentary hypothesis only by the
expedient of rending the Elohist in two, with an interval of centu-
ries between the sundered parts.

It was revolutionary in its relation to the Scripture record, whose
explicit statements it directly antagonized. Dr. Briggs here inter-
poses the caveat (p. 95) :

“It is important to distinguish the essential features from the accidental . . . .
The rationalism and unbelief that characterize Kuenen, Wellhausen and Reuss
.... are not essential to the theory itself.”

But the adoption by believing scholars of a theory which is
35

546 TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

inherently anti-Scriptural does not change its essential nature. The
precious cargo of a vessel may be scattered on the waves by a ruth-
less band of savages exulting in the work of destruction ; or it may
be cast overboard with no hostile intent by a devoted crew
persuaded that the vessel must be lightened that it may outride the
storm. The motives and the aims of the actors are as different as
day and night, but whether by friend or foe the cargo is sunk in the
sea. The various attitudes of different critics towards supernatural
and revealed religion does not alter the inherent quality of the
theory which they adopt in common, however it may modify the
tone and manner of their presentation of it, and the consequences
which they deduce from it.

The hypothesis of Reuss is built upon two assumptions, which are
in open and confessed antagonism to the declarations of Scripture:

1. That the Pentateuchal codes are not, as represented in the
Pentateuch itself and elsewhere in Scripture, component and mutu-
ally related parts of one complete system of legislation, but they
constitute so many distinct and successive systems of legislation, the
next in order being in each case further developed than that which
preceded it.

2. That the differences between these codes are such that they
cannot all have belonged to any one period, least of all to the Mosaic,
as represented in the Scripture account, but long periods of time
must have elapsed to give occasion for their introduction.

Now the professor very properly asks (p. 95):

“ How shall we meet it but on the same evangelical principles with which all
other theories have been met, without fear and without prejudice, in the honest
search for the real truth and facts of the case?”

Its antagonism to Scripture does not absolve us from a candid
examination of its claims, and a fearless inquiry into the facts upon
which it is professedly based. But we must not conceal from our-
selves the gravity of the issue. If it is true, the entire record of
the Bible on this subject is false. This is no reason for blinking
the question, momentous as it is. Or rather, its tremendous import-
ance imperatively demands that the investigation should be honest,
impartial and thoroughgoing. Here, if anywhere, we want to know
the exact truth. The Bible is not to be upheld by special pleading,
by concealment or ignoring of facts, by sophistical reasoning, or by
any species of dishonest arts. Let no servant of the God of truth
presume to undertake the defense of His righteous cause by disin-
genuous advocacy. The challenge of Job xiii. 7-11 is unanswer-
able : “ Will ye speak unrighteously for God, and talk deceitfully
for him ? ... . Shall not his excellency make you afraid, and his
dread fall upon you ?”

DR. BRIGGS' HIGHER CRITICISM OF THE HEXATEUCH. 547

The issue is direct: the Bible account of the Pentateuchal legis-
lation versus the theory of Beuss. Which is true ? If honesty forbids
covering up or evading any of the facts by which that theory is
supported, it equally forbids any sophistical attempt to hide or ex-
plain away the absolute incompatibility between that theory, and
not merely particular averments of Scripture, but the historical
truth of the entire Hexateuch. He who has confidence in the
Bible need not fear the result of the contest.

The development hypothesis is engrafted upon the documentary
hypothesis by assigning the Covenant code to E from four to six
centuries after the death of Moses, the Deuteronomic code to D
eight centuries, and the Priest code or ritual law to P ten centuries
after the same event. The documentary hypothesis accepting these
dates completely undermines the credibility of the narratives of the
Hexateuch, by attributing them to documents belonging six, eight
and ten centuries after the events recorded, and based upon variant
traditions circulating at those several dates. But the development
hypothesis goes further and charges the Pentateuch and Book of
Joshua with absolute falsity.

Moses is expressly declared (Ex. xxiv) to have written the Cove-
nant code, and read it in the audience of the people, whereupon
they promised obedience, and the covenant between Jehovah and
Israel was ratified on this basis with appropriate rites. The critical
allegation on the contrary is that the Covenant code, as recorded,
Ex. xxi-xxiii, was not and could not have been written by Moses,
but was drawn up in its present form in North Israel some time
after the settlement in Canaan ; Beuss says in the reign of Jehosha-
phat.

Moses is said (Deut. xxxi) to have written the book of the law, and
delivered it into the custody of the priests. This cannot mean less
than the Deuteronomic code ; it may include much more. But the
critical contention is that this code made its first appearance in the
reign of Josiah.

It is insisted that the Priest code as recorded in Exodus, Leviticus
and Numbers dates from the time of Ezra, whereas it is in the
sacred record directly attributed to Moses as a whole and in every
part of it. Its various enactments are interwoven with the events
of the Mosaic history ; the occasion and circumstances under which
they were delivered, together with the judgments inflicted for their
violation, are minutely specified. And the language of the laws ties
them to the period of wandering in the wilderness by the mention
of tents and camps and shittim-wood, and oxen and carts for the
transportation of the movable sanctuary, and Aaron and Eleazar as
the celebrants of the rites enjoined ; by allusions to Egypt as the land

548

TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

from which they had recently come, and to Canaan as the land to
which they were going ; and by injunctions which could only be im-
posed or obeyed when Israel was encamped together in a body, e. g.,
Lev. xvii. .1-9.

Of the two assumptions, on which the development hypothesis
rests, Dr. Briggs in 1883 admitted the first, viz., the successive de-
velopment of the codes in the order, Covenant code, Deuteronomic
code and Priest code ; but denied the second, viz., their origin at
widely separate periods ( Review p. 114).* He held that the codes
were all Mosaic ; that it was not

“necessary to postulate a thousand years to account for this development”
(Review, p. 114). “To an evangelical man, transgression and silence do not prove
the non-existence of the code, but only a general neglect and ignorance of it for
reasons that may be assigned ” (Review, p. 122). “That the law was buried in
oblivion as to its most essential parts and hid away in the temple for centuries,
while the nation followed traditional usage, is no more strange than that the
Gospel should have been buried in monastic chambers for so many centuries
away from the use of people, kings, and even pious priests and bishops of the
Church, while they followed canons, missals and traditional usage to a large
extent in violation of the first principles of the Gospel ” (Review, p. 126). “The
Mosaic legislation was delivered through Moses, but it was enforced only in part,
and in several stages of advancement, in the historical life and experience of
Israel from the conquest to the exile” (Review, p. 129).

And thus, while holding that the Deuteronomic code first came
into full operation in the reform of Josiah and the Priest code in
the reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah, he maintains that this did not
prejudice their Mosaic origin ( Review , p. 127) :

“ Nought but ancient, undisputed, divine documents, long neglected, but all
the more impressive on that account from the experience of the divine discipline
which that neglect involved, could so influence and control the pious leaders
and the pious part of the nation who followed them in these reforms.”

How the Priest code could be a development from the Deuteron-
omic code, and both alike Mosaic, when the latter was given in the
last month of Moses’ life (Deut. i. 3), the professor sought to ex-
plain thus ( Review , p. 115) :

“ It claims to be Mosaic legislation, but if we should suppose that Eleazar or
some other priest gathered these detailed laws and groups of laws into a code in
the time subsequent to the conquest, all the conditions of variation and develop-
ment might be explained.”

Then this whole development “ in the chief features of the cere-
monial system,” all in which the Levitical law goes beyond Deuter-
onomy in respect to ritual, would be post-Mosaic, and the Priest
code would be the law of Eleazar, not of Moses. Could the laws
of the great legislator have been so seriously altered within a gen-

* This and all subsequent references to the Review denote the Presbyterian
Review for 1883.

DR. BRIGGS’ HIGHER CRITICISM OF THE HEXATEUCH 549

eration? Or could Eleazar have taken such liberties with what he
had received direct from Moses himself? The sentence above
quoted has accordingly been altered thus (p. 108) :

“It claims to be Mosaic legislation, but if we should suppose that later priests
gathered the detailed laws and groups of laws into codes at any times subse-
quent to the conquest, this claim would be satisfied.”

He escapes from his former self-contradictory position by taking
a step in advance and accepting not only the first postulate of the
development hypothesis, but the second likewise, thus abandoning
his belief in the Mosaic origin of the codes, reversing all his former
arguments on that subject, and claiming that the different codes
were separated by several centuries from each other and from the
time of Moses (p. 123). By accepting these unproved postulates he
surrenders the whole case at the outset, and the conclusions of the
critics follow as a matter of course.

The fallacy in the critical reasoning on this subject lies in the
primary assumption that the Priest code was a further development
of the Deuteronomic code; whereas both are different and mutually
supplementary parts of one comprehensive system of legislation.
They are distinct in the matters treated, in their aim and purpose
and in the parties for whom they were respectively designed. One is
occupied with the ritual, and was intended for the direction of the
priests: the other was for the guidance of the people in the practi-
cal affairs of life. These codes were developments from the Cove-
nant code, one in one direction and the other in another. The
Covenant code was a preliminary body of laws, setting forth in
brief compass the civil and religious obligations of the people as
conceived in the spirit of the religion of Jehovah. It is placed
(Ex. xx-xxiii) just between the appointment of judges to administer
the affairs of the people (Ex. xviii. 25, 26) and the ratification of
the Covenant between Jehovah and Israel (Ex. xxiv), and it has an
obvious relation to both. It furnished a body of statutes to govern
the judges in their decisions, to which the people promised obedience
as the Covenant people of Jehovah.

In both respects it was preliminary and rudimental. The ratifi-
cation of the Covenant was first followed by the enactment of the
Priest code, in which the few and simple ritual requirements of the
Covenant code were developed into a minute and extensive cere-
monial, designed to give full expression to the worship of Jehovah
and the religious life of the people, as directed by the priests, the
ministers of religion. And later on, when the people had reached
the borders of Canaan, the great legislator gave to the people at
large the Deuteronomic code, a body of enactments covering the
whole of their practical life, being a renewal and enlargement of

550

TEE PRESB YTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

the Covenant code in all its particulars with such modifications as
the altered circumstances demanded. The Priest code was thus not
developed out of the Deuteronomic code, nor the Deuteronomic
code out of the Priest code ; but both were developments on differ-
ent sides from the original and primary Covenant code.

To sunder these great divisions of the Mosaic legislation from
one another and assign them to distinct epochs in the history of
Israel is as unreasonable as it would be to treat the several articles
of the Constitution of the United States in a similar manner. It is
as though some one were to insist that the articles on the legisla-
tive, the executive, and the judiciary, instead of describing coordi-
nate branches of the same government, really set forth distinct forms
of government, which grew up one after another, proceeding from
the simple to the complex, and implying great social and political
changes which it would require long periods of time to effect. The
second article would seem to be the most primitive, in which the
government was by a single chieftain, called President, who was
chosen to office for a brief term. At a later period this was super-
seded by Article 3, which established an aristocracy, denominated
Judges, who held office for life. Finally Article 1, which must
have been the latest in the series, introduced institutions of a more
popular cast by substituting a body of representatives elected by
the people. Nothing but confusion and perversion can result from
such an unwarranted proceeding.

Dr. Briggs explicitly acknowledges that the relation between the
several codes, which he urges (pp. 101-107) in proof of their suc-
cessive development, is due to the difference in their design (pp. 107,
108) :

“ A code for the elders and judges of tribes or clans in their various localities,
a code for the instruction of the nation as a whole in rhetorical and popular
form, and a code for the priests of the holy place as a centre, in the nature of
the case will show a progress from the simple to the more and more complex
and elaborate in matters of ritual observance. The Priest code is from the
priestly point of view in connection with the tabernacle and its institutions. It
will necessarily exhibit progress and development on the technical side in the
details of the ritual. This code is scattered in groups in the middle books, and
broken up by insertions of historical incidents, but when put together exhibits
an organic whole, a unity and symmetry which is wonderful in connection with
the attention given to details.”

If a greater elaboration of the ritual in the Priest code is explic-
able from the reason here given, his entire argument from this
source for its later development is null and void.* And the unity,

*The only instance adduced, which even apparently suggests the legislation
of different periods, is the alleged contrariety in the laws Ex. xxii. 31; Deut.
xiv. 2 ; Lev. xvii. 15, 16, xi. 39, 40. Of these he says (p. 106): “Several gener-
ations are necessary to account for such a series of modifications of the same

DR. BRIGGS' HIGHER CRITICISM OF THE HEXATEUCH. 551

which it is admitted to possess, speaks for all being the product of
a single mind, and not a conglomerate formed by the accretions of
ages.

In 1883 it was admitted in a passage already quoted, that trans-
gression of the codes and silence respecting them do not disprove
their existence, but only a general neglect and ignorance of them
for reasons that may be assigned. But now the same facts repeated
in identical terms are held to establish a different conclusion
(p. 123):

“ There are evidences of the presence from time to time in the history and
literature of certain laws of D before Josiah, and of certain laws of P before
Ezra, but not of these codes and writings as such.”

It was also affirmed [Review, p. 120), that “the most essential
things of the Priest code ” are “ the most striking features in the
religious history of the Books of Samuel,” and he went on to say :

‘‘These things, in which the holy places and things culminated, and in which
the clothing and office of the priesthood attained their climax, point with unmis-
takable force to the Priest code. That these essential features remained, argues
the prior existence of the legislation of the Priest code, notwithstanding its general
neglect and violation.”

This entire paragraph has now been dropped, and instead of it
the following sentence is appended to a previous statement regard-
ing the wilderness as the scene of the legislation of the middle books
of the Pentateuch.

‘‘This, however, does not force us to think of the antiquity of our present
Priests’ code, but only of the antiquity of those laws and institutions in it which
are ascribed to the earlier times ” (p. 116).

On this method of reasoning, unless every requirement in the
Priest code is mentioned in the history and was regularly obeyed,
the code itself could not have been in existence, but only such of its
statutes as chance to be expressly attested. The unreasonableness
of such a test is obvious, especially in relation to a code which was
for the government of the priests and the regulations of which could
not be expected to come within the scope of the general history
of the people unless in the most incidental and occasional way. The
same impracticable test is applied to the code of H (Lev. xvii-xxvi),

(p. 128):

“ Ezekiel’s resemblance to it in many respects implies a knowledge of its
legislation whether he knew it in its present form of codification or not. It is

law.” But there is no serious discrepancy after all, and nothing that cannot be
readily harmonized. Even Dill man n here takes issue with the professor, and
claims that the difference is not due to earlier or later date, but to the changed
point of view from which the subject was regarded ( Comment . on Lev. xvii. 15,
16).

552

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

probable that Ezekiel knew of it, but it is difficult to prove the existence of the
code prior to Ezekiel.”

As Ezekiel did not transcribe these chapters in full, his numerous
allusions to them and citations from them are not allowed to prove
their prior existence. If some classical critic were to demand
similar proof from ancient authorities of the existence of Greek and
Latin writings, where would it be found even in the case of the best
attested works?

Dr. Briggs agrees with the advocates of the development hypothe-
sis, as we have seen, in their two preliminary assumptions, and in
affirming the validity of their principal arguments ; does he accept
their conclusions? He claims that he differs from them in two re-
spects, to wThich we must devote a brief consideration.

He censures the early opponents of the school of Eichhorn (p. 54),
for “ not discriminating between those who were attacking the
Scriptures in order to destroy them, and those who were searching
the Scriptures in order to defend them.” There is some ground for
this censure then and since. Nevertheless Eichhorn and his collab-
orators, though enthusiasts in the study of the Old Testament as
Hebrew literature, had no sympathy with it as a supernatural reve-
lation. Eichhorn defended the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch
in the main, because by the rationalizing exegesis then in vogue he
was able to explain away all that was miraculous, and reduce it to
the level of extraordinary natural events. But when this insipid
rationalistic interpretation fell into disrepute, there was no resource
for those who denied the reality of the supernatural but to dispute
the contemporaneousness of the Mosaic record. The documentary
hypothesis was eagerly seized upon as the most effective method of
setting aside the authorship of Moses and allowing a sufficient inter-
val for the growth of miraculous legends. The various critical
hypotheses, which have been successively elaborated, have been
wrought out under the same bias, and have led to corresponding re-
sults. In consequence of this prevalent perversion it is not surpris-
ing that a prejudice has been conceived against the Higher Criticism
itself, as though it were essentially rationalistic, and antagonistic to
the truth of Scripture and to evangelical religion. But it is a serious
mistake to reject a valuable instrument because it has been misap-
plied. The Higher Criticism is simply a scientific method of inquir-
ing into and ascertaining the facts respecting the books of the Bible.
If proper methods are pursued right results will be reached. The
true way to deal with a “radical and revolutionary theory” like
the development hypothesis is, as Dr. Briggs well says (p. 98), “ to
look the . facts in the face, and inquire whether the theory of the
school of Reuss accounts for them in whole, or in part, or at all.”

DR. BRIGGS’ HIGHER CRITICISM OF THE HEXATEUCH. 553

No one who has a sincere faith in the Bible will hesitate to say
Amen to these noble words. The cause of the Bible cannot be
damaged by the frank acceptance of the truth in criticism, or in any
other branch of scientific inquiry. It may be and it has been dis-
credited in the estimate of intelligent and thoughtful men to their
own unspeakable injury by the blind and obstinate hostility of pro-
fessed advocates of religion to clearly established truths, as though
they were antagonistic to the Bible.

Beyond question Dr. Briggs is honestly aiming to defend the re-
vealed Word of God and evangelical religion against the hostile at-
tacks of a destructive and revolutionary criticism. Convinced that the
critics have established much that is at variance with what has been
currently believed hitherto respecting the origin and structure of the
books of the Bible, he is persuaded that the only honest and safe course
is frankly to accept these conclusions and adjust the belief of the
Church accordingly. He confidently maintains that nothing which
is essential to the Christian faith will be lost by so doing ; while, if
this is not done, the Bible will be put in apparent opposition to the
sure results of modern scholarship, to the serious disadvantage of the
Christian faith, a disadvantage to which it cannot rightfully be sub-
jected. This is an intelligible position. It is conscientiously taken,
and it is entitled to respectful consideration. If it can be shown
that critical conclusions do not affect the Christian faith, that the
latter will remain intact whatever be the results at which the
Higher Criticism may arrive, that the great verities of our religion
are quite independent of all questions of the date and authorship
and literary character of the books of the Bible, a decisive point of
vantage will unquestionably be gained. The believer may then
regard with entire unconcern the varying phases of the critical com-
bat. Terminate as it may, his serenity will be undisturbed. The
realm of critical inquiry will then stand in no relation to the realm
of Christian faith. They lie in distinct and independent spheres.
Human authorship is nothing ; divine authorship is everything.
Earnest minds who have been entangled in the meshes of critical
speculation, or hampered by doubts arising from the oppositions of
science and philosophy, may welcome such a solution of the diffi-
culties which have obstructed their acceptance of Christian truth,
and eagerly grasp the relief thus afforded them. And it is cause
for gratulation, if they who are in darkness and doubt can by any
means be led into clearer light.

But the serious aspect of the matter is that the divorce which
the professor proposes to effect is impracticable. The books of the
Bible are the charter of the Christian faith. If the former are un-
sound, the latter cannot be maintained. In attempting to adjust the

554

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

relations between the Christian faith and critical science, Dr. Briggs
lowers the former into conformity to the demands put forth in the
name of the latter, instead of elevating the latter to the just require-
ments of the former. There must be a new doctrine of the prov-
ince of reason, a new doctrine of inspiration, a new doctrine of the
evidential value of miracles, a new doctrine of the fulfillment of
prophecy, a new doctrine of the infallibility of the Bible. Every
thing must be graded down to the level of the last critical hypoth-
esis. The objective arguments for the truth of Christianity must
be surrendered ; or at least the Church must be ready to surrender
them, if need be. The subjective arguments are the only ones that
can be depended upon. The fides humana is worthless ; the fides
divina is alone of any account. But what God hath joined to-
gether cannot thus be put asunder. The fides divina is the only
faith that saves the soul. The testimouy of the Holy Spirit in the
heart can alone work that persuasion of the truth of the Scriptures
which is connected with salvation. But that persuasion is not
wrought in opposition to, nor apart from rational grounds of con-
viction. The Holy Spirit does not persuade the soul to embrace
that as divinely true which is evidenced to the understanding as
critically false. On the contrary, the persuasion which He produces
of the infallible truth of the Word of God is an irrefragable basis
of the conviction that the books of the Bible, which are the chan-
nels through which the divine truth is conveyed to men, are thor-
oughly trustworthy, and must prove themselves so under the most
searching investigation; and that a true criticism cannot set aside
their integrity, their authenticity, or any claim which they make
for themselves.

Dr. Briggs claims that he differs from the advocates of the devel-
opment hypothesis not only in his animus but also in his critical
results. He sums up the case thus (p. 128) :

“ We have now gone over the arguments relied upon by the school of Reuss
for their theory of the development of the Hexateucli. These sustain the the-
ory so far as the codification of the legislation in its present literary forms is
concerned, but not so far as to disprove earlier traditional Mosaic legislation and
earlier Mosaic codes which have been used by holy men with historic reverence
and under the influence of the divine Spirit in their codification of ancient laws
and their composition of the historic documents into which the codes were
taken up.”

But the most radical advocates of that hypothesis admit the ex-
istence of “earlier traditional Mosaic legislation,” which was
subsequently embedded in the codes. Thus Wellhausen, in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica , Art. “Pentateuch,” p. 513:

‘‘It is asked what is left for Moses if he was not the author of the Torah?
But Moses may have been the founder of the Torah, though the Pentateuchal

DR. BRIGGS’ HIGHER CRITICISM OF THE HEXATEUCH. 555

legislation was codified almost a thousand years later ; for the Torah was orig-
inally not a written law, but the oral decisions of the priests at the sanctuary.

. . . . Questions of clean and unclean belonged to the Torah, because these
were matters on which the laity required to be directed ; but, speaking gener-
ally, the ritual, so far as it consisted in ceremonies performed by the priests
themselves, was no part of the Torah. But, while it was only at a late date
that the ritual appeared as Torah as it does in the Priestly code, its usages and
traditions are exceedingly ancient, going back, in fact, to pre-Mosaic and hea-
thenish times. It is absurd to speak as if Graf’s hypothesis meant that the
whole ritual is the invention of the Priestly code, first put into practice after the
exile.”

At the utmost, then, the difference can only be one of compara-
tive amount. Possibly more may be traceable to Moses in the
reckoning of Dr. Briggs than in that of Wellhausen; but in the
indefiniteness with which both express themselves it is impossible
to affirm that this is so.

Dr. Briggs enumerates the five characteristic points of the develop-
ment hypothesis (pp. 96, 97), and, if we can understand the meaning
of his language later on in his discussion, he affirms his acceptance of
every one of them.

“The theory of the school of Reuss attempts to account, (1) for the variation
of the codes by three different legislations at widely different periods of time,
e. g., in the reign of Jehoshaphat, of Josiah, and at the restoration.”

The professor simply substitutes three codifications for “three dif-
ferent legislations,” but he means the same thing. For he says
(p. 128): “ There are evidences of certain laws of D before Josiah,
and of certain laws of P before Ezra, but not of these codes and
writings as such.” All that was in the codes except these “ certain
laws ” was of course new legislation, and, as we have already learned
from Wellhausen, the hypothesis does not assert the novelty of all
the legislation in the codes.

“(2) For the silence and the infraction, the discrepancy between the Penta-
teuchal legislation and the history and the literature, by the non-existence of the
legislation in those times of silence and infraction.”

This was denied in 1888, but the denial is now explicitly with-
drawn, and much of the argument on pp. 110-124 is unmeaning
otherwise.

“(3) For the development of the religion of Israel in accordance with these
codes by the representation that the origin of these codes corresponds with that
development.”

It* is claimed (pp. 125, 126) that “we can trace in the history of
Israel a religious progress in remarkable accordance with the
codes.” This is indicated by the fact that there was a “ develop-
ment of the legislation in successive codifications ” as the basis of
the reforms of Josiah and of Ezra. And the codes as such are said to

556

TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

have originated then, though “certain laws” incorporated in them
existed before.

“ (4) For the difference in point of view of the authors of Kings and Chroni-
cles, on the ground that the author of Kings knew only of Deuteronomy, while
the author of Chronicles was filled with the spirit of the new Priest code.’’

It is (p. 126) declared in so many words that the Priest code
“ was not known to him (the compiler of Kings) or used by him
and that the difference between Kings and Chronicles “ suggests the
natural supposition that the Priests’ code was subsequent in origin
to the Book of Kings.”

“ (5) For the peculiar position of Ezekiel’s legislation by the statement that
his legislation was in fact an advance beyond the Deuteronomic code, and & prep-
aration for the Priest code, which was post-exilic.”

Dr. Driver unambiguously asserts and argues for this view of the
closing chapters of Ezekiel. And Dr. Briggs quotes from him with
apparent approval of the statement that cogent arguments “com-
bine to make it probable that the completed Priests’ code is the work
of the age subsequent to Ezekiel.”

In one respect it might seem as though Dr. Briggs parted com-
pany with the school of Reuss, viz., in affirming the trustworthi-
ness of the Books of Chronicles, which they unhesitatingly deny.
Thus he says (p. 115) :

“ Some of the most essential things of the Priest code are mentioned by the
chronicler. These cannot be explained by the theory of the school of Reuss.
The way that Kuenen and Wellhausen meet the difficulty is hardly creditable to
their fairness and good judgment. We cannot consent to the denial of the his-
torical sense of the chronicler for the sake of any theory.”

This passage, repeated verbatim from 1883, might lead one to-
think that he still gave full credit to the statements of Chronicles.
But there are other indications that his mind has changed on this
subject. On p. Ill he repeats from 1888 the regulations of the
Priest code, which Chronicles declares to have existed in the time
of David and Solomon. But he twice inserts a caveat not in the
original passage: “But the other writers knew nothing of these
things,” “But these things are unknown to the prophetic histories.”
Why is the silence of Kings remarked upon unless with the view
of discrediting what rests solely on the authority of Chronicles?
The Books of Kings in general pay little attention to ritual ; on the
contrary, this is a prominent feature of Chronicles. This is a dif-
ference in the plan of these two histories that grows out of the Re-
sign with which they were respectively written, but does not in the
least affect their trustworthiness. In 1883 Dr. Briggs said ( Reviewt
p. 127):.

“The theory of the school of Reuss, that the chronicler colors the history

I)R. BRIGGS’ HIGHER CRITICISM OF THE HEXATEUCH. 557

from his point of view and misrepresents it, cannot be justified. It was natural
that each should examine the history from the point of view of the code most
familiar to him ; and that the author of Kings and the chronicler should, there-
fore, occupy different planes of judgment, but that does not show any miscon-
ception or misinterpretation on the part of either of them.”

Now he says (p. 126) :

‘‘The theory of the school of Reuss that the chronicler so greatly colors the
history from his point of view as to falsify it cannot be justified. It was natu-
ral that each should examine the history from the point of view of the code
most familiar to him, and that the author of Kings and the chronicler should,
therefore, occupy different planes of judgment. We could not reasonably de-
mand that they should be colorless. These differences do not show any inten-
tional misinterpretation on the part of either of them, or that the chronicler
undertook to invent the history.”

The author of Chronicles is acquitted of falsification, of inten-
tional misrepresentation and of inventing history, but not, as before,
of misconception and unintentional misrepresentation likewise.
This saves his honesty and lays the blame on inadequate sources of
information; but the history is no longer entirely reliable.

In accepting the development hypothesis, Dr. Briggs thus has to
reckon not only with the explicit and reiterated statements in
Chronicles of the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch, which he vainly
attempts by forced constructions to invalidate (pp. 21-25), warning
those who cannot understand them as he does of the peril they
incur :

‘‘Those who insist upon interpreting such phrases in such a way as to force
belief in the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch .... should beware lest
they risk the canonicity of the writings of the chronicler by bringing him in
conflict with the mass of evidence that may be presented from the Pentateuch
itself to show that, if the chronicler held that opinion, he was altogether mis-
taken.”

But he must reckon likewise with the fact, which he not only
admits, but insists upon and argues from, that Chronicles surveys
the history from the point of view of the Priest code. Its exist-
ence is assumed throughout the entire period that Chronicles covers,
viz., from the reign of David to the exile. This is the divine norm
to which rulers and people are held to be responsible, and by which
their acts are judged. The history is conceived and represented
from this point of view. And if this is a mistaken point of view
the history is colored and misconceived and misrepresented. And
the best apology that can be made for the author is that he was
honest, but mistaken.

It is to be noted further that Dr. Briggs’ acceptance of the devel-
opment hypothesis not only leads him to discredit Chronicles, and
brings him into conflict with the direct statements of the Pentateuch
as to the Mosaic origin of all its laws without exception, but obliges

558

TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

him likewise to treat as untrue the facts which are there recorded.
In 1883 he said of the period of the Judges ( Review , p. 117):

“ The ark of the Covenant, the tent of meeting .... are only found in the
Priest code.”

He now says (p. 112) :

‘‘The ark of the Covenant, the tent of meeting .... are diflerent from
these things as presented in the Priest code.” And (p. 113) he says of the
“sacred things of the Priest code ” in the time of Samuel : “They are in a dif-
ferent form and of a different character from that in which they appear in the
Priest code.”

Now if, as he imagines and magisterially affirms, the ark of the
Covenant, tabernacle, shew-bread, ephod, and Urim and Thummim
of the time of the Judges and Samuel were not such as are described
in the Priest code, and we are asked to infer from this that the
Priest code was not yet in existence, it can only be because these
things had not yet been constructed after the pattern described in
the Priest code. And yet we are expressly informed that the pat-
tern of all these things was given to Moses in the mount (Ex. xxv-
xxx), and that Bezaleel and Aholiab made the tabernacle and all its
vessels in precise accordance with these directions (Ex. xxxvi-
xxxix), and that on the first day of the first month of the second
year of the Exodus (Ex. xl. 17 sq.), the tabernacle was reared up,
and all its vessels put in place, that a contribution of oxen and
wagons was made for their transportation through thq wilderness
(Num. vii), and that when Israel left Sinai, the tabernacle and all
its appurtenances were taken with them (Num. x. 17, 21). If these
things were not made in the Mosaic age, as described in the Priest
code, all these detailed statements are false. It might indeed seem
as though the professor did after all believe in the reality of the legis-
lation attributed to Moses in these matters from his language on p. 1 16 :

“The Davidic legislation and the organization of the temple service point
backward to the simpler Mosaic legislation of which it is an elaboration. The
temple of Solomon is easier to explain on the basis of the tabernacle of Moses
than the latter on the basis of the former.”

But the omission of this sentence, which followed in 1883 ( Re-
view, p. 120), is significant :

“ There is a development in these two particulars, from the Priest code to the
Davidic institutions, that is more remarkable than the development from the
Deuleronomic to the Priest code, and this development is a constant one in all
the details of the buildings and the vessels and the ministry.”

This makes it plain that he is no longer willing to concede that
the elaborate tabernacle of the Priest code ever had any real exist-
ence. The real Mosaic tabernacle in his view was quite different.

And so, if there were space to do so, we might go through all
the particulars, in which he finds a post-Mosaic development in the

DR. BRIGGS’ HIGHER CRITICISM OF THE HEXATEUCH. 559

Priest code, and show in every instance that not only is the statute,
declared by the record to have proceeded from Moses, but there is be-
sides a record of the actual observance of the statute, either in the
Mosaic age or that immediately succeeding. The sin offering is not
only certified by the various passages, which he vainly seeks to set
aside (p. 117 note), but was actually offered at the consecration of
Aaron to the priesthood (Lev. viii. 14, ix. 7,8), and on the day that
Nadab and Abihu met their death, it is stated that Moses was dis-
pleased because one particular in the ritual of the sin offering was
disregarded (Lev. x. 16). The law of the central altar, of which he
finds no evidence before Hezekiah and Josiah (pp. 102, 120), was
certainly in force, when all Israel assembled to war against the two
and a half transjordanic tribes because of an imagined violation of
this ordinance (Josh. xxii). The distinction of priests and Levites,
which is alleged to be a development of P beyond D (p. 104), was
the very thing against which the rebellion of Korah was directed
(Num. xvi), which, as well as the awful catastrophe which over-
whelmed the conspirators, must be a mere figment, if no such dis-
tinction then existed. The whole Pentateuchal record becomes
untrustworthy, if the laws of the Priest code are not Mosaic.

In pp. 146-155, the professor brings together “a number of argu-
ments from the field of Biblical theology,” which “ might be in-
creased to an indefinite extent,” and which “ show the same order of
development” that he finds “in the legislation and in the language,
and indicate that the documents were composed at such epochs as
best explain this development.” To this reasoning in support of
the development hypothesis it is sufficient to oppose his language
in 1883 ( Review , p. 116), which apart from its unproved assumption
of the composite character of the Pentateuch is as true now as it
was then :

“The Elohist and the Elohistic Priest code differ in their doctrinal and ethical
conceptions in many respects from the Jehovist and the Deuteronomist and
their codes, but these differences are in type and point of view. The doctrines
and morals of the Elohist are still at the basis of the doctrinal and ethical devel-
opment of Old Testament theology The four constituent parts of the

Pentateuch resemble one another in theology far more than any of them resem-
ble the Prophets, the Psalter, or the ethical writings. They differ from one
another and yet resemble one another, as do the Gospels, and lie at the roots of
Old Testament theology, as do the Gospels at the basis of the New Testament.”

And, now, as the result of the whole matter, how much does the
professor find in the Pentateuch that is genuinely Mosaic? In the
narrative portion the itinerary (Num. xxxiii. 1-49) and a single
sentence in Ex. xvii. 14 ; no more (p. 10). Of the Ten Command-
ments the brief words of command with which they severally be-
gin; but not the specifications and reasons which constitute the

560

THE PRESBYTERIAN ARD REFORMED REVIEW.

bulk of them in their present form ; these are later additions by J,
E and D (pp. 181-187). The Book of the Covenant (Ex. xxi-xxiii),
which Moses is said to have written and read to the people, is not
preserved in its original form, but has been subjected to “ omissions,
insertions, transpositions and revisions.” What we possess is the
codification of a later date current among the ten tribes (p. 6).
Deut. i-xi professes to be “ the words which Moses spake unto all
Israel beyond Jordan in the wilderness.” But it is a post-Mosaic
production, and the best that can be said of it is in language quoted
approvingly from Dr. Driver (p. 86) : “ It is highly probable that
there existed the tradition — perhaps, even in a written form —
of a final address delivered by Moses in the plains of Moab.” The
Deuteronomic code (Deut. xii-xxvi), which is expressly said to have
been written by Moses and delivered by him for safe preservation
to the custody of the priests to be kept by them in the sanctuary,
is not what Moses wrote, but is (p. 157) a recodification of the
Judaic recension of the old Covenant code of Moses. The Judaic
writer (p. 156) attributes no legislation to Moses except “ the moral
law of the Ten Words, the decalogue of worship (Ex. xxxiii. 14-
26) and a special law of the Passover ” (Ex. xiii. 3-10). But it is
assumed that there was a Judaic recension of the Covenant code,
parallel to the Ephraimitic recension in Ex. xxi-xxiii, and that this
was the ancient code found in the temple in the reign of Josiah,
and was then expanded into the Deuteronomic code. The Priest
code, which is said in all its parts and enactments to have been
directly given by God to Moses, is a codification a thousand years
after Moses “ of the priestly ritual and customs coming down by
tradition from Moses and Aaron in the priestly circles of Jerusa-
lem ” (p. 157). How much is Mosaic and how much is later priestly
usage is left to conjecture. The proportion which these indeter-
minate constituents bear to each other may be inferred from the
following passage, which is quoted with approval from Dr. Driver’s
“ moderate and cautious statement” (p. 159):

“In matters of ceremonial observance, which would remain naturally within
the control of the priests, regulations, such as those enjoined iu Ex. xx. 24-26,
xxii. 29-32, xxiii. 14-19, would not long continue in the same rudimentary state ;
fresh definitions and distinctions would be introduced, more precise rules would
be prescribed for the method of sacrifice, the ritual to be observed by the
priests, the dues which they were authorized to receive from the people, and
other similar matters. After the priesthood had acquired, through the founda-
tion of Solomon’s temple, a permanent centre, it is probable that the process of
development and systematization advanced more rapidly than before.”

It is to this, then, that the Mosaic legislation shrinks : the kernel of
the Ten Commandments after all extraneous additions have been
stripped oft'; the original form of the Book of the Covenant, sub-

DR. BRIGGS' HIGHER CRITICISM OF THE HEXATEUCH. 561

sequently codified in the way of “ omissions, insertions, transpositions
and revisions ” into Ex. xxi-xxiii, and at a still later time in
another recension recodified into Deut. xii-xxvi, and a few simple
ritual regulations incapable of being definitely identified, which in
the long ages of temple practice were expanded into the ceremonial
law of the middle books of the Pentateuch. The enormous dispar-
ity between this representation of the law of Moses and the claims
which are made for it in the Pentateuch and throughout the Bible
will answer the^question with which this article began, Is the Higher
Criticism of Dr. Briggs Biblical or anti-Biblical ? It also shows
that the question which the late General Assembly was obliged to
face was not that of the inerrancy of the Scriptures in certain triv-
ial matters, im[no wise affecting their infallibility in matters of
faith, but their historical truth in all that pertains to the founda-
tion period of revealed religion.

Princeton. William Henry Green.

36

II.

RECENT DOGMATIC THOUGHT IN SCANDI-
NAVIA.

IT has been said that Germany is the library of the theological
sciences, and it cannot be denied that Germany, the cradle of
the Reformation, is foremost in theology as well as in philosophy.
All scholars must more or less look to Germany for truth and error,
orthodoxy and heterodoxy. But other lands can also present names
of learned men who shine like bright stars in the theological firma-
ment. We turn our eyes to the northern lands of Europe, to the
countries where Swedes, Norwegians, Danes and Finns have their
homes. Some think of Scandinavia only as the Land of the Mid-
night Sun, of fjords and cliffs and hills. But the sun of science
and culture shines brightly in the Land of the Midnight Sun, al-
though, as few Scandinavian books are translated into English, the
scholars of Sweden, Norway and Denmark are not so well known
as the leaders of German culture. Moreover, the theologians of
Scandinavia are not so productive as their German brethren, and as
a matter of course students there have been to some extent depend-
ent upon German theological thought. But there are some promi-
nent theologians in Scandinavia who deserve to be kept in memory.

One of the most renowned of recent Swedish dogmaticians is
Bishop C. 0. Bjorling, D.D., a representative of the orthodox school
of Lutheran theology, and it may be proper to begin with a toler-
ably full account of his system of thought. His great dogmatic
work, Christian Doymatics accordiny to the Confessions of the Luth-
eran Church , is divided into five main parts, somewhat similarly to
the system of Prof. Philippi, as follows: (1) The original fellow-
ship with God, (2) the disturbance of the original fellowship with
God by sin, (3) the objective restitution of the fellowship with God'
accomplished by Jesus Christ, (4) the subjective application of the
reunion with God, (5) the completion of the fellowship with God.

His method of discussion is to present first a scientific develop-
ment of each doctrine ; then to explain the Biblical foundation ;
and, lastly, to give an excellent, concise history of the doctrine
from the time of the early Church, concluding with the modern
development. In certain parts of his work he is somewhat specu-

RECENT DOGMATIC TH0UGH1 IN SCANDINAVIA. 563

lative, but not to sucb a degree as to deserve the name of a specula-
tive theologian. He holds that a theologian has a firm dogmatic
foundation, if he lives by faith in the truths of Christianity, as
these are presented in Holy Writ and stated in the Confessions of
the Church ; and he adds, that dogmatic conceptions are not only
expressions of abstract reason, but possess the reality of life. Ac-
cording to Bishop Bjorling, faith is formally a union of feeling,
thought and will. Dogmatic knowledge is acquired when the
thought present in faith is developed in a formal conception, which
does not disturb the life of faith. If there were no operation of
thought in faith dogmatics would be impossible. He considers dog-
matics to be, further, a development of the harmony which subsists,
in the conception of faith, between the thought and the contents of
faith, and places a great stress upon the testimonium Spiritus Sancti
internum , both in a theoretical and practical aspect. Dogmatic
knowledge is a presentation of this testimony. But the contents of
faith cannot be fully comprehended by the science of dogmatics,
because there is something in its eternal nature which the spirit of
man, circumscribed by space and time, never can find out. Bishop
Bjorling recognizes a holy ground where there is no room for spec-
ulation.

The main topics treated in the first section of Bishop Bjorling’s
treatise are God and the original condition of man. Besides these,
a certain prominence is given to the doctrine of angels. Some dog-
maticians, inclining to the school of Schleiermacher, who hold that
the existence of angels has no significance for the Christian con-
sciousness of faith, treat the doctrine of angels as only an appendix
to dogmatics ; but Bishop Bjorling is of the opinion that there is an
essential connection subsisting between the angels and the salvation
of man. He argues that if angels had not existed, with whom man-
kind was intimately connected, the incarnation and redemption had
not taken place ; because, if man had fallen through his own self-
determination, and not by seduction, he could just as little have
been redeemed as the fallen angels, who fell by their own volition.
On the one hand, if man had not been related to angels he could
not have been seduced by the evil angel. On the other hand, it
was because man fell by seduction from without that it was possible
for him to be saved by atonement, since man is not essentially sinful
but only permeated by sin. This view corresponds with the view
of the early Church, which is expressed in the words, “ Nullus
diabolus, nullus redemptor.”

Bishop Bjorling deduces all the divine attributes from the essen-
tial attribute that God is love. The existence of God is treated in
the Introduction, and stress is laid upon the doctrine of God as an

564

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

absolute personality. God is an absolute person, who, in His eter-
nal act of love, is a unity of being, knowing and wiling, and on
account of this unity He is the perfect, self-sufficient and blessed
One, in whose perfectness there is absolute power, truth, holi-
ness and wisdom. He teaches that in the essence of God, being,
knowledge and will are all alike primitive. Volition cannot be
before being and knowledge, because then will would.be a blind
power ; knowledge cannot be before willing and being, because then
it would be an empty form, a subject without an object; and there-
fore the school of Hegel cannot be approved in its contention that
the essence of God is thought, nor the school of Fichte, teaching
that the will is the principle of God’s essence. In this position he
opposes Delitzsch, Julius Muller and Thomasius, who hold that will
is the essential primitive attribute.

The idea of God as an absolute personality has an important
bearing upon Bishop Bjorling’s conception of the Trinity. In the
presentation of this doctrine he becomes somewhat speculative in
attempting to explain the mystery from the analogy of man. That
such an analogy is proper, he argues from the fact that man was
created in the image of God. Because man, on becoming conscious
of himself as an ego, knows himself to be an actual personality by
comprehending that there is a Thou, we must, according to Bjor-
ling, believe that the same is the case with God. We need only
bear in mind that man is a finite being and is determined by an in-
dependent outside power, but God is infinite and is not determined
by anything without Himself. The duplicity which necessarily be-
longs to a personality, the Ego and Tu, exists within the essence of
God. The relation of God the Father and God the Son is this
duplicity in the divine essence ; and further, as a union takes place
between the Ego and Tu in organic society — as in the family, in the
State and in the Church — there is also a unity of the Father and
the Son in the Holy Spirit. But this unity is not such as to annul
the distinction between the persons, but is mediated through their
hypostatic character. On account of this unity thus mediated God
is His own object, i. e., He thinks Himself and wills Himself. He is
self-conscious and self-determining, being an absolute person. This
absolute personality is materially determined by love. Therefore,
God is an absolute person, both formally and materially. God, as
Father, gives Himself and all that He has to the Son in an eternal
act of love ; God, as Son, gives Himself to the Father in an eternal
return of love ; and the Spirit is the eternally outgoing love from
the Father and the Son, by which and by whom the Father and
the Son are united and yet distinguished. Consequently, it follows
that God is the absolute person as the triune God. The three

RECENT DOGMATIC TEO UGHT IN SCAND1NA VIA. 565

cannot therefore be separated and each one per se be considered an
absolute person, but only in relation to each other; because all the
three persons constitute one absolute personality. Therefore the
Father is the absolute person in the form of the first relative per-
son, uniting with Himself and at the same time separating from
Himself the Son and the Holy Spirit ; the Son is the absolute per-
sonality in the form of the second relative person, uniting with
Himself and at the same time separating from Himself the Father
and the Spirit; the Spirit is the absolute personality in the form of
the third relative person, uniting with Himself and at the same time
separating from Himself the Father and the Son. This will suffice
to show how Bishop Bjorling seeks to explain the mystery of the
Trinity.

The fall of man from the fellowship of God, Bishop Bjorling ex-
plains, not simply by means of definitions and statements, but in
the argumentative manner characteristic of his dogmatic lectures.
We will give a short summary of his presentation. Man is a unity
of feeling, thought and will. Originally man enjoyed freedom in
the true sense, being determined by God. But there was no deter-
minism by a blind necessity ; and, on the other hand, man was
not left to himself, to his own good pleasure : because both of
these conditions would conflict with the free personal causality of
God, who alone can be the ground of independence and free devel-
opment. To the human liberty, given by God, belong two factors,
viz., determinateness and self-determination, and both are essential.
If the determining action of God only were affirmed, and the self-
determination of man excluded, it would result in the heresy of
determinism. But, on the other hand, if we lay stress only on the
self-determination of man, the liberty offered would be indeter-
minate and empty, an absolute good pleasure. In the original con-
dition of man the will of God was the deciding factor without de-
terminism. Consequently man in his primitive condition could
decide to obey or disobey God. This power was a liberty of choice,
but man was not indifferent. It was only necessary that man by
the way of free choice should attain true liberty, and, therefore, by
self-determination come to a determinateness in which the will of
God should always be the determining power. Thus, freedom
would have been confirmed and become permanent. Man had the
power of free choice, and it was necessary that the testing of his
self-determination should take place. An impulse made itself felt
from the two factors of freedom ; on the one side the divine deter-
mining power was felt as a demand on the self-determination of
man, and on the other side the choice of the will presented itself as
a test. Here lay the possibility of sin ; and the outward condition

566

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

was the occasion that God gave commands concerning the eating
and not eating of the fruits in the garden. Under this testing and
temptation man fell by allowing his self-determination to be deter-
mined by selfishness instead of the will of God. Selfishness is,
therefore, the original sin.

In his treatment of the “ order of grace,” Bishop Bjoriing'dis-
cusses first the call, then illumination, the new birth in connection
with repentance and faith, justification, the unio mystica, renovation
and sanctification, following the order of the older Lutheran dog-
maticians. The Scandinavian Lutherans generally, however, adopt
the following order: Vocation including awakening, illumination,
conversion as consisting of contrition and faith, justification, regen-
eration, the mystical union, renovation and sanctification ; regenera-
tion being considered the transitive conversion aud the act of God
when He adopts as His child the sinner justified by faith in Christ.
And this seems to the present writer also to be the best order, most
Biblical and least liable to be misunderstood. Concerning the
place of justification in the “order of grace,” Bishop Bjorling re-
marks that strictly justification does not belong to the “order of
grace,” because justification is the objective foundation of regenera-
tion, and is a forensic act of God taking place in the mind of God
when the sinner believes. In regard to the mystical union, he
speaks generally as follows: When man is justified and born anew,
the triune God makes His dwelling in man as in His temple. This
union is real and effective, and the life of God is formed in man,
although in accordance with the nature of man as a created being.
It may be compared with the presence of God in man before the
fall. Then, this presence was not different from God’s common
immanence, although of a special character adapted to the being of
man, who was lovingly turned towards God, whose will was the will
of man’s volition, the blessedness in his feeling and the thought in
his thinking, because man lived the life of God at the same time
that he lived his own life. This special immanence was lost through
the fall, but is restored by the Holy Ghost on account of the redemp-
tion of Christ applied to the believing sinner. When this mystical
union is looked upon as an act ( unitio ), then it takes place simulta-
neously with the new birth, but, regarded as a condition ( unio), it
continues as long as no fall from grace occurs. He adds that the old
dogmaticians held, not without reason, that a union also takes place
between the believer and Christ as to His glorified humanity, de-
pending upon the personal union of the two natures in Christ ; but
he rejects all ideas of consubstantiation, emphasizing only that the
union is real after its kind.

In his eschatological discussions concerning the state after death

RECENT DOGMATIC THOUGHT IN SCANDINAVIA. 567

Bishop Bjbrling holds the theory that there is a development in a
direction corresponding to the condition at death. The children
who die will therefore be spiritually developed in the intermediate
state, but he does not believe in a probation after death, which implies
conversion. His only hope is, that persons who have never heard the
Gospel here, but have followed the dictates of conscience and the natu-
ral evidences in seeking God, will hear the glad tidings at death and
in the future state. But he adds, that those who did not listen to the
voice of God in conscience and creation will not accept the offered
grace, and will therefore be in the same position as the nominal
Christians, although a greater responsibility rests upon the latter.

Before we proceed to call attention to other perhaps less known
theologians of Scandinavia, we must at least mention Bishop Mar-
tensen, who was Bishop of Seeland in Denmark. He is so well
known to the English student of theology that it is almost super-
fluous to give an account of his system. His Christian Dogmatics
and Ethics are translated into English. The former is a text-book
remarkable at once for its clearness and conciseness. It is a sug-
gestive and interesting book to read, and even educated laymen will
find it enjoyable and useful. Dr. Martensen’s was a master mind,
profound, progressive and broad. Although he may be reckoned
as of the confessional school, he does not belong to the strictly or-
thodox school of Lutheran theology. The Hegelian philosophy had
a strong influence upon him, and he is therefore not entirely free from
ideas which stand in a somewhat express relation to pantheism.
This may be seen, for example, in his treatment of the incarnation
in relation to the creation. The following are his chief views:

The creation is an act of love. Because God is love, He could not
be content to be a God of ideas, and in a certain sense He felt a
need of creating the world. But this need is not, as in the god of
pantheism, a blind desire after existence, but corresponds to the
riches of a liberty which cannot but will to reveal itself. If we
compare his mode of expressing himself in his Ethics , we will find
that Dr. Martensen entertains views of the same kind as those of
Jacob Boehme — holding that physical nature has a corresponding
reality in God, by which he explains how God was able to create a
material world. In this theosophic view of God’s nature we per-
ceive of course one item of his pantheistic tendency.

Concerning original sin, Dr. Martensen holds that, so far as man-
kind in virtue of their birth become partakers of the sin of the
world, their inborn sinfulness must be looked upon as their fate, and
only the personal appropriation of the inborn sin results in guilt,
while the inborn sin as such never brings damnation. It is evident

568

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

that he is heterodox on this point, and does not represent the Lu-
theran doctrine. The Lutheran Church, of which Martensen was a
prominent member, teaches in regard to original sin that all are
conceived and born in sin, and that this inborn sin is trulv sin and
condemns all those under God’s wrath who are not regenerated.

In regard to predestination and election, Dr. Martensen distin-
guishes between the two in such a way that the appointment of
Divine Providence concerning the souls of men, when viewed in the
light of eternity, is designated predestination or predetermination of
all men to regeneration ; but in time, when dualism begins, predesti-
nation is represented as fulfilling itself under the form of an election
of grace, which chooses and prepares certain persons successively
from the sinful mass for the new life in Christ. Predestination is
an eternal act, the election of grace is temporal and historical. The
former looks upon all as subjects of grace ; the election of grace
distinguishes between souls as chosen and reprobate. He says that
Calvin confounded predestination with the election of grace, and
made the separation, which is only in time, eternal by laying its
foundation in the eternal counsel of God, who from eternity made
a twofold unconditional election. In the same connection he says
concerning Schleiermacher, that he draws a distinction, but that he
avoids the fatalism of Calvin only in theory, and not actually, inas-
much as he maintains Calvin’s doctrine of God’s unconditional de-
cree, and leaves no room for human choice. Dr. Martensen accepts
the Lutheran view of universal grace and conditional decrees, but
he rejects the Lutheran teaching that God bestows grace upon or
withholds it from men ex prsevisa fide , or ex prsevisa incredulitate.
He says that the Lutheran doctrine of foreknowledge or election ex
prsevisa fids is a return to Calvinism. The error of this statement
becomes evident, however, as soon as we consider that God is omni-
scient and knows beforehand those who will accept the proffered
grace, and therefore conditionally elects such persons.

Concerning the person of Christ, Dr. Martensen teaches that He
is the second Adam, and is both the redeeming and world-complet-
ing principle. He is not only the head of mankind, but of the
whole creation. His eternal idea was to be a Mediator, and the
Logos would have become man, even if sin had not entered into
the world. He asks : “ Are we to suppose that what is most glori-
ous in the world could only be reached through the medium of sin,
that there would have been no place in the human race for the
glory of the Only-begotten One but for sin ?” ' He argues that as
man is a part of the world, and yet is above nature, representing in
himself -a microcosmos, likewise Christ is a part of humanity, and
yet He is above humanity, representing in Himself the whole race

RECENT DOGMATIC THOUGHT IN SCANDINAVIA.

569

of mankind. Christ is the perfection of human nature and at the
same time the incarnated God. In asserting that the incarnation
would have taken place independently of the Fall, Dr. Martensen
does not represent the commonly accepted Lutheran view. It is
generally held that the incarnation was necessary only on account
of sin, but thereby it is not denied that Christ, if the Fall had not
taken place, would have been as Logos the head of mankind, being
the eternal prototype and the end of creation.

In regard to baptism and regeneration, Dr. Martensen teaches, that
there is an objective regeneration, taking place in baptism, and a
subjective regeneration which takes place when the baptized by
personal trust or faith appropriates the baptismal grace. He says,
that just as the Church in the beginning was partly established by
an act of Christ, who gave the Church a beginning essentially in the
apostles, and partly by an act of the Holy Spirit, who established
the Church actually on the day of Pentecost ; so, in the case of the
individual, regeneration depends partly upon the act of Christ in
baptism, by which regeneration becomes a germinal possibility, and
partly upon the actual communication of the Holy Ghost. These
two acts, the objective and subjective, may take place simultaneously
in the baptism of persons of riper years, but in the baptism of
infants the two acts are separated as to time, because the personal
regeneration cannot be accomplished without a free effort upon the
part of the person himself. Apart from this peculiar presentation
of baptismal regeneration, Dr. Martensen inclines to the ordinary
orthodox Lutheran view, and he says plainly, that baptism is not
merely the pledge, not merely the promise and declaration of God’s
grace, but the bath of regeneration. The Lutheran Church holds
that regeneration always takes place in the baptism of children, but
in persons of riper years only when the necessary condition is
present, i. e., repentance and faith. In children there is no resist-
ance to grace, but a passive condition. Regeneration is an act of
God through the operation of the Holy Spirit. As God wills that
all men should be saved, He works through the appointed means,
whenever there is no hindrance. Baptism is the only means of
grace of which children can partake. No one will be saved except
he be born again. Consequently regeneration must also be effected
in children, if they are to be saved. Baptism is the ordinary way
by which children receive grace, because they cannot be acted
upon by the preached Word. The Lutheran Church lays stress
upon the necessity of the new birth, and holds that baptism is the
sacrament thereof, without going to the extreme of teaching a
regeneration by baptism, ex opere operato. The necessary condition
is of the utmost importance, without which no regeneration can

570

THE PRESBT7 ERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

take place. Bat whenever this condition is present, as in children
on account of their passive state, and in persons of mature years by
repentance, baptism always confers, or is a sealing and confirmation
of, regeneration.

In regard to the eschatological questions concerning eternal punish-
ment and the restoration of all things, Dr. Martensen expresses no
fixed opinion. He asks: “Must this world’s development then
end in a dualism ?” He says that the Church has never ventured
upon this inquiry, but is constrained to teach eternal condemnation.
Then he calls attention to the fact, that the doctrine of universal
restoration has been espoused at different times in the history of the
Church, and declares that there is full warrant for saying, that the
more deeply Christian thought searches into this question, the more
does it discover an antinomy, or an apparent contradiction between
two laws equally divine. He argues that this antinomy is met with
both in the Scriptures and in thought. When we start from our
conception of God’s character, he thinks that we are led on to the
doctrine of universal restoration ; but the anthropological, psycho-
logical and ethical lines of thought conduct us to the dark goal of
eternal punishment for unbelievers. He looks upon this antinomy
as a crux of thought, which shall never be solved by the Church
militant ; and this being the case, he continues by saying that he
teaches with Lutheranism a restitution of all things a parte ante ,
i. e., the universal purpose of God for the salvation of all, but as it is
held that this purpose is conditioned by the free will of man, there
is an apokatastasis, a parte post , only so far as is compatible with the
doctrine of the possibility of eternal condemnation. The Lutheran
Church, however, of which Dr. Martensen was a prominent bishop,
teaches explicitly the doctrine of eternal punishment.

Among the prominent dogmaticians in Scandinavia there is justly
numbered Prof. Gisle Johnson, of Christiania, Norway, who belongs
to the confessional school of Lutheran theology, and whose dog-
matic lectures show him to be a profound thinker. He begins with
and gives prominence to a part of dogmatics which he calls Pistik.
In this part of his system he discusses such topics as the conception
of faith, the Christian religion, the relation of natural man to God,
the relation of man to God under the law, the origin and essence of
faith. Under the last topic, he discusses repentance or longing
faith, faith as rest in God, the new birth, renovation, the fight of
faith, watching and prayer, the mind of the Christian in the
warfare, and false forms of the life of faith. In the dogmatic portion
proper of. his book, he treats all the principal doctrines under such
divisions as the following : 1. The general contents of faith. 2. The

RECENT DOGMATIC THOU GDI IN SCANDINAVIA. 571

contents of truth in faith as consciousness of sin. 3. The contents
of faith as consciousness of salvation. 4. The contents of faith as
consciousness of God. Although it would be instructive and inter-
esting to quote largely from these lectures, we must in an article
like this limit ourselves. We present only Prof. Johnson’s views
concerning two subjects. The one is justification, and the other re-
generation. Justification he defines as the total change, not in the sin-
ner’s subjective sinful reality, but in his objective relation to God, —
which is founded in sin, — and in God’s corresponding objective rela-
tion to him ; i. e., essentially, in God’s objective judgment in regard
to him. He discusses in an able manner the forensic act of justifi-
cation, the negative and positive sides and faith as the condition.
Regeneration is placed after justification. He does not define re-
generation as the old dogmaticians define it, but in the following
terms : “ The inner change taking place in the heart of the repentant
sinner through the subjective appropriation of justifying grace is the
new birth. Considered in its entire scope, regeneration is the work
of grace, by which God has created, in the heart of the contrite sin-
ner, a firm and living certainty in regard to the objective reality of
justification, and along with this certainty has implanted in him the
fructifying seed of a new life in perfect holiness and blessedness,
comprehending his whole personal organism.” He criticises the
view that regeneration is only the imparting of faith, and holds the
opinion that the new birth presupposes a faith that has apprehended
Christ, and is therefore the result of justification.

Rev. K. Krogh Tonning is another Norwegian dogmatician who
deserves to be remembered. His work, The Christian Doctrine of
Faith , aims at a Biblical and ecclesiastical presentation. His treat-
ment is profound, especially of certain topics, and at the same time
plain. There is a certain unevenness in the treatment. Some
articles are discussed at an undue length and other topics not
noticed as fully as could be desired. He treats, e. </., the heathen
doctrine of fate very fully, but the doctrines of the Trinity, original
sin, etc., are not completely discussed. The subjective appropria-
tion of the objective salvation, the author calls redemption or
deliverance. When he discusses vocation in the “ order of grace,”
he teaches that the call comes first by the means of the law, instead
of through the Gospel. Justification is divided into two parts, the
positive and the negative, the former depending upon the active
obedience of Christ and the latter upon the passive obedience. He
identifies positive justification not only with the imputatio justitise
Christi, but also with adoptio. Similarly indistinct statements may
be found here and there, but Tonning represents on the whole the
views of the Lutheran Confessions. He deserves great credit for

572

TEE PRESB YTERIAE AND REFORMED REVIEW.

his theological treatise, and has received it, both in Norway and
Sweden. There is one peculiarity in his system which ought to be
noticed. He makes an attempt, whenever opportunity presents
itself, to reduce the difference between the Protestant and the Roman
Catholic Churches. When he discusses the difference between
these Churches in regard to man’s original condition, speaking of
the donum naturale and the donum superadditum , he attempts to
unite the two views; and he says that it ought to be conceded, that
the original condition of man was more than nature — it was spirit.
He also recommends incense to be used at the celebration of the
Lord’s Supper. He complains of the lack of unity in the Protest-
ant Church, and hopes that the time will come when all one-sided-
ness will be laid aside and all will understand each other in perfect
unity.

If we again direct our attention now to the theologians of
Sweden, we shall find another dogmatic work which deserves to be
noticed, in The Outlines of the Christian Doctrine of Faith , by Dr.
S. L. Bring, who belongs to the strictly orthodox school. His book
is not of the dry kind, but breathes with warmth of feeling and is
spiritually edifying and refreshing in a very high degree. The
ruling principle of his presentation is love. In the principle of love
he finds alike the metaphysical, logical and ethical explanation of
revelation. In the love of God he finds the solution of the fact,
that the Absolute determines Himself in His exclusive unity and at
the same time permits a world of finite spirits to determine them-
selves freely in their relation to Him. And even in the temporal
world, in which, according to Paul, the eternal power and wisdom
of God is exhibited, there is a mirror of the law of love in the
kingdom of God. And when the image of God is restored in a
human being, the love of God and of the brethren are the two
lungs by which the religious life breathes. Dr. Bring divides his
dogmatics into four parts. The first part presents the principle of
the revelation, or God as love ; the second part the realization of
revelation in God Himself, or the doctrine of the Trinity ; the third
part the realization of the principle of love in the outward revela-
tion, creation, redemption and sanctification ; and the fourth part the
returning of the revelation to its principle, God, who as love is all
in all, the doctrine of the last things and eternity. This scheme
may be criticised on the ground of its separation of the love of God
and the Trinity, because God as the absolute love exists only in the
form of the Trinity, by which His absolute personality is explained.
The only criticism that we would make in regard to the formal pre-
sentation of doctrine in this excellent work is that Dr. Bring occa-
sionally allows his fancy too wide a play, even when uttering a

RECENT D 0 GMA TIC TEO UQET IN SCAN DINA VIA. 573

great undeniable fact. For instance, in one place he says that the
Lutheran Church, although she may lack many gifts of the Re-
formed Church, surpasses her sister in the yapiajia r^? yvwcews and he
adds : “ The Lutheran Church has not only like Mary placed her-
self at the feet of Jesus by erecting the Word of God above all
human traditions and opinions, but in her doctrine of the Lord’s
Supper she has, like John, reclined upon the bosom of Jesus. But
if it is, according to an old saying, the bosom that makes the theo-
logian ( pectus facit theologum), then this Church, which in the
Lord’s Supper rests in the bosom of Jesus, must have both the pro-
foundest and the clearest and therefore the most scientific theology
and dogmatics.”

Prof. P. Eklund, of Lund, Sweden, has also written a very con-
cise and well-systematized Outline of the Church Doctrine of Faith.
After having, in the Introduction, discussed the conception of
Church doctrine and the scientific mode of treatment, he discusses
the idea of God as theistic, ethic and trinitarian, and then divides the
dogmatic material into the doctrine of the Father, of the Son and
of the Holy Ghost. Prof. Eklund is a confessional dogmatician.
But he is not circumscribed in his mode of expression by the old
dogmaticians. Sometimes his statements may be questioned, as,
e. y., when he says, that the new birth is effected through the
Gospel in the form of Absolution. His meaning seems to be that
Absolution effects faith. Either he has another idea of Absolution
than the ordinary one or else his view somewhat conflicts with the
words: “So belief cometh of hearing.” But it may be true in cer-
tain instances that Absolution is instrumental in calling forth the
conditions of faith. Regeneration is, according to his idea, the
operation of the Holy Spirit by which faith is produced in the
penitent sinner. This corresponds with the views of many of the
old dogmaticians. He says : “ The new birth happens thus : After
man through illumination has come to contrition and desire for
faith, but as yet does not with the confidence of faith apprehend
the Lord Christ as Mediator, then partly through baptism (either
now received or before), and partly through the Gospel (especially
as Absolution), the Holy Spirit gives trust to man’s heart and
awakens that power of the will by which he is able to accept with
confidence the mediatorship of Christ, i. e., faith in the full sense of
the word is produced.” Prof. Eklund’s Dogmatics was intended for
use in the high elementary schools ; but it lacks the plainness of
presentation which is necessary for such a purpose. His treatment
is more suitable for advanced students of theology preparing to
enter the ministry.

There is another text-book, however, that has been found to be a

574

THE PRESB YTERIAN AXD REFORMED REVIEW.

most excellent outline of dogmatics for beginners, and is so used in
many of the gymnasia in Sweden. We refer to Dr. A. E. Nor-
beck’s Theoloyy. This book is divided into eleven chapters, treat-
ing the following subjects : Religion and Revelation ; The Holy
Scriptures ; God ; Creation and Providence ; The Image of God ;
Sin ; Jesus Christ and Redemption ; The Order of Grace ; The
Means of Grace and the Church ; The Christian Life ; and, lastly,
The Last Things. The definitions are plain and pointed, and several
proof-passages from the Scriptures are quoted in full under each.
The Latin technical terms are also given. A short outline of dog-
matics and Church history belongs to the regular curriculum of
every gymnasium in Sweden, in each of which there is a Lector of
Theology, only the teachers in a university being called Professors ;
and Dr. Norbeck’s work is well adapted for its aim as a text-book
for these high schools.

We must mention somewhat fully at least one more very promi-
nent recent dogmatician, Prof. Axel Fredrik Granfelt (died 1892),
who wrote his dogmatics in Swedish but was professor at the univer-
sity of Helsingfors, in Finland. His book is called Christian Dog-
matics, and he belongs to the mediating school of theology and in
many instances is a follower of Martensen. After his Prolegomena,
he discusses the Christian idea of God, treating the essence of God,
the attributes of God and the Trinity. Then he continues with the
doctrines of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In
order to give an idea of his standpoint we will present some of his
views.

If we turn to the doctrine of the Son, we find that his ideas con-
cerning the person of Christ in the main are as follows : The abso-
lute merciful love of God, which caused Him to create the world,
made it necessary for Him to manifest this, His unselfish love, and
the best proof of it was found in the incarnation. Both the crea-
tion and incarnation were necessary for God. The incarnation was
also necessary for man independently of sin, because man, having
both a spiritual and bodily nature, needs to see God in a spiritual
and bodily manifestation. The universe reveals the essence of God
only in silent symbols and types, as in a shadow which at the same
time conceals His glory. The almightiness of God is manifest, but
His love is more or less hidden. There is only a presentiment in
the splendor of the sky, in the light and heat of the sun’s rays, and
in the smiling flowers, but it retreats in the destructive powers of
nature, in the helium omnium inter omnes among the animals, and
although there is a higher divine manifestation in man, he is yet
circumscribed and finite. Man cannot be satisfied with the divine
manifestation in himself. No one can reveal God except He reveals

RECENT D 0 GDI A TIC THO UGET IN SCAN DIN A VIA. 575

Himself. As His essence is love, He does not reveal Himself sim-
ply by messengers, symbols and types, but in a way suitable to man.
Granfelt criticises the Lutheran view of the communicatio idiomatum ,
at least so far that he favors a genus tapeinoticon. He is a kenotic
of the same type as Thomasius.

In regard to the doctrine of the atonement his views summarily
are the following : The doctrine of the reconciliation has its consti-
tutive principle in the love of God, and the justice of God is its
regulator. It was intended that the same principle should rule in
creation, and this was the principle in erecting personal beings,
images of God Himself in the form of spirituality. Love was to
unite God and the creature. And the law of God was love to God
and our neighbors. But on account of sin this kingdom of love was
destroyed and selfishness became the ruling principle. As a conse-
quence the righteousness of God, which was remunerative, became
punitive and mankind suffered. Christ came and became a mem-
ber of the human organism, to restore the original condition of love.
The mystery of the atonement is not the satisfaction of the righteous-
ness of God in a judicial sense. Christ could not take upon Himself
the punishment of sin in its inward, most difficult and dangerous
sense. He could not die spiritually and eternally, but only in a
bodily sense. This proves that the punishment as such was not
atoning. The propitiation depended on the condition of mind in
which He suffered and died. And this condition of mind was the
self-denying love, which the legislative righteousness of God de-
manded. Christ did not take upon Himself our guilt in a real
sense, but our neglected duty to realize in our life love to God and
our neighbor. In the death of Christ there was no legal act of the
punitive righteousness of God. What was then the positive signifi-
cance of the death of Christ ? If the history of the world can be
called a continued battle between the love of God and the selfish-
ness of man, then the crucifixion of Christ forms the decisive turn-
ing point, when the cause of the separation of God and man was
taken away. Christ proved His love by His active and passive obe-
dience. The evil could only be satisfied by the good, and the debt
of guilt could only be paid by the vicarious innocence. Only love
could be the atonement for self-love. He did bear the sins of man-
kind as the head of humanity.

Granfelt accepted largely, but not fully the views of von Hof-
mann ; he says himself that he inclines more to the mediating posi-
tion of Kiibel. In his Dogmatics he presents the views of von
Hofmann and also the orthodox Church view of Thomasius, and
criticises mostly the latter, but partly also the former. He does
not go so far as Waldenstrom. He says, that he feels as if he must

576

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

stand by tbe orthodox view against von Hofmann and hold with von
Hofmann against the orthodox view. After stating the theory of
von Hofmann, he calls attention to his inconsequence in reasoning,
and against Thomasius he argues that Christ had only an indirect
and mediate connection with guilt, and therefore Granfelt rejects the
teaching that Christ was the direct object of the wrath of God. He
does not hol'd the theory of satisfaction as taught in the Lutheran
Church, and he rejects therefore the vicarious nature of the active
and passive obedience. The passive obedience of Christ, according
to Granfelt, consisted in this that Christ as the centrum of mankind
felt its guilt and all the consequences of sin, and the active obedience
was that He labored to instill into the organism of humanity His
life and spirit.

Concerning the Lord’s Supper, Granfelt holds in the main ortho-
dox Lutheran views, although he utters sentiments which may be
construed as teaching deviating doctrines. He says that Lutherans
and Calvinists agree in everything essential. Even if it be admitted
that the Lutherans and Calvinists are nearer to each other than the
Lutherans and Zwinglians, we feel convinced that even liberal Cal-
vinists, just as little as Lutherans, will hold with Granfelt that the
difference is unessential. Granfelt seems to hold the Calvinistic
view that only believers receive the sacramental gift. Lutherans
teach that ail the communicants receive in, with and under bread
and wine the body and blood of Christ, but only believers partici-
pate in the benefits. He proposes a union between the Churches on
the basis that the Calvinists shall give up their doctrine of predes-
tination, which has influenced their doctrine of the Lord’s Supper,
and the Lutherans shall give up the idea that unbelievers receive
the body and blood of Christ.

In his eschatology, Granfelt deviates from the orthodox view of
Christendom. He does not only believe in a spiritual development
after death, as many orthodox believe, but he also entertains the
view of probation after death, not only for heathen, but also for
nominal Christians who have been placed in an unfortunate position
here on earth. He even believes that baptized children who die in
infancy must decide either for or against Christ in the next world,
and rejects the idea that all such children are saved without their own
free acceptance, which opinion he speaks of as one belonging to Au-
gustinian predestination. Granfelt says: “How should simply the
accident that one person dies in infancy and the other not, be a suffi-
cient cause of such an essential difference in God’s dealing with
them that He wholly preserves the former from all the conflict, the
probation and the temptations to which He exposes the latter, who
may be lost?” On this and similar grounds, Granfelt holds as a

REGENT D 0 GMA TIC TEO UGHT IN 8CANDINA VIA. 577

postulate that there must be in the intermediate state a reciprocal
approaching of good and evil, and in some form there must be temp-
tations and moral effort. Therefore, he also believes in an inter-
mediate corporeal form. He even holds that there was a chance
for such a one as Dives to be saved, when Christ preached to the
spirits in prison, because Dives was not hardened. We must also
mention here another peculiar opinion of Granfelt’s. He thinks that
there will be a period of time extending between the destruction of
the world and the last judgment, because all men must live in an
intermediate state in order to be spiritually developed. Granfelt
was consequently somewhat speculative and heterodox in certain
points ; but he was nevertheless a great and prominent dogmatician
and sincere in his convictions.

There are also several dogmaticians in Sweden who deserve to be
noticed here who are not authors of complete dogmatic systems,
but have influenced dogmatic thought. We have space only to
mention the names of some of them. Such are Bishops A. F.
Beckman, M. Johansson, L. Landgren and U. L. Ullman, Professors
W. Kudin, U. R. F. Sundelin and 0. F. Myrberg. Bishops C. A.
Cornelius and G. von Schdele may also be numbered among those
who have influenced dogmatic thought in Sweden, the former a
Church historian and the latter an author in the department of
Symbolics.

Before closing it will be necessary to mention and briefly describe
certain tendencies of thought which have shown themselves in Scandi-
navia, which it may be interesting at least to bear in mind when the
recent dogmatic thought in Scandinavia is under discussion. W e will
begin with Hestadianism, not because this tendency has exercised
a far-reaching influence, but because it is the least known. Rev.
Lars Levi Laestadius was pastor of Karesuandolappmark, in the far
north of Sweden. He was born in 1800 and died in 1861. Before
he became known as a religious and moral revivalist, he had been
honored in the scientific world as a botanist. As a religious leader
he became the founder of the heretical tendency of Laestadianism.
His adherents, who are divided among themselves into sects, are
found in Lappmarken, Finland, Norway, and, by emigration, even
in the United States.

The dogmatic standpoint of Laestadius is stated in his religio-
philosophical work, Darhushjonet. In his anthropology he is mate-
rialistic. He denies the common teaching concerning the spirit of
man, and says that the soul is simply a metaphysical principle and,
in a concrete sense, nervous life. God is according to him a psychic
37

578 TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

personality, who must act justly according to His nature. He is not
a persona idealis who can be realis , but He is a persona substantialis ,
i. e., life. God is not free in an absolute sense and independent of
all necessities and conditions, but is bound by His essence, revealing
itself in the principles of life. Lsestadius holds that God is triune,
but explains the mystery in accordance with his anthropology. In
man there are true hypostatic relations in one substance, viz.:

1. The principle of life, which can exist without organic life.

2. The organic life, which depends upon the principle of life, but
is not called into existence by it. 3. Nervous life, which has origi-
nated in organic life. The first corresponds to the Father, the
second to the Son, and the third to the Holy Spirit. The bodily
organs are the seat of sin. The inclination of the will to evil and its
incapacity to do good is caused by the organic life which over-
powers nervous life. As the organic life is depraved by evil, so is
also the nervous life contaminated. But there is some power left in
nervous life. Reason and memory may be perfected to a high
degree by the will, but not the heart. The moral character is not
determined by the will, but by the heart and passions.

In his soteriology he teaches that the organic life is the soul
which is redeemed, and the heart is the centrum of this soul. God
reveals Himself as the negation of egoism. The object of salva-
tion in the atonement through Christ was the organic life, not the
principle of life and nervous life, because the organic life is the seat
of sin. He combines the objective and subjective reconciliation so
intimately that the former has very little value without the latter.
He does not deny the vicarious death of Christ, but he emphasizes
the objective less than the subjective. The subjective salvation
must aim at the subjugation of the passions. As far as man is
liberated from sin, so far is man reconciled to God. Instead of a
sinful passion there must be a moral passion, which is religious feel-
ing. In the beginning of religious awakening, the heart is cold and
hard, but a fear of death is experienced. Secret tremblings are
felt in the whole organism. Sometimes there is a trembling at the
hearing of a sermon. After some time the heart burns as with a
fever. Ltestadius confuses the bodily and spiritual, and this may
be one of the reasons why the spiritual revival among the Fins and
Laplanders led to such peculiar expression in the physical move-
ments which have been characteristic of his adherents. But
he was not a friend of extreme outbursts of feeling. He says:
“ It often occurs that a mighty revival among the common people,
destitute of strength to moderate the passions, expresses itself
in a superabundance of feeling, in such fullness of the heart as
even to cause swoons, which an able leader can ameliorate and

RECENT DOGMATIC THOUGHT IN SCANDINAVIA. 579

bring to a Christian soberness, if be possesses the confidence of the
patient.”

According to Laestadius, repentance is not a change of mind as
much as a change of outward behavior. Conversion implies that
man is conscious of spiritual life. He identifies conversion and
regeneration. Therefore he rejects the regeneration of children
through baptism. A person must feel with certainty that his sins
are forgiven. He calls faith a passion and its constitutive element
is feeling.

He does not hold the Lutheran view of the Lord’s Supper. He
says : “ If we leave metaphysics with its fine points, by which
nothing is proved, there remains only faith. What is apprehended
by faith is real, because it is realized by faith. When the idea
concerning the body and blood of Christ is realized in the heart,
then the object is not an idea, an empty form of conception, but
a reality in the heart. The theologians assert that the first utter-
ance of Christ in regard to the eating of His flesh had no reference
to the Lord’s Supper. But how can that be proved? Would
He at the institution of the Supper speak of His body in another
sense than in John vi, when He Himself explains how these
words are to be understood ! His body, which is given, is the
atoning sacrifice. It is not therefore necessary to say that the
bread and wine signify the atoning sacrifice, but bread and wine are
for the bodily life what the body and blood are for the spiritual
life. The main idea in the Lord’s Supper is thus the psychical
phenomenon, that the body and blood of Christ are truly present as
soon as the idea about it is realized in the heart through faith.”

Another tendency that is more known and of far greater impor-
tance is Waldenstromianism. The originator of this religious
movement is Dr. P. 0. Waldenstrom, born in 1888, Lector of Theol-
ogy at Gefle, Sweden. His doctrinal teaching is not a new heresy,
but the old Socinian heresy concerning the reconciliation, presented
in a popular, forcible and sophistical form. On account of his great
influence as a popular preacher, he has gained many adherents, even
among ministers. It is not necessary to present his views in any
fullness here ; it would, in the main, be a review of the doctrine of
the atonement as taught by the Socinians. Dr. Waldenstrom is
earnest and sincere and very skillful in debate. His arguments are
telling, and those who are not rooted in the faith may easily be
affected by them. Sometimes, of course, however, the sophistical
character of the arguments with which he mystifies the unthinking
masses is apparent enough. Thus when discussing the satisfaction
for our sins, he says, concerning the ransom paid to God, “ The for-
giveness of sins by payment is about the same as a quadrilateral

580

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

circle or a circular quadrate, and would not the ability be admired
which could make the circle quadrilateral ? ”

Mention needs also be made of Gruxdtvigianism, which is also
a tendency known to all theological readers. The Grundtvigians
were founded as a party by the personality and teachings of Bishop
N. F. S. Grundtvig in the Danish Church. He died in Copenhagen,
1872. His principal theological work is his True Christianity ,
which belongs to the department of Apologetics. Grundtvigianism
became a power from the time when Prof. H. N. Clausen, a learned
representative of rationalism in Denmark, published his Catholicism
and Protestantism. Grundtvig attacked this work and uttered a
strong protest against its teachings. The controversy led to a civil
suit and Grundtvig was suspended for a time. In this severe crisis
many friends rallied to his support and he became more and more
influential as a religious teacher. In his defense of high-Church
orthodoxy against the neology of the time he went, however, too
far, and became himself heterodox. We need only call attention
to his teaching concerning the Apostles’ Creed, which he placed be-
side if not above the Scriptures. Other points might be noted — as
his peculiar doctrine of baptism as the true foundation of the
Church, the Church itself as the foundation of Christianity, and
the living Word as the vehicle of the Holy Spirit. In the strict
sense he was not a dogmatician, although he has influenced dog-
matic thought in Denmark and partly in Norway.

The tendency known as Schartaunism arose also as an orthodox
reaction against neology (in Sweden), but the originator of this
movement remained a faithful confessional Lutheran. The father
of Schartaunism was Rev. Henric Schartau, who died in 1825. As
a young man he was tutor in a Moravian family and was somewhat
influenced by the teaching of Zinzendorf; but he did not remain
long under this influence. By faithful study of the Bible he be-
came more and more a conservative and sober theologian, and as a
champion of orthodoxy he counteracted both neology and Mora-
vianism. Somebody has said that neology preached mostly the
first article of the Apostles’ Creed, Moravianism the second, and
Schartau, preaching all three, emphasized the third. Therefore he
laid great stress upon the “ order of grace.” He was a preacher of
the law in the sense that he preached the law as a schoolmaster to
Christ. He warned against reading merely sentimental religious
books and recommended in the first place the Bible, and then the
writings of such men as Luther, Arndt, Bouget and Nohrborg.
Schartau was renowned both as a preacher and as a pastor. He was
a great spiritual psychologist. As pastor he made use of the keys,
encouraged private confession, and also used to pronounce at a

RECENT DOGMATIC THOUGHT IN SCANDINAVIA. 581

proper time the unconditional absolution or direct absolution. This
catechetical instruction proves that he was a dogmatician, although
he never wrote a dogmatic work. But by his great influence, espe-
cially in the southern part of Sweden, Schartau made an impression
upon dogmatic thought and his influence is still felt. He has many
adherents, both clergymen and laymen. Some of his adherents may
have been or are one-sided in certain matters, but not all of them.
Schartaunism aims under all circumstances at a conservative evan-
gelical Lutheranism.

The recent dogmatic thought in Scandinavia is, as will have been
seen, prevailingly of a confessional character, and the leaders in the
Church are generally orthodox men ; although, as we have also
seen, some wandering stars have appeared on the theological firma-
ment. In closing this article it is scarcely necessary to say that
only a small portion has been said which might have been pre-
sented ; but we hope that this limited presentation of our subject
will at least awaken the interest of the readers of this .Review in a
land which deserves to be remembered, not only for its past history
and as a land of the modern tourist (which is all that many seem to
know of it), but also as a country where arts and sciences, theologi-
cal as well as philosophical, are loved and developed.

Rock Island, III.

Conrad Emil Lindberg.

III.

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLY

SCRIPTURE.

THERE is certainly in the whole mass of confessional literature
no more nobly conceived or ably wrought-out statement of
doctrine than the chapter “ Of the Holy Scripture,” which the
Westminster divines placed at the head of their Confession and laid
at the foundation of their system of doctrine. It has commanded
the hearty admiration of all competent readers. Dean Stanley thinks
that no council or synod has ever argued and decided any single
theological question with an ability equal to that shown by the
great theologians in their private treatises. But he immediately
adds : “ The nearest approaches to it are the chapters on Justifica-
tion in the Decrees of Trent, and on the Bible in the Westminster
Confession.” * Dr. Schaflf considers it “ the best Protestant counter-
part of the Roman Catholic doctrine of the rule of faith,” and re-
marks: “No other Protestant symbol has such a clear, judicious,
concise and exhaustive statement of this fundamental article of
Protestantism.” f Such a statement of a fundamental doctrine is a
precious heritage, worthy not only to be cherished but understood.
That it may be at once highly praised and seriously misunderstood
has been made sufficiently evident in the course of certain recent
controversies. But apart from all reference to recent controversies,
it cannot be otherwise than useful to subject so admirable a state-
ment of doctrine to a close scrutiny, with a view to obtaining as
clear an understanding of its true purport as possible. Something of
this kind is attempted in this article. And that the formulas may
be looked at discolored as little as possible by the haze which may
rise from the years that have intervened since their composition, an
effort is made to place them in their historical setting and to illus-
trate them from discussions contemporary with themselves.

I. The Preparation of the Chapter.

“ If any chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith f says
Prof. Mitchell, “ was framed with more elaborate care than another,

* Contemporary Review, for August, 1874, p. 490 (as quoted by Dr. Scliaff).
f The Creeds of Christendom, i, p. 707.

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLT SCRIPTURE. 583

it was that which treats ‘ Of the Holy Scripture.’ It was consid-
ered paragraph by paragraph — almost clause by clause — by the
House of Commons as well as by the Assembly of Divines, before
it was finally passed ; and its eighth paragraph was deemed worthy
to be made the subject of a special conference between certain
members of the House and the divines of the Assembly.”* The
meagre minutes of the Assembly scarcely enable us to trace this
careful work. As early as the 20th August, 1641, a Committee, con-
sisting of Drs. Gouge, Temple and Hoyle, Messrs. Gataker, Arrow-
smith, Burroughs, Burgess, Vines and Goodwin, together with the
Scotch Commissioners, was appointed “ to prepare matter for a joint
Confession of Faith.” j* A fortnight later (September 4), Dr. Smith
and Messrs. Palmer, Newcomen, Herle, Beynolds, Wilson, Tuck-
ney, Young, Ley and Sedgewicke were added to the Committee or
constituted an additional Committee.^ Bailey was therefore justified
in writing in October: “The Confession of Faith is referred to a
Committee, to be put in severall the best hands that are here.” §
How much of the matter was prepared by this Committee we do
not know. On November 21, Bailey reports that though “the Cate-
chise is drawn up,” he fears “ the Confession may stick longer ;” ||
while on December 26 he thinks “ that we must either passe the
Confession to another season, or if God will help us, the heads of it
being distribute among many able hands, it may in a short time be
so drawn up, as the debates of it may cost little time.” By
April 25, 1645, some reports concerning the Confession had been
made to the Assembly,** and on the 4th of May Bailey writes :
“ Our next work will be the Confession and Catechisme, upon both
which we have alreadie made some entrance.” ff Accordingly, on

* Report of the Proceedings of the First General Presbyterian Council, at
Edinburgh, 1877. Appendix vi, p. 371.

fLightfoot {Works, Ed. Pittman, Vol. xiii, 1824, p. 305) says : “Mr. Palmer
reported from the Grand Committee, desiring this .... (2) A Committee to
join with the Commissioners of Scotland, to draw up a Confession of Faith.

.... Hereupon we fell to choose a Committee There was some debate

about the matter, because we have no order yet to enable us to such a thing,
and, at last, when it was resolved, there was some debate about the number :
and at last nine were fixed by vote.”

fWe are quoting here from Dr. Mitchell’s The Westminster Assembly, etc.,
pp. 357 sq. Compare the excerpts in The Minutes, p. lxxxvi. Lightfoot (as
above, p. 308), under date of Wednesday, September 4, says : “The first thing
done was, that Dr. Temple, Chairman of the Committee for the Drawing up of
a Confession of Faith, desired that that Committee might be augmented : which
was done accordingly.”

% Letters and Journal, Ed. 1841, p. 232.

|| Do., p. 242. Tf Do., P- 248.

ft Do., p. 272.

** Do., p. 266.

584

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

the 12th of May, 1645, “ the report of the Confession of Faith was
read and debated,” * and a Committee was appointed to draw up
the first draught of the Confession. This Committee consisted ap-
parently of Drs. Temple and Hoyle, Messrs. Gataker, Harris, Bur-
gess, Reynolds, Herle and the Scotch Commissioners. On July 7,
the first report was made : “ Hr. Temple made report of that part
of the Confession of Faith touching the Scriptures. It was read,
debated.” f This chapter on the Scriptures occupied the attention
of the Assembly thenceforward until July 18 ; but it is impossible
to trace more than the general outlines of their work. On the 11th
of July it is recorded: “Debate about the Scriptures where we
left ; about the knowledge of the divine authority of the Scrip-
ture.” X From this we may learn that the Assembly had got as far
as the fifth section by this date. From the note on the 14th of
July § we learn that the statement about the necessity of the inward
illumination of the spirit for the saving understanding of the Scrip-
tures was not a part of the original draft, but was inserted by the
Assembly in the debate. It was debated on this day and on July
15, when also the word “saving” was added, confining this neces-
sity to “the saving understanding” of the Word.j| The debate
was continued on the 16th of July and on the 17th of July, on
which latter occasion section nine was before the house : “ Proceed
in debate about the literal sense.” The last notice of the contin-
uance of the debate is that of the 18th of July. **

Early in January, 1646, the proof-texts were added to the first
chapter of the Confession. Those for the first paragraph on Janu-
ary 7; ff for the second on January 8; for the third, fourth and
part of the fifth on January 11 ; for the rest of the fifth on January
12 ; for the sixth and seventh on January 14, and for the rest on
January lo-Xt

In the meantime, on July 8, 1645, Messrs. Reynolds, Herle and
Newcomen had been appointed “to take care of the wording of the
Confession of Faith, as it is noted from time to time, and to report to
the Assembly when they think fit there should be any alteration in
the words,” after having consulted with at least one of the Scotch
Commissioners^ And on December 8, 1645, it was ordered that
Messrs. Tuckney, Reynolds, Newcomen and Whitaker be a Commit-
tee “to review the Confession of Faith as it is finished in the As-
sembly.” fi The final phrasing of this chapter was, therefore, due
to these Committees, or this Committee, for it is probable that it was

* Minutes, p. 91.
fP. 110.

*P. 111.

§P. 113.

1 P. 113.

IP. 114.

**P. 115.

ft Pp. 319 and 473.

tt Pp. 320, 321, 322.
§§P. 110.

|| P. 168.

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 585

all one Committee. * Its final form was debated and approved by
the Assembly on June 17 and 18, 1646. f

This outline of their labors undoubtedly bears out the statement
that great care was taken in the composition of the chapter, but
apparently not that any special or unusual discussion was given to
it. There are no great debates recorded concerning it ; and the
divines seem to have been more than usually at one concerning
its propositions. We are surprised, indeed, by the rapidity and
unanimity with which they did their work. The whole first
draft passed through the Assembly between July 7 and 18 : and de-
bates are signalized only on the knowledge of the divine authority of
the Scriptures (§ 5), the need of supernatural illumination for the
saving understanding of the Word (§ 6), and the literal sense of
Scripture (§ 9). To these may be added the conference with the
House of Commons on Sec. 8. The impression is very strong that,
in the case of this chapter at least, Bailey’s prevision proved correct
and the Confession came before the Assembly in a form that roused
little discussion and cost but little time in debate.

II. The Sources of the Chapter.

It belonged to the historical situation of the Westminster
divines that their doctrinal work should take much the form of a
consensus of the Reformed theology. That theology had grown to
its maturity during the controversies of the first century of its life.
Everywhere there was a strongly felt desire for a comprehensive
and universally acceptable creed statement of the Reformed faith,
which would unify the scattered Churches and supersede or supple-
ment the multitude of Confessions which had been produced in the
first age of the Reformation ; and this desire had already found ex-
pression in collections and harmonies of the Confessions. The
special history of the British Churches — including the Anglo-Catho-
lic and Arminianizing irruption under the leading of Laud —
brought to the aid of this general tendency of the times both the
impulse to seek support from the universal faith of other Reformed
Churches and the necessity of vindicating unity of belief with them.
It was in the nature of the case, therefore, that the Westminster
divines placed consciously before themselves as their dominant
purpose, the task “ of setting forth the whole scheme of Reformed
doctrine in harmonious development, in a form of which their coun-
try should have no cause to be ashamed in the presence of any of
the sister Churches of the continent.” Dr. Mitchell does not over-
state the matter when he represents the Westminster Assembly as

* Mitchell, Assembly, etc., p. 358.

f Minutes, p. 245.

586

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

having been “called together chiefly for two purposes, viz., first, to
vindicate the doctrine of the Church of England from misrepresen-
tation, and to show that it was in harmony with that of the other
Reformed Churches, and, second, to effect such changes in her polity
and worship as would bring her into closer union with the Church
of Scotland and the Reformed Churches on the continent.”* To
this, indeed, it was practically bound by the ordinance by which it
was called, which set forth as its purpose “the settling of the Gov-
ernment and Liturgy of the Church of England, and vindicating
and clearing of the doctrine of the said Church from false asper-
sions and interpretations,” reference being had (as is explicitly
stated in the former matter) to securing “nearer agreement with
the Church of Scotland and other Reformed Churches abroad ;” while
the Solemn League and Covenant included the vow that they would
“ endeavor to bring the Churches of God in the three kingdoms to
the nearest conjunction and uniformity in religion, confession of
faith ” and catechising, as well as in government and worship.

The Fundamental Source.

This conscious reference in the work of the Assembly to the Re-
formed theology in general, while it adds interest to a search after the
sources of its doctrinal statements, renders it almost impossible, in
the chapter on the Scriptures at least, to determine them with any
exactness. The difficulty is greatly increased by the circumstance
that the Reformed theologians, whether on the Continent or in
Britain, did not write in ignorance or independence of one another ;
so that it is a matter of merely literary interest to determine who was
the originator of arguments or modes of statement that are common
to all, or through what precise channels they came into the Confes-
sion of Faith. No reader of the Puritan literature of the seventeenth
century will fail to observe how hard it leans upon the great Re-
formed divines of the Continent — freely appropriating from them
lines of argument, forms of expression and points of view, while
also, no doubt, freely adapting them to its own purposes. The con-
sequence is that the sources of the several sections of the Confession
of Faith can with almost equal readiness be found in Ball or Du
Buc, in Cartwright or Calvin, according as we choose to look near
or far for them. There is scarcely a leading divine of the first
three-quarters of a century of Reformed theology, who has written
at large on the Scriptures, from whom statements may not be so
drawn as to make them appear to be the immediate sources of some
of the Westminster sections. For example the following sentences
from Calvin might very well lie as the basis of the first section :

* Minutes of Westminster Assembly, p. xxvii.

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLT SCRIPTURE. 587

“ Ergo quanquam liominum ingratitudinem satis superque omni patrocinio
spoliat fulgor ille, qui in ccelo et in terra omnium oculis ingeritur : . . . . aliud
tanien et melius adminiculum accedere necesse est, quod nos probe ad ipsuin
mundi creatorem dirigat. Itaque non frustra verbi sui lumen addidit, quo in-

notesceret in salutem Nec frustra eodem remedio nos in pura sui notitia

continet, quia mox alioqui diffluerent etiam qui videntur prae aliis firmi stare.

.... Tandem ut continuo progressu doctrinae veritas saeculis omnibus superstes
maneret in mundo, eadem oracula quae deposuerat apud Patres, quasi publicis

tabulis consignata esse voluit Sed quoniam non quotidiana e coelis red-

duntur oracula, et Scripturae solae extant, quibus visum est Domino suam per-
petuae memoriae veritatem consecrare : non alio jure plenam apud fideles auctori-
tatem obtinent, quam ubi statuunt, e ccelo fluxisse, acsi vivae Dei voces illic
exaudirentur.” *

This is but to say that the chief source of the Westminster doctrine
of Holy Scripture is the general teaching of the Reformed theology ;
and it is better for us to recognize this at the outset than to lose
ourselves in the perhaps vain task of endeavoring to find the proxi-
mate origin of its several clauses.

That we may realize how entirely the Westminster teaching on
Scripture is the common possession of the Reformed theology, it
will be well to draw out the Reformed doctrine on the sub-
ject in its salient points. In order to this we shall purposely rely
on Heppe’s statement, because it is framed out of the Continental
divines only, and will serve, therefore, to advise us, in the most
pointed way, of the unity of the faith in Britain and abroad. This
course is naturally attended, no doubt, with the incidental difficulty
that Heppe has not been able to retain so perfect an objectivity in
stating the Reformed doctrine that his own conceptions do not some-
times enter into his statement and color the doctrine of his authori-
ties. When this personal equation is allowed for, however, it ceases
to be a disadvantage; the essential agreement of the Westminster
Confession with the general Reformed doctrine of Scripture becomes
all the more striking when it is seen to be so conspicuous even
from Heppe’s statement of the latter. The following is a transla-
tion of Heppe’s outline, with the omission, of course, of the pas-
sages from representative Reformed theologians, which he gives in
his notes in support of the several statements : f

The consciousness that there is a God and that it is his duty to worship Him, Conf. of Faith,
is a natural aud essential possession of man. This innate knowledge of God, !• la-
the notitia Dei innita, frames itself in man, by the action of his reason and con-
science, into the notitia acquisita. Hence there is a religio naturalis. Reason
causes man to apprehend the idea of God immanent to it, and teaches him to
rise by inference from the visible world, as the work of God, to its invisible
author and ruler. At the same time, conscience teaches man to apprehend God
as Him who loves and rewards what is good, abhors and punishes what is

* Institutio, i, cc. vi, vii (Tholuck, 1846, pp. 54, 55, 57).

f Heppe : Die Dogmatik der evangelisch reformirten Kirche, pp. 1 sq.

588

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

Conf. of Faith,
I. lb.

I. 2a, 3.

wicked, and to whom lie is absolutely responsible. Man’s natural knowledge
of God, therefore (as distinguished from what it becomes through revelation),
most completely shapes itself through this — that man looks upon himself as the
image of God.

This natural knowledge of God is, no doubt, insufficient for attaining eternal
blessedness. For man, who is convicted of his sinfulness by his conscience,
learns by this, indeed, that God punishes wickedness, but from himself knows
nothing of what God’s gracious purpose with the sinner may be. The religio
naturalis is, therefore, not salutaris, and avails only to render man, if he does
not receive revelation, inexcusable. Moreover, man cannot of himself appre-
hend what he apprehends of God by reason and conscience as it ought to be
apprehended. Nevertheless, what natural religion teaches of God, although it
is incomplete, is true and also useful ; for, on the one side, every excuse is taken
from man, as over against God, if he does not believe in God and keep His law ;
and, on the other hand, the natural man who seeks peace with God by the
religio naturalis will the more joyfully and thankfully receive the revelation of
God’s grace when it is imparted to him ; and the regenerate man who has
received the gracious revelation, and believes it, will be able then the better to
understand and comprehend the natural revelation of God.

Since man knows himself in his conscience as breaker of God’s command,
and, therefore, guilty before God, and yet, through his natural knowledge of God,
apprehends God only as righteous Judge of the good and bad, it follows that
the religio naturalis can afford man no peace with God, and that it cannot he a
sufficing religio in itself or for man. It itself points above itself, in that it
awakens in man the need of and the longing for a revelation, through which
he may first rightly understand what it means that a God exists, and through
which he may apprehend that God can be the God even of the sinner, that God
wishes to be sought by the sinner and how He will be found by the sinner. Thus
only as faith in revelation does religion become what it should be, according to
its conception : not a knowledge of God, nor yet an observance of the divine
commandment in itself, but a determination of immediate self-consciousness, a
fueling (Schleiermacher) which rests on the experience of God as absolute love.
* * ****** *

Since theology is to recognize and present what belongs to natural religion
too, a distinction may be drawn between articuli simplices ( puri ), which rest
simply on revelation, and articuli mixti, in the presentation of which reason
also has its material part. Only we must hold fast to the fact that the funda-
mental doctrines of theology (of the Trinity, of the fall of the human race, of
the Redeemer, of the true blessedness and of the only way to it) can be appre-
hended only out of revelation, and that, therefore, the holy Scriptures are of
absolute authority in all the sections of the system of doctrine.

The sole source aiid norm of all Christian knowledge is Holy Scripture, i. e ,
the sum of the contents of all those books which God has caused to be written
through prophets, evangelists and apostles. Scriptura S. est verbum Dei, autore
Spir. S. in veteri test, per Mosen et prophetas, in novo zero per evangelistas et
apostolos descriptum atque in libros canonicos relatum, ut de Deo rebusque divinis
ecclesiam plene et perspicue erudiat, sitque fidei et vitce norma unica ad salutem
(Heidegg. ii. 6). To Holy Scripture belong, therefore, only those books which
were written by prophets and apostles, ». e., by such men as God has illuminated
in a special manner by His Spirit, in order to make use of them as instruments of
revelation. Since these books have been recognized and numbered from antiq-
uity down by a canon of the Church as prophetic and apostolic, they are called
canonical. The writings preserved and handed down with them, which are
not of prophetic or apostolic origin, are called, on the other hand, apocryphal
books. Libri apocryphi sunt et dicuntur, qui nec prophetas nec apostolos habent

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 589

auctores (Wendel., Coll., p. 44). Such apocryphal hooks occur, however, only
in the Old Testament, as an appendix to it. For those books of the New Testa-
ment which were looked upon by the Reformers, and in part by their disciples,
as apocryphal (i. e., as not proceeding from the apostles), have long been recog-
nized and received by the Church as canonical.

These canonical books of the Old and New Testament not only contain the
Word of God, but are themselves God’s written Word; for their penning was
brought about by special and immediate agency of the Holy Spirit, who incited l
the authors to the writing, suggested to them the thoughts and words which
should be penned, and guarded them from every error in the writing — that is, the
canonical books were inspired by the Holy Ghost to their authors, in both con-
tents and form. Upon this unparalleled peculiarity of the origin of Holy
Scripture — i. e., upon its divinity — rest its peculiar properties (to wit, proprie-
tates, quibus divinitas eius sufficienter declarator [L. Croc., Synt., iv. 1]). These
are : auctoritas et certitudo, sufficients et perfectio, necessitas and perspicuitas.

The divinity or the inspired character of the Holy Scriptures represents
itself to the believer primarily as the property of its authority. Auctoritas s.
scripturce est dignitas et excellentia soli sacra scriptures pros omnibus aliis scriptis
competens qua est et habetur authentica, i. e., infallibiliter certa, sic ut necessitate L 4’ 5'
absoluta ab omnibus ei sit credendum atque obtemperandum propter auctorem
Deum (Polan., i. 14). By virtue of this the Holy Scriptures are the principle of
the whole of theology, the exclusive norm of Christian doctrine, and the infallible
judge of all controversies ; and that in such a manner that all that is contained in
the language (Wortlaut) of Scripture, or follows by indubitable consequence I. 8, 10.
from it, is dogma, while what is contrary to it is error, and everything else, even if
it does not contradict Holy Scripture, is indifferent for the soul’s welfare. This
authority, i. e., its divinity and authenticity, rests in no sense (not even quoad j 4.
nos) on the recognition of the Church, but wholly and only upon the Scripture
itself, which as God’s Word is auroTziaros and avunsuftwo?. The sole witness
which certifies Christians of the divinity and authority of the Holy Scriptures
with absolute assurance, is, therefore, the witness which Scripture bears to itself,
or God to it in the conscience of the believer, to wit, the witness of the Holy
Spirit. This is given to the believer in the fact that the longing for salvation
which fills him obtains complete satisfaction by means of the Holy Scriptures, that
the Spirit of God which quickens him recognizes itself in the Holy Scriptures,
that his own life of faith finds itself promoted by them more and more and in '
ever more quickening manner. On this very account, however, the divinity
and authority of the Scriptures can be apprehended only by Christians. Other
evidences which are used for the proof of the divine authenticity of the Scrip-
tures have value for Christians, therefore, only in so far as they can be used
for the defense of the authority of Scripture externally. Among them belong the
witness of the Church, which delivers the Holy Scripture to the individual
Christian as the Word of God, recognized by it as such in all ages (which tradi-
tion, nevertheless, has no more value than the witness of heretics, Jews and
heathen, which likewise attests that the Holy Scripture was recognized by the
Church from the beginning as God’s Word), as well as the fulfilled prophecies
of Holy Scripture (especially the destruction of Jerusalem and the earlier
divine guidance and the later dispersion of the Jewish people) and the miracles,
through the performance of which the writers of Holy Scripture are attested,
by God Himself, as men of God.

Since the authority of Scripture coincides with the authority of God, it is
absolute authority. Nevertheless, there is a distinction drawn in the contents
of Scripture in the matter of authority. Inasmuch as, to wit, all that Scripture
records is absolutely certain historical truth, auctoritas s. authentia historica
belongs to it ; inasmuch, however, as it contains the absolutely divine rule of

590

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

faith and life, auctoritas s. authentia normativa belongs to it : whence it appears
that the auctoritas historica extends further than the auctoritas normativa. The
former belongs to the whole contents of Scripture ; the latter, on the other hand,
only to a part of it, since what Scripture reports as to the works, words and
thoughts of the devil and the godless has certainly auctoritas historica, but no
auctoritas normativa.

On the divinity of the Holy Scriptures rests further their perfection, Per-
fectio scriptures est perfectio partium, qua omnia fidei et morum capita continet, et
graduum, qua omnes gradus revelationis (Burin. 45). With respect to the pur-
pose of Scripture, its perfection presents itself as sufficiency, since Scripture
contains all that is needful for man, in order that he may he able so to learn
j God’s nature and will as well as himself, that thereby his consciousness of
sin shall be awakened and the salvation which he needs be mediated to him.
Yet this is not to say that Scripture presents all truths in express words, hut that
it ( implicite or explicite ) reveals the truth in a perfection which leads the believer
into all truth, since it instructs man in all that it is necessary for him to know for
the attainment of eternal life. A distinction is to be drawn between the per-
fectio essentialis, according to which Holy Scripture contains sufficingly the
truths of revelation which are necessary for the attainment of eternal salvation,
and the perfectio integralis, according to which the Holy Writings have been so
preserved by God’s grace from destruction and corruption, that no canonical
book and no essential part of one has been lost. Of a tradition which may in-
crease the doctrinal contents of Scripture, therefore, the Christian has no need.
Only for the organization, discipline and worship of the Church can tradition
come into consideration.

Just as essentially as the properties of perfectio and sufficiencia belongs also
that of necessitas to the Scriptures, since the Scriptures, on account of the weak-
ness of the human heart and the power of error which rules in the world, are
I. l. necessary for the preservation in the earth of the pure knowledge of revealed
truth. Scripture is necessary, therefore, not only for the well-being, but espe-
cially for the very being of the Church, which would pass out of existence if it
had not an absolutely certain record of the revealed truth. Nevertheless, it
must be observed that the necessity of Scripture is not an absolute one, but a
necessitas ex hypothesi dispositionis, since, had it been the good pleasure of God,
He could have preserved the pure knowledge and conviction of His truth, even
without the means of a Holy Scripture.

If now the Scriptures are necessary for the attainment of eternal life and for
the preservation of the Church on earth, in like manner must their most essen-
tial contents be presented with sufficient clearness to be understood by even the
unlearned man who reads the Scriptures with believing heart as one seeking
I- 7. salvation. Therefore there belongs to the Scriptures the property of terspi-
cuitas, qua, quee ad salutem sunt scitu necessaria, in scriptura ita perspicue et
dare sunt explicata, ut ah indoetis quoque fidelibus, devote et attente legentibus in-
telligi possint (Wendel. Proleg., cap. 3). By this is, however, not to be under-
stood that all the several words and sentences of Scripture are clear beyond
doubt ; rather is the perspicuity of Scripture to be referred only to the funda-
mental doctrines of revelation affecting salvation, which are contained in it ;
and it must be further noted that the true knowledge of them is possible only
to the reader who is seeking salvation, while others can obtain at the best only
a theoretical and purely external knowledge of the truths of faith. For just as
the brute can perceive the body but not the spirit of man, because he himself
has none, so also the unspiritual man can see and understand, no doubt, the
letters but not the spirit of Scripture.

Neither does the perspicuity of Scripture exclude the necessity of interpreting
it. Interpretatio S. Scriptures est explicatio veri sensus et usus illius, verbis per-
spicuis instituta, ad gloriam Dei et eedificationem ecclesice (Pol. i, 45).

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 591

It likewise follows from the divinity of the Scriptures, that the interpretation
of those passages which present difficulties is not to he made dependent on some
other judge, as possibly on the authority of the Church, hut only on the Spirit
of God, the work of whom alone Scripture is, or on itself. Since now all doc- L 9
trines, the knowledge of which is necessary for eternal life, are presented in
Scripture with undoubtable clearness for those who read it with believing mind,
i. e., according to the regula fidei et caritalis, it follows that the darker passages of
Scripture are to be interpreted according to the indubitably clear ones, or ac-
cording to the analogic/, fidei which rests on these: Analogia fidei est argumen-
tatio a generalibus dogmatibus, qua, omnium in ecclesice docendorum normam
continet (Chamier, i, 17). It is to be held fast at the same time, that not only
what stands in the express language of Scripture, but also what flows from that I. 6.
by necessary consequence, is to be recognized as Scriptural content (Schriftin-
halt) and revealed truth.

In the interpretation of Scripture two things are included which, indeed, are
expressed in the very idea of it, viz. : (1) The enarratio veri sensus Scriptures ;
and (2) the accommodatio ad usum (Pol., i, 45).

The true sense of Scripture, which interpretation has established, can always
be only single, and, in general, only the real, literal sense, the sensus literalis,
which is either sensus literalis simplex or sensus literalis compositus. The former
is to be firmly held as a rule ; the latter, on the other hand, is to be recognized I. 9.
wherever Scripture presents anything typically ; and only when the sensus liter-
alis would contradict the articuli fidei or the prceceptes caritatis, where therefore
Scripture itself demands another interpretation of its words, is the figurative
meaning of them, the sensus figuratus, to be sought. Besides this, the allegor-
ical interpretation has its right in the application of the language of Scripture
to the manifold relations of life in the accommod. ad usum.

For the right interpretation of Scripture there are, of course, requisite all sorts
of human preparations, knowledges, fitnesses (general and spiritual training
knowledge of languages and history, etc.); but the essential qualification is,
nevertheless, faith and life in communion with the Holy Ghost, who teaches us
to understand the complete harmony of Scripture, even in the apparent contra-
dictions of Scripture (in the £vavrto<pavrj). For the Holy Spirit leads all those
who are of believing heart, and who call on him for the purpose of receiving en-
lightenment only from Him, into all truth. Therefore the believer has the com-
fort of knowing that God really grants him the true understanding of Scripture,
and that the true knowledge of the Word will be preserved forever on earth by
God’s gracious care.

Even so brief an abstract as this, framed for a far different pur-
pose, illustrates the fact that no single assertion is made in the first
chapter of the Confession which is not the common faith of the
whole Reformed theology ; and this could be vindicated, if there were
need to do so, to the minutest detail. A fair case could be made
out — if the anachronism of two centuries did not stand in the way
— that Heppe’s statement was the source of the Westminster chap-
ter. A statement drawn up, from its most representative Continen-
tal teachers, by one heartily in accord with all the details of Re-
formed doctrine, would even more conspicuously show the minute-
ness and completeness of the relation. The great source of this
chapter is, therefore, the recognized Reformed theology of the time.

592

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

The Proximate Sources.

The most important proximate source of the chapter on Holy
Scripture, as it is also the main proximate source, as Dr. Mitchell
has shown,* of the whole Confession, was those Irish Articles of Re-
ligion which are believed to have been drawn up by Usher’s hand,
and which were adopted by the Irish Convocation in 1615. As no
doubt can exist as to this fact, so, says Dr. Mitchell, f “ as little
doubt can be entertained in regard to the design of the framers in
following so closely in the footsteps of Usher and his Irish brethren.
They meant to show him and others like him, who had not the cour-
age to take their place among them, that though absent, they were
not forgotten, nor their work disregarded. They meant their Con-
fession to be in harmony with the consensus of the Reformed
Churches, and especially of the British Reformed Churches, as that
had been expressed in their most matured symbol. They desired it
to be a bond of union, not a cause of strife and division among those
who were resolutely determined to hold fast by 1 the sum and sub-
stance of the doctrine ’ of the Reformed Churches — the Augustin-
ianism so widely accepted in the times of Elizabeth and James.”
Accordingly we might expect that in framing this chapter, too,
while resting primarily on the Irish Articles, the Westminster
divines would not neglect the earlier Reformed creeds ; and that they
actually did their work in full view of what had been done in the
way of creed-expression of the doctrine of Scripture before them,
Dr. Mitchell shows elsewhere by means of a carefully framed parallel
statement of the creeds on this subject.:}: So much of this as seems
needful for our purpose, we borrow :

Earlier Confessions.

We know God by two means.
First, by tbe creation and pres-
ervation and government of
the whole world .... by
which the invisible things of
God may be seen and known
by us, namely, his everlasting
power and Godhead, as Paul
the apostle speaketh, Rom. i.
20, which knowledge "feufficeth
to convince all men, and make
them •without excuse. But
much more clearly and plainly
he afterwards revealed himself
unto us in his holy and heaven-
ly word, so far forth as is expe-

Westminster Confes-
sion.

I. Although the light of na-
ture. and the works of creation
and providence, do so far man-
ifest the goodness, wisdom, and
power of God, as to leave men
inexcusable; yet they are not
sufficient to give that knowl-
edge of God and of his will
which is necessary unto salva-
tion; therefore it pleased the
Lord at sundry times, and in
divers manners, to reveal him-
self, and to declare that his
will unto his church ; and
afterwards, for the better pre-
serving and propagating of the

Irish Articles of 1615.

I. The ground of our religion,
and the rule of faith and all
saving truth, is the word of
God, contained in the Holy
Scripture.

* See Mitcliell, The Westminster Assembly, etc., The Baird Lectures for 1882,
p. 376 sq.; also Minutes, etc., p. xlvii sq.
f The Westminster Assembly, etc., p. 379.

+ Report of Proceedings of the First General Presbyterian Council, held at Edin-
burgh, 1877. Appendix vi, p. 371 sq.

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLT SCRIPTURE.

593

dient for his own glory, and truth, and for the more sure
the salvation of his in this life establishment and comfort of
[The Belgic Confession, 1561]. the church against the corrup-
tion of the flesh, and the mal-
ice of Satan and the world,
[The French Confession like to commit the same wholly
the Belgic, but far more brief.] unto writing ; which maketh
the Holy Scripture to be most
necessary ; those former ways
of God’s revealing his will un-
to his people being now ceased.

A this Holy Scripture is
contained in the canonical
books of the Old and New Tes-
tament, the catalogue whereof
is this: [Catalogue follows]
[The French Confession, 1559],

II. Under the name of Holy II. By the name of Holy
Scripture, or the word of God Scripture, we understand all
written, are now contained all the canonical books of the Old
the books of the Old and New and New Testaments, viz. :
Testament, which are these :

Of the Old Testament.

Of the Old Testament.

Genesis,

Ecclesiastes,

The five books Ecclesiastes,

Exodus,

The Song of

of Moses, Song of Solo-

Leviticus,

Songs,

mon,

Numbers,

Isaiah,

Isaiah,

Deuteronomy,

Jeremiah,

Jeremiah,
Prophecy and

Joshua,

Lamentations,

Joshua, Lamentations,

Judges,

Ezekiel,

Judges, Ezekiel,

Ruth,

Daniel,

Ruth, Daniel,

1 Samuel,

Hozea,

The 1st and 2d The twelve less

2 Samuel,

Joel,

of Samuel, prophets.

1 Kings,

Amos,

The 1st and 2d

2 Kings,

Obadiah,

of Kings,

1 Chronicles,

Jonah,

The 1st and 2d

2 Chronicles,

Micah,

of Chronicles,

Ezra,

Nahum,

Ezra,

Nehemiah,

Habakkuk,

Nehemiah,

Esther,

Zephaniah,

Esther,

Job,

Haggai,

Job,

Psalms,

Zechariah,

Psalms,

Proverbs,

Malachi.

Proverbs,

Of the New Testament.
The Gospels
according to
Matthew,

Mark,

Luke,

John,

The Acts of the
Apostles,

Paul’s Epistles
to the Roms.,

1 Corinthians,

2 Corinthians,

Galatians,

Ephesians,

Philippian s,

Colossians,

1 Thessalo-
nians,

2 Thessalo-
nians,

1 To Timothy,

2 To Timothy,
To Titus,

To Philemon,
The Epistle to
the Hebrews,
The Epistle of
James,

The 1st and 2d
Epist. of Peter,
The 1st, 2d and
3d Epistles of
John,

The Epistle of
Jude,

The Revelation.

Of the New Testament.
The Gospels
according to

Matthew, Timothy (two),

Mark,

Luke, Titus,

John, Philemon,

TheAots of the Hebrews,

Apostles,

The Epistle of The Epistle of
Paul to Roms., James,
Corinthians St. Peter (two),

(two),

Galatians,

Ephesians,

Philippians,

Colossians,

Thessalonians
(two),

St. John (three),

St. Jude,

The Revelation '
of St. John.

We acknowledge thesebooks
to be canonical ; that is we ac-
count them as the rule and
square of our faith [French Con-
fession, 1559],

All which are given by in-
spiration of God, to be the rule
of faith and life.

All which are acknowledged
to be given by inspiration of
God, and in that regard to be
of most certain credit and
highest authority.

We furthermore make a dif- III. The hooks commonly III. The other books, com-
ference between the holy books called Apocrypha, not being of monly called apocryphal, did

38

594

TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

and those which they call
apocryphal ; for so much as
the apocryphal may be read in
the Church, and it is lawful
also so far to gather instruction
out of them as. they agree with
canonical hooks ; but their au-
thority and certainty is not such
as that any doctrine touching
faith or Christian religion
may safely be built upon their
testimony ; so far off is it, that
they can disannul or impair
the authority of the other [ Bel -
gic Confession],

We believe that the word
contained in these books came
from one God ; of whom alone,
and not of men, the authority
thereof dependeth [ French Con-
fession],

Therefore without any doubt
we believe those things which
are contained in them ; and
that not so much because the
Church receiveth and alloweth
them for canonical, as for that
the Holy Ghost beareth wituess
to our consciences that they
came from God ; and most of
all for that they also testify
and justify for themselves this
their own sacred authority and
sanctity, seeing that even the
blind may clearly behold, and
as it were feel the fulfilling
and accomplishment of all
things which were foretold in
these writings [Bclgic Confes-
sion],

We believe also that the Holy
Scripture doth most perfectly
contain all the will of God, and
that in it all things are abund-
antly taught, whatsoever is
necessary to be believed of man
to attain salvation. Therefore,
seeing the whole manner of
worshiping God, which God
requireth at the bauds of the
faithful, is there most ex-
quisitely and at large set down,
it is lawful for no man, although
he hath the authority of an
apostle, no, not for any angel
sent from heaven (as St. Paul
speaks, Gal. i, 8), to teach

divine inspiration, are no part
of the canon of the Scripture ;
and therefore are of no author-
ity in the church of God, nor
to be any otherwise approved,
or made use of, than other hu-
man writings.

IV. The authority of the Holy
Scripture, for which it ought to
be believed and obeyed, de-
pendeth not upon the testi-
mony of any man or church,
but wholly upon God, (who is
truth itself,) the author there-
of ; and therefore it is to be re-
ceived, because it is the word
of God.

V. We may be moved and
Induced by the testimony of
the church to a high and rev-
erend esteem for the Holy Scrip-
ture. And the heavenliness of
the matter, the efficacy of the
doctrine, the majesty of the
style, the consent of all the
parts, the scope of the whole,
(which is to give all glory to
God,) the full discover}’ it
makes of the only way of
man’s salvation, the many
other incomparable excellen-
cies, and the entire perfection
thereof, are arguments where-
by it doth abundantly evidence
itself to be the word of God;
yet, notwithstanding, our full
persuasion and assurance of
the infallible truth, and divine
authority thereof, is from the
inward work of the Holy Spirit,
bearing witness by and with
the word, in our hearts.

VI. The whole counsel of
God, concerning all things
necessary for his own glory,
man’s salvation, faith and life,
is either expressly set down in
Scripture, or by good and neces-
sary consequence may be de-
duced from Scripture : unto
which nothing at any time is
to be added, whether by new
revelations of the Spirit, or tra-
ditions of men. Nevertheless,
we acknowledge the inward
illumination of the Spirit of
God to be necessary, for the
saving understanding of such
things as are revealed in the

not proceed from such inspira-
tion, and therefore are not of
sufficient authority to establish
any point of doctrine ; but the
Church doth read them as
books containing many worthy
things, for example of life and
instruction of manners.

VI. The Holy Scriptures con-
tain all things necessary to sal-
vation, and are able to instruct
sufficiently in all points of
faith, that we are bound to be-
lieve, and all good duties that
we are bound to practice.

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLT SCRIPTURE.

595

otherwise than we have long
since been taught in the Holy
Scripture. For seeing it is for-
bidden that any should add or
detract anything to or from the
word of God, thereby it is evi-
dent enough that this holy
doctrine is perfect and abso-
lute in all points and parcels
thereof; and therefore no other
writings of men, although never
so holy, no custom, no multi-
tude, no antiquity, nor pre-
scription of times, nor personal
succession, nor any councils,
and, to conclude, no decrees or
ordinances of men, are to be
matched or compared with
these divine Scriptures, and
this bare truth of God ; for so
much as God’s truth excelleth
all things [Belgic Confession ■].

word ; and that there are some
circumstances concerning the
worship of God, and govern-
ment of the church, common
to human actions and societies,
which are to be ordered by the
light of nature, and Christian
prudence, according to the
general rules of the word,
which are always to be ob-
served.

VII. All things in Scripture
are not alike plain in them-
selves, nor alike clear unto all ;
yet those things which are
necessary to be known, be-
lieved, and observed, for salva-
tion, are so clearly propounded
and opened in some place of
Scripture or other, that not
only the learned, but the un-
learned, in a due use of the or-
dinary means, may attain unto
a sufficient understanding of
them.

VIII. The Old Testament in
Hebrew, (which was the native
language of the people of God
of old), and the New Testament
in Greek, (which at the time
of the writing of it was most
generally known to the na-
tions), being immediately in-
spired by God, and by his
singular care and providence
kept pure in all ages, are there-
fore authentical ; so as, in all
controversies of religion, the
church is finally to appeal un-
to them. But because these
original tongues are not known
to all the people of God, who
have right unto, and interest
in the Scriptures, and are com-
manded, in the fear of God, to
read and search them, there-
fore they are to be translated
into tbe vulgar language of
every nation unto which they
come, that the word of God
dwelling plentifully in all, they
may worship him in an accept-
able manner ; and through pa-
tience and comfort of the
Scriptures, may have hope.

V. Although there be some
hard things in the Scriptures
(especially such as have proper
relation to the times in which
they were first uttered, and
prophecies of things that were
afterwards to be fulfilled), yet
all things necessary to be
known unto everlasting salva-
tion, are clearly delivered
therein ; and nothing of that
kind is spoken under dark
mysteries in one place, which
is not in other places spoken
more familiarly and plainly,
to the capacity both of learned
and unlearned.

IV. The Scriptures ought to
be translated out of the original
tongues into all languages for
the common use of all men ;
neither is any person to be dis-
couraged from reading the
Bible in such a language as he
doth understand, but seriously
exhorted to read the same with
great humility and reverence,
as a special means tobring him
to a true knowledge of God,
and of his own duty.

596

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

We acknowledge that inter-
pretation of Scriptures for au-
thentical and proper which,
being taken from the Scriptures
themselves (that is from the
phrase of that tongue in which
they were written, they being
also weighed according to the
circumstances, and expounded
according to the proportion of
places, either of like or unlike,
also of more and plainer), ac-
cordeth with the rule of truth
and charity and worketh nota-
bly for God’s glory and man’s
salvation [Later Swiss Confes-
sion].

Wherefore we do not con-
temn the holy treatises of the
fathers, agreeing -with the
Scriptures; from whom, not-
withstanding, we do modestly
dissent, as they are depre-
hended to set down things
merely strange or altogether
contrary to the same. ....
And according to this order we
do account of decrees and
canons of councils. Wherefore
we suffer not ourselves in con-
troversies about religion, or
matters of faith, to be pressed
with the hare testimonies of
fathers, or decrees of councils ;
much less with received cus-
toms, or with the multitude of
men being of one judgment,
or with prescription of long
time. Therefore in controver-
sies of religion or matters of
faith, we cannot admit any
other judge than God himself
pronouncing by the Holy
Scriptures, what is true, what
is false, what is to he followed,
or what to be avoided. So we
do not rest hut in the judg-
ment of spiritual men, drawn
from the word of God [ Later
Swiss Confession ].

IX. The infallible rule of in-
terpretation of Scripture is the
Scripture itself ; and therefore,
when there is a question about
the true and full sense of any
scripture, (which is not mani-
fold, but one), it must be
searched and known by other
places that speak more clearly.

X. The Supreme Judge, by
which all controversies of re-
ligion are to be determined,
and all decrees of councils,
opinions of ancient writers,
doctrines of men, and private
spirits, are to be examined, and
in whose sentence we are to
rest, can be no other but the
Holy Spirit speaking in the
Scripture.

Our knowledge that the Westminster divines did make use of
the Irish Articles, both in determining the general outline of the
Confession and (in places) its-more detailed phraseology, helps us to
perceive that it underlay their work in this chapter too. But it is
no more clear that they used it than that they used it very freely
and only so far forth as served their purpose ; they looked to it for
advice, not authority.

In one of the passages of this chapter, the rich phraseology of
which has been much admired, and to which the Irish Articles
have no corresponding section, Dr. Candlish * has discovered the

* British and Foreign Evangelical Review for January, 1877, p. 173.

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 597

traces of a Scotch hand. He points out that Section 5 bears so
close a resemblance to a passage in Gillespie’s Miscellany Questions *
as to suggest that the two came from the same pen. f Dr. Mitchell
takes up the hint and feels sure that we may here trace Gillespie’s
authorship. % We place the two in parallel columns :

Confession of Faith.

The heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy
of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the
consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole
(which is to give aU glory to God), the full dis-
covery it makes of the only way of man’s sal-
vation, the many other incomparable excel-
lencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are
arguments whereby it doth abundantly evi-
dence itself to be the word of God.

Gillespie.

The Scripture is known to be indeed the
word of God by the beams of divine authority
which it hath in itself .... such as the
heavenliness of the matter, the majesty of the
style, the irresistible power over the conscience,
the general scope to abase man, and to exalt
God ; nothing driven at but God’s glory and
man’s salvation ; . . . . the supernatural myste-
ries revealed therein, which could never have
entered into the reason of man, the marvel-
lous consent of all parts and passages (though
written by diverse and several penmen) even
where there is some appearance of difference,
.... these and the like are characters and
marks which evidence the Scriptures to be the
word of God.

There is much here that belongs to the commonplaces of the
time, and almost as close parallels to Section 5 may be derived from
the writings of several others of the Westminster divines. Never-
theless the phraseology seems too closely similar for there not to
have been some literary connection.

How closely the Westminster Confession held itself to the theo-
logical thought of its day may be illustrated from another parallel
which we shall immediately give, in which the Confession is placed
side by side with two of the chief popular dogmatic handbooks of
the age. Ball’s Catechism was in everybody’s hand and is a very
fair representative of the Puritan trend of thought. The Body of
Divinity , published by Downame in 1645, under Archbishop Usher’s
name, may not have been before the framers of this chapter before
their work was well on its way.§ The parallelism is so close, how-

*Ch. xxi, p. 105, ed. 1844.

t Gillespie’s work was published posthumously in 1649, but may have been
composed during the Assembly.

t The Westminster Assembly, etc., p. 429.

§ Exactly when the Body of Divinity was published is difficult to determine.
Parr says, simply, during Usher’s stay in Wales. Elrington helps us to come a
little nearer. He tells us that Usher left Oxford in the spring of 1645 (p. 242)
and was back in London in June, 1646. The date of Usher’s letter to Downame
repudiating responsibility for the work is May 15, 1645 ; but this letter is appar-
ently an answer to one which only contemplated publishing the book. It can-
not be certain, however, that it was not already published when Usher wrote.
On the other hand, the Committee on the Confession of Faith was first appointed
as early as August 25, 1644 ; the actual drafting of the Confession was, however,
committed to a committee only on May 12, 1645. The first report of the chapter
on the Scriptures was made on July 7, 1645. On the whole, it is not impossible
that the Body of Divinity may have been published in time to affect the draft.
Nor is it impossible that it may have been known to the drafters in manuscript.

598

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

ever, that it is hard to believe that it did not affect some of the
matter or even the phraseology. If not, the closeness of the paral-
lels is a pointed indication of the great indebtedness of the Confes-
sion to the same general sources from which Usher drew the mate-
rial for his “ commonplace hook.” In any case, this parallel will
measure for us the accord of the W estminster doctrine of Scripture
with the current doctrine of the times among the pronounced Prot-
estant party in England. *

Ball : A Short Treatise
containing all the Princi-
pal Grounds of the Chris-
tian Religion. 15th im-
pression. London, 1656.

P.49: “ The Gentiles by na-
ture hare the law written in
their hearts.”

P. 46 : “In respect of sub-
stance, the word of God was al-
ways necessary, without which
we could 1. neither know, nor
2. worship God aright.”

“ He sendeth us his word
alone for direction, how to at-
tain salvation, Isa. viii. 20, Luk.
x. 26, therefore none hut he can
reveal the way how we should
obtain that everlasting inheri-
tance, Psalm xvi. 11, Prov. ii.
6,9” (p. 4).

Usher : The Sum and
Substance of the Christian
Religion. London, 1702.

P.3: “By what means hath
God revealed himself? By his
divine works and by his

holy word What be the

divine works whereby God
hath shewed himself? Tbe
creation and preser-
vation of the world and aU

things therein What use

is there of the knowledge ob-
tained by the works of God ?
There is a double use. The one
to make men void of
excuse ; as the Apostle
teacheth, Rom. i. 20, and so it
is sufficient unto condemna-
tion. The other is to go further
unto salvation, and that by
preparing and inducing men
to seek 'God, if happily, by
groping they may find him
(as the Apostle sheweth, Acts
xvii.27), whereby they are made
more apt to acknowledge him
when he is perfectly revealed

in his word ” Cf. p. 23 :

“ That the knowledge of God
is to be had partly by his
works, viz., so much asmay
serve to convince man and
make him inexcusa-
ble.”

P. 4 : “ Are the works
of God sufficient to
give knowledge of the

only true God and the way un-
to everlasting happiness? They
may leave us without excuse,
and so are sufficient unto con-
demnation ; but are not able
to make us wise unto
salvation. Because of
things necessary unto salva-
tion, some they teach but im-
perfectly, others not at all, as
the distinction of the persons

Confession of Faith.

I, i, a : “ Although the light of
nature, and the works of crea-
tion and providence, do so far
manifest the goodness, wisdom,
and power of God, as to leave
men inexcusable ; ”

I, i, b : “yet are they not suf-
ficient to give that knowledge
of God, and of his will, which
is necessary unto salvation.”

* Some of the phraseology, which seems specially suggestive of the relation of
the Confession to Ball and Usher, has been put into broad-faced type, to attract
the eye.

TEE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLT SCRIPTURE. 599

P. 51 : “ Faith and obedience
is the way to happiness, and
the whole duty of man is faith
working by love, which man
could not learn of himself.”

“ What understand you by
the word of God? By the word
of God we understand tbe
will of God revealed
unto man being a reasonable
Creature, teaching him what to
believe and leave undone,
Deut. xxix. 29. Hath not this
word been diversely made
known heretofore ? This word
of God hath heretofore been
diversely made known, Hcb. i.
1, as (1) By Inspiration, 2 Chr.
xv. 1, Isa. lix. 21, 2 Pet. i. 21.
(2) By Ingraving in the heart,
Rom. ii. 14. (3) By visions ;
Num. xii. 6, 8, Acts x. 10, 11,
Apos. i. 10. (4; By dreams, Job
xxxiii. 14, 15, Gen. xl. 8. (5) By
Urim and Thummim, Num.
xxvii. 21, 1 Sam. xxx. 7, 8. (6)
By signs, Oen. xxxii. 24, Exo.
xiii. 21. (7) By audible voice,
Exo. xx. 1, 2, Gen. xxii. 15, And
lastly by writing, Exo. xvii. 14”
(PP- 5, 6).

P. 7: ‘ Why was the truth
delivered to the Church in
writing? The truth of God was
delivered to the Church in
writing, (l)That It might
be preserved pure
from corruption ; (2)
That it might be bet-
ter conveyed to pos-
terity; (3) That itmight bean
infallible standard cf true doc-
trine ; (4) That it might be the
determiner of all controversies ;
(5) That our faith might be con-
firmed, beholding the accom-
plishment of things prophesied ;
And (6) For the more full in-
struction of the Church, the
time of the Messias either
drawing nigh, or being come.”
(p. 46) “ Without which error
in doctrine and manners is un-
avoidable.”

[Cf. X, iv.]

I, i, c : ‘‘Therefore it pleased
the Lord, at sundry times, and
in divers manners, to reveal
himself, and to declare that his
will unto his church ; ”

I, i, d : “ and afterwards for
the better preserving and
propagating of the truth, and
for th e more sure establishment
and comfort of the church
against the corruption of the
flesh and the malice of Satan
and the world, to commit the
same wholly unto writing ; ”

in the Godhead, the fall of man
from God, and the way to re-
pair the same.” Cf. p. 1 :
“ May man be saved by any
religion ? No, but only by the
true, as appeareth by John
xvii. 3.”

“ Where then is the saving
knowledge of God to be had
perfectly? In his holy word.
For God, 'according to the
riches of his grace, hath been
abundant towards us in all
wisdom and understanding,
and hath opened unto us the
mystery of his will, accord-
ing to his good pleas-
ure, which he hath purposed
in himself,’ as the Apostle
teacheth, Ephes. i. 7, 8, 9.
What course did God hold in
the delivery of his word unto
men ? In the beginning of the
world he delivered his word
by Revelation and con-
tinued the knowledge thereof
by tradition, while the number
of his true worshippers was
small Were these Reve-

lations in times past delivered
all in the same manner? No.
For (as the Apostle noteth, Heb
i. 1) * at sundry times
and in divers man-
ners God spake in times
past, unto the Fathers by the
prophets.’ The divers kinds are
set down in Numb. xii. 6, and
1 Sam. xxviii. 6, and may be
reduced to these two general
heads : Oracles and Visions ”
(p. 4).

P. 4 : “ But after he chose
a great and popular nation, in
which he would be honoured
and served, he caused the same
to be committed to
writing for all ages to the

end of the world Yet so

that in half that time, God’s
will was also revealed without
writing, extraordinarily, and
the Holy Books indited one
after another, according to the
necessity of the times ; but in
this last half, the wbole
Canon of the Scriptures be-
ing fully finished, we and all
men, unto the world's end, are
left to have our full instruc-
tion from the same, without
expecting extraordinary reve-
lations, as in times past.”

P. 46: “In respect to the I, i, e: “which maketh the

P. 5 : “ Where then is the

600

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

manner of revealing in writ-
ing, the Scriptures were neces-
sary ever since it pleased God
after that manner to make
known his will, and so shall
be to the end of the world.”

P. 6: “What call you the
word of God? The Holy Scrip-
ture, immediately inspired,
which is contained in the
books of the Old and New

Testament (p. 7) What

is it to be immediately
inspired? To be imme-
diately inspired, is to be as it
were breathed, and to come
from the Father by the Holy
Ghost, without all means.
Were the SS. thus inspired?
Thus the holy SS., in the origi-
nals were inspired both for
matter and words, (p. 8) What
are the books of the Old T. ?
Moses and the Prophets. What
mean you by the books of the
O. T. ? All the books of holy
Scripture, given by God to the

Church of the Jews

(p. 9) What are the books of the
N. T. ? Matthew, Mark, Luke
and the rest as they follow in
our bibles.”

P. 1 : “ What ought to be the
chief and continual care of
every man in this life? To
glorify God and save his soul.
.... (p. 4) Whence must we
take directions to attain here-
unto ? Out of the word of God
alone.”

Holy Scripture to be most nec-
essary ;

those former ways of God’s re-
vealing his will unto his people
being now ceased.”

I, ii : “ Under the name of
Holy Scripture, or the word of
God written,

are now contained all the
books of the Old and New Tes-
tament, which are these :

[Catalogue.]

All which are given by inspi-
ration of God, to be the rule of
faith and life.”

I, iii : “ The books commonly
called Apocrypha, not being of
divine inspiration, are no part
of the canon of the Scripture ;
and therefore are of no author-

Word of God now certainly to
be learned? Only out of the
book of God contained in the
Holy Scriptures ; which are the
only certain testimonies unto
the Church of the Word of God.

“ Why may not men want
the Scriptures now, as they did
at the first from the Creation
until the time of Moses, for the
space of 2513 years? First, be-
cause then God immediately
by his Voice and Prophets sent
from him, taught the Church
his truth ; w li i c li now
are ceased.” (p. 4) “ But
in this last half, the whole
Canon of the Scriptures being
fully finished, we and all men
unto the world’s end, are left
to have our full instruction
from the same, without ex-
pecting extraordinary revela-
tions as in times past."

P. 5: “What is Scripture
then ? The word of God writ-
ten by men inspired by the
Holy Ghost for the perfect
building and salvation of the
Church ; or Holy Books writ-
ten by the Inspiration of God
to ma ke us wise unto salvation.
If the SS. be written by men,
which are subject unto infirmi-
ties ; how can it be accounted
the word of God ? Because it
proceeded ‘not from the will
or mind of man,’ but ‘holy
men ’ set apart by God for that
work, spake and writ ‘as they
were moved by the Holy
Ghost.’ Therefore God alone
is to be accounted the Author
thereof, who inspired the
hearts of those holy men,
whom he chose to be his Secre-
taries ; who are to be held only
the instrumental causes there-
of.” . . . . (p. 10) “ What books
are the Holy SS. ; and by whom
were they written? First, The
books of the 0. T., in number

nine and thirty written

by Moses and the Prophets,
who delivered the same to the
Church of the Jews. Second-
ly, The books of the N. T., in
number seven and twenty,
written by the Apostles and
Evangelists, who delivered
them to the Church of the Gen
tiles.”

[Catalogue, pp. 11, 14.]

Pp. 11, 12: “Are there no
other Canonical Books of the
Scripture of the Old Testament
besides these that you have
named? No; for those others

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 601

Pp. 44, 45 : “ What is the Di-
vine authority of holy
Scripture? Such is the
excellency of the holy Scrip-
ture above all other writings
whatsoever, that it ought
to be credited in all
narrations, threatenings, prom-
ises or prophesies, and
obeyed in all command-
ments. Whence hath it this
authority ? From God
the author thereof,
he being of incomprehensible
wisdom, great goodness, abso-
lute power and dominion, and
truth that can neither de-
ceive or be deceived. Doth
the authority of the Scripture
wholly depend upon God?
The authority of the

ity in the church of God, nor
to be any otherwise approved,
or made use of, than other hu-
man writings.”

I, iv : “ The authority of the
Holy Scripture, for which it
ought to be believed and
obeyed, dependeth not upon
the testimony of any man, or
church, but wholly upon God,
(who is the truth itself,) the
author thereof; and therefore
it is to be received, because it
is the word of God.”

which Papists would obtrude
unto us for Canonical, are
Apocryphal, that is to say , such
as are to lie hid when there is
proof to be made of religion.
How prove you that these
Apocryphal Books are no part
of the Canonical Scriptures?
First, They are not written
first in Hebrew, the language
of the Church before Christ,
which all the books of the O.T.
were originally written in,
Secondly, They were
never received into
the Canon of Scrip-
ture by the Church of
the Jews before Christ (to whom
alone in those times the Oracles
of God were committed, Rom.
iii. 2), nor read and expounded
in their synagogues. See Jo-
sephus Contra Appion, lib. i. and
Eusebius, lib. iii, 10. Thirdly,
The Jews were so careful to
keep Scripture intire as they
kept the number of the verses
and letters ; within which is
none of the Apocrypha. Fourth-
ly, The Scripture of the O. T.
was written by Prophets, . .

. . But Malachy was the last
Prophet, after whom all the
Apocrypha was written. Fifth-
ly, They are not authorized by
Christ and his Apostles who do
give testimony unto the Scrip-
tures. Sixthly, By the most an-
cient Fathers and Councils of
the Primitive Churches after
the Apostles, they have
not been admitted

for trial of truth

Seventhly, There is no such
constant truth in them as in
the canonical SS. For every
book of them hath falsehood
in doctrine or history.”

P. 15 ; “ The Authority of
these holy writings, inspired
by God, is highest in the
Church, as the Authority of
God ; whereunto no learning
or decrees of angels or men,
under what name or color so-
ever it be commended, may
be accounted equal nei-

ther can they be judged or sen-
tenced by any.”

P. 10 : “ Reason or wit-
nesses of men ; unto
which it is unmeet that the
word of God should be subject,
as Papists hold, when they
teach that the SS. receive their
authority from the Church.
For by thus hanging the credit
and authority of the SS. on the
Church's sentence, they make

602

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

Scripture doth only
and wholly depend
upon God the author

of it. May not one part of
Scripture be preferred before
another? Though one part
may be preferred before an-
other, in respect of excellency
of matter and use, yet in
authority and certainty, every
part is equal. Is any other
writing of equal authority to
the Scripture ? Only Scripture
is of Divine authority.”

P. 9 sg. : “ How may it be
proved that these books are the
word of God immediately in-
spired by the holy Ghost to
the Prophets and Apostles?
First. By the testimony
of the Church ; Second-
ly, CONSTANCY OF THE SAINTS ;

Thirdly, miracles wrought

TO CONFIRM THE TRUTH ; and

Fourthly, by the antiquity

thereof (p. 15) What

understand you by the Church ?
By the Church we understand
not the Pope, whom the Papists
call the Church virtual ; nor
his Bishops and Cardinals met
in General Council, whom they
call the Church representative ;
but the whole company of be-
lievers, who have professed
the true faith ; whether those
who received the books of holy
Scripture from the Prophets
and Apostles, or those who

lived after (p. 16) How

is this testimony of the Church
considered? Tlie testi-
mony of tlie Church
is considered, 1. Of the Jews,
2. Of the Christians. What
books did the Jews receive?
The Church of the Jews pro-
fessed the Doctrine and re-
ceived the books of the O. T.\
and testified of them that they
were divine. What things give
force to this testimony of the
Jews ? To the testimony of the
Jews, these things give force.
1. To them were committed
the oracles of God. 2. In great
misery they have constantly

professed the same 3.

Notwithstanding the high
Priests and others persecuted
the Prophets, while they lived,
yet they received their writ-
ings as prophetical and divine.
4. Since obstinacy is come to
Israel, notwithstanding their
great hatred of the Christian
religion, the holy Scripture ot
the 0. T. is kept pure and un-
corrupt amongst them, even in

I, v, a: ‘‘We may be moved
and induced by the testimony
of the church to a high and
reverent esteem for the Holy
Scripture.”

the Church's word of more
credit than the word of
God. Whereas the SS. of God
cannot be judged or sentenced
by any ; and God only is
a worthy witness of
himself, in his word,
and by his Spirit ; which give
mutual testimony one of the
other, and work that assurance
of faith in his children, that
no humane demonstrations can
make, nor any persuasions or
enforcements of the world can
remove.”

P. 6 : “ How may it appear
therefore, that this book which
you call the book of God, and
the Holy Scripture, is the word
of God indeed and not men’s
policies? By the con-
stant testimony of
men in all ages, from them
that first knew these penmen
of the Holy Ghost -with their
writings, until our time ; and
reasons taken out of the works
themselves, agreeable to the
quality of the writers. Both
which kinds of arguments the
Holy SS. have as much and far
more than any other writings.
Wherefore, as it were extreme
impudence, to deny the works
of Homer, Plato, Virgil, Tully,
Livy, Galen, and such like
which the consent of all ages
have received and delivered
unto us ; which also by the
tongue, phrase, matter, and all
other circumstances agreable.
are confirmed to be the works
of the same authors whose they
are testified to be : so it were
more than brutish madness to
doubt of the certain truth and
authority of the Holy Scrip-
tures, which no less but much
more than any other writings,
for their authors, are testified
and confirmed to be the sacred
word of the ever-living God.
Not only testified (I say)
by the uniform wit-
ness of men in all ages,
but also confirmed by such rea-
sons taken out of the writings
themselves, as do sufficiently
argue the Spirit of God to be
the author of them. For we
may learn out of the testimo-
nies themselves (as David did,
Psl. cxix. 152) that God hath es-
tablished them forever.” (p. 9)

. . . . “The Church of the
Jews until the coming of Christ
in the flesh, embraced all the
former writings of the prophets
as the book of God. Christ
himself appealeth unto them

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLT SCRIPTURE. 603

those places which do evident-
ly confirm the truth of Chris-
tian religion. What books did
the Christian Church receive ?
The Christian Church hath
embraced the doctrine of God,
and received the hooks both of
the Old and New Testament.
What things give weight to
this testimony? To the testi-
mony of Christians, two things
give force, 1. Their great con-
stancy. 2. Their admirable
and sweet consent : for in other
matters we may observe differ-
ences in opinion, in this a sin-
gular and wonderful agree-
ment. How many ways is this
testimony of Christians consid-
ered ? This testimony of Chris-
tians is considered three ways,

1. Of tlie Universal
Clturcli, which from the
beginning thereof, uutil these
times, professing the Christian
religion to be divine, doth also
professe that these Books are of
God. 2. Of the several primi-
tive Churches, which first re-
ceived the books of the O. T.,
and the Epistles written from
the Apostles, to them, their
pastors, or some they knew ;
and after delivered them under
the same title to their succes-
sors, and other Churches. 3. Of
the Pastors and doctors, who
(being furnished with skill,
both in the tongues and matters
divine) upon due trial and ex-
amination have pronounced
their judgment and approved
them to the people committed
to their charge. Of what force
is this testimony ? This tes-
timony of the Church
is of great weight
and importance; 1. It
is profitable to prepare the
heart and move it to believe.

2. It is of all human testimony
(whereby the author of any
book that hath, is, or shall be
extant, can be proved) the
greatest, both in respect of the
multitude, wisdom, honesty,
faithfulness of the witnesses;
and the likeness, constancy
and continuance of the testi-
mony itself. 3. But this testi-
mony is only human. 4. Not
the only, nor the chief where-
by the truth and divinity of
the Scripture is confirmed. 5.
■Neither can it be the ground of
divine faith and assurance.”

[The other items mentioned
in the first question quoted are
then treated in similar man-
ner.]

as a sufficient testimony of him,
John v. 39. The Apostles and
Evangelists prove the writings
of the New Testament by them:
And the Catholic Church of
Christ, from the Apostles’ time
unto this day, hath acknowl-
edged all the said writings,
both of the Old and New Tes-
taments, to be the undoubted
word of God. Tlius have we
the testimony both of the Old
Church of the Jews, God’s pe-
culiar people and first-born, to
whom the oracles of God were
committed, and the New of
Christians : together with the
general account which all the
Godly at all times have made
of the Scriptures, when they
have crossed their natures and
courses, as accounting it in
their souls, to be of God ; and
the special testimony of Mar-
tyrs who have sealed the cer-
tainty of the same, by shedding
their blood for them. Here-
unto also may be added the
testimony of those who are out
of the Church ; Heathens, out
of whom many ancient testi-
monies are cited, to this pur-
pose by Josephus contra Appion,
Turks, Jews, (who to this day
acknowledge all the books of
the 0. T.) and Hereticlfs, who
labour to shroud themselves
under them.”

604

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

P. 21 sq: “How else may it
be proved that these books are
the Word of God? By the

style, efficacy, sweet
consent, admirable
doctrine, excellent

end AND THE WITNESS. OF

the Scripture itself

These things declare the

majesty of the style
. ... The efficacy of
this doctrine doth pow-
erfully demonstrate the divin-
ity thereof. .... The sweet
and admirable consent
which is found in all
and every part of Scrip-
ture cannot be ascribed to any
but the Spirit of God, each
part so exactly agreeing with

itself and with the whole

The matter treated of
in holy Scripture is

divine and wonderful

The end of the Scripture
is divine, viz. 1. The glory
of God : and 2. The sal-
vation of man, not tem-
poral but eternal

These arguments
are of great force,
whether they be severally or
jointly considered ; and do as
strongly prove that the Chris-
tian Religion is only true, as
any other reason can, that
there was, is, or ought to be

any true religion The

testimony of the Scripture itself
.... is (1) most clear, (2) cer-
tain, (3) infallible, (4) publique,
and (5) of itself worthy credit.”

P. 40 sq. : “Is this testimony
of force to open the eyes or as-
sure the heart? No, for the
external light of arguments,
and testimonies brought to
confirm and demonstrate, must
be distinguished from the in-
ward operation of the holy
Ghost, opening our eyes to see
the light shining in the Scrip-
ture and to discern the sense
thereof. These reasons may
convince any, be he never so
obstinate : but are they suffi-
cient to persuade the
heart thereof? No ;
the testimony of the
Spirit is necessary
and only all suffi-
cient for this pur-
pose. Why is the testimony
of the Spirit necessary? Be-
cause by nature we are blind
in spiritual things. Though
therefore the Scripture be a

I, v, b : “And the heavenli-
ness of the matter, the efficacy
of the doctrine, the majesty of
the style, the consent of all the
parts, the scope of the whole
(which is to give all glory to
God), the full discovery it
makes of the only way of
man’s salvation, the many
other incomparable excellen-
cies, and the entire perfection
thereof, are arguments where-
by it doth abundantly evidence
itself to be the word of God ; ’’

I, v, c : “yet, notwithstand-
ing, our full persuasion and as-
surance of the infallible truth,
and divine authority thereof,
is from the inward work of the
Holy Spirit, bearing witness
by and with the word in our
hearts.”

Pp. 6, 7, 8: “Let me hear
some of those reasons which
prove that God is the author of

the Holy Scriptures

Fourthly, The matter of
the Holy Scripture being
altogether of hea-
venly doctrine, ....
proclaimeth the God of heaven
to be the only inspirer of it.
Fifthly, The doctrine
of the Scripture is such as
could never breed in the brains

of man Sixthly, The

sweet concord between these
writings and the perfect coher-
ence of all things contained in

them For there is

most holy and heavenly con-
sent and agreement
of all parts thereof.
.... Seventhly, a continuance

of wonderful prophecies

Eighthly, The great majes-
ty, full of heavenly wisdom
and authority, such as is meet
to proceed from the glory of
God, shining in all the Holy
Scriptures : yea, oftentimes un-
der great simplicity of words,
and plainness and easiness of
style Ninthly, In speak-

ing of matters of the highest
nature, they .... absolutely
require credit to be given unto

them Tenthly, The end

and scope of the Scrip-
tures, is for the ad-
vancement of God’s
glory and the salva-
tion of man’s soul.
.... Eleventhly, The admira-
ble power and force that is in
them to convert and alter
men’s minds. ” . . . . etc.

P. 9 : “Are these motives of
themselves sufficient to work
saving faith, and p e r -

suade us fully to rest
in God’s word ? No.
Besides all these, it
is required, that we
have the Spirit of
God , as well to open our eyes
to see the light, as to seal up
fully unto our hearts that truth
which we see with our eyes.
For the same Holy Spirit that
inspired the Scriptures, inelin-
eth the hearts of God’s chil-
dren to believe what is re-
vealed in them, and in-
wardly assureth
them, above all reasons and
arguments, that these
are the Scriptures of
God.” . . . , (p. 10) “This
testimony of God’s
Spirit in the hearts of
his faithful, as it is proper to

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE 01 HOLY SCRIPTURE. 605

shining light, unless our eyes
be opened, we cannot see it,
no more than a blind man doth
the sun. Why is the testimony
of the Spirit all-sufficient?
(1) Because the Spirit is the
author of supernatural light
and faith. (2) By the inspira-
tion thereof were the Scrip-
tures written. (3; The secrets
of God are fully known unto,
and effectually revealed by, the
Spirit. (4) The same law which
is written in the Scriptures, the
Spirit doth write in the hearts
of men that be indued there-
with. For which reasons it
must needs be that the testi-
mony of the Spirit is all-suffi-
cient to persuade and assure
the heart that the SS. are the
word of God.”

P. 47 sq.: “ Whatever
-was, is, or shall toe
necessary or profitable to
be known, believed,
practiced or hoped
for, that is fully compre-
hended in the books of the

Prophets and Apostles

The perfection of the Scripture
will more plainly appear, if we
consider, (1) That religion for
the substance thereof, was ever
one and unchangeable. (2) The
law of God, written by Moses
and the Prophets did deliver
whatsoever is needful for, and
behoveful of the salvation of
the Israelites. (3) Our Saviour
1. Made known unto his Disci-
ples the last and full will of
his heavenly Father, and 2.
What they received of him
they faithfully preached unto
the world, and 3. The sum of
what they preached is com-
mitted to writing. (4) There is
nothing necessary to be known
of Christians, over and above
that which is found in the
O. T., which is not plainly,
clearly and fully set
down and to toe gath-
ered out of ttoe writ-
ings of the Apostles

and Evangelists

In the whole body of the
Scripture, all doubts and con-
troversies are perfectly de-
cided, and every particular
book is sufficiently perfect for
the proper end thereof. What
use is to be made hereof?
Unwritten tradi-
tions, new articles of faith,
and new visions and reve-
lations are now to be re-
jected.”

I, vi, a : “ The whole counsel
of God, concerning all things
necessary for his own glory,
man's salvation, faith, and life,
is either expressly set down in
Scripture, or by good and
necessary consequence may be
deduced from Scripture: unto
which nothing at any time is
to be added, whether by new
revelations of the Spirit, or
traditions of men.”

the word of God, so is it greater
than any human persuasions,
grounded upon reasons or wit-
nesses of men : unto which it is
unmeet that the word of God
should be subject, as Papists
hold, when they teach that the
Scriptures receive their author-
ity from the Church,” etc. [as
above on I, iv].

P. 15 : “ Since God hath ap-
pointed the Holy Scriptures,
which bear witness of Christ,
to be written for our learning :
He will have no other doctrine
pertaining to eternal life to be
received, but that which is
consonant unto them, and
hath the ground thereof in
them. Therefore unto them
only is the Church directed for
the saving knowledge of God.”
(p. 15) “The books of Holy
Scripture are so sufficient for
the knowledge of Christian
Religion, that they do most
plentifully con taiu all doctrine
necessary to salvation. They
being perfectly profitable to in-
struct to salvation in them-
selves,and all other imperfectly
profitable thereunto, further
than they draw from them.
Whence it followeth t.hat
we need no unwritten veri-
ties, no traditions, or inven-
tions of men, no canons
of councils, no sentences of
fathers, much less decrees of
popes, for to supply any sup-
posed defect of the written
word, or for to give us a more
perfect direction in the wor-
ship of God, and the way of
life, than is already expressed
in the canonical Scriptures.”
(p. 17) “ It ought to be no con-
troversy amongst Christians,
that the whole Scriptures of
the 0. and N. Testament, doth
most richly and abundantly
contain all that is necessary for
a Christian man to believe and
to do for eternal salvation.”

606

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

P. 49 : "To a natural man
the Gospel is obscure, accounted

foolishness Tilings

necessary to salva-
tion are so clearly
laid down that tlie
simplest indued with the
spirit cannot be altogether ig-
norant of the same, .... But
to them that are in part il-
lightened many things are
obscure and dark.”

P. 49 sq.: “ In themselves the
whole S. is easy, for such excel-
lent matter could not be deliv-
ered in more significant and fit
words. But all tilings in
Scripture are not

alike manifest

Tilings necessary
for salvation are so
clearly laid down,
that the simplest indued with
the spirit, cannot be altogether

ignorant of the same ”

(p. 56) “ What be tlie

means to find out the true
meaning of the SS.? .... (1) Con-
ference of one place of S. with
another. .... (2) Diligent
consideration of the scope. (3)
and circumstances of the

place (4) Consideration

of the matter whereof it doth
intreat (5) and circum-

stances of persons, times and
places (6) Also con-

sideration whetherthe words be
spoken figuratively or simply.
.... (7) And knowledge of
the arts and tongues wherein
the SS. were originally written.
.... (8) But alwaysit is to be
observed that obscure places
are not to be expounded con-
trary to the rule of faith set
down in plainer places of the
Scripture.”

P. 54 : “ The SS. were written

in Hebrew and
Greek.”

P. 6: “The holy Scripture,
immediately in-
spired, which is con-
tained in the books of the Old

I, vi, b : “ Nevertheless, we
acknowledge the inward il-
lumination of the Spirit of God
to be necessary, for the saving
understanding of such things
as are revealed in the word

I, vi, c : “ and that there are
some circumstances concern-
ing the worship of God, and
government of the Church,
common to human actions and
societies, which are to be or-
dered by the light of nature,
and Christian prudence, ac-
cording to the general rules of
the word, which are always to
be observed.”

I, vii, a: “ All things in Scrip-
ture are not alike plain in
themselves, nor alike clear
unto all ; yet those things that
are necessary to be known, be-
lieved, and observed, for salva-
tion, are so clearly propounded
and opened in some place of
Scripture or other, that not
only the learned, but the un-
learned, in a due use of the or-
dinary means, may attain unto
a sufficient understanding of
them.”

I, viii, a: “The Old Testa-
ment in Hebrew, (which was
the native language of the peo-
ple of God of old,) and the New
Testament in Greek, (which at
the time of the writing of it
was most generally known to

P. 18 : “All which are dark
and difficult unto those whose
eyes the God of this world hath
blinded. But unto such
as are by grace en-
lightened and made will-
ing to understand, howsoever
some things remain obscure to
exercise their diligence, yet the
fundamental doctrines of faith
and precepts of life are all
plain and perspicuous.”

P. 18: ‘‘There are
some things hard in
the SS., that have proper
relation to the time in which
the Scripture was written and
uttered, or which are prophe-
sies of things to be fulfilled
hereafter; which if we never
understand, we shall be never
the worse for the attaining of

everlasting salvation

For all doctrine neces-
sary to be known
unto eternal salva-
tion, is set forth in
the SS. most clearly
and plainly, even to the
capacity and understanding of
the simple and unlearned.”
(p. 19) “These matters indeed
are above human reason : and
therefore are we to bring faith
to believe them, not human
reason to comprehend them.
But they are delivered in
Scripture in as plain terms as
such matter can be.” “ The
whole doctrine of salvation is
to be found so plain that it
needeth no commentary. And
commentaries are for other
places that are dark ; and also
to make more large use of
Scripture than a new beginner
can make of himself ; which we
see necessary in all human arts
and sciences.”

P. 10 : “ What language were
the books of the O. T. written
in? In Hebrews which
was the first tongue of the
world, and the most orderly
speech ; in com parison of which
all other languages may be

TEE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 607

and New Testament.” (p. 7)
" To be immediately inspired is
to be as it were breathed, and
to come from the Father by
the Holy Ghost, without all
means.” “Thnsthelioly
Scriptures in tlie
Originals were in-
spired, both for matter and
words.”

the nations,) being ii
diately inspired by God,”

I, viii, b : “ and by his'singu-
lar care and providence kept
pure in all ages,

are therefore authentical ;

so as in all controversies in
religion, the church is finally
to appeal to them.”

condemned of barbarous con-
fusion ; But chosen specially,

because it was tlie
language at tliat
time best Unown un-
to tlie Cliurcli (teaching
that all of them should under-
stand the Scriptures). Only
some few portions by the later
prophets were left written in
the Chaldean tongue (under-
stood by God’s people after
their carrying away into Baby-
lon).” (p. 14) “ In what lan-
guage were the books of the
New Testament writ-
ten? In Greek, be-
cause it was tlie most
common language,
best Unown tlien to
Jews and Gentiles ;
teaching that all kingdoms
should have the SS. in a lan-
guage which they understand.”

[On Inspiration, see above, on
I, ii, and cf. p. 10, where the
aboriginality of the Hebrew
vowel points is defended.]

P. 8 : “ The marvellous pre-
servation of the Scriptures.
Though none in time be so an-
cient, nor none so much op-
pugned ; yet God hath still by
his Providence preserved them
and every part of them.”

Pp. 20, 21 : “ Although in the
Hebrew copies there hath been
observed by the Masorites,
some very few differences of
words, by similitude of letters
and points ; and by the learned
in the Greek tongue, there are
like diversities of readings
noted in the Greek text of the
N. T., which came by fault of
writers : yet in most by circum-
stance of the place, and con-
ference of other places, the true
reading may be discerned.
And albeit in all it caunot. . . .
yet this diversity or difficulty
can make no difference or un-
certainty in the sum and sub-
stance of the Christian re-
ligion ; because the Ten Com-
mandments, and the principal
texts of Scripture on which the
Articles of our faith are
grounded, the sacraments insti-
tuted, the form of prayer
taught (which contain the sum
or substance of the Christian
religion) are without all such

diversity of reading so

plainly set down .... that no
man can make any doubt of
them, or pick any quarrel
against them.” (p. 20) “ The

608

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

Pp. 52 sq.: “ Dotli tlie
knowledge of the SS.
belong unto all men?

Yes, all men are not only al-
lowed, but exhorted and com-
manded to read, hear and un-
derstand the Scripture

(1) Because the SS. teach the
way of life, (2) Set forth the
duties of every man in his
place and estate of life, (3)
Are the ground of faith, (4)
The Epistle of God sent to his
Church, (5) His testament
wherein we may find what
legacies he hath bequeathed
unto us, (6) The sword of the
spirit, (7) Being known and
imbraced, they make a man
happy, but (8) Being neglected
or contemned, they plunge

men into all misery All

men of what age, estate,
quality or degree soever, ought
to acquaint themselves with
the word of God.” (p. 54)
“The SS. were writ-
ten in Hebrew and
Greek, how then
should all men read
and understand
them ? They ought to
be translated into
known tongues and

interpreted (1)

Because the Prophets and
Apostles preached their doc-
trines to the people and nations
in their known languages, (2)
Immediately afterthe Apostles'
times, many translations were
extant, (3) All things must
be done in the congregation
unto edifying, 1 Cor. xiv. 26,
but an unknown tongue doth
not edify, and (4) All are com-
manded to try the spirits.”

I, viii, c : “ But because these
original tongues are not known
to all the people of God, who
have right unto, and interest in
the Scriptures, and are com-
manded, in the fear of God, to
read and search them, there-
fore they are to be translated
into the vulgar language of
every nation unto which they
come, that the word of God
dwelling plentifully in all,
they may worship him in an
acceptable manner; and,
through patience and comfort
of the Scriptures, may have
hope.”

original languages
. . . . in them only the
SS. are for the letter
to be held authenti-
cal. And as the water is
most pure in the fountain or
spring thereof : so the right un-
derstanding of the words of the
Holy Scriptures is most certain
in the original tongues of
Hebrew and Greek iu which
they were first written and de-
livered to the Church.” ....
“All translations are- to be
judged, examined and re-
formed according to the text of
the ancient Hebrew and origi-
nal Chaldee .... and the Greek

text Consequently that

vulgar Latin, etc.”

“P.20: . . . . “Out of which
languages they must be truly
translated for the understand-
ing of them that have not the
knowledge of those tongues.”
(p. 22) “The Holy Scrip-
tures are reverently
and profitably to be
read and heard of all
sorts and degrees of men and
women ; and therefore to
be truly translated
out of the original
tongues into the lan-
guage of every na-
tion which desiretli
to know them. For the
lay people as well as the
learned must read the Scrip-
tures or hear them read, both
privately and openly, so as
they may receive
profit by them : and
consequently iu a tongue they
understand. ” “It were happy
if they could understand the
Hebrew and Greek ; but, how-
soever, they may read transla-
tions” (p. 23).

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLT SCRIPTURE. 609

P. 55 : “ Is tlte sense
of Scripture one or
manifold ? Of one place
of Scripture, there is but one
proper and natural sense,
though sometimes things are so
expressed, as that the things
themselves do signify other
matters, according to the
Lord’s ordinance. Are we
tied to the exposition of the
Fathers? We are not neces-
sarily tied to the exposi-
tion of Fathers or Councils
for the finding out of the sense
of Scripture. Who is the faith-
ful interpreter of the Scripture?
Tlie Holy Ghost
speaking in t H e
Scripture is tlie only
faithful interpreter
of tlie Scripture. What
be the means to find out the
true meaning of the Scripture ?
The means to find out the true
meaning of the Scripture, are
(1) Conference of one
place of Scripture

-with another (8)

But always it is to be observed
that obscure places
are not to he ex-
pounded contrary to
the rule of faith set down in
plainer places of the
Scripture.”

I, ix : “ The infallible rule ot
interpretation of Scripture, is
the Scripture itself ; and there-
fore, when there is a question
about the true and full sense
of any scripture (which is not
manifold, but one), it may be
searched and known by other
places that speak more clearly.’ ’

I, x: “The Supreme Judge,
by which all controversies of
religion are to be determined,
and all decrees of councils,
opinions of ancient writers,
doctrines of men, and private
spirits, are to be examined, and
in whose sentence we are to
rest, can be no other but the

P. 20: “ What assurance may
be had of the right understand-
ing the Holy SS. ? For the
words, it is to be had out of the
original text, or translations of
the same : for the sense or
meaning, only out of the SS.
themselves ( Nehem . viii. 8),
which by places plain and evi-
dent, do express whatsoever is
obscure and hard touching
matters necessary to salva-
tions” (p. 21) “ Why must
the true sense or
meauing of the SS. be
learned out of the SS.
themselves? Be-
cause the Spirit of
God alone is the cer-
tain interpreter of
his word, written by
his Spirit” [1 Cor. ii. 11,
2 Pet. i. 20, 21]. “The inter-
pretation therefore must be by
the same Spirit by which the
Scripture was written : of
which Spirit we have no cer-
tainty upon any man’s credit,
but only so far forth as his say-
ing may be confirmed by the
Holy Scripture. What gather
you from hence? That no in-
terpretation of Holy Fathers,
Popes, Councils, Custom or
Practice of the Church, either
contrary to the manifest words
of the Scripture, or containing
matter which cannot neces-
sarily be proved out of the SS. ,
are to be received as an un-
doubted truth. How then is
Scripture to be interpreted by
Scripture? According to the
Analogy of Faith (Rom. xii. 6),
and the scope and circum-
stances of the present place ;
and conference of other
plain and evident
places, by which all
such as are obscure
and hard to be un-
derstood, oughttobe
interpreted. For there
is no matter necessary to eter-
nal life which is not plainly
and sufficiently set forth in
many places of Scripture ; by
which other places .... may
be interpreted.”

P. 15: “These Holy
Scriptures are t It e
Rule, the Line, tlte
Square, the Tight,
whereby to examine
and try all judge-
ments and sayings of

men and angels

All Traditions, Reve-

61.0

1 UE ERE SB YTERIAN AXD REFORMED REVIEW.

Holy Spirit speaking in the lations, Decrees of
Scripture.” Councils, Opinions

of Doctors, &c., are to be
embraced so far forth as they
may be proved out of the Di-
vine Scriptures, and not other-
wise. So that from them only,
all doctrine concerning our
salvation must be derived :
that only is to be taken for
truth, in matters appertaining
to Christian Religion, which is
agreeable unto them ; and
whatsoever aisagreeth from
them is to be refused.” (p. 15)
‘‘The authority of these holy
writings, inspired of God, is
highest in the Church, as the
authority of God ; whereunto
no learning or decrees of
angels or men, under what
name soever it be com-
mended, may be accounted
equal, neither can they be
judged or sentenced by any.”

III. The Contents of the Chapter.

As the Confession accords with the fundamental idea and ordi-
nary practice of the Reformed theology, in beginning its exposition
of doctrine with the doctrine of Holy Scripture, as the root out of
which all doctrine grows, because the Scriptures are the fountain
from which all knowledge of God’s saving purpose and plan flows ;
so in stating the doctrine of Scripture it follows the logical and
natural order of topics which had been wrought out by and become
fixed in the Reformed theology. First, the necessity of the Scrip-
tures is asserted and exhibited (Sec. 1). Then Scripture is defined,
both extensively, or in relation to its general contents, in other
words as to the Canon, and intensively, or in relation to its essential
character, in other words as to its inspiration ; and this definition is
applied to the exclusion of the Apocryphal books (Secs. 2 and 3).
Then the three great properties of Scripture are taken up: its
authority (Secs. 4 and 5), its completeness or perfection (Sec. 6),
and its perspicuity (Sec. 7). The chapter closes with a state-
ment of certain important corollaries, as to the use that is to be
made of Scripture, with especial reference to its transmission, whether
in the originals or translations, to its interpretation, and to its final
authority in controversies (Secs. 8, 9 and 10).

In somewhat greater detail, the scheme of the chapter is, there-
fore, the following :

I. The Necessity of Scripture, §1.

1. Reality and Trustworthiness of Natural Revelation.

2. insufficiency of Natural Revelation.

3. Reality and Importance of Supernatural Revelation.

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 611

4. Its complete Commitment to Inspired Scriptures.

5. Consequent Necessity of Scripture.

II. The Definition of Scripture, §§2 and 3.

1. Extensively: The Canon, §2 a.

2. Intensively: Inspiration, §26.

3. Exclusively: The Apocrypha, §3.

III. The Properties of Scripture, §§ 4-7.

1. The Authority of Scripture, §§4 and 5.

A. The Source of the Authority of Scripture, §4.

B. The Proof of the Authority of Scripture, § 5.

(а) The Reality and Value of the External Evidence.

(б) The Reality and Value of the Internal Evidence.

(c) The Necessity and Function of the Divine Evidence.

2. The Perfection of Scripture, § 6.

A. Absolute Objective Completeness of Scripture, for the purpose for

which it is given.

B. Need of Spiritual Illumination for its full use.

C. Place for Christian Prudence and Right Reason.

3. The Perspicuity of Scripture, § 7.

A. Diversity in Scripture in Point of Clearness.

B. Clear Revelation of all Necessary Truth.

C. Accessibility of Saving Truth by Ordinary Means.

IV. The Use of Scripture, §§8-10.

1. In Relation to Its Form and Transmission, § 8.

A. Primary Value and Authority of the Originals.

(а) The immediate Inspiration of the Hebrew and Greek Scrip-
tures.

(б) Their Providential Preservation in Purity.

B. The Right, Duty and Adequacy of Translations.

2. In Relation to Interpretation, § 9.

A. Scripture Alone the Infallible Interpreter of Scripture

B. The Single Sense of Scripture.

3. In Relation to Controversies, § 10.

A. Scripture the Supreme Judge in Controversy.

B. Scripture the Test of all Other Sources of Truth.

Within this scheme, the common Reformed doctrine of Scripture
is developed with great richness and beauty of thought and expres-
sion. We shall seek to outline the matter of the statement as briefly
as possible.* To this outline we shall add (under each head, succes-
sively) a few illustrative extracts from the writings of the members
of the Westminster Assembly, which may serve to enable the reader

* Formal expositions of this chapter may be found in Shaw’s (Whitburn,
1845 ; Philadelphia, 1846), Hodge’s (Philadelphia, 1869), and Macpherson’s
(Edinburgh, 1881) commentaries on the Confession. The first is the most prac-
tical, the second the most doctrinal, and the third the most historical. See also
an article by Dr. James -S. Candlish, on “ The Doctrine of the Westminster Con-
fession on Scripture,” in The British and Foreign Evangelical Review, for 1877 ;
the chapters on the Internal Evidence and the Testimony of the Spirit, in Dr.
Cunningham’s Theological Lectures; and Dr. Alexander F. Mitchell’s remarks
in his lecture on The Westminster Confession, in his Baird Lectures on T he West-
minster Assembly, and in his Introduction to the Minutes of the^Westminster As-
sembly.

612

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

to enter more readily into the atmosphere of their symbolical state-
ments. These extracts could be almost indefinitely increased in
number, but it is hoped that enough are given to serve the purpose
in view.

The Necessity of Scripture.

I. First, then, the Confession expounds the necessity of Scripture,
in a paragraph which has always been admired, no less for the
chaste beauty of its language than for the justness of its concep-
tion.

The paragraph opens with the recognition of the reality and
trustworthiness of the natural revelation of God. The scope of this
natural revelation is briefly defined as embracing “ the goodness,
wisdom and power of God.” This is afterwards more fully stated
in chapter xxi, 1 : “ The light of nature showeth that there is a
God, who hath Lordship and sovereignty over all ; is good and
doeth good unto all ; and is therefore to be feared, loved, praised,
called upon, trusted in, and served with all the heart, and with all
the soul, and with all the might.” The effect of this natural reve-
lation, in rendering men inexcusable for not yielding God the ser-
vice which is His due, is pointed out. Then its insufficiency “ to give
that knowledge of God, and of His will, which is necessary
unto salvation ” is explained. This fundamental point, also, is re-
turned to at a later place in the Confession (x, 4), when, in exact
harmony with what is here said, it is declared that “ men not profess-
ing the Christian religion ” cannot “ be saved in any other way what-
soever, be they never so diligent to frame their lives according to the
light of nature, and the law of that religion they do profess.” The
parallel question and answer of the Larger Catechism (Q. 60) still
further exhibits the care of the framers of the Confession to hold
forth the Gospel of the grace of God as the only saving power on
earth. “ Q. Can they who have never heard the Gospel , and so know
not Jesus Christ , nor believe in Him , be saved by living according
to the light of nature ? A. They who, having never heard the
Gospel, know not Jesus Christ, and believe not in Him, cannot be
saved, be they never so diligent to frame their lives according to
the light of nature, or the laws of that religion which they profess ;
neither is there salvation in any other but in Christ alone, who
is the Saviour only of His body, the Church.”

It was because of this insufficiency of the natural revelation, that
(so the Confession teaches) God in His goodness was led to give a
supernatural revelation to His Church, of “ that His will which is
necessary unto salvation.” The manner of this supernatural reve-
lation is suggested ; it was in parts and by stages, i.e., progressive —

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLT SCRIPTURE. 613

“at sundry times and in divers manners.” Nor was the goodness
of God exhausted in merely making known the saving truth unto
men ; he took means to preserve the knowledge of it and to propagate
it. The Confession teaches that “for the better preserving and pro-
pagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort
of the Church against the corruptions of the flesh, and the malice
of Satan and of the world,” God, after revealing Himself and His will
necessary unto salvation, was pleased “ to commit the same wholly
unto writing.” This declares the written Scriptures to be, at least
in part, subsequent to the revelation of God’s will ; and so far dis-
tinguishes them from, and makes them, in this sense, the record of,
revelation ; a “ record,” however, made by God Himself, since it
was He who committed the revelation to writing. The importance
and value of such a commitment to writing is also moderately and
winningly stated. It is not affirmed that it was necessary for God
to commit His revelation to writing, in order to do justice to man on
the one side, or in order to prevent the truth from perishing utterly
on the other. It was a matter of “ good pleasure ” for Him to fix
His revelations in writing as truly as it was for Him to give them at
all. It was only for “ the better preserving and propagating of
the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the
Church” that He committed His revelations wholly to writing.
Had they been left unwritten and been committed for safe-keeping
and transmission to the native powers of men, they might possibly
have been (in some form or other) by God’s good providence pre-
served and propagated, but not so well, so surely or so safely as
in written form. Inspiration is in order to the accurate preser-
vation and wide propagation of the truth, not in order to its
very existence, nor (had God chosen so to order it) to its persist-
ence.*

All this is the groundwork for the proof of the necessity of the
Scriptures. This comes in the further declaration : “ Which mak-

* Mr. Macpherson, in his useful “ Commentary on the Confession,” in T. T.
Clark’s Handbooks for Bible Classes, properly says : ‘‘That the written Word
should take the place of oral revelations handed down, or frequently renewed
by direct divine utterance, is not viewed as in itself necessary.” This is what
the Confession says. But the inferences which Mr. Macpherson founds on this,
are not just, and are contradicted by the Confession itself and by as many of its
authors as have written on this subject. He has confused the two widely differ-
ent questions, of the necessity of the Scriptures in the sense of whether it was
necessary for God to commit His revelations to writing, and the necessity of the
Scriptures in the sense of whether the knowledge of the Scriptures, as the only
trustworthy record of those revelations, is necessary to salvation now, when the
revelations themselves have ceased. The Confession denies the former necessity
and affirms the second. Mr. Macpherson, by confusing the two, mistakenly in-
terprets the Confession as denying both.

614

THE PRESBYTERIAN A HD REFORMED REVIEW.

etk the Holy Scripture to be most necessary ; those former ways of
God’s revealing His will unto His people being now ceased.” The
necessity of Scripture is thus made to rest on the insufficiency of
natural revelation and the cessation of supernatural revelation — the
record of which latter Scripture is declared to be, though a record
of such sort that it is itself a revelation of God, since it was God
and not merely man who “ committed His will wholly unto writ-
ing.” By this statement the Scriptures are contrasted, not with
revelation as something different in kind and quality from it,
but with other forms of revelation, as being themselves a substan-
tive part of God’s revelation : “ Those former ways of God’s revealing
His will unto His people being now ceased.” Among the ways in
which God has revealed His will, the Scriptures thus are set forth
as one way ; and as the complete, permanent and final way, in no
respect subordinate to the other ways, except in the matter of time.
And their necessity is made to rest on nothing else than that they
are the permanent embodiment and sole divinely safeguarded and,
indeed, only trustworthy, extant form in which the revelation of God
and of His will which is necessary to salvation exists. They are,
therefore, something more than the “ record ” of revelation — they
are the revelation itself fixed in written form for its better preserva-
tion and propagation. And they are something more than useful —
they are necessary, since this alone saving revelation is extant now
only in their pages.

“Now that God, by the works of his Creation and Providence in the world,
doth teach and convince men, and so in that general way call men, is plain,

Rom. i So then, the whole world, in the excellent harmony of it, doth

necessarily teach a God This invitation Paul considers of in his Sermon

at Athens, Acts xvii. 27 Now there have been some of old, yea, and

many in these days, that would stretch these Texts too far, as if the invitation
by the creatures were immediately saving, or that men might obtain salvation
by looking unto these : They have not been afraid to say, That by the Sun and
Stars we may come to be effectually called, as well as by the Apostles, and the
preaching of the Gospel : But how senselesse and absurd is this ? For

“ First, This invitation and call by the creatures, doth not, nor cannot reveal any-
thing of Christ, the onely cause of salvation : “Without Christ there is no Salva-
tion ; Now how is it possible by the Creatures, in a natural way of discourse,
that ever we should come to know or believe in a Christ? ....

“ Secondly, The call by the creatures is not saving, because it discovers not the way
of Salvation, no more than the cause; viz., Faith: As Christ is wholly a Super-
natural object, and by revelation, so is faith the way to come to him, the hand

to lay hold on him, onely by revelation Where then there is no Christ,

nor no faith, there must necessarily be no call to salvation.

“ Thirdly, This call could not be saving, for the furthest and utmost effect it had
upon menr was onely outwardly to reform their lives : It restrained many from
gross sins, and kept them in the exercises of temperance and justice, and such
Moral vertues But you may say, To what purpose is this call of God

THE WESTMINSTER D 0 CTRINE OF HOLY SCR 1PTURE. 615

by the Creatures, and the work of his providence, if it he not to salvation?
Yes, it is much every way :

“ First, Hereby even all men are made inexcusable : As the Apostle urgetli, God

hath not left them without a witness or testimony Men, therefore, are

made inexcusable by this way ; they cannot say, God hath left them without any
conviction or manifestation of himself : No, the creatures they call, all the works
of God’s justice and God’s mercy, they call ; and their conscience, which is
implanted in every man, the dictates and reasonings thereof, they also call :
This then will be enough to clear God, and to stop every man’s mouth.

“ Secondly, God’s purpose in these calls is to restrain sin, and to draw men on
further than they do : There is no man that hath no more than this remote and
confuse call, that doth what he may do and can do ; He doth not improve, no,
not that natural strength that is in him ; (I do not say) to spiritual good things ;
for so he hath no natural strength ; but to such objects as by nature he might :
He wilfully runneth himself in the committing of sins, against his conscience
and knowledge ; he doth with delight and joy, tumble himself in the mire and
filth of sin ; Now God calleth by these natural ways, to curb and restrain him, to
put a bound to these waves : For if there were not these general convictions,
no Societies, no Commonwealths could consist.” — A. Burgess, Spiritual Re-
fining, etc., London, 1652, pp. 692-694.

“As for that dangerous opinion, that makes God’s calling of man to repent-
ance by the Creatures to be enough and sufficient, we reject, as that which cuts
at the very root of free grace : A voyce, indeed, we grant they have, but yet
they make like Paul’s Trumpet, an uncertain sound ; men cannot by them
know the nature of God and his Worship, and wherein our Justification doth
consist.” — A. Burgess, Spiritual Refining, etc., London, 1652, p. 588.

“ For to maintain (as some do) that a man may be saved in an ordinary
course, (I meddle not with extraordinary dispensations, but leave the secrets of
God to himself), by any Religion whatsoever, provided he live according to the
principles of it, is to turn the whole world into an Eden ; and to find a Tree of
Life in every garden as well as in the paradise of God ” (pp. 70, 71). He argues
“ the insufficiency of all exotick doctrines,” from the failure of pagan philosophy
to find saving truth (p. 77). “The Scriptures .... contain the mind of Je-
hovah. Somewhat of his nature we may learn from the creatures, but should
have known little or nothing of his will, had not Canonical Scripture revealed it ”
(pp. 86, 87). There are “six several acts ” through which men come by nature
to know God — “respicere, prospicere, suspicere, despicere, inspicere and circurn-
spicere ” (p. 128) : “But notwithstanding all this, as it fared with the wise
men from the East, who, although these were assured by the appearance of a
star that a King of the Jews was born, yet needed the prophet’s manuduction to
give them notice who he was and where they might find him ; so though
natural reason improved can make it appear that there is a God, yet there is a
necessity of Scripture revelation to inform us who and what he is, in regard of
his essence, subsistence, and attributes.” — John Arrowsmith, Chain of Princi-
ples, Cambridge, 1659, p. 128.

“There are two great Gifts that God hath given to his people. The Word
Christ, and the Word of Christ : Both are unspeakably great ; but the first will

do us no good without the second ” (pp. 55, 56) “If the Word of God be

of such invaluable excellency, absolute necessity, and of such admirable use,
.... Blessed be God who hath not only given us the book of the Creatures
and the book of Nature to know himself and his will by ; but also and espe-
cially, the book of the Scriptures, whereby we come to know those things of
God and of Christ, which neither the book of Nature nor of the Creatures can
reveal unto us. Let us bless God not only for revealing his Will in his Word,
but for revealing it by writing. Before the time of Moses, God discovered his

616

TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

Will by immediate Revelations from Heaven. But we have a surer word of
Prophecie, 2 Pet. i. 19, surer (to us) than a voice from Heaven. For the Devil
(saith the Apostle) transforms himself into an Angel of light. He hath his ap-
paritions and revelations And if God should now, at this day, discover

his way of Worship, and his Divine Will by revelations, how easily would men
be deceived, and mistake Diabolical Delusions for Divine Revelations? and
therefore let us bless God for the written Word, which is surer and safer (as to
us) than an immediate Revelation : There are some that are apt to think that if
an Angel should come from heaven, and reveal God’s will to them, it would work
more upon them than the written Word ; but I would have these men study
the conference between Abraham and Dives, Luke 16. 27, 28, 29, 30, 31. Habent
Mosen et Prophetas, etc. They have Moses and the Prophets ; if they will not
profit by them, neither would they profit by any that should come out of Hell,
or down from Heaven to them : for it is the same God that speaks by his written
Word, and by a voice from Heaven. The difference is only in the outward
cloathing ; and therefore if God speaking by writing will not amend us, no
more will God’s speaking by a voice. 0 bless Ood exceedingly for the written
Word! Let us cleave close to it, and not expect any Revelations from Heaven
of new truths, but say with the Apostle, Oal. i. 8, 9.” — Edward Calamy, The
Godly Man’s Ark, etc., Seventh Ed., London, 1672, pp. 90-93.

“Though human reason be a beam of divine Wisdom, yet if it be not en-
lightened with our higher light of the Gospel, it cannot reach unto the things

of God as it should For though reason be the Gift of God, yet it doth

proceed from God as he is God and general ruler of the world. But the Gospel
and the light thereof, did proceed from the Father, by the Son, to the Church,

Rev. xxii. 1 John i. 17, 18. Though reason be the gift of God and a

bearer of the Wisdom of God ; yet it cannot sufficiently discover a man’s sins
unto him ; . . . . and as meer human reason cannot make a sufficient discovery

of sin, so it cannot strengthen against sin and temptation Though the

light of reason be good, yet it is not a saving light ’Tis revelation-light

from the Gospel that doth bring to Heaven ; meer human reason cannot do it.”
— William Bridge, Scripture Light the Most Sure Light, London, 1656, pp.
32, 33.

"It is true that the light of nature, which God hath planted in every man,
will discover unto him some of the chief heads of the duties, that he requires of
him, as to love the Lord with all our hearts, and to fear, and serve him, Deut.
x. 12. And to serve one another through love, Gal. v. 13. But in what par-
ticular services we are to express our piety to God, or love to men, what can
man prescribe or imagine?” (p. 13). “ Whatsoever was impossible to be known
by any creature, or to be found out by discourse of natural reason, that must of
necessity be discovered and made known by God himself. But it will appear as
evidently as the very light, that most of the grounds of faith, which the Scrip-
ture proposeth unto us, are such as neither eye hath seen, nor eare heard, nor
ever entered into man’s heart, 1 Cor. ii. 9, and therefore could never be either
revealed or discovered by man. Wherefore, seeing we find them discovered in
the Scriptures, we can do no lessetlian acknowledge them to be the word of God ”
(p. 25). The necessity for a written word is argued under the following heads
(marginal analysis) : “1. As the most easie way to make it public. 2. As the
safest way to prevent corruption. 3. As the best way to win credit to his
Word. 4. As the most honorable ” (pp. 67, 68).— John White, A Way to the
Tree of Life, London, 1647.

“But yet the whole world in the frame thereof, was sufficient evidence of the
Eternall power and Godhead, Rom. i. 20, and Psal xix. 1. The heavens declare
the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handiwork. And albeit Aristotle,
the greatest of Philosophers, maintained the eternity thereof without beginning ;

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLT SCRIPTURE. 617

yet lie confesseth ingeniously in bis Book, De coelo, that all that went before
him maintained mundum genitum esse ; neither was bis discourse of power to
raze out that natural instinct hereof, which seems to be graven in the hearts of
men, and was the chief ground of that universal acknowledgement of a divine
power supreame. Now as God made himself known by his works, so I noth-
ing doubt but here withall it was their duty to know him, and according to their
knowledge to serve him and glorifie him, in acknowledgement of his glorious
nature, so far as they took notice of it ; But as for a rule whereby they should
worship him, I know none that God had given them, or that they could gather
from contemplation of the creatures. And surely the knowledge of God, as a
Creator only, is nothing sufficient to salvation ; but the knowledge of him as a
Redeemer : And therefore, seeing the World by wisdome knew not God in the wis-
doms of God, it pleased God by the foolishnesse of Preaching to save them that be-
lieve, 1 Cor. i. 21. And the Gentiles are set forth unto us in Scripture, as such
who knew not God, 1 Thes. iv. 5 ; 2 Thes. i. 8. And had they means sufficient
without, and ability sufficient within, to know him? How could it be that
none of them should know him? .... Yet were they inexcusable (and thus
farre their knowledge brought them, Rom. i. 20) in changing the glory of the
incorruptible God, to the similitude of the image of a corruptible man, and of birds

and of fourfooted beasts, and of creeping things Yet what shall all such

knowledge profit a man, if he be ignorant in the knowledge of him as a re-
deemer?” (pp. 188, 189). “And yet I see no great need of Christ, if it be in
the power of a Heathen man to know what it is to please God, and to have a
heart to please him ; For certainly, as many as know what it is to please God
and have an heart to please him, God will never hurt them, much lesse damn
them to hell. Yet the Apostle telleth us, that they that are in the flesh cannot
please God . . . .” (p. 190). ‘‘No question but The Word of God is the sword
of the Spirit, Ephes. vi, And the Law of the Lord is a perfect Law converting the
soule, Psal. xix. And it seemes to be delivered in opposition to the Book of the
creatures, as if he had said, though The Heavens declare the glory of God, and
the firmament sheweth his handywork, yet this is the peculiar prerogative of the
Book of God’s Word, and the Doctrine contained therein, that it converteth the
soule : and upon this is grounded the great preferment of the Jews above the
Gentiles, chiefly that unto them were committed the Oracles of God ” (p. 194). —
William Twisse, The Riches of God’s Love, etc., Oxford, 1653 (written 1632,
see p. 258).

The Definition of Scripture.

II. Having thus exhibited the indispensableness of the written
form of God’s revealed will, which is known under the name of Holy-
Scripture, the Confession naturally proceeds to define this Holy-
Scripture, which has been shown to be necessary. The designation
used for it is determined by the precedent statement : “ Holy Scrip-
ture or the Word of God written.” God’s revelation of Himself
and of His will is the Word of God ; the Scriptures are this revela-
tion “ wholly committed unto writing and, therefore, they are ap-
propriately called “the Word of God written.”

The definition of them is framed, first, extensively by the enumer-
ation of the writings which constitute the volume called “ Holy Scrip-
ture or the word of God written.” These are first designated gen-
erally as “ all the books of the Old and New Testament;” and then

618

TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

to prevent all mistake they are enumerated, one by one, by name.
Of these books it is then affirmed, by way of intensive definition,
that they are, one and all, in their entirety, “ given by inspiration of
God, to be the rule of faith and life.” The definition having thus
been made quantitatively and qualitatively, i. e., both as to the
canon and as to inspiration, it is finally applied to the exclusion of
“ the books commonly called Apocrypha,” which, “ not being of
divine inspiration,” “ are no part of the canon of Scripture.” They
are, therefore, declared, in accord with the ordinary Reformed doc-
trine, to be “of no authority in the Church of God, nor to be any
otherwise approved, or made use of, than other human writings.”

In this definition of Scripture the fact of inspiration is very
sharply asserted as the distinguishing characteristic of Scripture.
“All the books of the Old and New Testament,” in their entirety,
are declared to be “ given by inspiration of God ;” and only because
they are thus, as wholes and in all their parts, “ of divine inspira-
tion,” are they “part of the canon of Scripture” and “of authority
in the Church of God.” It is due to this fact of inspiration that
they are not of the category of “ human writings,” to which cate-
gory the “ books commonly called Apocrypha ” are ascribed, ex-
pressly because they are not “ of divine inspiration.” Here is a
strong assertion of the fact of inspiration as the distinguishing char-
acteristic of Scriptural books ; but here is no definition of inspira-
tion. The thing in definition is Scripture, not inspiration, and in-
spiration is the defining, not the defined fact.

The last clause of the second section, “ All which are given by
inspiration of God, to be the rule of faith and life,” is not, therefore,
to be taken as a formal definition of inspiration, although it is
an express assertion of inspiration ; and much less is it to be read
as if it were intended to limit inspiration to matters of faith and
practice. It is not a definition of inspiration, but part of the defi-
nition of Scripture ; and what it affirms is that “ all the books of
the Old and New Testaments” just enumerated in detail, and,
therefore, severally and in their entirety, have been fitted by in-
spiration to be in their entirety, without discrimination of parts or
elements, “ the rule of faith and life.” Inspiration is asserted to be
pervasive, to belong to all the books enumerated without exception,
and to all their parts and elements without discrimination ; and
its result is said to be that it fits these books to be “ the rule of
faith and life,” that is, constitutes them parts of the “ canon of the
Scripture.” Accordingly, the Apocrypha are immediately after-
wards excluded from “ the canon of the Scripture ” on the express
ground that they are not of “divine inspiration,” but “human
books.” The fact of inspiration is asserted, its pervasiveness, and

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLT SCRIP! URE. 619

its effect in making the books of which it is affirmed divine and
not “human” books; but no definition of it is here given.

The misinterpretation of this clause, which would use it as a def-
inition of inspiration, in the hope of confining inspiration in the defini-
tion of the Confession to matters of faith and practice, moreover, is
discredited as decisively on historical as on exegetical grounds. This
view was not the view of the W estminster divines. It had its origin
among the Socinians and was introduced among Protestants by the
Arminians. And it was only on the publication, in 1690, of the
Five Letters concerning the Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures , trans-
lated out of the French , which are taken from Le Clerc, that it be-
gan to make a way for itself among English theologians.*

But, although this special passage presents no formal definition of
the nature of inspiration, the Confession by no means leaves its
own conception of the nature of inspiration undefined. Already in
the first section it had declared that it was God who constituted
Scripture by Himself committing His will wholly unto writing,
thereby making another way of revelation in addition to those
other supernatural ways formerly used by Him. And in the third
section this inspiration, so strongly affirmed in the second section as
the characteristic of all the books of the Old and New Testaments,
is declared to make these books divine and not human writings.
In conformity with this, the Confession subsequently declares that
the Biblical books have “God (who is truth itself)” for their
“author” (§ 4), that they are “immediately inspired by God”
(§ 8), so that they are “ the very Word of God ” (Larger Catechism,
Q. 4), that they are of “infallible truth and divine authority” (§ 5), and
are to be believed to be true by the Christian man in everything that
is revealed in them (xiv. 2). As the historical meaning of the word
“ Inspiration,” conferred on the Scriptures in our present section, is
not doubtful, so neither is the meaning of these phrases, further de-
scribing its Confessional sense. For example, the phrase, “ To be
immediately inspired,” which is used in Sec. 8, is of quite settled
and technical connotation. We may find it, for instance, in Calov
(Syst. loc. theol ., i, p. 463): “ Nec ea tantum credenda verissima ,
quae ad fidem et mores spectantia in Scriptura traduntur, sed etiam
alia qusecunque in eadem occurrentia, quam ab immediato divino im-
pulsu profecta sint .” Or, in Hollaz (Ex. theol., p. 94) : “ Inspiratio
divina qua res est verba dicenda non minus quam scribenda prophetis
atque apostolis a Sp. S. immediate suggesta sunt." Or, if this seems
to be going too far afield, we may find it in the plainest of English
in John Ball, the Puritan catechist, held in the highest honor by all

* See the interesting historical sketch in Cunningham’s Theological Lectures ,
p. 304 sq.

620

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW

the Westminster men. “ What is it to be immediately inspired? ”
he asks in his A Short Treatise , etc. (15th ed., 1656, pp. 7 and 8),
and answers: “To be immediately inspired is to be, as it were,
breathed and to come from the Father by the Holy Ghost, without
all means.” And again: “Were the Scriptures thus inspired?
A. Thus the Holy Scriptures, in the originals were inspired both
for matter and words.” The Westminster Confession contains in
itself, therefore, the material by which we may be assured that the
inspiration, which it affirms in our present sections to be the charac*
teristic of all the Biblical books, was conceived by it as constituting
the Scriptures in the most precise sense, the very Word of God,
divinely trustworthy and divinely authoritative in all their parts
and in all their elements alike.

“29 Q. From whence must wee learne to know God and serve Him rightly 1
29 A. To know God, and to serve him rightly, wee must be taught out of God’s
"Word. 30 Q. Which book is God’s Word? 30 A. The Bible, or the Scripture,
of the Old and New Testament, is the very Word of God.” — Herbert Palmer,
An Endeavour of Making the Principles of Christian Religion .... plaine and
easie, etc., London, 1644, p. 7.

“The only rule of faith and obedience is the written Word of God, contained
in the Bible, or the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament.” — First
Draught of Catechism of Westminster Assembly ( Minutes , p. 281, for
September 14, 1646).

“ Hebrew (in which tongue the Prophets left their doctrine as the Canon of
the Church).” — Richard Capel, Remains, etc., London, 1658, p. 37. “For
the original copies, I must subscribe to that of Canus, a Papist, who tells us.
That we are not to receive into the holy Canon both for the Old and New Testament,
but such books as the Apostles did allow, and deliver over to the Church of Christ."
— Richard Capel, Remains, etc., London, 1658, p. 65.

“So that the Spirit of God inspired certain persons, whom he pleased, to be
the revealers of his will, till he had imparted and committed to writing what
he thought fit to reveal under the Old Testament, and when he had completed
that, the Holy Ghost departed, and such inspiration ceased. And when the
Gospel was to come in, then the Spirit was restored again and bestowed upon
several persons for the revealing further of the mind of God, and completing
the work he had to do, for the settling of the Gospel and penning of the New
Testament : and that being done, these gifts and inspirations cease, and may no
more be expected than we may expect some other Gospel yet to come ” (iii. 371).
“ From these men’s [those that companied with Christ] sermons and relations
many undertook to write Gospels, partly for their own use and partly for the
benefit of others; which thing though they did lawfully and with a good intent,
yet because they did it not by inspiration, nor by divine warrant ; albeit what
they had written was according to truth, yet was the authority of their writings
but human, and not to be admitted into the divine Canon ” (iii. 19). — John Light-
foot, Works (Ed. Pitman).

“The word kopta, whereby heathen writers had been wont to express their
oracles .... was enfranchised by the holy Ghost, and applied to the books of
Scripture, to intimate (as I conceive) that these books were to be of like use to
Christians, as those oracles had been to infidels The Scripture oracles

1 HE WEST il IN SI ER DO C TRINE OF HOL T SCRIPTURE. 62 1

differ from and excel those others, I. In point of perspicuity II. In point

of piety III. In point of veracity IV. In point of duration

V. In point of authority Scripture is of divine authority : Holy men of

God (saith Peter ) spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. They wrote ac-
cordingly. All Scripture, saith Paul, was given by inspiration of God. It is
not more true that they are oracles for their use, than that they have God for
their author.” — John Arrowsmith, Chain of Principles, Cambridge, 1659,
pp. 86-103. ‘‘I answer, Although the penman did not, the inditer, viz., the

Holy Ghost, did exactly know whose names were written in the book of Life,
and whose were not. Now he it was who in the history of the Acts, suggested
and dedicated to his secretary, both matter and words.” — John Arrowsmith,
do., p. 299.

“ The Scripture and the Word of God is [the Rule of Lawfulness or Unlaw-
fulness], it is the only Rule whereby I may and must make up my judgment on
Lawfulness and L'nlawfulness; it is that only which doth stamp lawfulness upon
an action.” — William Bridge, Scripture Light the Most Sure Light, London,
1656, p. 32. “Now this duty is urged and amplified; urged by divers argu-
ments : some taken from the excellency of the Word itself. First. It is ).6yo$
rpoipr/Tizdi, a Word of Prophecie, or a Prophetical Word, written by Divine
Inspiration ; the same that is spoken of in [2 Peter i] verse 20, called Prophecie
of Spripture. Secondly, it is Idyo? /Ss/jacSTspo?, a more sure Word; Some think

the comparative is put for the superlative But I take it to be meant

rather comparatively ; for the Word of God written, is surer than that voyce
which they heard in the Mount (whereof he spake in the former verse). More
sure is the Word written than that voyce of Revelation ; not ratione veritatis,
not in regard of the Truth uttered, for that Voyce was as true as any word in
the Scripture ; but more sure ratione manifestation is, more certain, settled,
established.” — William Bridge, do., p. 1. “What must we do, that we may
take heed and attend unto Scripture? .... First, for your knowledge in and
understanding of the Scripture, and the written Word of God, ye must, [1.] Ob-
serve, keep, and hold fast the Letter of it ; for though the Letter of the Scrip-
ture be not the Word alone, yet the Letter with the true sense and meaning of
it, is the Word. The Body of a Man, is not the Man ; but the Body and Soul
together, make up the whole Man : the Soul alone, or the Body alone is not the
Man. So here ; though the Letter of the Scripture alone, do not make up the
Word ; yet the Letter and Sense together, do ; and if ye destroy the Body
ye destroy the Man ; so if ye destroy the Letter of the Scripture, ye do destroy
the Scripture ; and if you deny the Letter, how is it possible that you should
attain unto the true sense thereof, when the sense lies wrapped up in the Letters,
and the words thereof. .... [2.] If you would have the true knowledge and
understand the Scripture, and so behold this great Light in its full glory and
brightness ; you must diligently enquire into the true sense and meaning of it ;
for the true sense and meaning is the soul thereof.” — William Bridge, do.,
pp. 46, 47.

“These holy writings are the Word of God himself who speaks unto us in
and by them. Wherefore when we take in hand the book of the Scriptures, we
cannot otherwise conceive of ourselves, than as standing in God’s presence to
hear what he will say unto us.” — John White, A Way to the Tree of Life,
London, 1647, p. 1. “Of the pen men of the Scriptures, that they were holy
men, inspired and guided in that work infallibly and wholly, by the Spirit ofGod.”
— Ho., do., p. 57. “Who the most of these holy men were it is well known to

the church, the titles of their books bearing their names And that the

rest whose names are either concealed, or doubtful, were such likewise, will be

evident to any indifferent person who shall consider two things It adds

something to the estimation of Scripture, that they were written by such holy

622

TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

men, as we have formerly mentioned, but that which procures unto them divine
reverence, which ought to make all hearts stoop unto them, is that they were
written by the direction of the holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, especially if we
consider what manner of direction it was which was given unto these holy Pen-
men of these sacred Oracles, in the composing thereof. The Apostle, 2 Pet. i.
20, 21, describes that kind of assistance of the holy Ghost, in the delivery of
the Scriptures, two ways. First, by way of negation, that they were neither of
private interpretation, nor came by the will of man. Secondly, he describes the
same assistance affirmatively, testifying that they spake as they were moved by
the holy Ghost. In the former of these, wherein he expresseth this manner of
delivering the Scriptures by way of negation, the Apostle excludes the working
of the naturall faculties of man’s minde altogether So that both the un-

derstanding, and will of man, as farre as they were meerly naturall, had nothing
to doe in this holy work, savely onely to understand and approve that which was
dictated by God himselfe, unto those that wrote it from his mouth, or the sug-
gesting of his Spirit For we may not conceive that they were moved in

writing these Scriptures, as the pen is moved by the hand that guides it, without
understanding what they did ; For they not onely understood but willingly con-
sented to what they wrote But the Apostle’s meaning is, that the Spirit

of God moved them in this work of writing the Scriptures, not according to
nature, but above nature, shining into their understandings, clearly and fully, by
a heavenly and supernatural light, and carrying and moving their wils thereby
with a delight, and holy embracing of that truth revealed, and with a like
desire to publish and make known the secrets and counsels of God, revealed
unto them, to his Church. Yea, beyond all this, the holy Ghost not onely sug-
gested unto them the substance of that doctrine which they were to deliver and
leave upon record unto the Church, .... but besides, bee supplied unto them
the very phrases, method and whole order of those things that are written in the

Scriptures Thus, then, the holy Ghost, not only assisted holy men in

penning the Scriptures, but in a sort took the work out of their hand, making
use of nothing in the men, but of their understandings to receive and compre-
hend, their wils to consent unto, and their hands to write down that which
they delivered.” — John White, do , pp. 57-61.

‘‘All the Scriptures are &s6xvsu<ttoi by Divine inspiration ; and therefore the
breathings of God’s Spirit are to be expected in this garden ; and these com-
mands of attending to the Scripture onely, and to observe what is written, is a plain
demonstration that God hath tyed us to the Scriptures onely : so that as the child in
the womb liveth upon nourishment conveighed by the Navel cleaving to it, so
doth the Church live onely upon Christ by the Navel of the Scripture, through
which all nourishment is conveighed.” — A. Burgess, Spiritual Refining, etc,
London, 1652, p. 132.

‘‘It is certain that all Scripture is of Divine Inspiration, and that the holy men

of God spake as they were guided by the Holy Ghost It transcribes the

mind and heart of God. A true Saint loveth the Name, Authority, Power, TFfs-
dom and goodness of God in every letter of it, and therefore cannot but take pleas-
ure in it. It is an Epistle sent down to him from the God of Heaven ” (p. 55).
“ The Word of God hath God for its Author, and therefore must needs be full of
Infinite Wisdom and Eloquence, even the Wisdom and Eloquence of God. There
is not a word in it but breathes out God, and is breathed out by God. It is (as
Irenaeus saith) xavcuv tjj? ntorsios dY.hsrfi, an invariable rule of faith, an unerr-
ing and infallible guide to heaven. It contains glorious Revelations and Dis-
coveries nowhere else to be found” (p. 80). ‘‘Before the time of Moses, God
discovered his Will by immediate Revelations from Heaven. But we have a
surer word of Prophecie, 2 Peter i. 19, surer (to us) than a voice from Heaven.
.... For it is the same God that speaks by his written word, and by a voice

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLT SCRIPTURE. 623

from Heaven ” (p. 92). — Edward Calamy, The Godly Man’s Ark, Seventh Ed.,
London, 1672.

“If Solomon mistooke not (and how could hee mistake in that, which the
Spirit Himselfe dictated unto hime).” — Cornelius Burgess, Baptismal Regen-
eration of Elect Infants, Oxford, 1629, p. 277 (quoting from Proverbs).

“ The Apocrypha speaks for itself that it is not the finger of God, but the
work of some Jews. Which got it so much authority among Christians, because
it came from them from whom the lively oracles, indeed, came also. But the
Talmud maybe read to as good advantage, and as much profit, and far more.” —
John Lightfoot, Works (Ed. Pitman), Yol. ii, p. 9. “The words of the text
are the last words of the Old Testament — there uttered by a prophet, here ex-
pounded by an angel ; there concluding the law, here beginning the Gos-
pel Thus sweetly and nearly should the two Testaments join together,

and thus divinely should they kiss each other, but that the wretched Apocrypha

doth thrust in between It is a thing not a little to be admired how the

Apocrypha could ever get such place in the hearts and in the Bibles of the

primitive times as to come and sit in the very centre of them both But

it is a wonder to which I could never yet receive satisfaction, that in churches
that are reformed they have shaken off the yoke of superstition and unpinned
themselves from ofi the sleeve of former customs, in doing as their ancestors
have done ; yet in such a thing as this, and of so great import, should do as first
ignorance and then superstition hath done before them. It is true, indeed, that
they have refused these books out of the Canon, but they have reserved them
still in the Bible, as if God should have cast Adam out of the state of happiness
and yet have continued him in the place of happiness.” — John Lightfoot,
Works (Ed. Pitman), vi, 131, 132.

The Properties of Scripture.

III. Having thus defined Scripture as the very Word of God
given by divine inspiration, and, therefore, not a human, but a
divine book, the Confession proceeds next to exhibit the properties
that belong to it as such (§§ 4-7).

The Authority of Scripture.

1. The first property of a divine book to be adduced is, naturally,
its authority (§§ 4-5). (A) Just because the book is God’s Book,

revealing to us His will, it is authoritative in and of itself ; and it
ought to be believed and obeyed, not on the ground of any bor-
rowed authority, lent it from any human source, but on the single and
sufficient ground of its own divine origin and character, “ because
it is the Word of God,” and “ God (who is truth itself) is the author
thereof” (§ 4). So the Confession asserts, in unison with the whole
body of Protestant theology, not as if it held that Scripture is to
be believed and obeyed as God’s Word before we know it to be
such, but as basing its right to be believed and obeyed on its divine
origin and character already established by definition in the preced-
ing sections. Because inspired, Scripture is the Word of God ; and
because the Word of God, it exercises lawful authority over the
thought and acts of men.

“ The former Position being once granted, that the Scriptures are God’s Word,

624

TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

no man can question their Authority, whether that be of him or no.” — John
White, A Way to the Tree of Life, London, 1647, p. 45.

‘‘Scripture is of divine authority It is not more true that they are

oracles for their use than that they have God for their author.” — John Arrow-
smith, Chain of Principles, Cambridge, 1659, p. 103.

“The Scripture resolves our faith on Thus saith the Lord, the only authorise

that all the Prophets alledge, and Paul, 1 Thes. ii. 13 * — Samuel

Rutherford, A Free Disputation against Pretended Liberty of Conscience,
London, 1651, p. 365.

“ The Scriptures are to be believed for themselves, and they need not fetch

their credit from anything else They are the truth The

reason of the Scriptures’ credibility is because they are the word of God

It is not proper to say, We believe the Scriptures are the Scriptures, because of

the Church, without distinguishing upon believing We may satisfy this

by an easy distinction, betwixt believing that Scripture is Scripture, and believ-
ing that the Church all along has taken them for Scripture We believe

the Church owns the Scriptures ; but he is a poor Christian who believes the

Scriptures are Scriptures on no other account God gives his word ; and

whether men will hear or whether they will forbear, it is, and will be, the word
of God forever.” — John Lightfoot, Works (Ed. Pittman), pp. 56 sq. and 351.

(B) But men are not so constituted as readily to yield faith and
obedience even to lawful authority. Their minds are blinded, and
their consciences dulled, and their wills enslaved to evil. The Con-
fession accordingly devotes a paragraph of unsurpassed nobility of
both thought and phrase to indicating how sinful men may be
brought to full conviction of and practical obedience to the infallible
truth and divine authority of the Scriptures. The value of the ex-
ternal testimony of the Church is recognized : the assurance of the
Church that they are the very Word of God may move and induce
us to a high and reverent esteem for the Holy Scriptures. The
greater value of the witness of the Scriptures themselves, in form
and contents, to their supernatural origin is affirmed and richly illus-
trated : by the miracle of Scripture itself, it abundantly evidences
itself to be the Word of God. “ Abundant evidence ” one must sup-
pose to be sufficient; and objectively it is sufficient and more than
sufficient; and this is what the Confession means to affirm. But,
according to the Reformed theology, man needs something more
than evidence, however abundant, to persuade and enable him to
believe and obey God’s W ord ; he needs the work of the Holy
Spirit accompanying the Word, ab extra incidens. And, therefore,
the Confession proceeds to point out that something more is needed,
besides this abundant evidence, to work within us a “ full persuasion
and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority ” of God’s
Word — to lead us to commit ourselves wholly to it, trusting its every
word as true and obeying its every command as authoritative. What
is needed is, in ordinary language, a new heart; in the Confession’s
language, “the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by
and with the Word in our hearts.”

This beautiful statement of the Confession has sometimes of late

TEE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF BOLT SCRIPTURE. 625

been strangely misunderstood. It is no more than to say, what every
Reformed thinker must be ready to say, that faith in God’s Word is
not man’s own work, but the gift of God ; and that man needs a
preparation of the spirit, as well as an exhibition of the evidences, in
order to be persuaded and enabled to yield faith and obedience. If
this be not true the whole Reformed system falls with it. It is,
then, neither to be misunderstood as mysticism, on the one hand, as
if “ the testimony of the Holy Spirit ” were to be expected to work
faith in the Word apart from or even against the evidences ; nor,
on the other hand, is it to be explained away in a rationalizing
manner as if it meant nothing more than that the Holy Spirit, as the
immanent spring of all life and activity, is operative in all human
thought. It is simply the Reformed doctrine of faith, stated here
in explanation of the origin of faith in the Scriptures. It is, there-
fore, naturally returned to in the chapter on Saving Faith (chap,
xiv). The first half of the second section of that chapter is
nothing more than a restatement of the declaration here : “ By
this faith ” — which (§ 1) “ is the work of the Spirit of Christ” in
the heart — a Christian believeth to be true, whatsoever is revealed
in the Word, for the authority of God Himself speaking therein;
and acteth differently, upon that which each particular passage
thereof containeth ; yielding obedience to the commands, trembling
at the threatenings, and embracing the promises of God for this life,
and that which is to come.” The only difference between the two
passages is that difference of form which springs necessarily from
the difference in general subject; here the subject is the Scriptures,
and we are told how men are brought to a full faith in them — there
the subject is faith, and we are told how this faith acts with refer-
ence to the Scriptures. Both passages alike, however, speak sim-
ply of that Jides generalise which is a topic treated at large in all
Reformed systems;* and both ascribe, in harmony with all Reformed

* For example, and most accessibly, in Dr. Charles Hodge’s Systematic The-
ology, Vol. iii, p. 95. See the same distinction in the extract from John White
quoted below, p. 630, under the terms of General and Particular Objects of Faith.
The difficulty which Prof. H. P. Smith has found in conceiving the doctrine of
fides generalis ( Inspiration and Inerrancy, p. 230) is as astonishing as the mysti-
cal sense read into our section by Dr. C. A. Briggs, although all the Westminster
men do their best to guard against it. Dr. Briggs’ representation that the posi-
tion of the Westminster Confession has been “abandoned” by the Presbyterian
Church is only an indication of his misapprehension of it. The exact method
indicated by the Confession is taken, for example, by Dr. Charles Hodge in his
The Way of Life ; and one must have read the Systematic Theology of the same
author to little purpose who has not met with such explicit affirmations of this
doctrine of the Confession as those made at i. 129 and iii. 60, 68, 69, 74. Dr.
William Cunningham’s exposition of the matter, in chaps, xxii-xxv of his Theo-
logical Lectures, again, might have been written by George Gillespie.

40

626

TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

thought, this fides generalis to the testimony of the Holy Spirit,
without which no evidences would suffice to awaken it.

“Q. What special proofs are there that the Scriptures of the Old and New
Testament are the very Word of God? A. The Scriptures are [specially]*
proved to be the very Word of God by their majesty and holiness of doctrine,
and the fulfilling of the prophesies, by their exalting God and debasing man, and
yet offering him sufficient means of comfort and salvation, and by their light
and power in convincing and converting.

“ [Q. May not all these excellencies and perfections be found in other books
besides the Scriptures? A. No words or writings of men have all these excel-
lencies and perfections in them but as they agree unto and are taken from the
Scriptures.]*

“5 Q. Are all these proofs sufficient of themselves to persuade a man to believe
that the Scriptures are the Word of God? A. It is only the Spirit of God that
makes any proofs effectual to assure the soul of this truth, that the Scriptures
are the Word of God.” — Original Draught of Catechism, Minutes of the
Westminster Assembly, pp. 281-283.

‘‘It is a right, a safe, a sure way to seek after and to enjoy assurance of our in-
terest in Christ, and in the covenant of grace, by the marks and fruits of sanc-
tification All thy marks will leave thee in the dark if the Spirit of

grace do not open thine eyes that thou mayest know the things which are freely
given thee of God. Hagar could not see the well, though she was beside it,
till her eyes were opened. Marks of grace are useless, undiscernible, unsatis-
factory to the deserted and overclouded soul Whereas, to make no

trial by marks, 'and to trust our inward testimony, under the notion of the Holy
Ghost’s testimony, when it is without the least evidence of any true gracious
mark, this way (of its own nature, and intrinsically, or in itself) is a deluding
and ensnaring of the conscience.

" Quest. But it may be asked, and it is a question worthy to be looked into
(though I must confess I have not read it, nor heard it handled before), How
doth this assurance by marks agree with or differ from assurance by the testi-
mony of the Holy Ghost? May the soul have assurance either way, or must
there be a concurrence of both (for I suppose they are not one and the same
thing) to make up the assurance?

“ Ans . For answer whereunto I shall first of all distinguish a twofold cer-
tainty, even in reference to the mind of man or in his conscience (for I speak
not here de certitudine entis, but mentis ) : the one may be called dotpalsia,
where the conscience is in tuto, may be secure ; needeth not fear and be troubled.
The Grecians have used the word dacaXeia when they were speaking of giving
security and assurance by safe conducts, or by pledges, or by sureties, or the
like.f The other is iz).-gpo<popia , a full persuasion, when the soul doth not only
steer a right and safe course, and needeth not fear danger, but saileth before the
wind, and with all its sails full. So there is answerably a double uncertainty. The
one may be called a-nopia, when a man is in himself perplexed and difficulted,
and not without cause, having no grounds of assurance ; when a man doth
doubt and hesitate concerning a conclusion, because he hath no reasons nor
arguments to prove it ; when a man is in a wilderness where he can have no
way, or shut up where he can have no safe escaping. The other is i~oyrj,
which is a doubting that ariseth not from want of arguments or from the inextri-
cable difficulty of the grounds, but from a disease of the mind, which makes it

* The words enclosed in brackets were subsequently omitted.

f H. Steph. in Thes. Ling. Gr., tom. 3, p. 1173.

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLT SCRIPTURE. 627

suspend or retain its assent, even when it hath sufficient grounds upon which it
may be assured. Now it is the evidence of signs or marks of grace which giveth
that first kind of certainty, and removeth that first kind of uncertainty ; but it
is the testimony of the Spirit of the Lord which giveth the second kind of cer-
tainty and removeth the second kind of uncertainty. Take two or three similes
for illustration.

“The Scripture is known to be indeed the word of God by the beams of
divine authority which it hath in itself, and by certain distinguishing characters
which do infallibly prove it to be the word of God, such as the heavenliness of
the matter ; the majesty of the style ; the irresistible power over the conscience ;
the general scope to abase man and to exalt God ; nothing driven at but God’s
glory and man’s salvation ; the extraordinary holiness of the penmen of the
Holy Ghost, without respect to any particular interests of their own or of others
of their nearest relations (which is manifest by their writings) ; the supernat-
ural mysteries revealed therein, which could never have entered into the reason
of men ; the marvellous consent of all parts and passages (though written by
divers and several penmen), even where is some appearance of difference ; the
fulfilling of prophecies ; the miracles wrought by Christ, by the prophets and
apostles ; the conservation of the Scriptures against the malice of Satan and fury
of persecutors ; — these and the like are characters and marks which evidence
the Scriptures to be the word of God ; yet all these cannot beget in the soul a
full persuasion of faith that the Scriptures are the word of God ; this persuasion
is from the Holy Ghost in our hearts. And it hath been the common resolution
of sound Protestant writers (though now called in question by the skeptics of
this age*) that these arguments and infallible characters in the Scripture itself,
which most certainly prove it to be the Word of God, cannot produce a certainty
of persuasion in our hearts, but this is done by the Spirit of God within us, ac-
cording to these Scriptures, 1 Cor. ii. 10-15 ; 1 Thess. i. 5 ; 1 John ii. 27, v.
6-8, 10 ; John vi. 45

“ I heartily yield that the Spirit of the Lord is a Spirit of revelation, and it is
by the Spirit of God that we know the things which are freely given us
of God, so that without the Comforter, the Holy Ghost himself, bearing wit-
ness with our spirits, all our marks cannot give us a plerophory or comfortable
assurance ; but this I say, that that which we have seen described by the An-
tinomians as the testimony of the Spirit of the Lord, is a very unsafe and unsure

evidence, and speaks beside, yea, contrary to the written word But it is

another which is here in question, for clearing whereof observe, that the effi-
cient cause or revealing evidence, which makes us believe and be assured, is
one thing, the objection formale fidei, or that for which we believe and are as-
sured, is another thing. In human sciences, a teacher is necessary to a young
student, yet the student- doth not believe the conclusions because his teacher
teacheth him so, but because these conclusions follow necessarily from the
known and received principles of the sciences ; and although he had never
understood either the principles or the conclusions without the help of a teacher,
yet he were an ill scholar who cannot give an account of his knowledge from
demonstration, but only from this, that he was taught so. In seeking a legal
assurance or security, we consult our lawyers, who peradventure will give us
light and knowledge of that which we little imagined ; yet a man cannot build
a well-grounded assurance, nor be secure, because of the testimony
of lawyers, but because of the deeds themselves, charters, contracts, or
the like. So we cannot be assured of our interest in Christ without the work of
the Holy Ghost and his revealing evidence in our hearts ; yet the ground and
reason of our assurance, or that for which we are assured, is not his act of re-

* Mr. J. Godwin in his Hagiomastix.

628

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

vealing, but the truth of the thing itself which he doth reveal unto us from the
word of God.” — George Gillespie, A Treatise of Miscellany Questions, Chap,
xxi ; 1647. Edinburgh reprint in The Presbyterian’ s Armoury, Yol. ii, pp. 104r-
110, (1844).

“ Scripture is of divine authority It is not more true that they are ora-

cles for their use than that they have God for their author. Many large vol-
umes have been written to make good this assertion. It is a thing wherein the
Spirit of God, who indited the Scripture, gives such abundant satisfaction to the
spirit of godly men as to make other arguments, though not useless, yet to them
of less necessity : He alone bearing witness to the divinity of holy writ, and to the
truth of his own testimony, so putting a final issue to that controversy. But
because there is need for other reasons for the conviction of other men, I have
produced certain arguments elsewhere” [in lactica Sacra, lib. 2, cap ult],
‘‘and shall here make an addition of two more, which are not mentioned in that
discourse, one from consent, another from continuance ” (pp. 103, 104).
Under “consent,” he continues: “Writings of men differ exceedingly from
one another, which made Seneca say, Philosophers would then be all of one mind ,
when all clocks were brought to strike at one and the same time. Yea, it is hard to
find an author that doth not differ from himself more or less, if he write much
and at various seasons. But here is a most harmonious consent. The word
since written fully agrees with that which in former times was delivered to the
Patriarchs, and transmitted by word of mouth. As the Word God is the same
to day, yesterday and forever, although not incarnate till the fulness of time
came, and then made flesh : so the word of God, although till Moses received a
command to put it in writing there wanted that kind of incarnation, was, for
substance the same before and after. And as the written word agreed with the
unwritten, so doth one part of that which is written harmonize with another.
The two Testaments, Old and New, like the two breasts of the same person,
give the same milk. As if one drew water out of a deep well with vessels of
different metal, one of brass, another of tin, a third of earth, the water may
seem at first to be of a different color ; but when the vessels are brought near to
the eye, this diversity of color vanisheth, and the waters tasted of have the same
relish. So here, the different style of the historiographers from Prophets, of the
Prophets from Evangelists, of the Evangelists from Apostles, may make the
truths of Scripture seem of different complexions, till one look narrowly into
them and taste them advisedly, then will the identity both of colour and relish
manifest itself.” — Johx Arrowsmith, Chain of Principles, Cambridge, 1659,
pp. 104-106.

The passage in Tactica Sacra referred to above, opens by stating that
Protestants and Papists agree in believing that the “Sacred Volume is the
word of God and not of man,” but differ as to the ultimate ground of faith — as
to “quidnam illud sit in quod ultimo resolvitur ista tides, id est, quod sistit
credulitatem nostram, ita ut quando illuc pervenitur non opus sit ulteriore scru-
tinio” (p. 206). In order to elucidate the matter, he distinguishes a “triplex
principium ” of the faith we owe to the divine authority of the Scriptures :
"unum Introducticum, alterum Argumentaticum, tertium vero Productivum.”
(1) The Introducing source of faith is the testimony of the church: “It may
happen, and often does happen, that the testimony of the church is the intro-
ducing source of faith, i. e., that some believe the Scriptures to be the very
word of God by means of the church as the first to point them to it, but not on
account of the church as the palmary basis of assent, but rather on the Scripture’s
own account ” (“ per ecclesiam ut primum indicem,” not “ propter ecclesiam ut
palmarium assensus argumentum,” but “propter se,” p. 207). (2) The Probative
source of faith is defined as “ ipsius Scripturse genius et indoles, sive innata ” (p.
210). As light makes both other things and itself manifest, so the Scriptures. He

TEE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 629

lays stress especially on these three qualities as eminently proving Scripture to be
the word of God — the majesty of the style, the sublimity of the matter and the
efficacy of the doctrine. (3) The Producing source of faith in the Scriptures is
“ the operation of the Holy Spirit and it alone.” " Let the church testify all it
is able to ; let the Scripture shine with its own inherent light all it is wont to ; if
nevertheless, there he present no operation of the Holy Ghost, touching the
heart with its own afflatus so that it may recognize the divinity that shines in the
sacred volume, Divine Faith will still be absent ; the testimony of the church
cannot produce more than human faith, nor can the genius of Holy Scripture
itself produce more than theological opinion” (p. 212). He then summons to
the support of his teaching Calvin (Inst, i, 7, § 4), Chamier (Lib. 6, De Canone,
Cap. 1, | 7), Whitaker (Opera in fol. tom. 1, pp. 10, 78) and Baronius (p. 212),
and defends himself from the charge of enthusiasm or mysticism. — John
Arrowsmith, Tactiea Sacra, Cambridge, 1657 (Amsterdam Ed. of 1700, p.
206 sq. ) .

"It must be considered that at present, we have nothing to do with Atheists,
Pagans, Jews, or Turks, that deny the Scriptures, either wholly, or in part, so
far are they from acknowledging them to be God’s word ; but onely with such
persons as admitting and allowing them to be the word of God, doe yet want
some clearer light, and fuller evidence, to work into their hearts a more certain
persuasion, and more feeling impression of that truth whereof they are con-
vinced, that all that is within them, even their whole heart, may not onely bow
and stoop, but be wholly thrown down, and laid flat on the earth before this
mighty sceptre of the kingdom of Christ. Wherefore, we shall not need to
bring in all the arguments that are used and taken up by others, to prove the
Scriptures to be God’s word, but passing by amongst them such as are more
obscure and farther deduced, shall content ourselves with such plain evidence
of this truth, as may he best understood of the simple, and appear at the first
view, as bein^ lively characters imprinted on the face and body of this sacred

Book, by that divine Spirit that composed it” (p. 7) The arguments

adduced are : 1. That the Scriptures are a law to the church, and "neither
could nor were fit to be given by any other than by God himself;” 2. "That
the holy Scriptures appear evidently to be the word of God.” Under the
latter : "The marks or notes by which the holy Scriptures are evidently discov-
ered to be God’s word, are divers, of which we shall for the present content
ourselves with three only, and those which are most easie to be discerned.
The first is, the style and phrase of speech, wherein the Scriptures, apparently
differ from all other writings composed by men. The second is, the subjects or
matter which the Scriptures handle, which are many times beyond the compasse
of man’s reason to find out, and therefore must be revealed by God himself.
The third evidence is taken from the wonderfulle effectuall power, which the
Scriptures appear to have upon the hearts of men, in terrifying, comforting,
subduing and renewing them ” (p. 18). These marks are then developed at
large. Subsequently he develops the difference between Historical and Jus-
tifying faith : "Amongst Divines Faith is commonly taken for a full persuasion

of any truth upon Divine testimony The cause of faith is the Spirit of

Grace flowing into a regenerate man from Christ his head And here we

meet with the first difference between Historicall and Justifying Faith, that they
proceed from different causes, the one being infused by the Spirit of Christ,
dwelling in us, the other the effect only of naturall reason, further inlighted

(at the most) by the assistance of that Spirit The kind of assurance

which true faith is built upon, we call an evidence How justifying faith

hath an evidence of the things it apprehends we have seene : Historicall wants
this evidence .... as having no further assurance of what it believes than
that which Reason suggests, which may rather be tearmed a conviction that

630

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

such things must be than an evidence what they be To cleare the truth

fully, we must consider the different testimonies, upon which justifying and
historicall faith are built. For we shall find that true faith is built upon a
Divine, the other upon a Humane testimony We call that a Divine testi-

mony which is given of the Spirit of God to that spirit which is within a regen-
erate person. For unto any testimony two things are required, First, the
manifesting and presenting that which is to be credited or believed : Secondly, an

ability in him to whom it is witnessed to understand it It is evident

then that true faith is founded upon a Divine testimony. In the next place we
must make it appeare, that Historicall faith relies onely upon an humane testi-
mony. Now it cannot be denied that the truths of Divine mysteries, though

they cannot be found out by man’s reason yet are they all consonant to

right reason : and it is as evident that the testimony of reason, is an humane tes-
timony. I say then, that historicall faith rests not upon the evidence or de-
monstration, but upon the reasonablenesse of divine truths, which therefore

man’s reason cannot but assent unto It is evident that an Historicall

faith believing these things for the Reasonablenesse of them, is but meerely
upon an Humane Testimony. Nay if he should goe a steppe further, and be-
leeve any thing that is written in the Scriptures, for the Testimony of the Scrip-
tures, yet still he beleeves upon an Humane testimony, because he beleeves the
Scriptures themselves upon Humane testimony, as upon the general consent of
the Church which receives the Scriptures, as the Word of God ; or upon the
probability and reasonableness of the things therein delivered ; lastly upon the
observation of the Truth of those holy writings in most things, which makes

them beleeved to be true in all We see then a wide Difference between

Justifying, and Historicall faith, in the cause, subject and ground of Assurance ;
we shall find no lesse in the Object. Now the generall Object of Faith, we
know, is God’s Word and Promise, which onely is a sure ground to build Faith
upon, as being the Word of the God of truth, Dent. iii. 2, 4, wjjo cannot lye,
Tit. i. 2, or denie himselfc, 2 Tim. ii. 13, or change his minde, Num. xxiii. 19.
So that his Word must needs be Everlasting, Psal. 119, 144, founded forever,
v. 132, upon the unfailing foundations, his Everlasting Truth, and unresistable
Power. But the particular Object of justifying Faith is God’s Promise of
Reconciliation, and Salvation by Christ, in whom onely we are Justified, Rom. iii.
24. In these Promises, both generall and particular, an Historicall faith may
beleeve both the truth and the goodnesse of them : But the goodnesse of them
to himselfe in particular he beleeves not, which a justifying Faith asserts and
embraceth.” . . . . — John White, A Way to the Tree of Life, London, 1647,
pp. 7-99.

“In your first and main part, concerning the Scriptures, your discourse bears
a comely suitableness to the nature and subject of that subject also. For as the
Historical beleefe of their authority, end, and use, is the foundation of all : so
your demonstrations thereof are formed out of, and framed into a congenial Har-
mony and consonancy to right Reason, and contain a natural Genealogy and
story of divine truths, as it carries with it the greatest conviction, and (as your
selfe (in that forementioned Treatise) expresse it) begets faith Historical, which
hath for its ground a rationality, and consonancy to reason ; so it is made use
of by the Holy Ghost, as a blessed subservient to that which you make the imme-
diate proper cause of saving Faith, The Demonstration of the Spirit.” — Thomas
Goodwin, in the letter “To the Author,” prefixed to John White’s A Way to
the Tree of Life, 1647, as above.

“The only preaching cf the word, it alone without the Spirit can no more
make one hair white or black or draw us to the Son, or work repentance in sinners
than the Sword of the magistrate can work repentance What can preach-

ing of man or angel do without God, is it not God and God only, who can
open the heart.” — Samuel Rutherford, A Free Disputation, etc., p. 351.

TEE WESTMINSTER D0CTR1EE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 631

"And that this light in the word is manifested unto us, 1. By the manuduc
tion and ministry of the Church, pointing unto the star, which is seen by its own
light. 2. Because we bring not such an implanted suitableness of reason to
Scripture as we do to other sciences, .... therefore to proportion the eye of the
soul to the light of the word, there is required an act of the Spirit, opening the
eyes and drawing away the vail, that we may discern the voice of Christ from
strangers : for, having the mind of Christ, we do according to the measure of his
Spirit in us, judge of divine truths as he did.” — Edward Reynolds, Works
1826, Yol. v, p. 154.

“ Q. How are we assured that the Scripture is God’s word? A. Not only by
the testimony of the Church, which cannot universally deceive, but especially
by the testimony of the Spirit, working strange and supernatural effects in us by
the Word, giving us such joy, contentment and satisfaction touching spirituall
and eternall things, by way of trust and feeling as is not possible for human
reason to doe : Joh. iv. 42 ; Joh. vi. 68, 69 ; 1 Thes. i. 5 ; 2 Pet. i. 18, 21 ; 2 Cor.
iv. 6.” — W. Lyford, Principles of Faith and Good Conscience, etc., Fifth Ed.,
Oxford, 1658, p. 2.

"There remains one Question to be resolved, for the close of this whole mat-
ter (namely). Into what then is our Faith finally resolved, and whereupon doth it
stay itselfe, seeing the fore-mentioned things, the Church, the Spirit, Reason and
Providence, though their help and minisiery be needfull, yet our Faith is not built
upon them, as hath been shewed ?

"The Authority and Truth of God speaking in the Scripture, is that upon
which our Faith is built, and doth finally stay itselfe ; theMinistery of the Church,
the Illumination of the Spirit, the Right use of Reason, are the choicest helps,
by which we believe, by which we see the Law and Will of God ; but they are
not the Law itselfe ; the Divine Truth and Authority of God’s Word, is that
which doth secure our consciences.

" To the founding of Faith it is necessary, that we know, first, what is the truth
revealed, for else we cannot believe it, nor rest upon an unknown Truth ;
Secondly, that God hath indeed revealed and declared those truths ; and then

the soul resteth upon it, as a sure Anchor of faith and hope If you ask

further, How I know that God hath revealed them, I answer, by a two-fold
certainty ; one of Faith, the other of Experience ; First I do infallibly by faith
believe the Revelation, not upon the credit of any other Revelation, but for
itselfe, the Law giving testimony thereunto, not only by the constant testimony
of the Church, which cannot universally deceive, nor only by miracles from
heaven, bearing witnesse to the Apostles’ doctrine, but chietly by its own proper
divine light, which shines therein. The truth contained in Scripture is a light,
and is discerned by the Sons of Light : It doth by its own light persuade us, and in
all cases, doubts, and questions, it doth clearly testifie with us, or against us ; which
light is of that nature, that it giveth testimony to it selfe, and receiveth Authority
from no other, as the Sun is not seen by any light but his own, and we dis-
cerne sweet from sowre by its own Taste. And the means for opening our eyes
to see this light (whereby our consciences are assured that we rest in God,) are
diverse : first, some private, as Reading, Prayer, conference of places, consent
of Churches in all ages, Helps of learning, and Reason sanctified. Secondly,

some publike, as the Ministery of the Word Thirdly, But the chief helpe

to shew me, and assure me of this light, is the Holy Spirit, given to God’s chil-
dren, in and by the use of the former meanes to open our understandings, to en-
lighten our minds, that we may know and believe the words of this life, and the
things that are freely given unto us of God ; In which light thus shewn unto us,
Faith staieth itselfe, without craving any further testimony or proofe, in the
same manner that the Philosopher proveth, that with the same sense we see, and
are assured we see : Thus I know by the certainty of Faith, resting upon its

632

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

object, that the Doctrine of Scripture is from God : This is a certainty in respect
of the understanding.

“2. Whereunto adde that other certainty of Experience, which is a certainty in
respect of the Affections and of the spirituail man, This is the Spirit’s seale set to
God’s truth, (namely) the light of the word : when it is thus shewen unto us,

it doth worke such strange and supernatural effects upon the soul so that

the things apprehended by us in Divine knowledge, are more certainly discerned
in the certainty of experience, than anything is discerned in the light of naturall

understanding And thus much of my first doctrine ; the supreame and

divine Authority of the Scripture, to determine all matters of faith and practice.”
— William Lyford, The Plain Man’s Senses Exercised, etc., London, 1657,
p. 38 sq.

“ And now we will draw towards the main conclusion. How a simple Countrey-
man is to believe our Bible to be the Word ? Doctor Jackson and Master John
Goodwin have set downe many, and many excellent things, but they flieso high,

that they are for Eagles Now all the considerations these great sophics

have, and let there be as much more added to them, yet they will not do the
work, till they come to the testimony of the Spirit : They may and do work, and
acquire in us an humane faith, which may stand free from actual hesitation, and
doubting, but not from possible dubitation, for lay them altogether, yet they

may deceive or be deceived So that when we have all done, and got all

the help we can to rest on the Scriptures, the work is not done, till we by the
Spirit of God have this sealed by infused faith in our souls that these books

(which we have translated) are the very words of God Well then,

though all humane reasons, the consent of all the world, will not help us to that
faith in the Word, which will help us to heaven, yet they are a preparation, and
such a preparation to this faith infused, that we cannot ordinarily look for faith
infused, but by the way of this faith which is gotten by the arguments, reasons,
considerations, and helps wrought by the Argumentations, and considerations
proposed by men which do work (as most often it doth) in us an acquired
humane faith free from actual (though not possible) mistake and doubting. This
may be and is a fair means to bring us to look on the Scripture without any
actual question made of it as the Word of God. And then by the use of the
Word to attain to a Divine faith, which is infallible by reason of the Divine in-
fallible truth rightly conceived and believed by it ” — Richard Capel, Remains,
etc., London, 1658, p. 70 sq.

0

The Completeness of Scripture.

2. The second property of Holy Scripture which the Confession
adduces is its perfection or completeness (§ 6). Here the absolute
objective completeness of Scripture for the great and primary pur-
pose for which it is given is affirmed ; and the necessity of any sup-
plement to it is denied, with reference especially to the “ new revela-
tions” of the sectaries and the “traditions” of Rome. It is not
affirmed that the Scriptures contain all truth, or even all religious
truth ; or that no other truth, or even religious truth, is attainable
or verifiable by man through other sources of knowledge. This
would be inconsistent with the frank recognition in Sec. 1 of the
light of nature as a real and trustworthy source of knowledge con-
cerning God. There is only a strong assertion of the complete-
ness and the finality of the Scriptural revelation of truth, for

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLT SCRIPTURE. 633

the specific purpose for which Scripture is given. God may give
men knowledge concerning Him through the forms of the reason ;
and the amount of knowledge so attainable, as outlined by the Con-
fession in the first section, is asserted to be enough to render men
inexcusable for withholding from God the worship and service
which is His due. The memory of the revelations which He may
have supernaturally given to men in the past may be, more or less
fully or purely, preserved in historical records or institutions ; and
this is especially true of those revelations which He has embodied
in the institution, and in the institutions, of the Church which He
has established in the world : the truths so preserved will exert
their power over men’s consciences, when conveyed to their knowl-
edge by the ordinary testimony of men or by the offices and testi-
mony of the Church. The Confession does not deny either the ex-
istence or the value of truth so obtained or so preserved for man. But
it does deny the need of such sources of knowledge to supplement
what is set down in Scripture, in order to instruct us what “man is
to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man.” It
does affirm the absolute objective completeness of Scripture as a
guide to the service of God, to faith and to life. And it does deny
that aught in the way of truth required by God to be believed, or
in the way of duty required by Him to be performed, in order that
we may attain salvation, is to be added from any other source what-
ever to what is revealed in Scripture.

This, it is to be observed, is to make Scripture something more
than a rule of faith and practice ; something more than the rule of
faith and practice, in the sense of merely the fullest and best extant
rule ; something more even than a svfficient rule of faith and
practice. It is to make it the only rule of faith and practice, to
which nothing needs to be added to fit it to serve as our rule,
and to which nothing is to be added to make it altogether complete
as our authoritative law. It contains not only enough to serve all
the purposes of a rule of faith and practice, but all that is to be
laid as the authoritative law of life on the consciences of Christians.
Therefore, the Laryer Catechism defines (Q. 3) : “The Holy Scrip-
tures of the Old and New Testament are the Word of God, the
only rule of faith and obedience and the Shorter Catechism : “ The
Word of God, which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and
New Testaments, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify
and enjoy him.” One of the chief effects of this declaration of the
Confession is, therefore, to protect the people of God from the
tyranny of human requirements, which lay upon men’s consciences
burdens that God has not laid upon them, and that are too grievous
to be borne. It is the doctrinal basis of the subsequent assertions

634

TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

that “ good works are only such as God hath commanded, and not
such as, without warrant thereof, are devised by men out of blind
zeal or upon any pretence of good intention” (xvi. 1); and that
“ God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the
doctrines and commandments of men which are in anything con-
trary to his Word or beside it in matters of faith and worship : so
that to believe such doctrines or obey such commandments out of
conscience is to betray true liberty of conscience.” In a word, the
Confessional doctrine of the sufficiency or completeness of Scripture
is the charter of liberty of conscience ; God’s prescriptions for faith
and conscience are required to be received with humility of heart,
and none but God’s.

It must be observed, however, that the teachings and prescrip-
tions of Scripture are not confined by the Confession to what is
“expressly set down in Scripture.” Men are required to believe
and to obey not only what is “ expressly set down in Scripture,” but
also what “by good and necessary consequence may be deduced
from Scripture.” This is the strenuous and universal contention of
the Reformed theology against Socinians and Arminians, who de-
sired to confine the authority of Scripture to its literal asseverations ;
and it involves a characteristic honoring of reason as the instrument
for the ascertainment of truth. We must depend upon our human
faculties to ascertain what Scripture says ; we cannot suddenly ab-
negate them and refuse their guidance in determining what Scrip-
ture means. This is not, of course, to make reason the ground of
the authority of inferred doctrines and duties. Reason is the instru-
ment of discovery of all doctrines and duties, whether “ expressly
set down in Scripture ” or “ by good and necessary consequence de-
duced from Scripture :” but their authority, when once discovered, is
derived from God, who reveals and prescribes them inScripture, either
by literal assertion or by necessary implication. The Confession is only
zealous, as it declares that only Scripture is the authoritative rule of
faith and practice, so to declare that the whole of Scripture is authori-
tative, in the whole stretch of its involved meaning. It is the Re-
formed contention, reflected here by the Confession, that the sense
of Scripture is Scripture, and that men are bound by its whole
sense in all its implications. The reemergence in recent controver-
sies of the plea that the authority of Scripture is to be confined to
its expressed declarations, and that human logic is not to be trusted
in divine things, is, therefore, a direct denial of a fundamental posi-
tion of Reformed theology, explicitly affirmed in the Confession,
as well as an abnegation of fundamental reason, which would not
only render thinking in a system impossible, but would discredit at
a stroke many of the fundamentals of the faith, such, e. g ., as the doc-

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLT SCRIPTURE. 635

trine of the Trinity, and would logically involve the denial of the
authority of all doctrine whatsoever, since no single doctrine of
whatever simplicity can be ascertained from Scripture except by
the use of the processes of the understanding. It is, therefore, an
unimportant incident that the recent plea against the use of human
logic in determining doctrine has been most sharply put forward in
order to justify the rejection of a doctrine which is explicitly
taught, and that repeatedly, in the very letter of Scripture ; if the
plea is valid at all, it destroys at once our confidence in all doctrines,
no one of which is ascertained or formulated without the aid of
human logic.

It is further to be observed that the Confession, in asserting the
perfection or completeness of Scripture, forgets neither the subjec-
tive disabilities of fallen man, nor his needs outside the sphere of
“ things necessary for God’s glory, man’s salvation, faith and life,” in
which sphere alone Scripture is asserted to be objectively complete or
perfect. The Confession explicitly recognizes the “ inward illumin-
ation of the Spirit of God ” as necessary to enable man “ savingly
to understand such things as are revealed in the Word.” And it as
explicitly recognizes that there are “circumstances concerning the
worship of God and government of the Church, common to human
actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature
and Christian prudence.”

While strenuously asserting the completeness of the Scriptural rev-
elation of faith and duty, considered objectively, it adopts the prin-
ciple, “ credo ut intelligam” and as clearly asserts that a preparation
of spirit is necessary to its saving understanding. As the Minutes of
the Assembly show, the word “ saving ” is significant here. It is not
denied that men, in the exercise of their natural powers of understand-
ing, may attain to a knowledge from Scripture of what is revealed
in Scripture. It is only denied, as Dr. James S. Candlish admirably
phrases it,* that it is possible to attain, without the Spirit’s illu-
mination, “such a knowledge as is not merely intellectual and inop-
erative, but accompanied with a relish and love for the truth, and
leading to a life of holy obedience.”

And while jealously guarding the uniqueness of the authority
of Scripture in divine things, and its completeness in the sphere of
faith and duty, the Confession equally clearly asserts that its pre-
scriptions do not cover in detail every circumstance “ concerning
the worship of God and government of the Church.” All that is in
Scripture, by express statement or necessary implication, must be
obeyed ; and all that must be obeyed is in Scripture ; but outside

* “The Doctrine of the Westminster Confession on Scripture,” in The British
and Foreign Evangelical Review, 1877, p. 174.

636

THE PRESBTTERIAy AND REFORMED REVIEW.

of and beyond what Scripture prescribes, there is a sphere of what
may properly be done in worshiping God and governing his Church
in which the principle of Christian liberty reigns, and in which the
ordering is left to the light of nature and Christian prudence. How
wide this sphere is, may be a matter of dispute : it is enough that
the Confession explicitly recognizes its existence ; and specifies “ cir-
cumstances concerning the worship of God and government of the
Church ” as matters which fall within it. The limitation it sug-
gests is that these circumstances are such as are “ common to human
actions and societies; ” which probably means that the Church, as a
society in the world, is free to take such order for its activities and
government as are open to other human societies, though always, of
course, because it is a divine society and under a divinely given
charter, with regard to “ the general rules of the W ord, which are
always to be observed.”

Unless the declaration here be pressed beyond all bounds, no
inconsistency will emerge with the position taken in chap. xxi. 1,
that “ the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted
by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may
not be worshiped according to the imaginations and devices of
men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representa-
tions or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scripture.”
Much less will inconsistency emerge with the teaching of chaps,
xxx and xxxi, that “ the Lord Jesus, the king and head of the
church, hath appointed therein a government,” established offices
and authorized synods. On the contrary, the same provision for
the prudent regulation of worship and government which is here
made, is there repeated, it being expressly set forth as one of the
duties of synods and councils, “ to set down rules and directions
for the better ordering of the public worship of God and govern-
ment of the church,” — which appears to be an authoritative com-
mentary on our present passage. A distinction apparently is in-
tended to be drawn between “ a way of worship ” and the “ ordering
of worship:” the ordination of the former, in strong anti-Romish
polemic, is reserved to God, while the latter alone is placed in the
sphere of the prudent and reasonable regulation of the Church
itself. The extreme position is excluded that nothing is to be done
in the ordering of God’s house except what is warranted by explicit
provisions of the Word; but a sharp line of distinction is drawn
between the duty of conforming in all things to the provi-
sions of the Word and the liberty to be exercised outside of and
beyond these provisions.

There is an inferential application of this declaration to the affairs
of daily life also, which it may be wise for us to note. “ In other

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLT SCRIPTURE. 637

words,” says Dr. Alexander F. Mitchell, in his Lecture on the
Westminster Confession ,* “the Westminster divines were so far
from holding, as the earlier Puritans are accused of doing, that one
must have an express text of Scripture for everything he says
or does in common life, that they directly assert there are circum-
stances in regard both to the worship of God and the government
of His Church for which no such sanction is to besought, but which
are left to be regulated by the dictates of reason and of Christian
prudence, if only care is taken that all be done decently and in
order; and, while they directly grant this much, they leave it
clearly to be inferred, further, that merely human actions and the
doings of civil societies are to be regulated in the same way, or, as
they elsewhere have it, according to justice, faithfulness and truth.”

“Chapter XX. That necessary consequences from the written word of God do
sufficiently and strongly prove the consequent or conclusion, if theoretical, to be a
certain divine truth which ought to be believed, and, if practical, to be a necessary
duty which we are obliged unto, jure divino.

“This assertion must neither be so far enlarged as to comprehend the erro-
neous reasonings and consequences from Scripture which this or that man, or
this or that church, apprehend and believe to he strong and necessary conse-
quences (I speak of what is, not of what is thought to be a necessary conse-
quence) : neither yet must it be so far contracted and straitened as the Armin-
ians would have it, who admit of no proofs from Scripture, but either plain,
explicit texts, or such consequences as are nulli non obvice, as neither are, nor
can be, controverted by any man who is rationis compos ( see their Praef. ante
Exam. Cens., and their Examen, cap. 25, p. 283); by which principle if embraced,
we must renounce many necessary truths which the reformed churches hold
against the Arians, Antitrinitarians, Socinians, Papists, because the conse-
quences and arguments from Scripture brought to prove them are not admitted
as good by the adversaries.

“ This also I must in the second place, premise, that the meaning of the asser-
tion is not that human reason, drawing a consequence from Scripture, can be the
ground of our belief or conscience ; for although the consequence or argumen-
tation be drawn forth by men’s reasons, yet the consequent itself, or conclusion,
is not believed nor embraced by the strength of reason, but because it is the
truth and will of God, which Camero, Prcel., tom. i. p. 364 doth very well
clear

“Thirdly, Let us here observe with Gerhard, a distinction between corrupt

reason and renewed or rectified reason It is the latter not the former

reason, which will be convinced and satisfied with consequences and conclu-
sions drawn from Scripture, in things which concern the glory of God, and
matters spiritual or divine.

“Fourthly, There are two sorts of consequences, which Aquinas, part 1,
quest. 32, art. 1 distinguisheth : 1. Such as make a sufficient and strong proof,
or when the consequence is necessary and certain 2. By way of agree-
ableness or convenience This latter sort are in divers things of very

great use; but for the present I speak of necessary consequences.” He next

* Third Ed., Edinburgh, 1867, p. 48.

638

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

proves liis point : 1. From the example of Christ and his apostles. 2. From the
custom of the people of God. 3. “ If we say that necessary consequences from
Scripture prove not a jus divinum, we say what is inconsistent with the infinite
wisdom of God ; for although necessary consequences may be drawn from a
man’s word which do not agree with his mind and intention, and so men are
oftentimes ensnared by their words ; yet (as Camera well noteth) God being
infinitely wise, it were a blasphemous opinion to hold that anything can be
drawn by a certain and necessary consequence from his holy word which is not
his will.” .... 4. That great absurdities follow from the denial of this prin-
ciple. 5. That the principle is conceded and acted on by those who deny it.
6. We would by denying it, deny “to the great God a privilege of the little gods
or magistrates.” — George Gillespie, A Treatise of Miscellany Questions, 1649
(Edinburg reprint of 1844, p. 100 sq.).

“Now things maybe contained in Scripture, either expressly and in plain
tearms, or by consequence drawn from some grounds that are delivered in
Scripture, and one of these two ways all grounds of faith or rules of practice,
are to be found in these holy writings ” (p. 65). “Two conclusions, The. First
is acknowledged by all men without contradiction, which is, That there can he
no infallible interpreter of the Scriptures but God himself. The second though it
he somewhat more questioned, yet is as true as it in all points, namely, That
every godly man has in him a spiritual light, by which he is directed in the under-
standing of God’s mind revealed in his word in all things needful to salvation ”
(p. 161). — John White, A Way to the Tree of Life, London, 1647, pp. 65 and
161.

“But you will say unto me, Now it is given by those holy Apostles and
prophets, and laid up in the Scriptures, may not all men or any man understand
it? No, for as you have it in 2 Peter i. 20, the Scripture is not of private interpre-
tation (and he speaks especially of the Gospel), that is, it is not in the power of
any man’s understanding to apprehend or know the meaning of the word.
‘ But ’ saith he, ‘ holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy
Ghost ; ’ and therefore as the Scripture was written by the Holy Ghost, so it
must be the Holy Ghost that must interpret it. Take all the wise men in the
world, they are not able to understand one Scripture ; it is but private interpre-
tation. The Holy Ghost, therefore, the same Spirit that guided the holy apos-
tles and prophets to write it, must guide the people of God to know the meaning
of it; and as he first delivered it, so must he help men to understand it.” —
Thomas Goodwin, Works (Nichols Ed., 1861), Yol. iv, p. 293.

“ But secondly and more practically ; If you would so understand the Scrip-
ture that you may take heed thereunto, as to a light shining in your dark state ;
then, First, you must go to God for the Spirit ; for without it ye cannot under-
stand the mind of God in the Scripture And seeing God hath promised

to give the Spirit unto them that ask it, go unto God for the same. Secondly ;
Take heed of a worldly, fleshly mind ; fleshly sins do exceedingly blind the
mind from the things of God.” — William Bridge, Scripture Light the Most
Sure Light, etc., London 1656, pp. 50-52.

“It is the Spirit of wisdom and revelation which both openeth the heart to
the word, giving an understanding to know the Scriptures, and openeth the
Scriptures to the heart : for he takes of Christ’s and sheweth it unto us. The
Spirit doth not reveal truth unto us, as he did in the primitive patefaction thereof
to the prophets and apostles, — by divine and immediate inspiration, or in a way
of simple enthusiasm ; but what he reveals, he doth it by and out of the Scrip-
tures, which are the full and perfect rule of faith and obedience, as Christ
opened to his disciples in the Scriptures, the things which concerned him (Lk.
xxiv. 27).”— Edward Reynolds, Works, 1826, v, pp. 152, 153.

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 689

The Perspicuity of Scripture.

8. The third property of Scripture adduced, is its perspicuity
(Sec. 7) : and here again the Confession is no less precise and guarded
than clear and decided in its assertions. The perspicuity of Scrip-
ture is sharply affirmed, in the sense that the saving truth is de-
clared to be placed in Scripture within the reach of all sincere seekers
after it. But the limitations of its perspicuity are very fully and
carefully stated. It is only “ those things which are necessary to
be known, believed and observed for salvation ” that are said to lie
perspicuously in Scripture. Even these things are not said to be
plainly delivered on every occasion in which they fall to be men-
tioned or treated in Scripture ; but only “ in some place of Scrip-
ture or other.” Nor is it even stated that they all are anywhere so
clearly propounded and opened as that they may easily be understood
unto perfection ; but only so as that “ a sufficient understanding of
them ” may be attained. Nor yet are they affirmed to be equally un-
derstandable by all; but only that they are so clearly spread on the
face of Scripture that every man, learned or unlearned, may attain
a sufficient understanding of them to secure his salvation and peace.
The variety of Scripture is here fully recognized — its frequent ob-
scurities, its difficulties, its problems, and its profound depths darken-
ing to all human gaze. The variety of mental acumen and teachable-
ness of heart brought to the study of Scripture, is sufficiently recog-
nized. But the fact that the Scriptures, despite all their obscurities, are
a people’s book, is sharply and decisively asserted ; and with it the
right of the unlearned man to them, and his capacity to make full
use of them for. the main purpose for which they were given ; and
as well, the openness of the Scriptures to the “ due use of the ordinary
means.” In a word there is combined here an adequate recognition
of the profundity of the Scriptures and their occasional obscurity,
with an equally clear assertion of the popular character of the Word
of God as a message to every one of His children.

We must not overlook, in passing, that it is by “ a due use of the
ordinary means ” that the learned and unlearned alike are said
to be able to attain a sufficient knowledge of the saving message of
Scripture. By the phrase, “ a due use of the ordinary means,” not only
is the need of an infallible interpreting Church denied, but also all
dependence on extraordinary revelations, the “ inner light ” of the
mystical sectaries, and the like, is excluded. Within the “ordi-
nary means” is included that “inward illumination of the Spirit of
God,” which is declared to be necessary to the saving understanding
of Scripture in Sec. 6, and which is here declared to be an ordinary
endowment of the children of God. Within them is included

640

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

all the religious and gracious means which God has placed at tlie
disposal of His people, in the establishment of His Church and its
teaching functions. But in this phrase is also included the implica-
tion that Scripture is to be interpreted, as other books are interpreted,
in the ordinary processes and by means of the ordinary implements of
exegesis. There is included here, therefore, the charter of a sound
and rational system and method of exposition ; and we are accord-
ingly not surprised to find the Westminster divines dealing con-
stantly in their extant writings with the question of “ how to read
the Scriptures,” and laying down well-considered and reasonable
canons of interpretation.

“The Word is perspicuous, and hath 'notas insitas veritatis’ in all necessary
truth, as being written not for scholars only, but for vulgar and illiterate men.”
— Edward Reynolds, Works, 1826, v, 154.

"Scripture is so framed, as to deliver all things necessary to salvation in a
clear and perspicuous way. There are indeed some obscure passages in it to
exercise our understandings and prevent our loathing of overmuch plainness
and simplicity : yet whatsoever is needful for us to satisfy hunger, and nourish
our souls to life eternal, is so exprest (I do not say that it may be understood,
but so) as men that do not wilfully shut their eyes against the light, cannot pos-
sibly but understand it.” — John Arrowsmith, Chain of Principles, Cambridge,
1659, p. 96.

“As it is a ful and sufficient light ; so is it a cleer light, a light that sliineth,
.... not that there are no hard things therein and difficulties ; where is the
man that ever was able to untie al the knots and difficulties of Scripture ? Paul’s
Epistles have their hard things to be understood, even in the eyes of Peter,
Epist. 2, Chap. 8, verse 16. Yet what truth is in all the Scripture which is neces-
sary to salvation, but doth lie plain and clear? .... Deul. xxx. 11, 12, 13, 14 ;

Ro. x. 6, etc. ; 1 Cor. ii. 16 Surely therefore this light is a clear and

shining light” (p. 14). “Is there then no use for reason and the Light thereof?
Yea, much : not onely in civil things ; but in the things of God, comparing spir-
itual things with spiritual. Did not Christ himself make use of reason to prove
the resurrection ? .... So the Apostles after him. Surely therefore we are
not so to adhere to the letter of the Scripture, as to deny the use of our reason

in finding out the true sense and meaning of the Scripture Reason is of

great use even in the things of God : and wel hath he said. Contra Ratione-
mem nemo sobrius” (p. 33). [Clear rules for interpreting Scripture are laid
down, p. 50 s<y. ] — William Bridge, Scripture Light the Most Sure Light,
London, 1656.

“It is true this inward light, or anointing (as Saint John calls it) maybe
much cleared and enlarged by such helps as God is pleased to afford us, by the
ministry of his word, by private conferences, and reading of Godly men’s writ-
ings, which are therefore to be made full use of diligently and constantly.”
[Good and sound rules for interpreting follow on p. 164 s#.] — John White,
A Way to the Tree of Life, etc., p. 163.

“Thus they fly from the Word written, to their own revelations ; which (as
Melanchtlion doth truly and wisely observe) doth draw after it three main and
mischievous conclusions. 1. A losse of the certainty of the doctrine of the Law,
and the Articles of our faith. 2. An utter uncertainty of Christian consolations.
3. An extinction and destruction of true faith, and the exercises of faith :

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 641

whereas there are now no revelations (sitli all is written) nor no need of any
extraordinary revelations to expound the Word, but ordinary only, to expound
the Scripture by the Scripture, and so give the sense, comparing places with
places” (pp. 245, 246). “That one meaning of the Word is plaine, and a
plaine heart shall have a plaine answer from God by his Spirit, which is icliich”
(p. 243). — Richard Capel, Tentations, The Fourth Part, London, 1655.

The Use of Scripture.

IV. On the basis of this exposition of what Scripture is, in its
origin and characteristics, the Confession next propounds certain
important corollaries as to its use, with especial reference, as we
have seen, to its form and transmission in text and translation, to
its interpretation, and to its final authority in controversies (Secs. 8-10).
These sections contain the application of the principles laid down
in the preceding sections, to the burning practical questions raised
by the very existence of the Reformed religion. Their declarations
enunciate the fundamental principles of Protestantism : that the
appeal for doctrine is not to be to the Latin Vulgate, but to the
original Scriptures; that the people have right to the Scriptures in
the vernacular ; that Scripture, and not an infallible interpreting
Church, is the Supreme Interpreter of Scripture ; and that Scripture
and not the Church is the Supreme Judge in religious controversy.
There is a true sense in which the whole preceding portion of the
chapter was written in order to furnish firm groundwork for these
three closing sections.

The Transmission of Scripture.

1. The object of the first of these sections (Sec. 8) is to indicate the
proper place in the Church of God, both of the original Scriptures
and of translations of them into vernacular tongues. The originals
are asserted to be the only final appeal in the defining and defense
of doctrine. The translations are asserted to be competent channels
for the transmission of saving truth to the people at large.

In both matters, the impelling motive of the Confessional state-
ment was, of course, the contentions of the Church of Rome, which
on the one hand declared that the Latin Vulgate was to be held
“ pro authentica ” in all “ public reading, disputation, preaching
and exposition ; ” and on the other, discountenanced the free use by
the people of the Scriptures in vernacular versions. In defense of
both contentions, the Romanist controversialists made much of the
uncertainties in the transmission of Scripture, pointing to the various
readings in the original text and to the mistranslations in the ver-
sions, with the general design of leaving the impression that the
Scriptures have been to such a degree corrupted in their transmis-
sion that no one can safely commit himself to their teaching, except
41

642

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

under tbe safeguard* of an infallible Church attesting and assuring of
the truth.* The Westminster divines were the more driven form-
ally to oppose this assertion of the practical loss of the divine Scrip-
tures under the errors of transmission, that it had been taken up by
the sectaries of the day in their plea for toleration : how absurd, it
was argued, to punish a man for not believing in the divine authority
of Scripture, when you have no certainty that you have the true
inspired Scripture in this or that passage appealed to. In opposition
to both bodies of opponents alike, the Confession affirms the provi-
dential preservation of the inspired Scriptures in purity, in the orig-
inals, and the adequate purity of the Word of God in translations.

The necessity of looking upon the original Scriptures only as “ au-
thentical,” that is, authoritative in the highest sense, f and appeal-
ing to them alone as final authorities “ in all controversies of re-
ligion,” is based by the Confession on the fact that these original
Scriptures, and they alone, are the inspired Bible. The Confession
uses the strongest phrase of technical theological terminology to ex-
press their divine origin : “ Being immediately inspired by God.” It
thereby points to the originals as the very Word of God, authorita-
tive, as such, in every one of their deliverances of whatever kind.
The possibility of appealing to the original Scriptures, as we now
have them, as the Word of God, is based on the further fact that
they have been “ by God’s singular care and providence kept pure
in all ages.” The Confession thus distinguishes between the auto-
graphic text of sacred Scripture, which it affirms was “immediately
inspired by God,” and its subsequent transmission in copies, over
the course of which it affirms, not that an inspiring activity of
God, but that a providential care of God has presided, with the
effect that they have been kept pure and retain full authority
in religious controversy. This distinction cannot be overlooked
or explained away ; it was intentional, as is proved by the contro-
versies of the day in which the framers of the Confession were
actively engaged.:}:

*It is somewhat amusing to find a modern controversialist pointing to the
repetition of this stock argument of the Jesuits by Richard Simon (1678), as its
origination (Prof. George F. Moore, D.D., in The Independent for March 30,
1893).

f Such appears to the present writer to he its sense here. Compare the word
in the Oxford Dictionary, edited by Dr. Murray. It is obviously used here
with direct reference to the deliverance of the Council of Trent on the Vulgate,
•where too the meaning is disputable. Prof. Candlish ( l . c.) takes it here as “ at-
tested as a correct copy of the author’s work,” which he thinks is the point
mainly in view in this context.

Jit is surprising, therefore, that Prof. E. D. Morris writes : “Asa Professor
in a Theological Seminary, it has been my duty to make a special study of the
Westminster Confession of Faith, as I have done for twenty years ; and I ven-

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLT SCRIPTURE. 643

When it is affirmed that the transmission has been “ kept pure,”
there is, of course, no intention to assert that no errors have crept
into the original text during its transmission through so many
ages by hand-copying and the printing press ; nor is there any in-
tention to assert that the precise text “immediately inspired by
God,” lies complete and entire, without the slightest corruption, on
the pages of any one extant copy. The difference between the in-
fallibility or errorlessness of immediate inspiration and the falli-
bility or liability to error of men operating under God’s providen-
tial care alone, is intended to be taken at its full value. But it is
intended to assert most strongly, first, that the autographs of Scrip-
ture, as immediately inspired, were in the highest sense the very
Word of God and trustworthy in every detail ; and, next, that God’s
singular providential care has preserved to the Church, through
every vicissitude, these inspired and infallible Scriptures, diffused,
indeed, in the multitude of copies, but safe and accessible. “ What
mistake is in one copy is corrected in another,” was the proverbial
philosophy of the time in this matter ; and the assertion that the
inspired text has “ by God’s singular care and providence been
kept pure in all ages,” is to be understood not as if it affirmed that
every copy has been kept pure from all error, but that the genuine text
has been kept safe in the multitude of copies, so as never to be out
of the reach of the Church of God, in the use of the ordinary means.
In the sense of the Westminster Confession, therefore, the multipli-
cation of copies of the Scriptures, the several early efforts towards
the revision of the text, the raising up of scholars in our own day to
collect and collate MSS., and to reform the text on scientific principles
— of our Tischendorfs and Tregelleses, and W estcotts and Horts —
are all parts of God’s singular care and providence in preserving
His inspired W ord pure.

No doubt the authors of the Confession were far from being

ture to affirm that no one who is qualified to give an opinion on the subject,
would dare to risk his reputation on the statement that the Westminster divines
ever thought of the original manuscripts of the Bible as distinct from the copies
in their possession” ( The Evangelist (newspaper), No. 2379, for January 26,
1893). Yet they explicitly make this distinction. When one who has given so
much time to the study of the Confession could make this mistake, it is the
less surprising that others, with less extended opportunity for learning the
doctrine of the Confession, could share it (cf. e. g., Dr. TeunisS. Hamlin, in The
Evangelist for February 16, 1893 ; Dr. Simon T. McPherson, do., and in pamph-
let form ; Dr. Henry VanDyke, in pamphlet entitled, The Bible As It Is). But
it is a source of mortification that such an obvious error should be given perma-
nent record in the Minutes of the General Assembly, by the repetition of it in a
protest to the action of the Assembly of 1893, signed by a number of names.
This may give future historians the impression that the study of the Westminster
Confession, to say nothing of the Westminster divines, had fallen into some
desuetude in the American Church, towards the end of the nineteenth century.

644

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

critics of the nineteenth century : they did not foresee the course
of criticism nor anticipate the amount of labor which would be
required for the reconstruction of the text of, say, the New
Testament. Men like Lightfoot are found defending the readings of
the common text against men like Beza ; as there were some of them,
like Lightfoot, who were engaged in the most advanced work which
up to that time had been done on the Biblical text, Walton's Poly-
glott , so others of them may have stood with John Owen, a few
years later, in his strictures on that great work ; and had their lot
been cast in our day it is possible that many of them might have been
of the school of Scrivener and Burgon, rather than of that of West-
cott and Hort. But whether they were good critics or bad is not the
point. It admits of no denial that they explicitly recognized the fact
that the text of the Scriptures had suffered corruption in process of
transmission, and affirmed that the “ pure ” text lies therefore not in
one copy, but in all, and is to be attained not by simply reading the
text in whatever copy may chance to fall into our hands, but by a
process of comparison, i.e., by criticism.* The affirmation of the Con-

*Dr. Mitchell ( Lecture , etc., as cited, p. 48) says justly : “It does not, at first
sight, look as if they were afraid of sound criticism, or meant to commit them-
selves to oppose its progress, when they thus vindicate for the originals of the
Old and New Testament Scriptures, the place which was their due, and it was
the least a council of thoughtful divines, meeting after that of Trent, could do to
indicate dissent from its decrees concerning the Latin Vulgate. There were
scholars in the Westminster Assembly who knew more about the state of the
text than of late they have got credit for, and even those of them who ere less
skilled in such studies, with the common Hebrew and Greek Bibles of the age,
nay, with the common English Bibles (which contained references to some
various readings among their marginal annotations), were not left in total
ignorance of the existence of such readings, and, therefore, when they asserted that
by God’s singular care and providence the originals had been kept ‘pure,’ they
could not mean to ignore the existence of various readings.” But what they
did mean, Dr. Mitchell seems to us less accurately to divine. They meant to
assert that the various readings in the several copies did not prevent the preser-
vation of the text absolutely pure in the multiplicity of copies ; not that the text
has been, despite various readings, kept adequately pure in every copy, — which
no doubt is also true, within certain limits. Dr. Briggs recognizes that : “The
Westminster divines .... knew, as well as we know, that there were variations
of reading and uncertainties and errors in the Greek and Hebrew texts in their
hands. The great Polyglotts had settled that” {The Bible, the Church and
the Reason, p. 76). It might not be a bad thing for those who find difficulty in
apprehending the attitude of the Westminster divines on this subject, to consult
Walton’s Prolegomena and his Considerator Considered, as the best sources of in-
formation as to the knowledge of the times. In the latter, for example, we
read such passages as these : “The whole Prolegom. 7 is spent in proving that
the Originall Texts are not corrupted either by Jews, Christians or others, that they
are of supream authority in all matters, and the rule to try all translations by ,
2 hat the copies we now have are the true transcripts of the first duTdypa<pa writ .
ten by the sacred Pen-men, That the special providence of God hath watched over
these books, to preserve them pure and uncorrupt against all attempts of Sectaries,

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 645

fession includes the two facts, therefore, first that the Scriptures iu
the originals were immediately inspired by God ; and secondly that
this inspired text has not been lost to the Church, but through God’s
good providence has been kept pure, amidst all the crowding errors
of scribes and printers, and that therefore the Church still has the
inspired Word of God in the originals, and is to appeal to it, and to
it alone, as the final authority in all controversies of religion.

The defense of the right of the people to translations of Scrip-
ture in their mother tongue, is based by the Confession on the
universality of the Gospel and the inability of the people at large to
read and search the Scriptures in the original tongues. In making
good this right, the competence of translations to convey the Word
of God to the mind and heart is vigorously asserted ; and as well
the duty of all to make diligent use of translated Scripture, to
the nourishing of their Christian life and hope. The sharp distinc-
tion that is drawn between the inspired originals and the uninspired
translations is, therefore, not permitted to blind men to the pos-
sibility and reality of the conveyance in translations, adequately
for all the ordinary purposes of the Christian life and hope, of
that Word of God which lies in the sense of Scripture, and not in
the letter save as in a vessel for its safe conduct. When exactness
and precision are needed, as in religious controversies, then the in-
spired originals only can properly be appealed to. But just because
of the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture, as set forth in Sec.
7, and that of its perfection, as set forth in Sec. 6, translations suffice
for all ordinary purposes, and enable those who truly seek for it to
obtain a thorough knowledge of what is “ necessary to be known,
believed and observed for salvation.” The use of translations is,
thus, vindicated by the Confessional doctrine of the properties of
Scripture.

But something more than the right of translations is here vindi-

Hereticks, and others, and will still preserve them to the end of the world, for
the end for which they were first written. That the errors or mistakes which may
befall by negligence or inadvertency of Transcribers or Printers, are in matters of
no concernment ( from whence various readings have risen), and may by collation
of other copies and other means there mentioned, be rectified and amended ” (p.
14). “I do not onely say, that all saving fundamentall truth is contained in the
Originall Copies, hut that all revealed truth is still remaining entire ; or if any
error or mistake have crept in, it is in matters of no concernment, so that not
only no matter of faith, but no considerable point of Historicall truth, Prophe-
cies, or other things, is thereby prejudiced, and that there are means left for rec-
tifying any such mistakes where they are discovered ” (p. 66). “To make one
Copy a standard for all others, in which no mistake in the least can be found,
he cannot, no Copy can plead this privilege since the first dur6ypa<pa were in
being” (p. 68). So Walton, too, is among the prophets. These remarks might
have been penned by Rutherford or Capel. Compare Usher, above, p. 607.

646

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

cated. The duty of making translations “ into the vulgar language
of every nation ” under heaven, is laid upon the consciences of the
people of God — a duty to which the great Bible Societies are a part
of the splendid response. And the duty of that personal searching
of and feeding upon the Scriptures out of which alone a vigorous
Christian life can be nourished, is laid upon the individual heart.
The characteristic of Westminster piety is distinctly set forth as
Bible piety ; and everything is said here which could be said, to
secure that the teachings of those who should acquire the right to
teach under the sanction of this document, should be purely Bible
teaching, and that the life of those who should live under it should
draw its springs from a personal, vital and constant contact with
“the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever.”

“ If you will dispute in Divinity, you must be able to produce the Scriptures
in the Original Languages. For no translation is simply Authenticall or the
undoubted Word of God. In the undoubted Word of God there can be no
error. But in translations there may be and are errors. The Bible translated,
therefore, is not the undoubted Word of God, but so far only as it agreeth with
the Original” (p. 1). “They [the Anabaptists] can alledge no Scripture but
that which is translated into their mother-tongue, in which there may be and
are some errors ; for though the Scriptures be the infallible Word of God, yet
the Translators Were men subject to error, and they sometimes mistook ” (p. 15).
To the Anabaptist objection : “ Though ice cannot prove the Letter to be well trans-
lated, that matters not much, for the Letter of the Scripture is not Scripture,”
Featley answers : “That is blasphemy, I pray take notice of it, he denyeth the
letter of the Text to be Scripture. (Anabaptist.) The letter of the Word of God
is not Scripture, without the revelation of the Spirit of God : the Word revealed
by the Spirit is Scripture. (D. Featley.) Very fine Doctrine; if God reveal
not to us the meaning of the Scripture, is not the letter of the Text, Scripture ?
By this reason, the greatest part of the Revelation, and other difficult Texts of
Scripture should not be Scripture, because God hath not revealed unto us the
meaning of them” (p. 16). — Daxiel Featley, The Dippers Dipt, London,
1660.

“ To believe the Scriptures (which we are bid to search) whether in the Orig-
inals, or in the English translations, to be the Word of God (that is) to contain
in them the Mind and Will of God, concerning Man’s Salvation, is a necessary
foundation of Christian Religion, that is, of our Faith and Worship, of our Pro-
fession and Practice Obj. Yea, but to believe the English Scriptures, or

the Bible translated into English to be the Word of God ; this is no foundation of

Christian Religion. This is an old piece of Popery in an Independent dresse

For answer hereunto, I lay down these two Conclusions : That Divine Truth in
English, is as truly the Word of God, as the same Scriptures delivered in the
Originall, Hebrew or Greek ; yet with this difference, that the same is perfectly,
immediately and most absolutely in the Originall Hebrew and Greek, in other
Translations as the vessels wherein it is presented to us, and as far forth as they
do agree with the Originalls : And every translation agreeing with the Originall
in the matter is the same Canonicall Scripture that Hebrew or Greek is, even
as it is the same Water that is in the Fountain and in the Stream ; we say this is
the Water of such or such a Well, or Spring, because it came from thence ; so
it is in this business, when the Apostles spake the wonderful works of God in

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLT SCRIPTURE. 647

the languages of all Nations (that were at Jerusalem ) wherein they were born ;
the Doctrine was the same to all, of the same truth and Divine Authority, in the •
Severall Languages : and this Doctrine is the Rule we seek for, and the founda-
tion upon which our Religion is founded, and it is all one thing whether it be
brought to my understanding in Welch, or English, or Greek, or Latine : All
Language, or Writing, is but the Yessell, the Symbole, or Declaration of the
Rule, not the Rule itself : It is a certain form or means by which the Divine
Truth cometli unto us, as things are contained in their Words, and because the
Doctrine and Matter of the Text is not made known unto me but by words, and
a language which I understand ; therefore I say the Scripture in English is the
rule and ground of my Faith ; -whereupon I relying, have not a humane but a
Divine Authority for my Faith. Even as an unbeliever, coming to our Sermons,
is convinced of all and judged of all, and he will acknowledge the Divine Truth
of God, although by a humane voice in preaching, it be conveyed unto him, so
we enjoy the infallible Doctrine of the Scripture, though by a man’s Transla-
tion, it be manifested unto me

“ 0, but 1 cannot believe them to be true, because the Translators were not assisted
immediately by the holy Ghost.

“Such extraordinary assistance is needful to one, that shall indite any part of
Scripture, but not to a translator, for a man by his skill in both Languages, by
the ordinary helps of prayer and industry, is able to open in the English tongue
what was before lockt up in the Originall Hebrew, or Greek. As a Spanish
or Danish Embassadour, delivers his Message, and receives his answer by an
Interpreter. — The Interpreter needs not any inspiration, but by his skill in both
languages, and his fidelity, he delivers the true mind of one Nation to another :

So it is in this case, the Translator is God’s interpreter to a strange people.

“ Oh! But by the often change and variable Translations, it seems that some
have erred

“We do not say that this or that Translation is the Rule and Judge, but the
Divine Truth translated ; the knowledge whereof is brought to us in the Trans-
lation, as the vessell, wherein the Rule is presented to us, as is aforesaid.” —
William Lyford, The Plain Man's Senses Exercised, London, 1657, pp. 46-51.

“ Now by Scripture is meant the Word of God written. Written then, Printed
now ; .... It is consented unto by all parties, that the Translators and Tran-
scribers might erre, being not Prophets, nor indued with that infallible Spirit in
translating or transcribing, as Moses and the Prophets were in their Original

Writings. .... The tentation lies on this side Sith there are no

Prophets, no Apostles, no nor any infallible Spirits in the Church, how can we
build on the foundation of the Prophets and Apostles now, sith the Scriptures
in their translated Copies are not free from all possible corruptions, in the

Copies we have either by transcribers or translators For the Originals,

though we have not the Primitive Copies written by the finger of God in the
Tables, or by Moses and the Prophets in the Hebrew, or by the Apostles, and the
rest in the Greek for the New Testament, yet we have Copies in both languages,
which Copies vary not from the Primitive writings in any matter that may
stumble any. This concerns only the learned, and they know that by consent
of all parties, the most learned on all sides amongst Christians do shake hands
in this, that God by his providence hath preserved them uncorrupt. What if
there be variety of readings in some Copies ? and some mistakes in writing or
Printing? This makes nothing against our doctrine, sith for all this the foun-
taine runs clear, and if the fountaine be not clear all translations must need be
muddie

“For if our Ambassadour deliver his minde by an Interpreter, are not the
words of the Interpreter the words of the Ambassadour ? Right, say you, if the
Interpreter do it truly : So, say I, a Translation, is a translation no further than

648

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

lie doth translate, and interpret truly : for a false translation, so farre as it is

» false, is no translation God being in his providence very careful, that his

Church shall not want sufficient provision for their souls, hath ever, doth, and
will ever so assist Translators, that for the main, they shall not erre. I am of
minde, that there was never any Christian Church, but the Lord did so hold the
hands, and direct the pens of the translators, so that the translations might well
be called the Word of God, .... subject I confesse to some errour, but not
such errour, but that it did serve to help the Church to faith, for the salvation
of their souls

“I cannot but confesse that it sometimes makes my heart ake, when I seri-
ously consider what is said, That we cannot assure ourselves that the Hebrew in the
Old Testament, and the Greek in the New, are the right Hebrew and Greek, any further
than our Masters and Tutors, and the General consent of all the Learned in the
world do say, not one dissenting. But yet say these, since the Apostles, there are
no men in the world but are subject to deceive, and to be deceived. All infallibility

in matters of this nature having long since left the world And to the

like purpose is that observation, That the two Tables written immediately by Moses
and the Prophets, and the Greek Copies immediately penned by the Apostles, and
Apostolical men are all lost, or not to be made use of, except by a very few, and that
we have none in Hebrew or Greek, but what are transcribed. Now transcribers are
ordinary men, subject to mistake, may faile, having no unerring Spirit to hold
their hands in writing.

“These be terrible blasts, and do little else when they meet with a weak head
and heart, but open the door to Atheisme and quite to fling off the bridle ;
which onely can hold them and us in the wayes of truth and piety ; this is to
fill the conceits of men with evil thoughts against the Purity of the Originals :

And if the Fountains run not clear, the Translations cannot be clean

It is granted that translators were not led by such an infallible Spirit as the

Prophets and Apostles were Well then, as God committed the Hebrew

Text of the Old Testament to the Jews, and did and doth move their hearts to
keep it untainted to this day : So I dare lay it on the same God that he in his
Providence, is so with the Church of the Gentiles that they have and do preserve
the Greek Text, uncorrupt and clear : As for some scapes by Transcribers, that
comes to no more than to censure a book to be corrupt, because of some scapes
in the printing, and ’tis certaine that what mistake is in one print, is corrected

in another Therefore I make no question but that the sweet providence

of God hath held the hearts, and hands, and pens of translators, so in all true
Churches, in all times that the vernacular and popular translation into mother
tongues, have been made pure, without any considerable tincture of errour to
endanger the souls of the Church. For what if Interpreters and Translators
were not Prophets, yet God hath and doth use so to guide them, that they have
been, are, and shall be preserved from so erring in translating the Scriptures,
that the souls of his people may have that which will feed them to eternal life,
that they shall have sufficient for their instruction, and consolation here, and

salvation hereafter Translations are sufficient with all their mistakes to

save the Church. I will deliver this in the words of Master Baine :* Faith
cometh by hearing of the Word from a particular Minister, who by confession of
all is subject to errour ; As God hath not immediately and inf allibly assisted Min-
isters, that they cannot erre at all, so we know that he is in some measure with them,
that they cannot altogether erre. A translation that erreth cannot beget faith, so farre
forth as it erreth, The word Translated, though subject to errour is God’s Word,
and begetteth and increaseth faith, not so farre forth, as man through frailty
erreth, but as he is assisted through speaking and translating, to write the truth.

* Spiritual Armoury, 263, 264.

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLT SCRIPTURE. 649

So we. This gives full satisfaction to me, and I hope it will to others.” —
Richard Capel, Remains, London, 1658, pp. 1-83.

‘ ‘ But to goe on, That cannot he the way of God which necessarily inferretli
the darkness, inevidence and inextricable difficultie of understanding the Scrip-
ture. But such is the way of Libertie of Conscience For Master John

Goodwin, undeniably the learnedest and most godly man of that way, hath said
in a marginall note, of men for piety and learning I cannot admire enough.

“ The Vindicators call the denying of Scriptures to be the Word of God a dam-
nable Heresie, and we have no certainty that the Scriptures of the Old and New
Testament which we now have, either the English translation or the Originall of
Hebrew and Greek copies are the Word of God. So then holding the Scriptures
to be the Word of God in either of these two senses, or significations of the words
(either translations, or originall) can with no tolerable pretext or colour be called
a foundation of Christian Religion, unlesse their foundations be made of the
credit, learning and authoritie of men ....

“ Because there is need to wonder, by the way, at this, Let the reader observe,
that Libertines resolve all our faith, and so the certaintie of our salvation on
Paper and Inke ; and Mr. John Goodwin will allow us no foundation of faith,
but such as is made by Grammars and Characters, and if the Scripture be wrong
pointed, or the Printer drunke, or if the translation slip, then our faith is gone :
Whereas the means of conveying the things believed may be fallible, as writing,
printing, translating, speaking, are all fallible means of conveying the truth of
old aDd new Testament to us, and yet the Word of GOD in that which is deliv-
ered to us is infallible, 1. For, let the Printer be fallible, 2. The translation fal-
lible, 3. The Grammer fallible, 4. The man that readeth the word, or publisheth
it fallible, yet this hindreth not but the truth itself contained in the written
Word of God is infallible ; . . . . Now, in the carrying of the doctrine of the
Prophets and Apostles to our knowledge, through Printers, translators, gram-
mer, pens, and tongues of men from so many ages, all which are fallible, we are
to look to an unerring and undeclinable Providence, conveying the Testament
of Christ, which in itself is infallible and begs no truth, no authoritie, either
from the Church as Papists dreame, or from Grammer, Characters, Printers, or
translators, all these being adventitious, and yesterday accidents to the nature
of the Word of God, and when Mr. Goodwin resolves all our faith into a foun-
dation of Christian Religion (if I may call it Religion) made of the credit, learn-
ing and authoritie of men, he would have men’s learning and authoritie either the
Word of God, or the essense and nature thereof, which is as good as to include
the garments and cloathes of man, in the nature and definition of a man, and
build our faith upon a paper foundation, but our faith is not bottomed or resolved
upon these fallible means

“The Scripture resolves our faith on, Thus saith the Lord, the only authoritie
that all the Prophets alledge, and Paul, 1 Thes. ii. 13, For this cause also tlianke
we God without ceasing because when ye received the Word of God which ye heard
of us, ye received it not as the word of man (made of men’s credit and learning
as Mr. Goodwin saith), but (as it is in truth) the word of God.

“Weak, dry and saplesse should be our faith, all our patience and consolation of
the Scriptures, Rom. xv. 4, all our hope on the word of God, Ps. cxix. 45, 50,
52, 54, 55, all pur certainty of faith, if it were so as Mr. Goodwin averreth. But
we have ftsfiaLo-cpoo hoyov, a more sure word of prophecie, surer than that which
was heard on the Mount for our direction, and the establishing of our faith,

2 Pet. vii. 19, Job. v. 39 Undoubtedly Christ appealeth to the Scriptures

as to the onely Judge of that controversie, between him and the Jews, whether
the Son of Mary was the Eternall Son of God, and the Saviour of the world, he
supposed the written Scriptures which came through the hands of fallible Print-
ers and Translators and were copies at the second, if not at the twentieth hand

650

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

from the first copy of Moses and the Prophets, and so were written by sinfull
men, who might have miswritten and corrupted the Scripture, yet to be a judge
and a rule of faith, and fit to determine that controversie and all others, and a
Judge, de facto , and actually preserved by a divine hand from errours, mistakes
and corruptions, else Christ might, in that, appealed to a lying Judge, and a
corrupt and uncertaine witnesse ; and though there be errours of number, gen-
ealogies etc., of writing in the Scripture, as written* or printed, yet we hold
Providence watcheth so over it, that in the body of articles of faith and neces-
sary truths, we are certain, with the certaintie of faith, it is that same very word
of God, having the same speciall operations of enlightening the eyes, converting
the soule, making wise the simple, as being lively, sharper than a two-edged sword,
full of divinity, life, Majesty, power, simplicity, wisdome, certainty, etc., which
the Prophets of old, and the writings of the Evangelists, and Apostles had.

“Mr. Goodwin’s argument makes as much against Christ and his Apostles, as
against us, for they could never in all their Sermons and 'Writings so frequently,
declare and found the faith on xadib? ylypanrai , as it is written, in the Prophets,
as David saith, as Isaiah saith, and Hosea, as Daniel saith, as Moses and Samuel
and all the Prophets beare witnesse, if they had had no other certainty, that the writ-
ings of the Prophets, that came to their hands, was the very word of God, but the
credit, learning and authority of men, as Mr. Goodwin saith, for sure Christ and
the Apostles, and Evangelists, had not the authentick and first copies of Moses
and the Prophets, but only copies written by men, who might mistake, Printers
and Translators not being then, more than now, immediately inspired Prophets,
but fallible men, and obnoxious to failings, mistakes, and ignorance of Hebra-
ismes, and force of words ; and if ye remove an unerring providence, who
doubts but men might adde a xS or subtract, and so vitiate the fountaine sense ?
and omit points, change consonants, which in Hebrew and Greek, both might
quite alter the sense? .... May not reading, interpunction, a parenthesis, a
letter, an accent, alter the sense of all fundamental^ in the Decalogue? of the
principles of the Gospel? and turne in all points (which Mr. Doctour [Jeremy
Taylor] restricts to some few darker places, whose senses are off the way to
heaven, and lesse necessary) in a field of Problemes, and turn all believing into
degladiations of wits? all our comforts of the Scripture into the reelings of a
wind-mill, and fancies of seven Moons at once in the firmament? this is to put
our faith, and the first fruits of the Spirit and Heaven and Hell to the Presse.
But though Printers and Pens of men may erre, it followeth not that heresies
should be tolerated, except we say, 1. That our faith is ultimately resolved upon
Characters and the faith of Printers, 2. We must say, we have not the cleare
and infallible Word of God, because the Scripture comes to our hands, by fallible
means, which is a great inconsequence, for though Scribes, Translators, Gram-
marians, Printers, may all erre, it followeth not that an [un-]erring providence
of him that hath seven eyes, hath not delivered to the Church, the Scriptures
containing the infallible word of God. Say that Baruch might erre in writing
the Prophesie of Jeremiah, it followeth not that the Prophesie of Jeremiah,
which we have, is not the infallible word of God ; if all I’ranslatours and Print-
ers did then alone watch over the Church, it was something, and if there were
not one wnth seven eyes to care for the Scripture. But for Tradition, Councells,
Popes, Fathers, they are all fallible means, and so far forth to be believed, as
they bring Scripture with them.” — Samuel Rutherford, A Free Disputation
Against Pretended Liberty of Conscience, London, 1651, pp. 360, 361.

“How shall we hold and keep fast the Letter of Scripture, when there are so
many Greek Copies of the New Testament ? and these diverse from one another ?”
“Yes, well: For though there are many received Copies of the New Testa-

*i. e., Manuscript.

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLT SCRIPTURE. 651

ment ; yet there is not material difference between them. The four Evangelists
do vary in the Relation of the same thing ; yet because there is no contradic-
tion, or material variation, we do adhere to all of them and 'deny none. In the
times of the Jews before Christ, they had but one original of the Old Testament ;
yet that hath several readings : there is a Marginall reading, and a Line reading,
and they differ no less than eight hundred times the one from the other ; yet the
Jews did adhere to both and denied neither; Why? Because there was no
material difference. And so now, though there he many Copies of the New
Testament ; yet seeing that there is no material difference between them, we
may adhere to all : For whoever will understand the Scripture, must be sure
to keep and hold fast the Letter, not denying it” (p. 47). [By ‘‘material ”
difference, Bridge means, not difference of moment, but difference in matter
or in sense, as the opposite to difference in letter. For his teaching as to the
importance of the letter see the quotation above, p. 621 : ‘‘Though the Letter
of the Scripture be not the Word alone, yet the Letter with the true sense and

meaning of it, is the Word So if ye destroy the Letter of the Scripture,

you do destroy the Scripture ; and if you do deny the Letter how is it possible
that you should attain to the true sense thereof, when the sense lies wrapped up
in the Letters, and the words thereof ? .... If you would have the true knowl-
edge and understand the Scriptures, and so behold the great Light in its full
glory and brightness ; you must diligently enquire into the true sense and mean-
ing of it : for the true sense and meaning is the soul thereof” (pp. 46, 47).] —
William Bridge, Scripture Light the Most Sure Light, etc., London, 1656.

“ Consider how many copies were abroad in the world. The Old Testament
was in every synagogue ; and how many copies would men take of the New
Testament. So that it is impossible but still Scripture must be conveyed” (vi.
60). ‘‘Admirable is their [the Masorites’] pains to prove the text incorrupt,

against a gainsaying Papist So that, if we had no other surety for the

truth of the Old Testament text, these men’s pains methinks, should be enough
to stop the mouth of a daring Papist ” (iv. 20). “ It was their care and solici-

tude to preserve the text in all purity .... Yet could they not, for all their
care, but have some false copies go up and down amongst them, through heed-
lessness and error of transcribers To which may be added that the same

power and care of God, that preserves the Church, would preserve the Scrip-
tures pure to it, and he that did, and could, preserve the whole could preserve
every part so that not so much as a tittle should perish” (iii. 405-8). — John
Lightfoot, Works (Ed. Pittman).

“ The antient Jews preserved the letter of Scripture entire, but lost the sense ;
as the Papists now keep the text, but let go the truth ” (p. 93). ‘‘Yet the Bible
hath been continued” [in spite of persecution] ‘‘still by the overruling hand of
heaven ” (p. 107). — John Akrowsmith, Chain of Principles, Cambridge, 1659,
pp. 93 and 107.

The Interpretation of Scripture.

2. Out of the same properties of Scripture follows also, logically,
the Confessional doctrine of the interpretation of Scripture. This cuts
off at once the greater part of the difficulty of interpretation, by de-
claring that Scripture has but one sense ; and puts the chief instru-
ment of interpretation in the hands of every Bible reader, by declaring
that Scripture is its own interpreter, and that more obscure Scrip-
tures are to be explained by plainer Scriptures. Of course, it is not
meant that thus all difficulties of Scripture are cleared up ; the

652

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

Confession is not so immediately concerned here with the detailed
scientific exposition of Scripture as with its practical and doctrinal
use. What is intended is to affirm, in accord with the doctrines of.
the perfection and perspicuity of Scripture as set forth in Secs. 6
and 7, that the plain man, by paying heed to the clear passages of
Scripture and by passing provisionally over those of doubtful interpre-
tation, may come to a full and saving knowledge of its teaching in
all “ things which are necessary to be known, believed and obeyed for
salvation.” If he stumbles upon dark statements, yet “ in some place
of Scripture or other ” the saving doctrines may be found “ so clearly
propounded and opened” that he may obtain “a sufficient under-
standing of them.” And this rale, thus commended to the plain
man seeking light, is commended also to the scholar seeking his way
through the obscurities of the letter. Human learning may give
him aid ; parallel passages alone will give him infallible guidance :
and. while the one is not to be neglected, certainly to the other he
may be required docilely to bow. Of course, the rule here set forth
is that which is known as “ interpreting by the analogy of faith,”
and its foundation is the assumption of the common authorship of
Scripture by God, who is truth itself. If we once allow the Con-
fessional doctrine of the divine authorship of Scripture, it becomes
alone reasonable that we should not permit ourselves to interpret
this divine author into inconsistency with Himself, without compel-
ling reason. This is the Confession’s standpoint ; and from this stand-
point the rule to interpret Scripture by Scripture is more than
reasonable — it is necessary.

Having quoted Rom. xi. 2: “God hath not cast away his people whom he
foreknew,’’ Arrowsmith adds : “ The infallible meaning whereof may be gath-
ered from that in Peter, Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father,
1 Pet. i. 2. And more plainly yet in verse the seventh and eighth of the same
chapter.” — John Arrowsmith, Chain of Principles, Cambridge, 1659, p. 353.

“The same Scripture hath but one intire sense. Indeed Papists tell us that one
Scripture hath many senses; but the Protestants hold, That there is but one

sense of a Scripture though divers applications of it Though the sense

of the Scripture be but one intire sense, yet sometimes the Scripture is to be un-
derstood Literally, sometimes Figuratively, and Metaphorically (but always
Spiritually, for when it is taken Literally, it is taken Spiritually), for saies the
Apostle ; If my Brother offend thee heap coals of fire on his head : that is not to
be taken Literally but Metaphorically” (pp. 48, 49). "Something you must
do by way of observation, something by way of practice. [1.] As for observa-
tion, in case you are able you must consult the Original If you would un-

derstand the true sense and meaning of a controverted Scripture, then look well
into the coherence, the scope and the context thereof. .... If you would un-
derstand the Scripture rightly, then compare one Scripture with another

And be sure that you swerve not from the proportion of Faith ” (pp. 50, 51). —
William Bridge, Scripture Light the Most Sure Light, London, 1656.

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. 653

“There are that make many senses of Scripture but upon no sufficient
ground, whereas it is apparent, there can be but one true and right sense. Yet
we grant that some places may have a proper sense or a mysticall or allegorical^,
as it is called, Oal. iv. 24. But if we weigh it well, there is but one sense of
the words, which is proper, the other is the sense of the Type expressed by

those words, which represents to us some mysticall thing Such allegori-

call senses of Scripture, we must not easily admit, unless the Scripture itself war-
rant them.” Neither must we “ obtrude our allegories upon others as the sense
of the Holy Ghost, much less to build upon them any ground of faith or rule of
life.” — John White, A Way to the Tree of Life, etc., London, 1647, pp. 1678.

“The same spirit which assureth an honest heart, that the Bible is the Word
of God, will guide him to find out the right sense of the Word. The sense of
the law is the law, and of the Word of God there is but one sense : it is the
easier found out, because there is but one sense.” — Richard Capel, Tentations,
The Fourth Part, London, 1655, p. 243.

The Finality of Scripture.

3. The whole exposition of the doctrine of Scripture is appro-
priately closed (Sec. 10) with the assertion that the Holy Spirit, who
speaks in every part of Scripture, is the Supreme J udge in all con-
troversies of religion. This is, of course, nothing more than the
application of the property of authority laid down in Sec. 4, to the
use of Scripture, which is here in discussion. But there is a sense in
which, as Turrettin reminds us, this is the palmary point in the
whole controversy as to the Scriptures. For with both the Roman-
ist and the Enthusiast, everything else of the Protestant doctrine of
Scripture which was brought into dispute — its authority, integrity,
purity, perspicuity or perfection — was brought into dispute only that
Scripture might be declined as the Supreme Judge in controversies of
religion. The Confession therefore most fitly closes its statement with
a perfectly explicit affirmation that religious controversies are to be
decided, not on the ground of “ decrees of councils, opinions of
ancient writers, doctrines of men, or private spirits,” under whatever
names they may masquerade in the changing modes of speech which
the passage of years brings to controversies — whether as traditions
deliverances of reason, the voice of immanent divinity, the “testi-
mony of the Spirit,” the “ Christian consciousness,” private or cor-
porate, or the consensus of scholarship — but on the ground of the
unrepealable “ Thus saith the Lord ” of Scripture itself. By this
indisputable authority all other assumed authorities are to be tested,
and “ in its sentence we are to rest.”

The mode of expression is worth our notice. The Supreme Judge
is not said to be Scripture, but “ the Holy Spirit speaking in Scrip-
ture.” It is not, however, to be imagined that a distinction is here
drawn between the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit speaking in them.
The phraseology is determined by the form which the controversy
with Rome had taken. The Romanists distinguished between the

654

TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

Eule and the Judge, and were ready to allow the Scriptures to be the
Eule, though an incomplete Eule, but asserted that a Judge was also
required to apply the Eule ; and this Judge they argued must be a
present and living one. The Protestants rejoined that the Holy
Spirit who speaks in Scripture is a Living and the sole Supreme
Judge. This language cannot be interpreted, therefore, as if it in-
stituted a distinction between Scripture as a whole and that part of
it in which the Holy Spirit speaks, so that it is only affirmed that
he speaks somewhere in Scripture, and his utterances are to be sought
out from the mass of human speech in or under which they are
buried, and only they held to be authoritative. Nor yet can it be
read as if it were intended to say that the Holy Ghost speaks in
Scripture only when, by his power, its words are driven home to our
hearts and consciences and so “ find us ; ” so that then, and then
only, is Scripture a judge in controversies, when our spirits recog-
nize its words as utterances of God. The passage deals with the objec-
tive right of Scripture to rule, not with the subjective recognition
of that right on our part. Nor, even yet can it be read as Dr. Candlish
appears to read it,* as if the phrase were intended to express the
twofold fact that Scripture is given by the Holy Spirit and our eyes
opened to its meaning by the same Spirit ; so that it is He, the
combined inspirer and illuminator, who is the Judge in all contro-
versies. In accordance with the whole context of this chapter, and
with the ordinary Protestant usage as well,f the phrase must be read
as asserting that, as a matter of fact, whenever and wherever Scrip-
ture speaks, that is the Holy Ghost speaking ; and as a matter of
duty, every controversy in religion shall be held to be settled by the
Word of Scripture, and every other assumed authority shall be
brought to the test and sentence of the decisive “ It is written.”

Nevertheless, the choice of this phrase, as has already been
hinted, is not without significance. As Dr. Candlish points out in
the article already quoted, Chillingworth, in his The Religion of
Protestants a Safe Way of Salvation , sought to meet the demand
of Eomish controversialists for a living Judge by suggesting that
the Bible is not a dead rule, but the Judge’s sentence put on record,
and, being plain in all things necessary, is all that we require. The
Confession seems to go a step further, and to declare that the
living Spirit speaks in His Word, which is “ quick and powerful, and
sharper than any two-edged sword.” If this is all that Dr. Candlish
means by his language criticised above, then doubtless it is true that
the Spirit is conceived of as more than the Word; but it needs to

* British and Foreign Evangelical Review, 1877, p. 128. Cf. Featley, above, p.
646.

f E. g., Turrettin, Loc. ii, qu. 20, where Scriptura and Deus in Scriptura loquens
are used convertibly as the supremus et infallibilis controversiarum Judex.

THE WESTMINSTER DOCTRINE OF HOLT SCRIPTURE. 655

be recognized that it is wholly as in the Word that He is here
spoken of, and not as also in the heart, and that the representation
is that the Word of God acts as a living thing because the Spirit is
in it, and speaks out from it His decisions in all controversies. The
Words of Scripture, in brief, are not dead words, but are instinct
with life.

“The Scriptures .... are the alone rule of all controversies” (v, 152).
^‘So then the only light by which differences are to be decided, is the word,
being a full canon of God’s revealed will, for the Lord doth not now, as in
former times, make himself known by dreams, or visions, or any other immedi-
ate way” (v, 153). — Edward Reynolds, Works, 1826, v, 152, 153.

“The Scripture makes itself the judge and determiner of all questions in
religion.” — Samuel Rutherford, A Free Disputation, etc., London, 1651,
p. 361.

“The holy Scripture is called ‘a more sure word’ than the voice of God
which came from heaven concerning his well-beloved Son, 2 Pet. i. 17-19, and
so by parity of reason, if not a fortiori, the written word of God is surer than
any voice which can speak in the soul of a man, and our inward testimony may
sooner deceive us than the written word can ; which being so, we may and
ought to try the voice which speaks in the soul by the voice of the Lord which
speaks in the Scripture.” — George Gillespie, A Treatise of Miscellany Ques-
tions, ch. xxi, 1649 ; Edinburgh Reprint in The Presbyterian’ s Armoury, 1844,
Yol. xi, p. 110.

“How may Christians inquire of God in their doubtings, as Israel did ....
in theirs? I must answer briefly, and that in the words of God himself, ‘ To the
law and to the testimony:’ to the written Word of God, ‘Search the Scrip-
tures.’ .... There is now no other way to inquire of God, but only from his
word.” — John Lightfoot, Works (Ed. Pittman), vi, 286.

Such is the doctrine of Holy Scripture taught in the Westmin-
ster Confession. If it be compared in its details with the teachings
of Scripture, it will be found to be but the careful and well-
guarded statement' of what is delivered by Scripture concerning
itself. If it be tested in the cold light of scientific theology, it
will commend itself as a reasoned statement, remarkable for the
exactness of its definitions and the close concatenation of its parts.
If it be approached from the point of view of vital religion, it will
satisfy the inquirer by presenting him with a formula in which he
will discover all the needs of his heart and life met and safe-
guarded. Numerous divergences from it have been propounded
of late years, even among those who profess the Westminster doc-
trine as their doctrine. But it has not yet been made apparent that
any of these divergences can commend themselves to one who
would fain hold a doctrine of Scripture which is at once Scriptural
and reasonable, and a foundation upon which faith can safely build
her house. In this case, fhe old still seems to be better.

Princeton.

Benjamin B. Warfield.

HISTORICAL AATD CRITICAL XOTES.

A CRITICAL COPT OF THE SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH,
WRITTEN IN A.D. 1232.

While I was in Jerusalem in May of last year I heard of a Samar-
itan manuscript being there offered for sale, but did not succeed in
seeing it. A little later, on May 12, 1892, doubtless the same manu-
script was brought to me at the Latin Convent in Nablous. It was
then the property of a Moslem of the latter city. The account he
gave of how it came into his possession was that he had purchased
the effects of an aged Samaritan who had died not long before, and
among them had found this Book of the Law. His statement was
corroborated by other inhabitants of Nablous; indeed, the deceased
seemed to be a person well known in the town. I entered into nego-
tiations for purchasing the volume, the Samaritan priest acting as
agent (for a cash commission), and three weeks later it was delivered
into my hands at Sidon.

The manuscript consists of two leaves of paper + two hundred
and sixty-nine leaves of parchment + four leaves of paper, a total of
five hundred and fifty pages. The leaves are now about 121x10^
inches in size, but were cut down somewhat in the rebinding. They
are without numbers (except those added by myself), signatures or
catch-words. The text covers a sjiace about 8^x7^ inches on both
sides of the leaf. In the parchment portion, there are from twenty-
six to twenty-nine lines to the page, both the extremes being of rare
occurrence ; but in the paper portion as man}' as forty-six lines are
found, including in both enumerations the blank lines between para-
graphs. The text on parchment is in large characters, except where,
for special reasons, a word or a few words are written in smaller let-
ters. It begins with “ for dust thou art,” of Gen. iii. 19,

and ends with “ to hear his voice,” of Deut. xxx. 20 ;

between those limits, with the exception of one leaf lost from Gene-
sis, scarcely a letter of the original scribe’s work is past recovery.

I will now attempt to establish the two points included in the title
of this paper, viz. : (I) that this codex was written in A.D. 1232, and
(II) that its scribe was a textual critic and indicated various readings
with their relative authority. .

I. In the blank spaces at the ends of Genesis (p. 136), Exodus
(p. 260) and Numbers (p. 461) are notes of ownership in the years

A SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH, WRITTEN IN A. D. 1232. 657

A. II. 867, A.H. 927 and A.H. 998, respectively. On the last page is
an Arabic colophon of a later date, which states that the manuscript
was repaired and what was missing from the beginning and the end
(the present paper portion) supplied by “ Jacob, the son of Aaron,
the son of Islameh (?), the son of Ghazal, the son of Isaac, the son
of Abraham, the Priest.” It also says that the volume is in the hand-
writing of “the Sheikh Abraham, Judge of Israel ” (‘jiOtS” tilts',
in Samaritan characters). I thought the last statement was the
most authentic information in regard to the writer that we would
ever have, until one day while engaged in collating I came across a
cryptogram, which was soon followed by the discovery of others. In
all I have found six, but will here give a translation of only the two
bearing on the question of authorship.

In the text of Exodus, on p. 182, occurs a cryptogram which
reads, “ The writing of Abraham and through the first six-

teen pages of Deuteronomy (pp. 462-477, inclusive) runs another, as
follows : “ I, Abraham the son of Israel the son of Ephraim the son
of Joseph the Prince [N’J20I7] King of Israel, wrote the copy of this
holy Torah for myself in the name of my children in the year six
hundred and twenty -nine of the kingdom of Ishmael, which [it] is
the year three thousand and two hundred of the dwelling of the chil-
dren of Israel in the land of Canaan and [it] the year five thousand
and nine hundred and ninety-three of the formation of the world. —
And it is the completion of seventy-four Torahs [which] I wrote and
the days of the years of my life in the tread of it are sixty years ; I
praise Yhvh. — And I ask him to prolong their lives until children and
children’s children study in it. Amen. Amen. Amen.”

Thus the date of this codex is given according to three eras. The
one most useful at the present day — indeed, the one from which we
must ascertain the other two — is that of “ the kingdom of Ishmael,”
or the Hegira. Remembering that, as the Moslems employ a lunar
year of twelve months of alternately twenty-nine and thirty days,
with an intercalary day eleven times in thirty j'ears, their years are to
ours as 354^ to 365£, and starting from July 16, A.D. 622, we find
that the year 629 ot the Hegira ended on or about October 19,
A.D. 1232.

As the cryptograms are worked into the very substance of the text
itself, being formed from it without the addition of a single letter,
we now have them as they came from the hand of the writer of that
text; the possibility of their having been subsequently added or tam-
pered with is absolutely excluded. Therefore, we must believe that
this manuscript was written in A. D. 1232, unless we see some reason
for saying that the scribe is either accidentally or intentionally de-
ceiving us. I think it can be shown that the chronogram is entirely
trustworthy.

(a) The cryptograms are real and not the product of imagination.
In one instance (p. 275) the page was creased by folding, and in the
42

658

TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

case of three others, including the longest, special guiding lines were
ruled. (In the case of the two on pp. 179 and 182, special ruling
was not necessary, because of lines on the other side of the leaf.)
One cryptogram is circular and five are vertical. Where the latter
occur the pages present the appearance of three columns, two lateral
of equal size separated by narrow spaces from a central one of single
letters. There are also dots and lines of punctuation between then-
words, which have no meaning apart from them, and one of which,
because of that fact, led to my discover}'. The scribe, therefore, was
fully aware of and intentionally formed these ciyptograms.

(b) It might be supposed that the writer had copied from another
manuscript in which the chi-onogram already existed. That, it is
said, has often happened with colophons. Curiously, old Abraham’s
mistakes come forward to testify in his favor. An examination of
all the erasures that occur in the text of Exodus to Deuteronomy
(inclusive), has convinced me that the writer, in a large measure, puz-
zled out or stumbled on his caligraphic arrangements as he went
along. Perhaps the most striking instance is found on p. 230.
Part of the sixth line of the paragraph in which the circular crypto-
gram occurs had been written when the suggestion of that device
came ; then the scribe erased all from the latter part of the first line
and rewrote it in a way to bring out the cryptogram. (Sufficient
traces of the first text remain to show that it was the same as the
present.) If this stood alone, it might be said that the writer had at
this point changed his examplar for one in which that conceit existed.
I find, however, quite a number of places scattered through the vol-
ume where something has been erased and rewritten, where the evi-
dent reason — and the only reason I can discover — was that, after the
first writing, it had occurred to Scribe Abraham that by making the
change he could carry out further that dearly-loved device of placing
similar letters in successive lines under each other. Two of them are
in close connection with cryptograms (on p. 179 and p. 230). In four
places, three of them in connection with the long chronogram, similar
changes have been made which the production of the cryptograms
rendered necessary, but which might have been avoided by a little
more foresight. Thus there is conclusive proof that this is not a fac-
simile copy of any other codex. The manuscript before the writer
during his work may, perhaps, yet be identified through certain phe-
nomena which possibly indicate the length of its lines and paragraphs.

Unintentional deception on the part of the scribe being thus ex-
cluded, the theory of intentional fraud remains to be considex-ed.

(c) This is not a modern forgery concocted for sale to an American
or Eui'opean tourist. To any one vei-sed in paleographical studies,
it bears unmistakable evidence of age and genuineness. Even the
repairer had no foreign antique hunter in view while doing his woi'k.
Besides the evidence of Samaritan possession already mentioned, the
first page contains the name of a person who had the book after it

A SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH, WRITTEN IN A.D. 1232. 659

was rebound, Ephraim, the son of Rizq the Samaritan. It came into
Gentile hands, as I have narrated. I am, doubtless, the first “ Frank ”
who owned it, and the Moslem from whom I bought it the first non-
Samaritan.

(d) The supposition that Scribe Abraham himself falsified the date
is also untenable. Would the personal and family references, which
the longest cryptogram contains, have been made in a copy for per-
sons outside of the writer’s own household ? How could he make
false statements about his lineage, his past labors as a scribe and the
synchronism of the sixtieth year of his age with the date given, with-
out the certainty of detection staring him in the face? No, there is
a pathetic simplicity in that chronogram which is a sufficient voucher
in itself for its genuineness and authenticity. The writer intended
this copy to be his family Bible, and to be handed down to his de-
scendants, so that “his children and his children’s children might
therein study Yhvh’s law.” I can almost see the aged “ Hebrew ”
bent over his parchments, putting his whole soul with loving care into
this, perhaps, his last work, and the embodiment of his lifelong inves-
tigations into the original text of this portion of God’s Word.

We are accordingly compelled to credit the statement of the chron-
ogram, that this codex was written in A. H. 629 = A. D. 1232. It is,
therefore, one hundred and twentjr-four j’ears older than the earliest
dated Samaritan manuscript of any kind in the British Museum, and
but five years later than the oldest dated Samaritan Pentateuch men-
tioned by Blayney.

II. It remains for me to show that the manuscript before us is a
critical copy, and indicates various readings. I say “ indicates,” be-
cause in only one instance, as far as I have reach, are two readings
actually given, unless some of the interlineations are to be considei’ed
such. On page 73, in Gen. xxx. 37, poim is written with an ordi-
nary full-sized n, but above that letter is a small y ; both are from
the first hand, in exactly the same kind of ink, and look as though
made at the same time. The latter (with y) is the reading in the
text of Blayney, but codex 62 agrees with the former.

The evidence in support of my assertion is derived from a study
of the scribe’s use of dots and lines placed over words.

(A) It is well known that the Samaritans employed lines to show
that a certain combination of letters was used in a particular one of
the two or more senses which it was capable of bearing, e.g., flK when,
alone or in combination, it is the preposition “ with,” has a line over it,
but when it is the sign of the accusative, is without any line (except
in Pin#, where it is lined to distinguish that word from the pronoun
of the second person). Many of the lines and dots in this manuscript
are explained by this usage. In the case of the words over which
they are placed, it is easy to find similar combinations of letters with
which they might be confounded in the unpointed text, and, perhaps,
in no instance do the manuscripts give alternate readings.

660

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

(B) In my codex there are a large number of dots and lines con-
temporary -with the text which cannot be explained on the principle
just stated, but which must be considered as indications of alternate
readings. In most cases, if not all, there was no occasion to employ
marks to prevent ambiguity arising from the same combinations of
letters being used in diverse senses. In striking contrast to the fact
in regard to the former class, there is in every instance manuscript
authority for the alternate reading which I suppose to be indicated.
In a very few cases, however, that authority must be sought in an-
other passage which contains the same word.

The following is a rough statement of the result of my investiga-
tions in this direction in Exodus to Deuteronomy (inclusive) :

(a) 1 conjunctive to be prefixed as the secondary reading 9

(b) 1 conjunctive to be omitted as the secondary reading 4

(c) 1 to be inserted in the middle of a word 'as the secondary

reading 155

(d) 1 to be omitted from the middle of a word as the secondary

reading 14

(e) ’ to be inserted in the middle of a word as the secondary

reading 67

(f ) 'to be omitted from the middle of a word as the secondary

reading 20

(g) Other changes, including additions, omissions and substi-

tutions 53

Total 322

In manuscripts, dots were sometimes placed over letters which are-
to be omitted in reading, because inserted simply by mistake. That
was not a usage of Scribe Abraham, nor can the marks grouped above,
under (a) to (g), be so explained. Either the original writer or some
subsequent possessor — for the present argument it matters not which
— has shown no hesitancy in erasing letters from the beginning, mid-
dle and end of words. As that means of correction was employed
in some forty places, why was it not also in those grouped under (b),
(d), (f) and — in part — (g), which together little exceed that number?
In the about two hundred and fifty places grouped under (a), (c), (e)
and — in part — (g), the mark cannot, of course, indicate the omission
of a letter inserted by mistake, for there is no letter to omit. Nor
does it indicate that a letter has been omitted by mistake. In quite
a number of cases, the line or dot is found over a blank space between
letters more than sufficient to contain the letter whose insertion I
believe to be indicated as an alternate reading. Even where the space
is not large enough for that, we are not allowed to suppose that a
letter has been accidentally omitted. There are, at least, thirty inter-
lineations, most of them undoubtedly from the first hand. Why
should omissions be supplied in that waj^ in those places and not else-
where? Finally, in the case of some of the words grouped under (g)r
the mere omission of the marked letter would make nonsense.

A SAMARITAN’ PENTATEUCH, WRITTEN IN A. D. 1232. 661

There are four places where a letter with a line over it has been
interlineated by the first hand. Can we not infer that at first the
scribe considered the shorter reading as the only one entitled to be
recorded, but at length concluded to note the other as secondary ?

An erasure per se it is hard to assign to a particular person. All
those, for caligraphic reasons and several others, were evidently made
by Abraham, and, I think, I could produce some evidence tending to
show that some of the erasures made to change the spelling of words
were also his work. I can now only mention that on page 415 (Num.
xxi. 33) 'onjop1? was the original reading which was changed by the
first hand to □mop*? (the latter is the reading of Blayney’s text
and the former of manuscripts 61 and 64). If the (about) half dozen
instances of the erasure of a dotted letter could be traced to the orig-
inal writer of this codex, we might infer that at first he considered
those letters as possibly part of the text, but was subsequently led
to cast them out ; thus, in regard to each of them, we might see three
judgments, viz. : at first, (1) that the best supported text omitted it ;
but (2) that it had enough authority to entitle it to a second place ;
finally, (3) that it was not entitled even to second place. If those
erasures were made by a second hand, the same course of reasoning
would hold good, inasmuch as he has left other dotted letters un-
touched, but the final decision would not be backed with Abraham’s
authority.

The phenomena of dotting and lining, of interlineation and of
erasure show a careful weighing of the comparative authority of the
different readings, and prove that the one preferred was written at
length and the one of secondary authority only indicated. The sys-
tem of spelling, or rather want of system, would show the same
thing. A letter lined or dotted in a certain word in some passages is
in others inserted without any such mark ; in others, again, is omitted
without any mark ; and in still others is omitted, but its insertion in-
dicated. Variety in spelling is adhered to where uniformity might
have been attained without change in meaning ; to it was sacrified
even the carrying out of that caligraphic device to which so much
was sacrificed, proving that truth, fidelity to the (in the writer’s judg-
ment) best supported text, was preferred to beauty of arrangement.

I need scarcely say that it is evident from the facts already stated
that we have not here a mere collection of all readings, good, bad and
indifferent, or even good and indifferent, known to the scribe. There
are very many readings noted in Blayney of which we find no trace
here.

I hope I have established what I undertook to prove, viz. : that this
codex of the Samaritan Pentateuch is a critical copy of the year
A.D. 1232.

In conclusion let me refer to the bearing which this investigation
has on the question of the origin of the celebrated roll attributed to
Abishua, the great-grandson of Aaron, the first high priest of Israel,

662

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

now in the sjmagogue in Nablous. The writer of codex, if not
an inhabitant of Nablous, was probably in that city before the six-
tieth j’ear of his age. His position, personal and official, among his
co-religionists being such as it was — apart from his own statements
and the evidence from his work, the colophon calls him “Judge of
Israel ” — he would not be forbidden access to the synagogue copies
of the Law. A scribe of such a conscientious and critical turn of
mind as we have found him, it is certain that in his labors he would
use the best manuscript authority within reach. From the various
readings which he has indicated in my codex, it is plain that he knew
of no manuscript of absolute authority, of no one whose text might
not yield place to that of another in quite a number of places. If he
had access to a manuscript which he believed was rightly attributed
to Abishua, would he not have accepted a document so venerable in
age and origin as authoritative? I am, therefore, inclined to believe
that the Nablous roll was not in A.D. 1232 attributed to the great-
grandson of Aaron, the brother of Moses, and that, if it was then in
existence, it had no unique authority at that date. A more positive
inference can scarce^ be drawn until some of the elements of doubt
in the chain of reasoning are removed.

Towerhill (Guttenberg P.O.), N. J. W. Scott Watson.

A NOTEWORTHY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE PUBLIC
AND THE PRIVATE EPISTLES OF THE
NEW TESTAMENT.

To my knowledge no commentator has hitherto adverted to a point
which seems to me deserving of being noted. In the Epistles of the
New Testament, addressed to communities, no individuals then alive,
of whom any evil thing is related, or who are spoken of with disapproba-
tion, are mentioned by name. In such Epistles the names of living per-
sons frequently occur, who are referred to in terms of approval, or to
whom no stigma is affixed. But in the Epistles which may be called
private letters, that is, which are neither catholic nor addressed to
churches, individuals are mentioned by name who are blamed for mis-
conduct. Terms of censure for persons whose names are not sup-
pressed can be found in those letters which were evidently designed
not to be read in public. Thus, Paul in writing to Timothy names with
disapprobation Hymenaeus and Alexander (1 Tim. i. 20), Phygelus
and Hermogenes (2 Tim. i. 15), Hymenaeus and Philetus (2 Tim. ii.
IT), Demas (2 Tim. iv. 10), Alexander, the coppersmith (2 Tim.
iv. 14), Onesimus (Philemon 11). So John, in his Third Epistle,
which is addressed to Gaius, names Diotrephes as an evildoer (v. 9).
But in the Epistles to communities, while offenders are freely rebuked,
no one of them is specified by name. The silence preserved regard-
ing the name of the incestuous man in Corinth (1 Cor. v) is particu-
larly striking. The greatness of his sin is dwelt on, his condemnation

ON I{ Ad HUE NO I IN MATT. IV. 16.

668

is insisted on, but his name is withheld. And when Paul, with such
tenderness and delicacy, gives direction, in his Second Epistle to the
Corinthians (ii. 5-10), that the penitent offender should be restored
to the fellowship of the Church, he still avoids the mention of his
name. The language of reprobation is, indeed, applied to one who
has the name of Jezebel given to her in the Epistle to the angel of
the Church of Thyatira (Rev. ii. 20). But this name is manifestly a
symbolical, not a real, one.

This characteristic, which we have indicated, makes it clear that the
Epistles addressed to individuals were intended solely for those who
received them, and were not to be read in public. Who, indeed,
could suppose Titus reading aloud to a congregation in Crete such a
statement as we find in Titus i. 12, 13 ?

The point which I have made is not without apologetic value. It
helps us to see the character of naturalness and reality which belongs
to the Epistles of the New Testament. If a forger could think of
imparting such an appearance to fictitious letters, it would be neces-
sary for the success of his trick that these marks of naturalness
should readily strike the reader, and not escape the notice of the
world for ages.

Pascal, after expressing his admiration for this peculiarity in the
style of the Gospel, that there is not a single invective indulged in
by the historians against Judas or Pilate, or any of the enemies or
murderers of Jesus Christ, makes the following reflections : “ Had this
delicacy on the part of the evangelical historians been only assumed,
together with the other features of their amiable character, and had
they only assumed it that it might be observed, then, even though
they had not dared in some way or other to call attention to it them-
selves, they could not have failed to procure some friend to notice it
to their advantage. But, as they were quite unaffected and disinter-
ested, they never provided any one to make such a comment. In fact,
I know not that the remark was ever made till now, and this is a
strong proof of the simplicity of their conduct.”

The application of these reflections of Pascal, mutaiis mutandis , to
the present case is obvious.

Pittsburgh, Pa. Dunlop Moore.

ON KA6HMEN0S IN MATT. IY. 16.

Must xaihjfievos, in Matt. iv. 16, be translated by “sitting?”
The corresponding word in the Hebrew original of Isa. ix. 1, from
which Matt. iv. 16 is a citation, is hoV/chim, “going.” That this
is the correct reading of the Hebrew is confirmed, not merely by the
unanimity of the Hebrew manuscripts, but also by the unanimity of
the versions, all of which, with the apparent exception of the manu-
script A of the Septuagint, render by a word meaning “going.” The

664

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

manuscripts and B of the Septuagint have icopeuop.evo$ ; the Coptic
version of the LXX. has ndetmoshi , “ those who go and the Hexaplar
Syriac version has damehallekh , “ who were going.” The Syriac Pe-
shito version has damehallekhin , “ who were going.” The Y ulgate has
“ qui ambulabat.” The Chaldee Targum has p'prrp nrn, “ who
were going.”

Since there can be no dispute about the correctness of the Hebrew
text, and since halakh cannot mean “ to sit,” the whole question is
thrown back upon xaftjjfisvos. It must, if it mean “ sitting,” be an
adaptation or gloss of the sense of the original, due to a change of
metaphor similar to that which we meet with in Jonah i. 4, where
hetil ruahh , “ he cast a wind,” is rendered by ^rjyEipzv itveupa,11 he stirred
up a wind ” (see for other examples of this change Hatch’s Essays
in Biblical Greek , p. 17). The latter part of the verse may have in-
fluenced such a change in Isa. ix. 1. But such a change of metaphor
is not required here either by the Greek idiom or by the other Greek
manuscripts of the LXX. Can xad7jp.evo$, then, by any possibility, have
been intended, as it stands, or in the form from which it has been cor-
rupted, to mean “ going,” and hence be a translation of halakh ? In
the JEolic and Doric dialects Eta was used instead of Epsilon Iota
(Kiihner, § 201, 2). In the Alexandrian dialect Eta was frequently
confounded with Epsilon Iota (Winer, New Testament Grammar ,
§5 ; Scrivener’s Introduction ,p. 159; Tischendorff ’s Prolegomena, §28).
If this were the case here, we would have xadTjpsxos used dialectically
for xaftEipivos from xadiypt, “ to march down,” as in vEschylus’ Theb.,
79, or “ to set oneself in motion,” as in Herodotus vii. 138 (see
Liddell, and Scott, in loc.~). Or xa&rjpsvos may be a dialectic form for
xaftip svo?, second Aorist Middle participle from xaftir)p.i. In the de-
cline of the Greek language Eta and Epsilon were confounded (Soph-
ocles’ Dictionary, under “ Eta ”). This was a characteristic of Alexan-
drian Greek also (see Scrivener, Introduction, p. 14, and Winer’s
Grammar , § 5).

But if it be not admissible that xa&ijpsvos is a dialectic form of
writing, it may be a scribal error, arising from dictation, or, perhaps,
a willful mistake of a copyist. Both of these errors were very com-
mon (see Reuss’ History of the New Testament, Yol. ii, § 364).

The ease with which forms from xddrpxai and forms from xahirjpi
may be confounded and changed b}'- copjdsts is manifest in the LXX.
Forms from the latter verb occur five times in the Yatican manuscript
of the LXX. One of these times it is a translation of the verb liaya,
“to be,” and another time of yashabh, “ to sit” (see Jer. xxxii. 5,
Zech. vi. 13). In Jer. xxxii. 5, B reads xadurat. ; A, dno^avelrai • S (or
X), not found ; the Coptic has ephehemsi , “ he shall dwell.” In Zech.
vi. 13, B reads xadisrac (?) ; S (or X), xaOtsrau ; A, xadtenat ; the Coptic
has ephehemsi, “ he shall sit the Hexaplar Syriac has nettebh, “ he
shall sit.” Since, in Ex. xxiv. 18, A has xdihjpai as a rendering of
haya, a rendering which is confirmed by the Ethiopic nabara, “ he

PROF. CHEYNE’ S IDEA OF INSPIRATION.

665

dwelt ” or “ stayed,” there can be no doubt that haya could at times
be rendered by xadryiai ; and, if so, it follows that in Jer. xxxii. 5, as
well as in Zech. vi. 13, the translators had used xa&r]/j.ai , and that
copyists had afterwards corrupted the text into x-afUryn.

Do not the above facts afford some basis for the conjecture that
the composer of the Greek of Matthew may not have written “ sit-
ting ” for “ going,” but that we have here either an erroneous spelling
or a dialectic form of a second Aorist or Perfect participle from
xadiiyit, making an unparalleled but perfectly allowable rendering of
halakh, “ to go ? ”

Allegheny. Robert Dick Wilson.

PROF. CHEYNE’S IDEA OF INSPIRATION.

Mr. Alfred W. Benn, a theologian who occupies, as he tells us, a
x‘ slightly more advanced position ” than Prof. Cheyne, and who, there-
fore, is certainly not moved by “ apologetical rancor,” points out in a
notice of Prof. Cheyne’s last book, Founders of Old Testament
Criticism , the confusing way in which he uses the term “ Inspiration.”
After animadverting on the frequency with which the words “ rever-
ent ” and “ devout ” meet us in Prof. Cheyne’s pages, and somewhat
dryly remarking that Prof. Cheyne’s “ reverential attitude ” towards
the Biblical narratives is one which “ carries with it not the slightest
concession to its historical authority, where that has been impeached,
as he thinks successfully, by a criticism which reverences nothing but
scientific truth,” Mr. Benn makes the following interesting observa-
tions upon Prof. Cheyne’s attitude towards inspiration :

“The delicate question of inspiration is one the decision of which cannot fail
largely to affect the general attitude of theologians in these controversies ; and
here Prof. Cheyne’s view seems to differ intrinsically from that of his friend.
According to Prof. Driver, the Eliliu speeches, although by a different and later
poet, are just as much inspired as the rest of Job. Our author on the other
hand holds that though ‘of course inspired,’ they are not inspired in the same
degree as the rest of the book, nor ‘ must we force ourselves to reverence these
two poets in an equal degree ’ (pp. 348, 349). The Chronicles are also ‘of course
inspired, ’ but only ‘ as even a sermon might be called inspired, i.e., touched in a
high degree with the best spiritual influences of the time.’ The Chronicler is
only guided by inspiration ‘with those limitations subject to which the same
thing could be said of any conscientious and humble-minded preacher of the
Christian Church’ (p. 362). We knew on the authority of Keble that all ser-
mons were good, but we did not know before how many of them were inspired.
At any rate it is to be hoped that few preachers would now deliberately falsify
history to the same extent as the Chronicler. There are, however, three books
which Prof. Cheyne cannot bring himself to place even on the level of a tolerable
sermon. The Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and Esther are not inspired at all ;
at any rate they ‘are not for us Christians, in the truest sense of the word,
canonical ’ (p. 349). Nevertheless all three deserve ‘ reverent study.’ I confess
I do not understand the constitution of a mind that can study with any feeling
but one of utter disgust such a glorification of cold blooded and sanguinary vin-
dictiveness as the Book of Esther” ( The Academy, for August 19, 1893).

EDITORIAL ATOTES.

THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE PRESBYTERIAN
CHURCH IN CANADA.

According to appointment, the General Assembly met in the city
of Brantford, Ontario, on the evening of June 14. The retiring
Moderator, Rev. Dr. Caven, preached on the text : “ All Scripture is
given,” etc. The Rev. Dr. Sedgwick, of Tatamagouche, N. S., was
unanimously chosen Moderator, and filled the Chair to the very great
satisfaction of the Assembly. .

The General Assembly of 1893 was one of the briefest held in the
Canadian Church, having closed at 11p. m. on the 21st. This was
largely due to the fact that no matters of special difficulty came before
the Assembly, but also to the excellent feeling which prevailed and
the general desire to avoid unnecessary discussion. In nearty all
cases speaking was condensed and practical.

The business of the Assembly consisted mainlj’ in reviewing the
•work of the year in connection with the several schemes and institu-
tions of the Church. By the good hand of God upon the Church
some measure of progress fell to be reported in the missionary oper-
ations in all departments, though neither the results on mission fields
nor the liberality attained in giving is all that the Christian heart can
desire. The standard of liberality is, however, gradually rising, as
the sense of the Church’s duty to labor for the extension of Christ’s
kingdom is becoming more vivid.

The Home Mission has been considerably advanced, especially in
the Northwest and British Columbia. New- fields have been occupied,
mission stations have grown into augmented congregations, and aug-
mented congregations have become self-sustaining. A hopeful feature
in the work is that the newrer Provinces and Territories are satisfac-
torily increasing their contributions to the Home Mission fund — a
matter of great importance, seeing that the resources of the older
Provinces, in some localities, are impaired by immigration into these
wide regions.

The whole amount expended in Home Mission work during the
year was a little over $160,000. Of this sum. about $33,000 went
towards the augmentation of ministers’ salaries in weak congregations
— congregations which would otherwise have been mission stations.
That this branch of Home Missions is not more heartily sustained is

A SSEMBL T OF PEE SB YTERIAN CHUR CH IN CANADA. 667

to be regretted. That the strong should assist the weak is a primary
Christian obligation, emphasized by our Presbyterian system ; and
that the aiding of weak congregations is properly a part of Home
Mission work is abundantly obvious. The Sustentation Fund of the
Free Church of Scotland cannot, perhaps, be an exact model for us
in these new and widely extended countries, but it represents a sound
principle, which should be applied as circumstances demand or admit.

The Canadian Church has its Foreign Missions in the New Hebrides,
West Indies, China, Formosa and Honan, India, and among the
aborigines of our own country. A mission to the Jews in Palestine
has also been decided on, and a missionary sent forth, but the precise
locality for operations has not yet been selected. A measure of pro-
gress is reported from all the fields occupied. In Trinidad, encour-
aging results are obtained among the coolies from India. In For-
mosa there are 2641 church members and 56 native preachers. In
Honan, after persistent opposition, the missionaries seem at length
to have gained a foothold. Medical work has been much developed
in the past year, and is proving of much service in the mission. In
India, there are six ordained missionaries, five lady physicians, five
lady teachers, besides the usual contingent of native helpers. Five
stations are permanently occupied, all in the Province of Malwa, in
which no other Presbyterian Church is working. As they view the
immense field for which the Church is, in some sense, responsible, the
missionaries are crying out for more laborers.

Work has been commenced among the Chinese in Victoria. B. C.,
but it is yet too early to report results. The Presbyterian Church
was somewhat late in undertaking a mission to our own Indians of
the Northwest, but our zealous missionaries have had considerable
encouragement, especially in their educational efforts.

The question as to the relation of theological schools to the
Church, and the best mode of appointing professors, so as to secure
the just authority of the Church in the education of its ministry, was
before the Assembly of last year, and a committee was appointed to
take the whole subject into consideration. The careful report of this
committee showed that the practice of the Church in its several insti-
tutions, and at different times, was various. In all the colleges, ex-
cept two, appointments had uniformly been made by the Supreme
Court ; but in some cases this was done after nomination by Presby-
teries, in others after nomination by College Boards, in still others
without nomination at all. In Queen’s College and Morrin College,
both of which have faculties in arts as well as in theology, all ap-
pointments, in accordance with their charters, are made by the Board
of Trustees, which are not appointed by the Assembly. Last year
the General Assembly, while appointing a committee on the general
subject, also requested the Trustees of Queen’s and Morrin to con-
sider whether their theological faculties could be brought into closer
relations to the Church. Two reports, therefore, were presented to

€68

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

the Assembly — one by the Committee and one by the Trustees of
Queen’s University. The latter says : “ It seems evident to the
Trustees that the spii’it of the charter requires that no one should be
appointed a professor in the theological department who might be
•considered unsuitable by the Church, and therefore that such appoint-
ments should be reported to the next Assembly after the}' were made,
and be subject to its veto. The Trustees see no objection to such a
modification of the charter.” The report of the Committee recom-
mended that the practice should be uniform in all the colleges and
that it should be — appointment by the General Assembly, pursuant
to nomination b}T the governing bodies of the respective colleges. In
this way, the authority of the Church would be maintained, while full
advantage would be taken of the special knowledge which boards of
trustees or senates might be supposed to possess.

The Assembly expressed its appreciation of the excellent spirit in
which the Trustees of Queen’s University had sought to meet the
wishes of the Church, and referred to them the report of the Com-
mittee, to give it careful consideration and report their opinion of its
recommendations to next General Assembly. The Assembly further
expressed general approval of the recommendations of the Committee
as securing to the Church a proper control over all appointments to
theological chairs, and referred the report to the Presbyteries of the
Church and to the boards and senates of the colleges, with instruc-
tions to report next year on the best method of making appointments,
and on the desirability of having the same method in all the colleges
or of allowing diversity of practice, so long as no appointment is
made contrary to the mind of the Assembty.

The training of her ministry is clearly one of the functions of the
Christian Church, and one of the utmost importance. If the duties
of pastor in a congregation should be discharged under the immedi-
ate care and sanction of the Church, it seems self-evident that the
very responsible work of teaching theology to the future teachers of
congregations should be regarded as strictly a part of the Church’s
work ; but, if so, the argument for the appointment of theological
professors by the Church rather than by Boards which are not
direct^ under the Church’s supervision is very strong. It is, at the
same time, desirable that such appointments should be made in the
way best fitted to secure the most suitable men, while the prerogative
of the Church is maintained.

Towards the end of last year a number of highly respected minis-
ters of the Congregational Church met the Presbytery of Toronto,
and read a statement subscribed b}' themselves and others of their
brethren in favor of union with the Presbyterian Church, and re-
quested the Presbytery to take such action in the matter as it might
see fit. It was arranged that these brethren should ask the Congre-
gational Union at its first meeting to appoint a Committee on Union
with the Presbyterian Church, while the Presbytery should memori-

ASSEMBLY OF PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN CANADA. 669

alize the General Assembly to appoint a Committee on Union with
the Congregational Church. The Congregational brethren did not
succeed in carrying in the Union the motion which they presented T
but a compromise motion appointing a Committee on Union in gen-
eral was adopted. In these circumstances, the Presbytery of Toronto
would hardly urge the prayer of its memorial. The following reso-
lution was, however, unanimously adopted by the General Assembly r
“ The General Assembly receives the Memorial, expresses its great
regard for the brethren of the Congregational Church who recently
conferred with the Presbytery of Toronto on the subject of Union
and sincerely rejoices in all the work done for the Master by the
honored branch of the Church with which they are connected. The
General Assembly will be always ready to entertain the question of
union with other evangelical Churches, and in particular with the
Congregational Church, when in the providence of God good results
seem to be promised ; but in view of the action reported as taken by
the late meeting of the Congregational Union, it appears better not
to adopt the recommendation of the Memorial of the Presbytery of
Toronto. But in testimony of the importance which the Assembly
attaches to the more perfect manifestation of the unity of the Re-
deemer’s body, it is resolved to appoint a Committee on the General
Subject of Union, with instructions to hold themselves ready to con-
fer with any similar body or bodies which may be appointed by any
other Church or Churches, should the way be clearly opened up for
conference.”

The Report on Statistics was presented by the Rev. Dr. Torrancer
the efficient and accurate convener, for many years, of the Committee
on that important subject.

The number of communicants returned is 173,037, an increase for
the year of 8681. Of the 10,937 persons baptized, 875 were adults.
The attendance at weekly prayer-meetings is too small, being rather
less than third the number of communicants. Sabbath-school attend-
ance is 140,730. Women’s Foreign Missionary Associations number
615, an increase of 26. There is still, therefore, a good deal of room
for extending these valuable organizations.

Increase in stipend, $47,905, making the entire amount paid in the
Church, $885,740. As there are 907 pastoral charges, this gives an
average of $976 paid to ministers by congregations. The arrears of
stipend reported are $13,213, which cannot be considered large. The
expenditure on building and repairing churches and manses is $27,095
less than in 1891 ; this probably accounts for the slightly diminished
total of the Church’s givings during the year. For all congregational
purposes, the amount contributed was $1,653,216, which gives $1823
per congregation, i. e., pastoral charge. The total reported contribu-
tions for all purposes are $1,996,171, a decrease of $7068 on the pre-
ceding year. It is, however, gratifying to note that for the schemes
there is an increase of $8299, making the whole amount $295,475.

670

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

It is much to be desired that the members and adherents of churches
would carefully stud}" their statistics, which are so instructive and
compiled with much labor and pains. These tables are not beneath
the attention of those who most desire spiritual fruit and who trust
least to an arm of flesh.

Toronto. William Caven.

THE GENERAL SYNOD OF THE REFORMED CHURCH IN

AMERICA.

This body met at Asbury Park, N. J., June 7, and continued in ses-
sion eight days. The Rev. P. M. Brett, D.D., was elected President,
a young man for the position, but one who discharged its duties to
the entire satisfaction of all concerned. A full representation was
present from all parts of the denomination, a pleasant feeling per-
vaded the bod}7, and the debates, though often spirited, were devoid
of acrimony.

The reports of the various Boards were encouraging. That of For-
eign Missions showed that the debt in bank had been paid, and the
Security Fund ($53,000) was now for the first time in many years
unpledged and in the hands of the Board, the total receipts for the
year being over $136,000, of which the Woman’s Auxiliary had con-
tributed nearly $30,000. Mention was made of the meeting in New
York in January last of officers of many missionary societies for con-
ference, which gave much valuable information and suggested con-
siderable economies in method. A just tribute was paid to Dr. J.
Y. N. Talmage, who died last summer after having spent forty-five
years in service, and who, by the testimony of his fellow-laborers, was
facile princeps in every department of missionary work. The work
still goes on in his field, and there are now ten self-supporting churches
in Amoy. In Japan, Dr. Amerman, after sixteen years’ successful
labor as professor of theology, has been compelled by ill health to re-
turn home. The reaction there against Christianity, so painfully con-
spicuous of late years, seems to be subsiding. In India the chief
progress has been along educational lines. The general trouble in
all the fields is that success creates new calls for laborers which there
are neither the men nor the means to meet. The Domestic Board re-
ported a like relief from burdensome debt, the total receipts being a
little over $88,000. It has aided in supporting 177 churches and mis-
sions, besides the aid given towards the building of churches and par-
sonages. Mention is made of the conference of delegates of Presby-
terian, Congregational and Reformed bodies to promote comity and
avoid disturbance in carrying on denominational work. It is pleas-
ant to know that something is done to abate what is the great scandal
of American Protestantism.* The Board of Education reports an

* The following resolution was passed : “Resolved, That the rule adopted by
the Board of the Reformed Church, and confirmed at the recent conference with

GENERAL SYNOD OF THE REFORMED CHURCH IN AMERICA. 671

increase of permanent funds ($8500), of contributing churches and of
the yearly offerings. Ninety-one students have been aided, and
matei’ial help has been given to Hope College and the Northwestern
Academy. The Board of Publication reported “ the most prosperous
year ” in their experience, in supplying books to churches, mission
stations, and Sunday-schools not able to purchase them.

One of the most important matters before the Synod was the elec-
tion of a professor of didactic theology in the Seminary at New
Brunswick to supply the vacancy made bjr the death of the lamented
Dr. Mabon. Many persons were put in nomination, but the choice
ultimately fell on the Rev. J. Preston Searle, minister of the First Re-
formed Church in Somerville, N. J., a man widely known for pulpit
ability and pastoral skill. He is still under forty, and will have time
to fit himself still more thoroughly for the duties of his important
chair — an item of interest in these days when divers and strange doc-
trines are broached in places where one would hardly expect them,
and when assaults upon the fundamental principles of evangelical
faith are made from within as well as from without. Strong and well-
equipped men are needed nowadays to man the beleaguered citadel of
orthodoxy. And no one doubts where Dr. Searle stands. Himself
the son and grandson of ministers of our denomination, and having
spent his whole life hitherto in her communion and service, he cannot
be a perfunctory official, but will with all his heart uphold the banner
of Heidelberg and Dort, and at the same time resist and expose the
new errors which afflict the contemporary Church. The didactic
chair is not a bed of down, but it is a place of advantage for dealing
heavy blows against the enemies of truth.

A marked feature of this Synod was its winding up of the project
so long entertained of a Federal Union with the (German) Reformed
Church. The matter had been wisely and carefully considered. Fre-
quent conferences had been held. One tentative after another was
proposed until at last a scheme was evolved which seemed to obviate
all reasonable objections and at the same time secure the ends aimed
at. This, when submitted to the Classes, was approved by nearly all
the German judicatories and by two-thirds of the Dutch. But when
it came before the General Synod last year for final ratification a de-
cision was postponed, and the plan referred once more to the Classes.
The result of their reconsideration was somewhat of a sui’prise.
While some were eai’nest and emphatic in approval, it turned out that
a majority voted in the negative. Then, of coui'se, there was but one
thing to do, and it was done. And so the proposed federation has
failed. But we believe it has left no heart-burning behind. Nor has

the Presbyterian and Congregational representatives, viz.: ‘Not to gather a
congregation in any community when the field is fuliy occupied by another
evangelical denomination,’ is again called to the attention of all those of our
Church who are engaged in the work of Church extension.” It is to he hoped
that an earnest effort will be made all round to conform not only to the letter,
but to the spirit of this resolution.

672

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

all that has been said or printed on the subject been in vain. The
Federal idea has been fully and fairly brought before the general
mind of non-prelatical believers, and seed has been sown which some
day will yield a precious harvest. The friends of the scheme have
no reason to regret their course. It was right that the attempt should
be made, nor is its ill success any argument against such a view.

The report of the Standing Committee on Systematic Beneficence
indicated that substantial progress had been made in this important
matter. The exodus of the Free Church of Scotland fifty years ago
startled the whole Christian world, but reflecting men were still more
impressed with the success of that body in securing its various funds,
a success due to the genius of Chalmers in causing a personal appli-
cation to be made at short intervals to every individual, so that “ the
power of the littles ” was shown to be amazing. All are to give, no
matter how small a sum, and to give it regularly. This is the end to
be secured, and it is of small consequence how it is reached. Never
will treasuries become plethoric and the Church perform its whole
duty until the privilege of systematic giving is brought to the door
of each member of Christ’s house. It is a good sign of the times
that in all evangelical communions there is a constant nisus to this
grand result.

New York. T. W. Chambers.

THE GENERAL SYNOD OF THE REFORMED CHURCH
IN THE UNITED STATES (FORMERLY,

GERMAN REFORMED).

The General Synod of this Church, which meets only triennially,
held its sessions this year at Reading, Pa., beginning Wednesday,
May 24, and closing Thursday, June 1. It was, in many respects, an
interesting and significant session. First of all it met in one of the
strongholds of the denomination ; for Reading was originally a Ger-
man settlement, and, although having only 72,000 inhabitants, has
thirteen Reformed Churches. The General Synod, therefore, received
a royal reception from this Reformed city.

But more significant was the fact that this session was the one
hundredth anniversary of the organization of the denomination. For,
although the German immigrants who founded the Church began set-
tling in America in the early part of the last century, yet the scattered
congregations were not organized until 1747, by Rev. Mr. Schlatter.
Then they associated themselves together into a Coetus as an aux-
iliary of the Reformed Church of Holland, and were cared for by the
Classis of Amsterdam, who had sent Rev. Mr. Schlatter to this coun-
try. During the forty -six years that they were under the control of
the Reformed Church of Holland, that Church spent thousands of
dollars in caring for this distant German Chui’ch. But in 1793 the
Coetus of Pennsylvania felt it necessary to become an independent,
self-suppoi-ting body ; and thej' declared their independence by organ-

GENERAL SYNOD OF TEE REFORMED CHURCH IN TEE U. S. 673

izing themselves into a Synod at Lancaster, Pa., on April 27, 1793.
Very properly this General Synod observed this session as a centen-
nial meeting, and devoted Monday evening, May 29, to special exer-
cises. The ladies of St. Paul’s Reformed Church, in which the ses-
sions were held, gave a banquet to the delegates, after which a number
of suitable toasts were responded to. It was very suitable and for-
tunate that the Synod should have with it Rev. Dr. Philip Schalf, of
New York. Forty -nine years ago he came to this country as profes-
sor at the Theological Seminary at Mercersburg, and then delivered
his inaugural address at Reading. He was, therefore, called upon
to respond to the toast, “ Switzerland, the Cradle of the Reformed
Church and, in spite of his age and recent ill health, he responded
in a happy manner. Rev. Dr. J. B. Drury, of the Dutch Reformed
Church (the lineal descendant of the Classis of Amsterdam in this
country), responded very excellently to the toast, “ The Reformed
Church of America, the Early Friend and Foster-mother of the Re-
formed Church in the United States.” Rev. Dr. H. J. Ruetenik (one
of the prominent ministers of foreign birth) responded to the toast,
“ The Rhineland and the Reformed Church in the United States.”
Rev. Dr. J. H. Dubbs,who wrote the historical manual of the Church,
responded to the toast, “ Our Pioneer Forefathers.” Rev. Dr. G. W.
Williard, one of the pioneers of the Western work, was to have spoken
on “ The Church in the West : Its Early Settlement and Growth,”
but was prevented by ill health. His place was taken by Rev. Dr. E.
V. Gerhart, one of the oldest of the ministers. The General Synod
then adjourned in a body to the Academ}^ of Music, opposite the
Church, which was filled with a large audience. Rev. James W.
Meminger delivered a telling address on “ The Landmarks of a Cen-
tury.” Rev. Dr. J. Elmendorf, as the representative of the Dutch
Reformed Church, made an admirable address on“ A Glance at Forces
Working For and Against Church Union.” And Rev. Dr. J. S. Kieffer
delivered an able address on “ Dependence and Independence.” The
General Synod, further, took action which will revive the correspond-
ence broken a century ago with the Classis ^f Amsterdam in Holland,
by appointing the officers of the Synod a committee to prepare a
suitable memorial to be sent to that Classis, reminding them that our
denomination has not forgotten their kindness of over a century ago,
and extending to them our Christian greetings with prayers for the
divine blessing to rest on their work. The Synod also appointed a
Committee to erect a suitable monument over the grave of Rev.
Michael Schlatter, the founder and organizer of the Church, who lies
buried in Franklin Square, Philadelphia, a part of which was origin-
ally the cemetery of the Reformed Church. The President of the
Synod had the privilege of presiding over its sessions seated in a
chair which belonged to Rev. Mr. Schlatter, and which was loaned to
the Synod by Mr. Rudolph Kelker, of Harrisburg, whose property it
is. These events and resolutions make this General Synod one of
43

674

THE PRESS TTERIAX AXD REFORMED REVIEW.

historic significance. May the next century of the Church's history
be more prosperous and blessed than that which is gone.

Another peculiarity of this session was its attention to Church
government. It was not disturbed by questions of doctrine like some
of the other Churches, but it devoted a large part of its time to
Church government. For fifteen years the Church has had commit-
tees at work on a new Constitution, and the present committee re-
ported a Constitution of 193 articles. It is Pcesbyterial in its sys-
tem, of course, making provision for the four courts, Consistory,
Classis, Synod and General Synod ; hut, like all human attempts, it is
not a perfect instrument, nor is it exactly harmonious in all its parts,
for it gives rather more power to the Classis and Synod at the ex-
pense of the congregation and General Synod. It may he said to he
aristocratic Presbyterialism, centring in the Synod. And it is un-
fortunate in not making any provision for future amendments. Still
no Constitution is perfect. Every Constitution will find men who
will want to improve it. The General Synod, after wrestling with a
part of it. article by article, for awhile, sent it down to the Classes for
adoption or rejection.

Another important feature of the Synod was the matter of Church
Union. For six years the two Churches which hear the name of
Reformed have been laboring to formulate a plan which would be ac-
ceptable to both denominations. These committees framed articles
for the formation of a federal union under a federal Synod. This plan
was adopted by both General Synods, and then sent down to the
Classes. It was adopted by almost all of the Classes of the Reformed
Church in the United States. But the Reformed Church in America,
after sending it down to the Classes twice, and adopting it the first
time, failed to adopt it the second time. Rev. Dr. J. Elmendorf, the
corresponding delegate of the Dutch Church, regretfull}' brought the
news. But his admirable address so aptly put the situation before the
General Synod that while there was general regret there was no revul-
sion of feeling against union. The Reformed Church stands ready for
union : and the articles of federal union, drawn up by the joint com-
mittees, will be the basis%or future unions. Organic union has been
found so difficult that the federal theory of union will be the future
method. W e suggest these articles (originally based on the draft by
Rev. Dr. J. A. DeBaum, of the Dutch Church) as a basis to begin to
bring about a federal union of the various branches of the family of the
Reformed Churches holding the Presbyterial system, throughout the
world. The General Synod also elected the following as delegates to
the next council of the Reformed Alliance at Glasgow, in 1896 : Rev.
Drs. Apple, J. Dahlman, Eschbach, Gerhard, Gerhart, Good, Kefauver,
H. Kieffer, Leberman, J. Miller, Mosser, Peters, Rupp, Stahr, Swander,
Tan Horne, Prugh, and Rev. Messrs. Bartholomew and Bridenbaugh,
with Elders Ankeny, Barnhardt, Dietz, Kieffer, Miller and House-
keeper ; and provided for its share in the expenses of the Alliance.

The various practical operations of the Church, which always come

GENERAL SYNOD OF THE REFORMED CHURCH IN THE U. S. 675

before a General Synod, reveal progress. The Foreign Mission Board,
whose work is centi’ed at Sendai, Japan, reported a steady progress.
It has a theological seminary, girls’ school, 9 congregations, 38 preach-
ing stations, 8 native and 3 foreign missionaries, and 1733 members.
The Church raised, on an average, $21,140 annually during the last
three years. The Board had to report a deficit of $15,000. The
Home Missionary Board reported greater progress. During the last
three years the Home Missionary work has been more unified under
the General Synod. The Board reported 136 missions, and the offer-
ings were at the rate of $41,640 a }rear. The Church raised $16,000
more than it did during the three years before the last General
Synod. The most successful phase of the Home Mission work was
among the Hungarians. This was begun about three or four years
ago, and has developed into sixteen congregations. There is a strong
Reformed Church in Hungary, numbering two millions, and some of
our immigrants belong to that Church. They seem very responsive
to religious work. The Board has two missionaries at work among
them, one at Cleveland, the other at Pittsburgh. The Board also
supported a harbor missionary at New York, who labors among the
German immigrants. During the past three years he received 1274
families consigned to his care from Europe. In Sabbath-school work
the Synod took a forward step in the appointment of a Sabbath-
school Secretary, a new office. Rev. Rufus W. Miller, the founder of
the Brotherhood of Andrew and Philip, and one of the most practi-
cal among the younger ministers, was chosen to that office. The
Synod took strong action protesting against the opening of the Col-
umbian Exposition on the Sabbath, but, strange to say, neglected to
take action on temperance or even to reiterate its previous strong
action on that subject. The report on the state of religion was en-
couraging. Where, a century ago, there were 22 ministers and be-
tween 10,000 and 20,000 members, to-day there are 8 Synods, 55
Classes, 885 ministers, 1583 congregations, 212,830 members, 1563
Sunday-schools, 149,023 Sunday-school scholars, 285 students for the
ministry. It gave $236,321 for benevolent purposes, $1,060,229 for
congregational purposes. These statistics reveal an increase, since
last General Synod three years ago, of 50 ministers, 29 congregations,
12,332 members, 50 Sunday-schools, 10,407 scholars, $170,267 for
benevolence and $441,229 for congregational purposes. The number
of theological students is the same as three years ago. The necro-
logical roll revealed that forty-four ministers had died during the last
three years, the first of whom was the President of the last General
Synod, Rev. Dr. J. H. A. Bomberger.

The session was ably presided over by Rev. Dr. T. G. Apple, of
Lancaster, President; Rev. Dr. M. Bachman, of Baltimore, and Rev.
Dr. J. H. Sechler, of Philadelphia, Yice-Presidents ; Rev. Dr. I. H.
Reiter, of Miamisburg, Ohio, and Rev. Jacob Bahlman, of Akron,
Ohio, being Stated Clerks.

Reading, Pa.

James I. Goon.

YI.

REVIEWS OF

RECENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE.

I.— APOLOGETICAL THEOLOGY.

Religion and Revelation. By Rev. D. Van Horne, D.D., Professor of Sys-
tematic Theology in Heidelberg Theological Seminary. Pp. vi, 192. (Day-
ton, Ohio : Press of the Reformed Publishing Co. , 1892.) This is a brief state-
ment of the essentials, first, of the great historic religions, and, secondly, of
the Christian revelation, so far as it is considered under Theology proper. We
wish that the author had presented in like manner the other departments of
Systematic Theology. Perhaps it is his intention to do so. There are some
printer’s errors which should be corrected in a subsequent edition, as Dries-
bach for Griesbach, on p. 84. We think, too, that the discussion of Crea-
tion would gain in clearness if the distinction were made between creatio
prima and creatio secunda. There are places, moreover, where clearness has,
perhaps, been sacrificed to brevity. These, however, are very few. The
book is a model of simple, perspicuous, concise statement. It is an admira-
able summary of theology as far as it goes ; sufficiently full and scientific to
be useful to the theological student who would take a bird’s-eye view of his
science, and yet plain enough to be valuable to the Sabbath-school teacher
or general Christian reader. Dr. Van Horne belongs to the German Reformed
Church. His doctrinal position is that of the Heidelberg Catechism . He quotes
largely from the commentary of Ursinus. Frequent reference, however, is
made to the leading Confessions of the various branches of the Reformed
Church, especially the Westminster Confession; and it is believed that the
spirit of the work is in essential harmony with their teachings. At the same
time, the bearing of modern science and of modern theology is not overlooked.

Manual of Natural Theology. By George Park Fisher, D.D., LL.D.,

Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History in Yale University. Pp. x, 94.
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893.) Manual 'of Christian Evi-

dences. By George Park Fisher, D.D., LL.D., Titus Street Professor of
Ecclesiastical History in Yale University. Pp. ix, 120. (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1891.) Too much praise can hardly be given to these little
books. Perhaps the highest praise that could be bestowed is that they are in
every respect worthy of their author. Prof. Fisher is quick to discern the need
of the thinking public, and he brings to the supply of the need spirituality,
candor, scholarship, and style possessed by few. The demand for such man-
uals as these was never more urgent than now ; and for fullness as well as

REGENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE.

677

conciseness, comprehensiveness as well as definiteness, accuracy of statement
as well as popularity of style, they leave nothing to be desired. They are
equally scientific and interesting. We wish that they might be read by every
thoughtful person, and they ought to be studied in every Christian college
and academy. We cannot help suggesting that the author add a chapter to
the Manual of Evidences , in which chapter the various lines of evidences,
each of which has in itself been so admirably worked out, shall be presented
in their combination and thus a more impressive exhibition be given of “ the
effect. ” We must also take exception to the paragraph on p. 92, as to
“ the limits of the teaching of Jesus.” It is true that “ we go too far when
we stake the truth of Christianity on the correctness of opinions concerning
which no verdict was intended to be pronounced by Christ or His Apostles.”
It does not seem true, however, that he intended to express no opinion
“ respecting the authorship and date of Old Testament writings.” While
He did not discuss these questions critically, He did distinctly adopt the view
then current with reference to them ; and how the Son of God could have
done this and not have expressed and intended to express an opinion, it is
difficult to see. The Manual of Natural Theology we should like to see ex-
tended, so as to embrace brief chapters on the government of God and our
duties to Him in the light of nature, and on the necessity of revelation. We
prefer without doubt or hesitation to side with the “ philosophers of deserv-
edly high repute who look upon the principle of adaptation as intuitive or a
priori , and thus on a level with that of efficient causation.” While we believe
that, “ if evolutionary doctrines have raised difficulties in Natural Theology,
they have given to the argument of design a more impressive force,” we do
not believe that this is the case with the doctrines of evolution as commonly
presented. The aim of pure Darwinism would seem to be to account for
adaptation without intelligence. Nature, without intelligence or purpose, is

supposed to do what only mind could effect. Through Conversion to the

Creed. Being a Brief Account of the Reasonable Character of Religious
Conviction. By W. H. Carnegie, B.A., Rector of Great Witley, Worcester-
shire. Pp. viii, 129. (London: Longmans, Green & Co., and New York:
15 East 16th Street, 1893.) This gracefully written and attractively printed
booklet is an “ attempt to describe very briefly the origin and development
of religious faith in the soul, and to show that there is nothing in them
which reason cannot accept.” It analyzes “the conditions, the hypothesis,
and the development ” of saving faith, and proves that they are in analogy
with the action of the mind in other departments of knowledge and belief.
We do not agree with the author in everything, certainly not in his doctrine
of “ regeneration by the waters of holy baptism ;” but we feel that there is
need in this day of evincing the reasonableness of conversion, and we think
that Mr. Carnegie has done it. We wish, however, that he had given much
more prominence to conversion as the laying of our guilt on Him who died

to bear it. The Church in Relation to Skeptics. A Conversational Guide

to Evidential Work. By the Rev. Alex. J. Harrison, B.D., Vicar of Light-
cliffe, Evidential Missioner of the Church Parochial Mission Society, Lec-
turer of the Christian Evidence Society, Boyle Lecturer 1892-3, Author of
Problems of Christianity and Skepticism, etc. Pp. xvi, 341. (London:
Longmans, Green & Co., and New York: 15 East 16th Street, 1892.) This
is a unique book. It is a treatise on Applied Apologetics by one who has
been active for a quarter of a century as an evidential missioner in England.
It gives some of his experiences, and states his methods in public debate or
in private conversation with “ unbelievers,” with “ doubters,” and with
“ questioners.” The book is clearly and attractively written, is throughout
interesting, and is often very instructive. Its treatment of “ Secularism ”

678

TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

and its criticism of “ Atheism impress us as specially valuable. Excellent,
too, is the recognition of the subordinate place of Apologetics as compared
with that of positive preaching, and its insistance that the former should be
mainly aggressive rather than merely defensive. There is a suggestive chap-
ter on “Christ’s Recognition of Science,” and a fine one on the “Present-
Future Life.” Mr. Harrison holds with our Lord that whosoever believeth
on the Son hath now and here everlasting life, and he presents forcibly the
near conception of “ the life that now is,” which this should give us. Were
there space, it would be easy to commeud many other features of the book.
It abounds, too, in pregnant and pointed sentences. “ The praverless are
rarely atheists. They do not care enough about God to doubt Him.”
“ Humility is not so much the consciousness of our littleness as it is the
consciousness of God’s greatness.” “ There can be but one allowable reason
for belief, and that is the truth.” Gems like these are constantly met with.
And yet this book should be given only to those who can read with discrimi-
nation. The writer makes the mistake of many apologists: in his desire
to meet his opponent more than half way, he concedes what he ought to
defend, what must be defended if defense is to be valuable. This is specially
the case when he deals with Christianity in particular as distinguished from
religion in general. He makes practically no mention of the Old Testament,
and in the Hew Testament he would fall back on Christ Himself in the vain
attempt to hold to Him and yet play fast and loose with His teachings.
Indeed, it is evident that he belongs in many respects to the very Broad
Church Party. He does not believe in the fall of man in any historic sense.
With Maurice, he would seem to hold that “ Christ is the archetype of every
human being, and that when a man becomes pure, he is only developing the
Christ who was within him already.” Grace is useful, but neither irresisti-
ble nor indispensable. For some, at least, there is, doubtless, a second pro-
bation. If there is not to be a final restoration of the impenitent, there
must be the annihilation of them. The Bible is not errorless, but is still
the Word of God; just as the Holy Eucharist contains much impure bread
and wine, but is still the Body and Blood of Christ. He is not the “ Saviour
of the elect,” but rather the light that lighteth every man that cometh
into the world. Yet even He is not an infallible light. He may have made
mistakes. He may have accommodated His teaching to the belief of His
day. Doubtless, He did both in such questions as that as to the authorship
of the 110th Psalm. Hence, if a doctrine seems unreasonable, it must be
rejected, even though He taught it. “ I can find,” says Mr. Harrison, “ no
scientific evidence that Christ’s words must be interpreted as teaching eter-
nal torments for the impenitent ; but should such evidence be forthcoming,
I should feel that I should honor Him more, and be truer to His teaching as a
whole, in believing that on this point He was mistaken or that He had been
misinterpreted by the evangelist.” These are but specimens of the author’s
concessions. They suggest the question, Is not such apologetics often more
dangerous than the undisguised foes that it assails ?

Princeton. War. Brenton Greene, Jr.

II. — EXEGETICAL THEOLOGY.

Vocabulary of New Testament Words , Classified According to Roots, With
Statistics of Usage by Authors. Prepared by Ozora Stearns Davis. 8vo,
pp. 32. (Hartford, Conn. : Hartford Seminary Press, 1893.) The purpose
of this helpful pamphlet is, as stated in the introductory notice, “ to arrange

REGENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE.

679

in a suggestive and, at the same time, scientific way all nouns, adjectives and
verbs used more than ten times in the New Testament, in order that the
student, by memorizing them, may be aided in his sight reading of the New
Testament.” Words have been grouped under their roots, and the number
of times each occurs in different groups of New Testament writings, e. g., in
the Gospels and Pauline Epistles, marked. An English vocabulary of char-
acteristic meanings is given at the end. This little work, which means much
mechanical labor and care, we welcome heartily. May it contribute one
more impulse to the mastery of the Greek of the New Testament, which
every theological student, at least, should seek for. The time has gone by
when men should have their knowledge of New Testament Greek poured
into them by means of exegetical lectures. They should study New Testa-
ment grammar and New Testament vocabularies, till they know the Greek
of their New Testaments. Then they can have some intelligent apprecia-
tion of the exegetical work that is done for them ; better still, they would
be able to do some work for themselves. All such help as this, prepared by
Mr. Davis at the suggestion of Prof. Jacobus, should be widely used. May

this be the good fortune of this timely work. The Epistle to the Philip-

pians. (Expositor’s Bible Series.) By Robert Rainey, D.D. 8vo, pp. 368.
(New York : A. C. Armstrong & Son, 1893.) This book is worthy of a place
beside the others of this series, which, by a combination of scholarly insight
and discrimination and a popular presentation of the thoughts and truths
discovered, are made so helpful to the average reader. Dr. Rainey’s work
is marked by thorough sympathy, fine discernment and devout, sober expres-
sion. It carries one to the heart of the Epistle, and is helpfully suggestive.
He dates the Epistle from the latter part of the Roman captivity, and accounts
for the sudden change in iii. 1 by the appearance of trouble from Judaisers at
Rome, or in some other field, which led Paul to put the Philippians on their
guard against like possible troubles. Chap. ii. 1-8 gives a good specimen
of the author’s clearness, care and directness in exposition. The style is

simple, lucid, effective. The Story of a Letter — Ephesians. (The Book of

Books Series.) By Bishop John H. Vincent. 8vo, pp. 44. (New York :
Hunt & Eaton; Cincinnati: Cranston & Curtis, 1893.) The object of this
series is to bring together in brief form such material as shall help the stu-
dent to a more intelligent study of the books of the Bible. This little pam-
phlet contains: (1) some account of the situation in Ephesus, (2) an analysis
of the Epistle, (3) directions as to what to look for in the teachings of the
Epistle, (4) arguments in favor of Pauline authorship and of the Ephesian
destination, (5) the letter according to the Revised Version. The whole is

compact, well put and helpful. New Commentary on the Acts of Apostles.

By J. W. McGarvey, A.M. Vol. ii. 8vo, pp. 298* (Cincinnati : The Stand-
ard Publishing Co.) This second volume embraces chaps, xiii-xxi. As
we noted in reviewing Vol. i, it is a commentary for English readers. It
makes a careful analysis of each section, and in a clear, concise way opens
up the thought. It is abreast of the latest information, and is characterized
by sound, independent, discriminating comment. A good specimen of this
is found in xiii. 48, in connection with the phrase, “ and as many as were
ordained to eternal life believed” (A. V.), which the author renders, as
many as were “ determined ” or “ disposed for.” The translation, “ Ye men
of Athens, in all things I perceive that ye are very demon-fearing ,” is no

great improvement on the Authorized Version. Simon Bar-Jona: The

Stone and the Rock; or, St. Peter and His Confession. By Mrs. T. C. Porter.
8vo, pp. 221. (Philadelphia: Reformed Church Publication House, 1893.)
This work is a reprint of articles which originally appeared in the Reformed
Quarterly Review. Taking the Lord’s words to Peter, “ Thou art Simon,

680

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

the son of Jonas, thou shalt he called Keplias (which is interpreted Peter),”
the author makes them the text of the book, and in the divisions, a living,
peculiar, precious, tried, sure foundation stone, gives an outline of the life of
the apostle as related to this prophecy of the Lord. It is not clear what is
meant by the statement that, by the term “ Kephas,” Christ was honoring
and commemorating the fact that of all the sons of Adam, he (Peter) was,
and should yet be, acknowledged the first partaker of the life of Adam un-
fallen; and by the latter, “ Peter,” that with this life he had also been the
first to receive the life of “ the Son of the living God,” incarnate in Him.
Nor will all agree with that interpretation of the phrase, “ upon this rock I
wall build my Church,” which makes rock the equivalent of this: “the
actual and constant communication of God’s life.” The book is devout in
tone, and is the result of much meditation upon the words and experiences
of Christ with Peter. It lacks the freshness and vigor of Dr. Taylor’s
“ Peter,” and some of its chapters carry us quite a way round to the point.
The subject itself, nevertheless, is one of great interest, and one will find
much in this presentation of it wrhich will repay reading.

Auburn. James S. Riggs.

III.— HISTORICAL THEOLOGY.

Das Evangelium cles Petrus. Das kiirzlich gefundene Fragment seines
Textes aufs neue herausgegeben, ubersetzt und untersucht. Yon D. Theo-
dor Zahn, Professor der Theologie in Erlangen. Pp. vi, 80. (Erlangen
und Leipzig : Georg Bohme, 1893.) The newly recovered fragment of the
apocryphal Gospel of Peter, like the Teaching of the Twelve some nine years
ago, has called almost every prominent New Testament scholar to the task of
throwing light on its text, its origin and purpose. Among these not the
least qualified for such a task is Prof. Theodor Zahn, of Erlangen, the author
of seven or eight volumes on the history of the New Testament canon and
editor of the apocryphal Acta Joannis. With the skill and information ac-
quired through the work represented in the above-named volumes, Prof.
Zahn combines the talent of an acute but sound and conservative critic.
Hence the conclusion he reaches is probably correct, that this Gospel was
composed as a Docetic campaign document about the middle of the second

century in the neighborhood of Antioch. A Select Library of Nicene and

Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. Second Series. Translated
into English, with Prolegomena and Explanatory Notes, under the Editorial
Supervision of Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D., and Henry Wace, D.D. Vol. vi.
St. Jerome: Letters and Select Works. Pp. xxxv, 524. (New York: The
Christian Literature Company, 1893.) The special title page of this volume
further explains the general title page, reading as follows: The Principal
Works of St. Jerome. Translated by the Hon. W. H. Fremantle, M.A.,
with the assistance of the Rev. G. Lewis, M.A., and the Rev. W. G. Martley,
M.A. And the Preface by Canon Fremantle (which is by the way a model of
suggestiveness as to the use of the volume) gives additional information re-
garding the part of the woik done by the translator and the assistants respec-
tively. Canon Fremantle writes the Prolegomena and the Indices and as-
sumes the general responsibility for the whole work. The life and times of
Jerome are not new topics for Canon Fremantle, as he is the author of the
article on the great Latin scholar and Church writer in Smith and Wace’s
Dictionary of Christian Biography. But the translation into English, made
for the first time, required great care, and from all appearances has been

RECENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE.

681

made in such a way that it will not need to be done over again very soon.
Special note must be made of the pains taken to interest the general reader
by pointing out to him in the Table of Contents the general subjects of the
letters, and in the Index the most instructive and entertaining portions of
the book under the headings “ Pictures of Contemporary Life,” “ Proverbs,”

and “Stories.” Quellensdtze zur Kirchengeschichte. Erstes Stuck: Alte

Ivirche. Yon Heinrich Berthold Auerbach, Oberlehrer am Fiirstlichen
Gymnasium zu Gera und Past. Coll. Pp. 49. (Gera: Theodor Hofmann.)
This collection of the most essential and compendious sources for an outline
of ancient Church history is meant to be an improvement over Noack’s
Kirchengeschiclitliches Lesebucli (Berlin, 1890), a work which was intended to
furnish the original sources for the outline study prescribed in the German
Gymnasia, but appeared defective to Auerbach in not supplying explana-
tory notes and translations, and in the indiscriminate way in which its selec-
tions were made. The extracts incorporated in the present collection are
from a wide range of ancient authors and illustrate the struggle and victory
of the Church, its doctrine, its worship and morals, and its polity and disci-
pline. Die Bedeutung Benedikts von Nursia und seiner Regel in der Ge-

schichtedes Monchtums. Yon Lie. Dr. Griitzmacher, Privatdocent der Theo-
logie zu Heidelberg. Pp. 72. (Berlin : Mayer & Muller, 1892.) Grutz-
macher’s investigations lead him to dispute the opinion hitherto held that
Benedict of Nursia should be considered the patriarch of western monkdom,
and his Buie the epoch-making book in the history of western monasticism.
The latter was only one of several attempts to codify the laws already gov-
erning monastic communities at the time of Benedict, and not a result of
Benedict’s own thinking and work ; it has acquired a factitious importance
because of the indorsement it received from such high authorities as the first
three Gregories, Zacharias and Boniface, and later from Charlemagne and
Louis the Pious. These results, which can only be mentioned without dis-
cussion here, should and will tend to stimulate renewed research in this field.

The Ancient Irish Church. By John Healy, LL.D., Rector of Kells. Pp.

192. (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1892.) This constitutes Yol.viii
of the Church History Series published by the London Religious Tract So-
ciety, and is written from the point of view of a full appreciation of the pecu-
liar importance of the early Irish Church in the development of the Roman
Catholic ecclesiastical system. The Schism Between the Oriental and West-

ern Churches. With Special Reference to the Addition of the Filioque to the
Creed. By the Rev. George Broadley Howard, B. A. Pp. 115. (London : Long-
mans, (Jreen & Co., 1892.) It is more as an irenic than as a historical mono-
graph that the author sends out this little volume. His aim is to show that
the united ancient Church favors the stand taken by the Orientals in the great
schism, and to propose the omission by the Church of England of the objec-
tionable filioque from its doctrinal standards. As a historical production, its
great merit is the full and first-hand presentation of the facts ; this feature is
however offset by a failure to unravel the complex of causes and motives.

Die Geschichte der Predigt in Deutschland bis Luther. Yon Lie. Dr. F. R.

Albert, Pfarrer zu St. Petri in Dresden. I. Teil : “ Die Zeit vor Karls des
GrossenTod, 600-814.” Pp. 176. II. Teil : “ Lateinische Predigten von Yer-
fassern deutscher Herkunft, 814-1100.” Pp. vi, 192. (Giitersloh : C. Ber-
telsmann, 1893.) Dr. Albert has undertaken to trace the history of preach-
ing not merely on German soil but especially in the German language. In
the first of the two parts that have yet appeared of his work he treats of the
preaching of the Irish preachers Columbanus (Columba of Luxeuil accord-
ing to Albert), Gallus or Gillian (Gallun), the Anglo-Saxon preachers Bon;-
fatius and Burghard of W iirzburg, and the Italian preachers Pirminius and

682

TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

Martin of Bracara. In the second part he deals with Alcuin and the
Germans, Rabanus Maurus, Haymo of Halberstadt, Walafrid Strabo and
the lesser lights, so to speak, of the tenth and eleventh centuries. His
method is thorough and critical in the best sense of the word, and the work

is an interesting and valuable monograph on the history of preaching.

Abelard and the Origin and Early History of Universities. By Gabriel
Compavre, Rector of the Academy of Poitiers, France. Pp. xiii, 315.
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893.) [The Great Educators Series.
Edited by Nicholas Murray Butler.] If one were to take up this volume
for the purpose of informing himself on the life and fortunes (or as he
called them himself, misfortunes) of Abelard, he would find himself disap-
pointed. The name of the brilliant scholastic of the twelfth century is used
in this series simply as the centre, about which is built up a most thorough
and systematic exposition of the method of education which arose simultane-
ously with Abelard and received the name of University. The work is in
Dr. Compayre's best style and may justly be called a real contribution to

the history of Education. Froebel and Education by Self -activity . By

H. Courtliorpe Bowen, M.A., formerly Headmaster of the Grocers’ Com-
pany’s Schools, Hackney Downs; lately University Lecturer at Cambridge,
on the Theory of Education. Pp. viii, 209. (New York: Charles Scrib-
ner’s Sons, 1893.) [The Great Educators Series, Edited by Nicholas Murray
Butler.] The personality of the organizer of the kindergarten system plays a
much more important part in this number of the series than that of Abelard in
Compayre’s history of the rise of the Universities. In other respects, both
as a link in the chain of historic sketches of educators, and for its intrinsic

interest and merit, the volume deserves a high place in the series.

Johannes Tauler, Predigermonch in Strassburg. Ein Lebensbild. Yon Anna
Lau. Pp. 36. (Strassburg i. E.: C. A. Vomhoff, 1892.) A simple narrative
of the life of the great mystic without any claim to original, critical or ex-
haustive method of investigation, or novel results. Festschrift zu Menno

Simons 400-j'dhriger Geburtstagsfeier den 6. November , 1892. Yon H. G.
Mannhardt, Prediger der Mennoniten-Gemeinde zu Danzig. Zweite Aufl.
Pp. 60. (Danzig: L. Saunier’sche Buchhandlung, 1892.) Within three
weeks after the landing of Columbus at San Salvador the man was born
who was to tame and chasten and direct the rather wild energy of the move-
ment known as the Anabaptist movement of the Reformation period. It is
with sincere pleasure that the student of Church history sees the great influ-
ence of Menno recognized, and his memory honored by the descendants of
those who first felt it. The sketch before us is a fair review of the facts of
Menno’s life, but somewhat open to the objection of unduly idealizing the

Anabaptists who preceded Menno. Church and State in North Carolina.

By Stephen Beauregard Weeks, Ph.D., Professor of History and Political
Science, Trinity College, North Carolina. Pp. 65. (Baltimore, The Johns
Hopkins Press, 1893.) [Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and
Political Science ; Herbert B. Adams, Editor ; Eleventh Series ; v-vi.] A con-
tinuation of the author’s investigation in the same field as published in his
paper on The Religious Development of the Province of North Carolina (see
Presbyterian and Reformed Review, Vol. iii, p. 755). In the present
essay he traces the gradual growth of religious freedom in the same region.
His method of treatment is the same as in the previous paper.- Presby-

terianism. A Brief Survey of the Doctrine, Polity and Life of our Churches.
Prepared by the Rev. H. D. Jenkins, D.D., for the World’s Fair Com-
mittee of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.
PfP- 80. A campaign document in which the best aspects of American
Presbyterianism are presented with telling force. Though prepared for the

REGENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE.

683

Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, the essay'gives an ac-
count of the institutions and present condition of all the various branches

of Presbyterianism in the country. Our Church Heritage ; or , The Scottish

Churches Viewed in the Light of Their History. Addressed to the New Gen-
eration that has Risen up since the Disruption. By Rev. Norman L.
Walker, D.D., Author of Robert Buchanan , JD.D., Scottish Church History ,
etc. New Edition. Pp. 126. (New York: T. Nelson & Sons, 1893.) A
brief sketch of the fortunes of the Scotch Church, with special emphasis on
the period of the Disruption in 1843 and since. It is written from the evan-
gelical point of view, and not merely as a matter of scientific interest, but as a
source of suggestion for the future conduct of the affairs of the Free

Church. Ein Stuck Kirchen- und Lebens-Oeschiclite aus den deutsch-russi-

schen Ostseeprovinzen. Yon Richard Krause, I Kon. Pfarrer zu Wonsees in
Oberfranken, ehem. Pastor zu Dondangen in Kurland. (Giitersloh : C. Ber-
telsmann, 1893.) A graphic account of the persecutions to which the evan-
gelical and Lutheran Protestants of the border provinces of the Baltic (in-
habited by Germans but belonging to Russia) have been subjected during
the last eight years, owing to a change of policy on the part of the Russian
authorities. It is the account of an eye witness and a sufferer, and appears
in every way credible, though one cannot but deplore the possibility of such
gross abuse of power in the midst of European civilization in this enlight-
ened age. Papers of the American Society of Church History. Yol. v.

Report and Papers of the Fifth Annual Meeting held in the City of Washing-
ton, December 27 and 28, 1892. Edited by Rev. Samuel Macauley Jackson,
M.A., Secretary. Pp. lxxxii, 143. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons,
1893.) Dr. Jackson deserves the thanks of the public, as well as of the
Church History Society, for the careful, and, as far as appears, exhaustive list
of works of interest to the student of Church History which have appeared
in 1892. It is to be hoped that this may now, after a trial of two years, be-
come a permanent feature of the reports of the Society. The other papers in
the volume are “ St. Thomas of Canterbury,” by Dr. Scliaff ; “ The Absolu-
tionFormulaofthe Templars,” by Henry Charles Lea, LL.D.; “ The Services
of the Mathers in New England Religious Development,” by Prof. Williston
Walker; “Holland and Religious Freedom,” by Dr. T. W. Chambers ; and
“ The Italian Renaissance of To-day,” by Dr. G. R. W. Scott. The bare
enumeration of these titles of papers and names of authors will suffice to show
the high character of the work being done under the auspices of the Ameri-
can Society of Church History.

Chicago. A. C. Zenos.

IY. — SY STEMATIC THEOLOGY.

Theological Propaedeutic. A General Introduction to the Study of Theol-
ogy, Exegetical, Historical, Systematic and Practical, including Encyclopae-
dia, Methodology and Bibliography. Part i. By Philip Scliaff, D.D., LL.D.,
Professor of Church History in the Union Theological Seminary, New York.
8vo, pp. viii, 233. (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1892.) Dr.
Schaff is peculiarly fitted both by his extensive and varied learning and by a
certain judiciousness which he possesses in an eminent degree, to pre-
pare a most useful book on this subject ; his advice to students and his rec-
ommendation of books for their use are sure to be valuable helps to them
in their work. The fuller review which such a book deserves may well be
postponed until its completion. Let it suffice here to say that Dr. Schaff is
not always happy on the side of terminology : it is a mistake to seek to con-

684:

TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

form the English language to pedantic rule, as is done in proposing to
neglect usage in the matter of the names of the several departments ; and the
phrase “ theory of a literal inspiration ” is unfortunate and misleading. The
definition of theology as “ the science of religion ” (p. 17, cf. 19, 77, 80) is
not only wrong formally, and based on a wrong theory of the relations of
religion and theology, but it will inevitably be exceedingly confusing to
students. What is a beginner to do when he reads on page 17 the simple,
oracular statement, “ Theology is the science of religion,” and then turns
over a single leaf and finds “ The Science of Religion ” heading a new chap-
ter and expressing something very different from theology ? Studies in

Theology. By Kev. Randolph S. Foster, D.D., LL.D., a Bishop of the Meth-
odist Episcopal Church. 3 vols. Theism. Cosmic Theism ; or, The Theism
of Nature. 8vo, pp. xii, 450. Evidences of Christianity. The Supernatural
Book. 8vo, pp. xiv, 430. Prolegomena. Philosophical Basis of Theology.
8vo, pp. viii, 344. (New York: Hunt & Eaton, 1889 and 1890.) On the
appearance of this important work it was placed in the hands of the Rev.
Prof. Mabon, D.D., of the theological seminary at New Brunswick, to
notice for this Review. Dr. Mabon had made some progress in his review
of it, which, as his notes testify, he designed to be both appreciative and
searching — expressing assent and dissent as the case deserved — when he was
removed from all earthly tasks to the courts above. At this late date it
seems proper to do nothing more than to call the attention of our readers to
the work as an important contribution to the Prolegomena of Theology. Dr.
Mabon had intended to give especial attention to Bishop Foster’s remarks
on Inspiration, which scarcely seem adequate. Let us pause at least to
emphasize the remark (p. 278 of Vol. iii) that “ Exact definitions would
correct a vast amount of angry controversy.” Bishop Foster’s defini-
tion of Inspiration is not that most commonly adopted by exact writers :
he makes it “a method of revealing,” confining Revelation to “manifes-
tation in act.” So defined, no one would contend that all Scripture is
inspired of God ; yet Paul so declares. After all, the main thing is what
Bishop Foster declares it to be : “ That which is important is, that the Bible
be true as a whole and in every part. U ntruth is the only thing that can put
it in peril ” (p. 279). The precise theological definition of Inspiration is, the
activity of God, the Holy Ghost, in securing just this. We are not entitled
to argue that “ Inspiration ” was not necessary to secure this; we are bound
to assert that this has been secured ; that God saw to it that it should be
secured ; and God’s activity in seeing to this is what we call “ Inspiration.”
The mode of this activity we conceive to be of much less importance to
determine and to insist upon, than the effect— truth; though we have our
opinion as to the mode, and think it important to conceive it rightly in order
to secure a permanent recognition of the effect. Men will continue to argue
a priori against the effect, however it be a posteriori indisputable, until they

rightly conceive the mode by which the effect is secured. Two Present-

Day Questions. I. Biblical Criticism. II. The Social Movement. Sermons
Preached before the University of Cambridge, etc. By W. Sanday, M.A.,
D.D., LL.D., Dean Ireland Professor of Exegesis and Fellow of Exeter
College, Oxford. 12mo, pp. 72. (London and New York : Longmans, Green
& Co., 1892.) Dr. Sanday has chosen the subjects of his Cambridge sermons
with his usual insight and has spoken on them with his usual wisdom. He
sees the danger, attending the two movements of which he speaks, of what
he calls “ premature solutions,” and raises his voice to counsel caution. “ It
seems to me, if I am not mistaken, that just at the present moment one of
the greatest dangers to which Christian opinion is exposed, and that at once
in each of the two most important branches of it which I have named, is of

RECENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE.

685

a premature insistence upon partial and insufficiently tested solutions of
those questions and difficulties with which the inquirer is confronted ” (p.
19). It is becoming in a critical student of the New Testament — the history
of the critical investigation of which has so much more rapidly run through
its stages — to remind Old Testament students of what experience has taught
in the sister-sphere: “ When we think of the lessons which the criticism of
the New Testament may suggest to the student of the Old, we cannot help
being reminded that scarcely one of the discoveries of recent years has not
had for its tendency to bring back the course of criticism into paths nearer
to those marked out by tradition” (p. 37). Nor could such a warning be
delivered anywhere with better grace than in that Cambridge where so splen-
did an example of independent research and calm and instructed judgment
has been set by that great trio of New Testament and patristic scholars, of
whom only one, alas, is left to us now. We do not think as well of the
presently popular school of Old Testament criticism as Dr. Sanday seems to
do. We could not call their work, even at Cambridge, “ circumspect.” But
it is all the more significant that even from so sympathetic a standpoint as
the one which he occupies, he feels the need of these words of caution. He
reminds Old Testament critics, as they need sorely to be reminded, that
“traditional” views have sometimes something that can be said in their
favor ; that the dilemma is not between “ illusion ” and “ accepting the
latest idea that is put before us;” that Old Testament criticism is in its
infancy and the least that can be asked is that some twenty or thirty years
of work should lie between the present and the right to speak with the assur-
ance which some assume even now; and that the present is a moment in
which “the student Of the Old Testament would do well not to express him-
self too confidently.” The right and duty of criticism certainly needs no
defense ; but a right to crude, hasty, ill-considered, borrowed criticism can
never be made good. Dr. Sanday’s treatment of his second topic is even
more redolent of good sense. He puts his finger on the fundamental ethical
principle of the New Testament when he says (p. 65): “The Christian
teacher is called upon to enforce duties as duties ; he is not called upon to
claim or defend or champion rights as rights.” No phenomenon of the dealing
of the New Testament with ethical questions is half so prominent as this—
that it lays all its stress on duty, enjoining duties on all and emphasizing the
rights of none. Dr. Sanday is led by the pure spirit of the New Testament,
therefore, when he warns the minister that if he feels called upon to enter into
the problem of the settlement of social questions he must do it by represent-
ing to the offenders their duties, not by representing to the offended .tlieir
grievances. “ But if, instead of going to the offender, he goes to the person or
class offended against ; if he tells them they have a grievance and urges them
to prosecute that grievance; if he fosters a spirit of discontent and makes
that discontent a rallying point for efforts at reform ; if this is the line he
takes, then I do not say that he is doing w'rong, for his action may, perhaps,
from some other point of view, be justified; but I do say that his action is
not, in any true and strict sense, Christian” (p. 66). We cannot go with
Dr. Sanday in separating the sphere of Christian duty off to itself and allow-
ing a wide sphere of duty with which Christianity has no immediate concern.
But whether the sphere of Christian duty is all-inclusive or not, it is un-
doubtedly true that the New Testament remedy for grievances is to convert

the oppressor, not to rouse the oppressed to opposition and revolution. Jj

Judaism and Christianity. A Sketch of the Progress of Thought from Old
Testament to New Testament. By Crawford Howell Toy, Professor in Har-
vard University. 8vo, pp. vii, 456. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1890.)
The subordinate title will scarcely convey to the ordinary reader an accurate

686

TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

understanding of the scope of Prof. Toy’s book. It is not a sketch of the
progress of thought in what may be called the inter-testamental period — that
silent time from Malachi to John the Baptist. It takes its starting point
from the days of Ezra ; and from the days of Ezra, not as represented in
Scripture and tradition, but as constructed by the critical hypotheses of Graf
and Kuenen. And it finds its closing point only with the complete develop-
ment of Christian doctrine, i. e., at the end, not the beginning, of the New
Testament. The material dealt with, therefore, includes a large portion of
the Old Testament, assigned by Prof. Toy’s school of critics to a date after
the restoration under Ezra, and all the New Testament ; and the task set
before him by the author is nothing less than the presentation of a large sec-
tion of wThat is ordinarily known as Biblical Theology, from the point of view
of the evolutionary school. As he himself conceives it, it is the presenta-
tion of Jewish thought in its transition from a national to a universal relig-
ion. Therefore he prefixes an introduction, treating “ of the general laws of
the advance from national to universal religions,” and deals with his mate-
rials so as to make this a specific case under those laws. It is a very meagre
“ Biblical Theology ” that we get — this bed is too short for this frame to
stretch itself upon. And it is a very naturalistic progress that wTe get ; even
that most supernatural of figures, whose very existence in the complex of
natural laws challenges every one with the question, “ What think ye of the
Christ ? ” is pared down to a natural phenomenon : “ Jesus laid no claim in

thought or in word to other than human nature and power.” Religion

and Myth. By the Rev. James Macdonald, author of Light in Africa , etc.
8vo, pp. xiii, 240. (London: D. Nutt; imported by Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1893.) Mr. Macdonald’s book is one of a class, of which Mr. Eraser’s The
Oolden Bough will naturally prove the fertile parent. It consists of two
elements of very unequal value and interest, an element of fact and an ele-
ment of theory. Under the impulse aroused by Mr. Fraser’s book, Mr.
Macdonald has been led to put together the facts concerning the religious
life and thought of the African tribes, with which a long sojourn in Africa
has made him familiar. This record of fact is of the very greatest value.
We learn that not only are there no known Africans without a religion, but
that religion permeates their whole existence ; and that those who have from
time to time reported a tribe here and there as without religious conceptions,
have done so through inability to enter into the savage man’s conceptions of
a religion which dominates his whole life and shows itself in his every
action. “ I have seen natives of Africa,” says our author, “ perform acts
of devotion before the eyes of men who declared that they had no idea of
worship nor of God ” (p. 184, cf. also p. 125, refuting Schweinfurth’s errors,
and p. 173). We learn further that the African savage universally has the
conception of a soul, persistent after bodily death (p. 33). And we have a
very clear and valuable testimony to savage ideas of sacrifice (pp. 66, 67).
The Africans, it seems, possess two complete and distinct systems of sacri-
fice. One of these is a system of thank-offerings and sacrificial thanksgiv-
ing, the underlying idea in which seems to be consecration. The other is a
system of propitiation. We quote the important statement of the latter en-
tire :

“Those whose function it is to stand between men and the unseen, approach divinity with an
offering for men’s sins. They stand there as representatives or substitutes, taking the place of
the worshippers. For a tribal offering may be made by the priest without a muster of the tribe
or even the army. The sacred functions belong to sacred persons, and they determine how and
when these are to be performed, and only obey certain general principles without which no
sacrifice is a genuine offering. One of these is that all sacrifices must be made by fire. Unless
portions of the animal slain are burned, there has been no true offering, and the gods view the
whole ceremony in grief and anger. Another is, that the animal must be honestly come by. A

RECENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE.

687

man may purchase a sacrifice, but this is rare, and, I think, regarded as irregular ; but no man
would sacrifice a beast that had been stolen. The most acceptable sacrifice is that which is a
man’s very own. There is also one phrase in the dedicatory prayer which is never omitted. It
is this : ‘ We do not offer the dead ; it is blood. We offer life. Behold, 0 ye hosts.’ During the
time when the sacrifice is offered, the priest stands, as intercessor for the people, in room of the
chief” (p. 67).

This is certainly a most interesting testimony to the ethnic idea of propi-
tiatory sacrifice. The theoretical element of the book is of very inferior
value ; or, to speak with entire frankness, it seems to us of no value at all.
The effort to trace the origin of sacrifice to the widespread custom of killing
the king, conceived of as the god himself (pp. 61, 75, 82), “as the spirit of
vegetation and creative energy,” through the intermediate stage of killing a
temporary substitutive king instead of the king himself, is, of course, a dis-
mal failure ; it is an attempt to derive the practice of propitiatory sacrifice
from primitives which lack every element of the thing to be derived. To
kill the god and to propitiate the god, are quite opposite conceptions. The
deliverance, “ From killing the god they passed to substitution, thence to
propitiatory sacrifice and thank-offerings ” (p. 75), seems to have plausi-
bility, only on account of the unexplained term, “substitution; ” here it
means “ substitution ” of another for the god to be killed, and has noth-
ing to do with propitiatory sacrifice and could not lead up to it. The
theory of the origin and development of religion which is taught is even less
plausible. According to the author, religion begins in reverence for the
king as the embodiment of powTer, to whom men looked for all good ; then
from the rude conception of a divine king who ruled nature, thought ad-
vanced to a doctrine of souls, through the conception of the dead chief as still
living and taking an interest in the world’s affairs ; thence arose the idea of
all human souls living in a land of spirits ; whence arose the conception of
“ personal and separate divinities slowly gravitating towards the idea of one
supreme God, unknown and unknowable ; ” “pursuing its inquiries, never
resting for a moment, the human mind reached the conception of the one
God, becoming incarnate in time ” (p. 168, cf. p. 134). From this scheme
Mr. Macdonald would explain all religious ideas, from fetishism (p. 48) to
pantheism (p. 50), and are we not even to say Judaism and Christianity
themselves ? At least we read (p. 213) of the “ slow process of evolution
through which religious thought must pass before it reaches the higher con-
ception of one Supreme God. and the substitution of a single Incarnation,
revealing the will of God to man, for the multitude of prophets who claim
to hold converse with the unseen.” Possibly the author may have some ex-
planation of such expressions, even when taken in connection with the gen-
eral trend of his theories, which may save him from the extreme naturalism,
so astounding in a missionary, to which they appear to point. He will have
even greater difficulty, however, in making them consistent with the doc-
trine of the authority of the Bible to which, as a Free Church minister, he
has subscribed ; especially when taken in connection with his repeated refer-
ences to Biblical, not customs merely, but institutions and precepts, as of
purely naturalistic origin and meaning (cf. pp. 91, 116,128, 150, 180,206).
The T.pwrov (pzudo§ which underlies the whole reasoning is the assumption
that in studying any given savage tribe wre are studying “ primitive man,”
against which even Westermarck, in his History of Human Marriage, raises
a (no doubt insufficient) protest (cf. this Review, iii, p. 605). Yet Mr. Mac-
donald quite naively speaks of “ African and other primitive peoples,” and
the like. But the African savages are no more primitive man, in time, than
the Parisian jeunesse cloree. Who can prove them nearer in custom and
thought ? The entire basis of this elaborate theorizing is pure assumption.
The one element of evidence offered is drawn from the widespread extension

688

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

of certain usages, as testified not merely by their present existence among
savages widely separated from one another, but also by survivals among civ-
ilized races ; whence it seems inferable that primitive man had them. But
even Homer nods ; and in one passage Mr. Macdonald betrays consciousness
of an obvious principle which is fatal to the inference: “And the curious
thing is, not that they resemble customs once common among civilized men,
for the human mind in its search for knowledge works by the same methods in
all lands, but that so much of what is ancient, dating back far beyond his-
toric time, should survive among the nations of Europe.” If community
in such customs does not prove common origination, where is the proof that
they are “ primitive ? ” The whole fabric of theory hangs in the air. Be-
fore we deal so freely with “ primitive man ” we shall do well to begin by
following the famous advice as to the preparation of “ broiled hare ” —
“ First, catch your hare.” The “ catching ” of “ primitive man ” does not
seem so easy a task as some appear to think it ; every man who has had the
fortune to come into contact with savage peoples is certainly not entitled to

suppose it, therefore, in his case a fait accompli. The Blood Covenant.

A Primitive Rite and its Bearings on Scripture. By H. Clay Trumbull,
author of Kadesh Barnea, Friendship the Master Passion, etc. Second Edi-
tion, with a Supplement. 8vo, pp. x, 390. (Philadelphia : John D. Wattles,
1893.) The first edition of this notable book, published in 1885 by Charles
Scribner’s Sons, was reviewed appreciatively and judiciously by Dr. W.
Henry Green in the Presbyterian Review for January, 1886 (Yol. vii,
p. 170). This second edition is enriched by a supplement, intended, partly, to
meet the chief criticisms passed on the work and, partly, to add certain
further gleanings of fact. The service which Dr. Trumbull has rendered by
collecting the evidence of the widespread prevalence of blood covenanting,
and investigating its fundamental meaning, is very great. The enthusiasm
of his discovery seems, however, to have led him to look upon it as a key to
other problems than those it is fitted to solve. The fundamental concep-
tion that the blood is the life has found a variety of applications, the connec-
tion between which appears to be not immediate but only mediate, through
the medium of this common basic idea. Prominent among these are these
three: (1) Covenant-making by interchange of blood; (2) transfusion of
strength, valor and the like, by slaying the strong and valiant, or by feeding
upon them, or by drinking their blood ; (3) expiation, by offering the out-
poured blood. Ho one has as yet been able to show any pathway by which
any one of these conceptions passes directly into or may be held to underlie
the others, although they are variously mingled in the customs of different
races. Mr. Macdonald, in his recent book, Religion and Myth, takes his
start from the second conception and seeks to explain the third from it : men
killed the human god in order to retain his divine graces ; then they killed a
substitute for him ; and then they supposed the king was not the god, but
that the god was in heaven— and in the killing of the substitute we have now
the germ of sacrifice. The truth is that here the victim is the substitute for
the god and not for the worshiper ; and it is the latter that he is universally
represented to be in propitiatory sacrifice. Dr. Trumbull takes his start
from the first of these conceptions, that of the blood covenant, and equally
unsuccessfully tries to pass from it to the explanation of sacrifice. His idea
is that first there is the covenant by interchange of blood ; then the blood is
provided by a substituted animal, presumed to represent and accepted as
representing both contracting parties ; and then the animal is provided as
the mutual substitute of God and man — and we have sacrifice as a covenant-
ing rite. But while two men can agree upon a common substitute, it is less
easy to see that such a transaction may take place between God and man.

RECENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE.

689

And there seems to be no stringent reason to believe that a covenant estab-
lished in the blood of a sacrifice is an outgrowth of the covenant by inter-
change of blood. It may be, and probably is, only another specific form of
solemn covenanting, a form performed in connection with the sacred service
of sacrifice, by which God is made a party to it and therefore it is surrounded
with peculiar sanctions. The difficulty in Dr. Trumbull’s view, is that the
ideas of expiatory sacrifice and of blood covenanting coexist among the same
peoples without conscious connection between them, as, for example, Mr.
Macdonald shows for Africa ; and that there seems no logical passage from
one to the other. They are opposite conceptions, and seem connected only
through the fact that both are outgrowths of the universal conception that
the life is in the blood. Without abating a bit from our admiration for Dr.
Trumbull’s book, or from our conception of its usefulness, we think he
presses his conception too far ; and we deprecate most of his applications of it
to the explanation of Biblical passages, especially those relating to sacrifice
and, more especially still, those in the New Testament which speak of the sac-
rificial work of Christ. Gloria Patri; or, Our Talks about the Trinity. By

James Morris Whiton, Ph.D. 12mo, pp. iii, 155. (New York: Thomas
Whittaker, 1892.) The professed object of this little book is to give life and
ethical wmrtlr to the doctrine of the Trinity. Its real effect is to explain that
doctrine away altogether by the aid of modern pantheizing conceptions of
the relations of God to the universe, in which, as the author says truly, Uni-
tarianism and such a Trinitarianism as he presents may easily meet. Dr.
Whiton’s fundamental conception is the oneness of God and man. “Both
Unitarians and Trinitarians,” he tells us (p. 20), “ are coming to agree in
regarding human nature as essentially one with the divine.” Accordingly,
we are logically obliged to carry the application of the Nicene homoousios
further than was done at Nicsea, “ and to claim for the race of man that one-
ness of spiritual nature with God which was then claimed only for the great
‘ Son of Man ’ ” (p. 29). Indeed “ we must take the same line of thinking
in regard to the world itself, animate and inanimate, as an embodiment, a
sort of incarnation, of God”(p. 83). Accordingly, “the Incarnation of
God is not a mere event, but an age-long process, of which we see in Christ
the consummate ripeness ; ” and sonship “ is constituted not by the genera-
tion in one individual of a Divine Substance (a thing we can know nothing
of), but by the generation in all of a Divine Power, a Life, which is, semi-
nally at least, Divine ” (p. 129). This “ Life is the organizing Power, Nature
the organized form ” (p. 96). And the Trinity is the Trinity of Life : — “ The
Father is the Life Transcendent, the Divine Source, ‘ above all.’’ The Son is
the Life Immanent, the Divine Stream, ‘ through all.’’ The Holy Ghost is
the Life Individualized, the Divine Spherule, ‘ in all,' the Divine Inflow into
the individual consciousness” (p. 96). Or, as it is elsewhere expressed, in
the Trinity “ we are shown that the Infinite and Self-existent and Hidden
One, whom the agnostic hesitates even to name, is both the Paternal Source
of all that is and also at the growing tip as at the primal root of all that is,
inhabiting all forms with His intelligent Power and making all that live the
multiform channels of His Filial Stream of Life; then, as the Holy Breath,
whose promptings generate our prayers, perfecting His life in us by the
inspirations which become our aspirations to realize our Sonship to Him ”
(p. 120). What, therefore, “ is the going forth of spiritual life from the
church to the world but the proceeding of the Spirit from the Son ” (p. 117) S'
These pantheistic conceptions (that Dr. Whiton knows how to draw a dis-
tinction between formal pantheism and his own teachings, pp. 56, 84, does
not alter the fact that his conceptions are pantheistic), of course, not only
do away wi th the Christian doctrine of the Trinity in favor of an imma-
44

690

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

nently working Life, and of the Christian doctrine of the uniqueness of the
Son of God (how Christ is superior to the other “Sons” of God, in Dr.
Whiton’s view, may be seen on p. 68), and of the Christian doctrine of a
personal Sanctifying Spirit, but, of course, involve a whole new theology,
as Dr. Whiton briefly points out regarding the doctrines of the Scriptures,
the A tenement, and the like. The book is written brightly in the form of a
dialogue, which has not only the advantages which the author claims for it,
but also this additional one — that it enables him to tell the reader constantly,
through the expressions of wondering admiration placed in the mouth of the

“ seeker after light,” what estimate he places on his own argumentation.

Calvinism: Pure and Mixed. A Defense of the Westminster Standards.
By William G. T. Shedd, D.D. 8vo, pp. vii, 164. (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1893.) Dr. Shedd’s lucid style, the fit clothing of his clear
thought, is consecrated in this volume to exposing the confusions of those
who have been seeking to mix alien elements of thought with the Calvinism
of the Westminster Confession. These efforts have culminated in the two
attempts to extrude the decree of preterition and intrude universal grace
into the Confession, and to undermine the Westminster doctrine of Inspira-
tion in the interests of a rationalizing criticism. Dr. Shedd, with infinite
patience and with admirable acumen and clearness, analyzes the positions of
the advocates of these “ improvements,” and shows their unscriptural and
illogical character. It may be possible to neglect his reasoning ; it is impos-
sible to refute it. The Biblical Doctrine of Sin. By James S. Candlish,

D.D., Professor of Systematic Theology in the Free Church College, Glas-
gow. 16mo, pp. 128. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark; New York: imported
by Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893.) This readable booklet is the latest issue
of the Handbooks for Bible Classes , edited by Drs. Marcus Dods and Alex-
ander Whyte. No Scotch theologian writes with more thorough knowl-
edge or in a more genial spirit than Dr. Candlish. The present book is no
exception to this, but breathes on every page with fullness of information
and clearness of apprehension and depth of charity. As a handbook for
Bible classes, one would like a more positive and less comparative treatment —
more of the essence of Scripture and less of the embers of controversy ;
especially as the treatise purports to be upon the Biblical doctrine of Sin.
But Dr. Candlish has done the work he set before him well, and his book is
full of modes of statement and points of view which will be useful to
students of a higher than Bible-class grade. His definition of sin leaves
nothing to be desired — “ Sin is moral evil viewed as an offense against God ”
(p. 11). His elaboration of this conception is both lucid and strong. We
note that on the vexed question of Imputation he occupies the attitude that
has characterized a school of American theologians, chiefly in the Southern
States (Landis, Dabney, etc.), and declines to decide the relations of imputed
guilt and imparted sin (p. 122) ; and we note with surprise and pain that he
represents the matter of eternity of punishment as an open question (p. 54).
“ So Great Salvation.',, By the Rev. G. II. C. Macgregor, M.A., Aber-
deen. With an Introduction by the Rev. II. C. G. Moule, M.A., Principal
of Ridley Hall, Cambridge. 32mo, pp. 138. (Edinburgh : T. & T. Clark,
1892.) A delightfully and faithfully written exposition of the completeness
of salvation provided in Christ. Theologically, it is a little too deeply col-
ored by the peculiarities of the Keswick teaching as to the nature and mode
of sanctification ; for a clear statement of what this is, our readers may be
referred to Dr. Norman L. Walker’s account in our January number (pp. 36
sq.). There is also a little lack of clearness in dealing with faith ; and the
theory of the Atonement and of the all-Fatlierhood of God underlying it,
put forward in the chapter on “ Man Justified,” will scarcely satisfy. But,

RECENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE.

691

in the main, the theology is as sound as its presentation is pointed. There is
even apparent an unusual felicity in theological statement. For example,
the true meaning of “God is love” is admirably brought out on p. 36:
“ God in His very essence, and not merely in His relations to His creatures,
is Love.” By this the Ritschlian contention that we know nothing of what
God is, and can know only His relations, and therefore call Him Love
because He is love to us, is on the one hand excluded ; and equally, on the
other, the sentimental notion that the very essence of God is love ; while the
true idea that God’s essential nature is love, and not merely His relations to
us loving, is neatly brought out. So, on pp. 79, 80, we have an admirable
exposition of the nature of faith and its relation to salvation : “ When a
man gives up trying to save himself, God comes and saves him ; when a man
gives up trying to atone for his sins, God comes and tells him he is already
forgiven.” Faith, in a word, is a condition of mind analogous to that of a
drowning man when he ceases struggling and permits his rescuer to save
him. We only regret that this evangelical conception of faith is not firmly

retained throughout the volume. The First Millennial Faith. The

Church Faith in its First One Thousand Years. By the Author of Not on
Calvary. 12mo. pp. 83. (New York: Saalfield & Fitch ; London: Eden,
Remington & Co., 1893.) The author of Not on Calvary has learned some-
thing since the issue of that crude pamphlet, which was noticed in this Re-
view for July, 1892 (Yol. iii, p. 591). Among other things he has learned
to express more regard for Scripture ; in that booklet he openly refused the
guidance of the prophets and apostles (p. 29 sq.) ; in this, he professes his
acceptance of “ the Canonical Scriptures as the infallible and inspired Word
of God ” (p. 72), though he has not learned as yet that it is not “ upon the
authority ” of “ Saints, Martyrs and Confessors” that “we receive certain
books as inspired ” (p. 72). He has learned much more than this also; and
the whole of this little volume is written with a circumspection to which the
former treatise was a stranger. But, again, he has not learned how difficult
it is to investigate history with a foregone conclusion and yet be true to his-
tory, especially when the mind is unilluminated with an adequate apprehen-
sion of the phases of thought which history brings before us. The one fact,
that we owe to Anselm the first thorough formulation of the doctrine of
satisfaction, is practically the sole trustworthy historical teaching of the
pamphlet. The state of the mind of earlier generations on the subject is
thoroughly misconceived — as, indeed, in the circumstances was inevitable.
If the author would now seek to understand “ the satisfaction theory ”
which he has set himself to combat, he would realize how wide of the mark

his polemics are. And then, if the offense of the Cross would cease !

The Sacramental System , Considered as the Extension of the Incarnation.
By Morgan Dix, S.T.D., D.C.L., Rector of Trinity Church, New York.
12mo, pp. xx, 239. (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1893.) This is a
volume, full of eloquence, in which the author’s convictions find strong ex-
pression ; but it does not contain a perfectly clear exposition of what the
essential idea of a “ sacramental system” or of the “extension of the In-
carnation ” is. Of the latter, indeed, nothing is said, beyond an incidental
allusion here and there; and the reader is left at the end as much in the
dark as to Dr. Dix’s conception of its meaning and importance as he was at
the beginning. With reference to the former, twin conceptions struggle in
the womb of Dr. Dix’s thought ; and it remains uncertain still which shall
serve the other. On the one hand, the sacramental idea is conceived as the
idea of symbolical expression : and this is the dominant note of the book.
A basis for “the sacramental system” is accordingly found in the divine
authorship of nature, the relation of man to nature, the participation of

692

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

nature in man’s fate, and the connection with nature into which our Lord
came when He was incarnated in human flesh ; all this renders it extremely
fit that “ the creature,” which is bound up in man’s fortunes, should be em-
ployed by the Holy Ghost in ministering to the diseases of the soul. From
this point of view, the whole universe is sacramental : “ sacraments are
everywhere and hardly anything which is not sacramental ” (p. 81). “ The
name of a sacrament,” we are told (p. 83), “ may be attributed to anything
whereby an holy thing is signified;” and the essential function of a sacra-
ment seems to be “ to keep before us ” the alliance between the natural and
supernatural (p. 84). Its necessity arises from the “ need of means to convey
religious ideas” (p. 185), and from the difficulty of keeping “ a system of
doctrine intact without the help of symbols apt to represent and teach it,”
which symbols become agents “ in strengthening our intellectual apprehen-
sion.” In developing this view, many true things are beautifully and strongly
said; and a defense of a “ritual” worship is made on its basis. As a
theory of “ the sacramental system,” however, such a presentation does not
advance beyond Zwinglian ground. The essence of the Zwinglian view is
that the value of sacraments turns on their representative character ; it is
because of the truths they symbolize and teach that they are useful in the
Christian life. When Dr. Dix presents “ the sacramental system ” from this
point of view, and extends it to include as “ lesser sacraments ” the five taught
by Rome and rejected by Protestants, and, indeed, says that almost every-
thing is, in a still lesser sense, a sacrament, he is moving thus on distinctively
Zwinglian ground. On the basis of sacraments as symbols of truth, he
erects, however, on the other hand, a high doctrine of sacramental efficacy
as to the “ two chief sacraments ” of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Bap-
tism, he teaches to be necessary to salvation in the sense that “where that
rite may be had, no man is, or can be, in Christ till he be baptized inas-
much as Baptism is “ the instrument whereby men are grafted into the
vine and placed in direct and personal relation to Christ, the Second Adam ”
(p. 117). The gifts conveyed in Baptism are forgiveness of sins, regeneration
and illumination. Hence he teaches “ Baptismal regeneration;” though it
is not easily discovered precisely what he means by “ regeneration.” Infants,
as incapable of presenting a bar in the way of grace, are the normal exam-
ples of baptism and its effect ; “ adults may hinder and prevent its operation
by ignorance, by indifference, by want of due preparation ” (p. 129). That
infants are baptized proves that they need salvation, in the three items of
forgiveness of sins, regeneration and illumination ; but Dr. Dix is confused
and confusing as to the first item. The formularies of his Church (Art. ix)
teach that “ original or birth sin” includes both “ fault and corruption,”
and lay thus a firm ground for baptism of infants “ for remission of sins.”
Dr. Dix obscures the idea of “ fault ” here, emphasizing it as “ fault in the
nature ,” as if this voided its “ personal or individual ” character and made
“ the sufferer not responsible ” — as if it were, then, a thing to be “ corrected ”
rather than to be “ forgiven.” Yet he teaches that infant baptism is the
normal baptism for forgiveness of sins. The Lord’s Supper is for him a
“ sacrament ” in a sense in which even Baptism is not ; it “ is first in dignity
— and in power most efficient.” Baptism is “an instance of the use of an
element of the natural order as an instrument whereby, without change in
the element, gifts are granted to the love and spirit of man.” “But . . . .
the elements now used [in the Lord’s Supper] fix our attention, as if some
change had passed upon, over, or through them, by which their position in
the world of the material and physical had been modified in some wondrous
way ” (p. 151). So that “ what is said of Him outside this sacrament may
be said, word for word, of the sacrament itself ” (p. 148). Accordingly, “ it

RECENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE.

693

has a twofold aspect, being sacrifice and sacrament in one ” (p. 149) ; the
priest on earth offers “ the same oblation which Christ offers in heaven ”
(p. 149) ; the sacrament is “ complete and, so to speak, a fait accompli, as
soon as the priest has done his part ” (pp. 156, 169) — this completeness con-
sisting in the union of the outer and inner perfectly and without confu-
sion, so that the sacrament is “ so presented as an objective reality to the
congregation,” and is not made a sacrament to them by their faith. In every
one of these points, Dr. Dix’s teaching is distinctly un-Protestant and Rom-
ish, and traverses the official teaching of the Anglican Church. His concep-
tion of the sacramental union is indistinguishable from the early teaching
called impanation ; and the corollaries drawn by the advocates of that view
are drawn by him, e. g., he, too, represents it as communicating to the body

the germ of the spiritual body that is to be (pp. 33, 212). Faith- Healing,

Christian Science and Kindred Phenomena. By J. M. Buckley, LL.D.
12mo, pp. xi, 308. (New York: The Century Company, 1892.) Dr. Buckley
did a great service to the Church by publishing, in The Century , the papers
collected in this volume ; he has increased this service by reissuing them in
this handsome and accessible form. The delusions of Faith-Healing and
Christian Science are still troubling the people of God ; no better refutation
of them can be found than this calm sifting of the facts and clear exposition
of them in their relation to kindred phenomena. He who reads Dr. Buck-
ley’s volume will have no excuse left for permitting himself to be deceived
in matters of this kind. A Study of Faith-Healing. By Alfred T. Scho-

field, M.D., Author of “How to Keep Healthy,” “Health at Home,” etc.
12mo, pp. 128. (New York : Fleming W. Revell Company [1892].) A read-
able little book, not so learned or so judicious as Dr. Buckley’s closely
reasoned volume just noticed, but yet adapted to be useful in the present
tendency to fanaticism. The World of the Unseen. An Essay on the Re-

lation of Higher Space to Things Eternal. By Arthur Willink. 16mo, pp.
vi, 184. (New York and London : Macmillan & Co., 1893.) We know noth-
ing of the ecclesiastical connection of the author of this clearly written little
book. It is in essence, however, an attempt to justify and commend the
Swedenborgian anthropology and eschatology through the use of the con-
ception of “ the Higher Space,” or the doctrine of space of more dimensions
than three. Here is the Swedenborgian difficulty in conceiving “ Spirit ” —
the author speaking of it, as ordinarily apprehended, as something of which
we know nothing and of which nothing can therefore be affirmed — as in a
word no-thing (pp. 105, 71). Here are also the Swedenborgian conceptions
of God as possessing “ form ” (p. 60), and of man as like God in “form,”
both here and in “ heaven of a twofold body for man, an earthly one and
a “ spiritual ” (though material) one (p. 121) ; of the other world as, there-
fore, physical, inhabited by men with “ material ” bodies (p. 61) ; and of the
whole universe, physical and spiritual, as therefore comprehended in “ na-
ture,” and connected “physically” into one whole (p. 8). In a word, here
is the whole crude naturalism and materialism of the Swedenborgian con-
ception of the other world and of life beyond the grave. The author thinks
to support this view by appealing to the conception of transcendental space.
It is a proverb that it is hard for an empty bag to stand upright ; here we
have the interesting experiment tried, of attempting to stand two empty

bags upright by propping them against one another. The Blessed Virgin

in the Catacombs. By the Rev. Thomas J. Shahan, D.D., Professor of
Church History in the Catholic University of America. 12mo, pp. 80.
(Baltimore: John Murphy & Co., 1892.) “ If we had no other survivals of
the first three centuries than their extant literature,” remarks the learned
author of this prettily got-up little book, “ we would be at a loss for a purely

694

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

scientific demonstration of their sentiments concerning the Mother of God ”
(p. 13). Hence he presents here a lucid description of the remaining artistic
representations of the Virgin, from the early years of the Church, in the
hope of justifying from them the affectionate veneration paid her by Roman-
ists of to-day. But the representations adduced fail utterly to support the
Mariolatry of the Church of Rome. The author himself sums up the
results thus : “ Far from being an idolatrous outgrowth, the early Christian
art clings most timidly to the cycle of Gospel subjects, scarcely daring to
introduce a detail foreign to the letter of Scripture ” (p. 75). So both early
literature and early art fail to give us that “ mother of grace and parent of
sweet clemency,” that “ Queen of Heaven,” with the conception and vene-
ration of whom modern Romish teaching and practice are saturated. One
of the conversations with Dr. Dollinger reported by Frau von Kobell, is in
point here ( Ignatz von Dollinger: Erinnerungen von Luise von Kobell,
Munich, 1892. English Translation by Katharine Gould. London : Bently) :

“ ‘I was only yesterday wishing for your presence, Dr. Dollinger,’ I said to him one day, in
the course of a walk. ‘ I wanted to beg you to enlighten me a little on the subject of the woman
clothed with the Sun mentioned in the Book of the Revelation (xii. 1). I have not the remotest
idea who or what she is intended to represent.’ ‘ Nor I,’ replied Dollinger, smiling ; ‘ but there
exist at least ten different interpretations of the passage, and since the subject interests you I

will gladly send you the books The opinion held by so many people that she signifies the

mother of God is, I think, a mistaken one, and untenable by any who have carefully studied the
Apocalypse. I cannot think that the Blessed Virgin is here typified, for the actual adoration of
Mary only began to take root in the middle ages, and before that time the mother of our Lord is
barely mentioned.’ ’’

The Progressiveness of Modern Christian Thought. By James Lindsay,

M.A., B.D., B.Sc., F.R.S.E.,F.G.S., Minister of the Parish of St. Andrew’s,
Kilmarnock. 12mo, pp. x, 182. (Edinburgh and London : William Black-
wood & Sons, 1892.) A judicious characterization of this book and a sufficient
indication of its contents may be found in our January number (Vol. iv, p.
28 sq.), from the pen of Dr. Norman L. Walker. To that we refer the
reader. The book contains seven chapters ; the first two of these are a plea
for the conception of theology as a progressive science, and the last is an
attempt to forecast the future, while the intermediate chapters are an effort
to “ take stock ” of the progress which Mr. Lindsay thinks theology has
made in our own day. With the general contention that theology is a pro-
gressive science every one will heartily agree. Mr. Lindsay excellently out-
lines the implications and laws of this progress. It does not presuppose that
the divine deposit of faith is mutable, but only that the human apprehension
of the matter revealed is progressive; “the starting point of the develop-
ment of Christian theology lies not in the completed revelation of the Scrip-
ture, but only in the initial attainments of the Church under the Apostolic
teaching ” (p. 7) ; “ the law of progress must be that we take up the inherit-
ance of the past into which we are come .... and eliminate the misappre-
hensions of the past, and .... expand .... the vital truths given us in
this inalienable inheritance” (p. 10). But when Mr. Lindsay comes to
“take stock of the progress ” recently achieved, the question is at once raised
whether he is describing to us the progress achieved by the science of the-
ology, or only the change which he has himself made in his theological con-
ceptions. No doubt Mr. Lindsay would not have made these changes had he
not thought them a “ progress ;” but it is possible that he is mistaken in his
judgment here, and in our opinion lie is mistaken. He has simply, in his in-
dividual convictions, exchanged his hereditary Scotch Calvinism for the Ger-
man Mediating Theology ; and he sums up here what this change has meant
to him in the way of modification and alteration of doctrine. That the
change is an advance for Theology itself as a science, is sheer (and, we think.

RECENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE.

695

mistaken) assumption. The Mediating Theology was an advance on its
German predecessor— the rationalism of the early years of this century. It
is not an advance, but a distinct retrogression, from the Calvinism of the
Church of Scotland. It is already giving way in Germany to the Ritsclilite
rationalism, which is now the dominant system in the university circles there,
but which, we are glad to see, Mr. Lindsay condemns as not a progress,
but a retrogression, although it has the same right to be considered a progress
as the Mediating Theology itself : it, too, comes after something else, and
has its own advocates of scholarship and power. Mr. Lindsay’s book is an
excellent statement of the differences between the Mediating Theology in
its best form and the Reformed Theology, and may serve a useful purpose in
advising the public of the extent and character of the change which would
be involved in deserting the Reformed truth in order to give shelter to this
“ New Theology,” which is now being driven from its native land and is
seeking a home in Britain and America. But it marks “ progress ” in theol-
ogy as little as the advent in our sober streets of our traveled youth attired
in the latest Paris fashion necessarily marks “ progress ” in dress. If Mr.
Lindsay would give as enthusiastic study to the Reformed Theology, in which
he was bred, as he has given to the Mediating Theology of recent German
thought, he would find it unspeakably “ advanced,” in all that constitutes
the great realities of theological science, above the temporary German sys-
tem for which he W'ould exchange it ; and he would find that it is it alone
which can supply the great basal facts, already determined in the progress of
theological science, upon which all subsequent solid advance must be built.

Princeton. B. B. Warfield.

V.— PRACTICAL THEOLOGY.

Von den Pflichten der Familie und der Kirche in der Christlichen Erzieh-
ung der Jugend, damit sie beim Wort erhalten und selig werden. Yon L.
Holter. (St. Louis : Concordia Publishing House.) This is a report made to
the Illinois District of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and
other States, and published by their order. It makes a volume of 182 closely
printed octavo pages, which is certainly not too much to be given to the sub-
ject of Christian education. There is a thorough and radical treatment of the
whole matter, stating the need of such education, the manner in which it is
to be given by the parent, the teacher and the Church. The tone is earnest
and devout, as the positions taken are Scriptural. The wide circulation of
so excellent a tractate is very desirable among our German-speaking Protes-
tants. The Gospel of the Kingdom. A Popular Exposition of the Gospel

according to Matthew. By C. H. Spurgeon. (New York : Baker & Taylor
Co.) This posthumous volume of the great London preacher has a graceful
Introduction from the pen of Dr. Pierson, and the portions into which the
exposition is divided have a characteristic heading in brackets supplied by
Mrs. Spurgeon. The book is not learned nor critical, but abounds in spicy,
suggestive comment, such as the author was accustomed to give in the public
reading of the Scriptures on the Lord’s day. It is of course evangelical and
spiritual throughout. Like his other volumes it will do good to any reader.

Christus Consolator ; or. Comfortable Words for Burdened Hearts. By

Gilbert Haven. (New York: Hunt & Eaton.) The substance of this vol-
ume was prepared for the press by the late Bishop some months before his
death. It is now issued with a few appended notes by his son. From these
we learn that its constituent parts were delivered from the pulpit, usually
more than once, which accounts for the directness and incisive force that

696

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

appear on every page. It is a great thing to be able to speak effectiyely to
the heavy-laden, to speak a word in season to him that is weary, which is what

this book does. It is not profound or startling, but it is truly soothing.

The Life of Love. A Course of Lent Lectures. By the Rev. George Body.
D.D. (Longmans, Green & Co.) The author bases his lectures on the
words of the Blessed Virgin, and, as he says in the Preface, has been charged
on one hand with “ unblushing Mariolatry,” and on the other with 11 deroga-
ting from the due honor of the Mother of God whereas he claims to have
been loyal to the theology of the Primitive Church in distinction from that
of mediaeval and modern days. His claim is just. Yet he insists upon Mary’s
perpetual virginity as if that point were settled, which it clearly is not. He
accepts also one of the w'orst features of Popery, the idea of “ the religious
life, which means a life ruled by the three counsels of perfection, poverty,
chastity and obedience.” These seem to us rather counsels of imperfection,
whether judged by Scripture or experience. The utterances of Dr. Body are
in the main good and helpful, though he puts into the words of Mary more
than they will bear, and even draws a pattern from that saying (John ii. 3)
which our Lord reproved, though much less harshly than is commonly sup-
posed. The life and words of “ the handmaid of the Lord ” are suggestive, but
this author has not treated them in the best way. Words to Young Chris-

tians. Being Addresses to Young Communicants. By George Elmslie
Troup, M. A. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.) These addresses are upon such
themes as Habits, Holiness, Growing, Earnest Living, etc., and are
extremely well conceived. The thoughts are vigorous, the style is simple
and direct, and the counsels given are invariably wholesome. Mr. Troup
does not confine himself to commonplaces or to mere fervid exhortation, but
comes into immediate touch with the circumstances, needs and temptations
of those to whom he speaks. They who “ suggested the publication of these

simple words ” did wisely and well. Revelation by Character. Illustrated

from Old Testament Lives. By Robert Tuck, B.A. (New York: W. B.
Ketcham.) The execution of this volume is not equal to its conception.
The Old Testament furnishes, as it was designed to do, a rich field for the
exhibition of human character, but it needs acute observation to bring out
its full riches. Such titles as Spiritual Abraham, Persistent Joshua, Playful
Samson, Homely Elisha, do not show any piercing insight into men’s charac-
teristic features. Yet there is often a good vein of useful suggestion, and
though the book is not what it ought to be or might have been, there are
those who will find it helpful. Nobiscum Deus. The Gospel of the Incarna-

tion. By William Frederic Faber. (A. D. F. Randolph & Co.) This is a
volume of thoughtful sermons, though one does not see the exact relevancy of
the title, since the great mystery of godliness is the theme of only one or
two. In the discourse, The Price and the Purchase, it is suggested that
these terms mislead, yet an apostle said, “ Ye are bought with a price,” and
the truth wrapped up in this phrase is the life-blood of the Gospel and the
strongest stimulus to holy living. The moral effects of the great sacrifice
depend upon its forensic effects. To surrender the latter is to give up the

former. The Mosaic Record of the Creation Explained. By Abraham C.

Jennings. (F. H. Ilevell Co.) This tractate of 67 pages undertakes to
verify Scripture truth by showing that the first chapter of Genesis means six
literal days of twenty-four hours each. It does not seem to us to be a satis-
factory explanation. A Study of the Book of Books. By the Rev. W. H.

Groat. (Hunt & Eaton.) This paper-covered book of 59 pages is intended
for young people. It gives a clear outline of the history, geography and
doctrines of the Bible, with maps and plans, the whole complete in twelve
lessons, to each of which questions are appended. It of course is only a

RECENT THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE.

697

sketch, but as such in the hands of a competent teacher could be made very
useful. All aids to the acquiring a knowledge of the contents of the Bible are

to be heartily welcomed, if they be accurate so far as they go. Milk and

Meat. Twenty-four Sermons. By H.C. Dixon. (The Baker & Taylor Co.)
The quaint title of this volume is explained by the texts on the title page, one
from 1 Peter (ii. 2), speaking of the sincere milk of the Word ; the other,
from Hebrews (v. 14), of strong meat for them of full age. The pastor of
the Hanson Place Baptist Church, Brooklyn, has the ear of his people, and
he gives them both pure milk and solid food. His sermons are not con-
structed according to homiletic rules and patterns, but are interesting and
natural. They abound in illustrations which, however, never seem to be
brought in for their own sake. They catch the attention and hold it fast,
and must be impressive; yet we doubt if a congregation can be as well
instructed and edified in this way, attractive as it is, as they would be by a
more orderly and didactic presentation of the truth. Intelligent conviction
is as desirable as any degree of transient emotion. Mr. Dixon’s theology is
sound. Speaking of the fashion of our day to exalt Christ’s life at the
expense of His death, he says it is “ the religion of Cain with his fruits and

flowers, without the blood.” Christ Enthroned in the Industrial World.

A Discussion of Christianity in Property and Labor. By Charles Eoads.
(Hunt & Eaton.) This is a careful and elaborate consideration of one of
the most important, social questions of the time. Mr. Roads thoroughly
explodes many of the prevailing theories, such as Laissez faire , dependence
upon evolution, a higher self-interest, an ideal environment, the law of sup-
ply and demand, and hence concludes that the only course is to dethrone
barbarism and enthrone Christ in business and labor. The argument is con-
ducted in a fair and satisfactory manner. It is contended that when Chris-
tian principles permeate society outside the Church, and the idea of Chris-
tian brotherhood is fully developed, it will be seen that it pays best to do
right, and the evils that now afflict the intercourse of men will surely disap-
pear. It is doubtless well that the author does not introduce some patent
method of accomplishing "this result, but relies upon the steady march of

the truth in establishing the kingdom of God upon the earth. The New

Era; or, The Coming Kingdom. By the Rev. Josiali Strong, D.D. (The
Baker & Taylor Co.) This is a much better book than the one just noticed
on the same general subject. Dr. Strong considers first the race’s progress
to a perfected society, the contributions to this end made by the Hebrews,
the Greeks, the Romans, and the Anglo-Saxons, and the one authoritative
teacher with his two fundamental laws. He then refers to the prevailing
discontent, the problem of the country and of the city, and the mission of
the Church. In view of the failure of the latter he suggests new methods,
and insists upon the necessity of personal contact, and likewise of coopera-
tion. He points out the application of these two great principles to the
problems of the time, and concludes his book with a glowing chapter on the
enthusiasm of humanity. The work is well written, shows abundant read-
ing, is clear and forcible in its marshaling of facts and principles, and is well
worthy of a wide circulation. We should hardly, with some, call it “ one of
the few great books of the century,” but it certainly deserves general and
profound consideration as a courageous effort to grapple with the great
difficulty which confronts every close observer of the moral and religious
aspects of our time. Dr. Strong is not a pessimist, nor is his book simply a
jeremiad. The facts of the case are distinctly stated, and then follows the
true ground of hope for every lover of his race. The information wrhich the
volume contains will be of great service to the general body of readers, and
the practical suggestions must come with peculiar force to the leaders of

698

TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

opinion. The book, as is proper, has a copious and well-arranged Index.

Victory through Surrender. A Message Concerning Consecrated Living. By
the Rev. B. Fay Mills. (F. H. Revell Co.) This little volume from the
pen of one of the most successful evangelists of our day is admirably adapted
to its purpose. It points out very clearly the “ highway of holiness,” yet
without extravagance or misuse of Scripture. Earnest and sensible manuals
of this kind have a broad held of usefulness before them, nor can there well
be too many of them.

New York. T. W. Chambers.

VI.— RECENT ORIENTAL LITERATURE.

\

Keilschriftliches Textbueh zum Alien Testament. Herausgegeben von Hugo
Winckler. Lieferung I, Bogen 1-3. (Leipzig : Verlag von Eduard Pfeiffer,
1892.) This is a collection of excerpts from the historical inscriptions
of the kings of Assyria and Babylonia, in so far as they are supposed by the
author to throw light upon the events recorded in the Old Testament. It
is intended to afford an opportunity to lecturers on the Old Testament of
referring to the most important cuneiform texts in a convenient form. The
transliterated text and a version are given, without note or comment, except

an occasional textual variant or explanatory remark. Babylonische Ver-

tr'dge des Berliner Museums in Autographie, Transscription und Uebersetzung.
Herausgegeben und commentiert von F. E. Peiser. Nebst einem juristi-
schen Excurs von J. Kohler. (Berlin: Wolf Peiser Verlag, 1890.) The
Preface states that this work contains the most important inscriptions of the
collection which was purchased by the Berlin Museum in 1888. The im-
portance of these inscriptions appears plainly when we glance at the index
of the subjects discussed, which the author gives on pp. x-xvii of the Intro-
duction. Nearly everything that one can think of that has anything to do
with buying or selling, with wills and inheritance, with rents and interest,
with witnesses and civil suits, etc., is here treated of, fragmentarily, of
course, and tentatively, yet with the hope that what is now dark will soon be
cleared up ; for we can well be assured that we have as yet but a very small
portion of the documentary evidence which will eventually be produced to
throw light upon the hitherto totally unknown laws of Babylon the great.
From these published texts it seems that as it was the fundamental principle
of property among the ancient Israelites that Jehovah was the owner of
the land, so also in Babylon the “ gods were the ideal owners of the ground,
so that every citizen had to pay taxes for the lots which were in his control
to that temple to whose special god the property right of his possession be-
longed.” In addition to the land, the temples were owners of slaves and
had prior claim on the labor of certain free men. These laborers were en-
gaged in business of all kinds. Sometimes they worked in factories owned
by the temple. Sometimes they were hired out, their earnings going to the
temple treasury, which was enriched, also, by the bounties of kings and by
the gifts of private individuals. The influence which the priests are known
to have possessed in the later periods of Babylonian history rests quite as
much upon their financial resources and position as upon their religious ideas.
The rate of interest was usually 20 per cent., though it ranged from 10 to 25,
the latter of which was the rate in Assyria. Money was paid by what was
equivalent to our notes or cheques. Receipts were given upon payment.
Lawsuits about money matters were common ; and then, as now, oppressors
of the poor widow, like Shillibi, were able to circumvent the law while seem-
ing to observe the law. From the necessities of the case many of the trans-

RECENT ORIENTAL LITERATURE.

699

lations here offered are conjectural, both because the text itself is often in
doubt and because the root and form of the word are often unknown or

dubious. Arts clem babylonischen Rechtsleben. I und II. Yon J. Kohler,

Professor an der Universitat Berlin, und F. E. Peiser, Priv.-Doc. an der
Universitat Breslau. (Leipzig : Verlag von Eduard Pfeiffer, 1890 und 1891.)
With few exceptions, the inscriptions given in these booklets are translated
from Strassmaier’s edition of the Babylonian texts belonging to the reigns
of Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus. The authors first enunciate the law ;
next, they give a contract or other record illustrative of the law ; and
finally, when deemed necessary, there follows a discussion or elucidation of
the record. Few books afford more suggestive or direct information on
some of the laws and customs of the Old Testament than these. For ex-
ample, slaves were allowed their peculium, which in most cases was secured
to them. If this was the case among the Hebrews, it will account for the
statement of the Babbins,that slaves could be manumitted through redemp-
tion by a money payment. The laws in reference to fugitive slaves differed.
In Babylon they could be sold by the one to whom they fled. If the original
owner discovered this he received a compensation. Among the Hebrews it
was not permissible to give them up to their masters, nor to sell or maltreat
them, but they were allowed to dwell where they chose (Deut. xxiii. 16, 17).
The law among the Babylonians in regard to a woman who had been bought
as a wife differed in one important particular from that among the Hebrews.
In Ex. xxi. 10, we read : “ If another he shall take to her, her food, her
clothing, and her pretium pudicitiae shall he not diminish.” Among the
Babylonians in such a case the woman could return to her former place and
was to receive a compensation. In the record quoted by Dr. Peiser (Nebu-
chadnezzar 101) the amount of this compensation is fixed at one mina of gold.
May not the Latin “ dimittet earn ” be the correct translation of hephdah in
Ex. xxi. 8 ? If we take the Greek translation axodurpmaei in the sense of
“ deliver ” simply (compare d-Koluzpwau; in Luke xxi. 28 and Heb. xi. 35), the
eighth verse would then read : “If she be evil in the eyes of her lord, be-
cause to him (with the Keri ) he has taken her to wife (or, with the Kethibh,
so that he may not take her as wife), then let him dismiss (or. free) her,”
etc. It has generally been supposed that the ideas about adoption which are
enunciated in the New Testament were derived from the Romans. Yet it
is not necessarily so. For among the Babylonians there were laws and cus-
toms in operation which would probably account for all the statements made
in the N ew Testament with regard to adoption. A son could be given up
by his own parents and adopted by one who was not even related by blood,
so as to become for all legal purposes the son of the latter (see the case

of Marduk-Riman, on p. 10). Babylcmisclie Schenlcungsbriefe. Trans-

scribiert, ubersetzt und commentiert von K. Z. Tallquist. (Helsingfors:
1891.) In this little book we have all of the donation letters of the pub-
lications of Strassmaier which have not yet been transcribed and translated.
"VVe could not escape a feeling of disappointment at the small results which
we were able to gather from these eighteen letters; not because of any
fault of the author’s, who has doubtless done the best possible with his
material, but because the majority of them add so little to our previous
knowledge of the subjects treated of in them, and because the most important
of the letters seem to be untranslatable on account of our ignorance of Baby-
lonian. Still a service has been rendered in publishing, in a form which all
can use, all of the hitherto untranslated letters of the Strassmaier collection.
We note on the ninth page that Dr. Tallquist claims that nadu in the sense
of “ to give ” is the stem of iddashshu, basing his theory upon the nadu which
in Syllabary C, line 80, is given as a synonym of nadanu, pakadu, et al., and

TOO the PR ESB YTER1AN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

upon the fact that in Ezek. xvi. 23 nedheh occurs in the sense of “ gift ” (and
as a synonym of radhan ) and that nadhah (on the authority of Prof. I.

Barth) is found in the Samaritan in the sense “ to reach.'1'' Histoire du

Patriarche Copte Isaac. Etude critique, Texte et Traduction par E. Ame-
lineau. (Paris: Ernest Leroux, Editeur, 1890.) This is the second of the
“ publications de l’ecole des lettres d’Alger, bulletin de correspondence Afri-
caine.” It contains an Introduction of 37 pages and 80 pages of Coptic text,
with a Erench translation beneath. The Coptic document which is here
published is one of the two known to the author which were written during
the Arab supremacy, the principal Coptic works having been written from
325 to 451 A.D., i. e., between the councils of Xice and Chalcedon. “In
this period there were a great number of lives of martyrs, saints and fathers,
and many discourses and romances, etc.” After this period the minds of
men were so distracted by controversies and by the persecutions of the Mel-
kites that they had no time or inclination for original composition, and de-
voted themselves to copying and embellishing works already known. From
the middle of the sixth century to our day there is an almost complete silence,
broken during the Arab domination by one fitful attempt at a renaissance.
In the midst of this night there are found three documents alone, the first
written a little while after the invasion of Egypt by the Persians, during the
disastrous reign of Heracleus, the other two under the Arab domination,
with a long interval between them. One, indeed, dates from the end of the
seventh or the beginning of the eighth century, and the other from the time
of the Crusades, having been composed about 1200 A.D. Dr. Amelineau,
having previously published the first and third of these documents, now pub-
lishes the last. After telling us all that is known of Mena, the author of
the Life of Isaac, the Introduction proceeds with a discussion of the date
of the work and of the death of Isaac. At the time when Isaac lived the
schools among the Copts were numerous and flourishing. Xot merely the
Coptic, but, in some cases, the Greek fathers were studied, and Syriac was
frequently employed in the convents. According to Dr. Amelineau, the
ancient Egyptian was still known, “ La chose est certain pour la commence-
ment du YIP siecle, car l'eveque de Keft pouvait du premier coup d’ceil et
tres couramment lire un rouleau ecrit en caracteres demotiques.” After
citing some examples of the influence of this ancient Egyptian upon the
forms of thought of the Copts, the author adds : “ Le scribe cretien est reste
fidele aux pensees de ses ancetres, meme en paraissant changer de religion;
il s’est contente de retoumer son habit.” We are told in the narrative that
on one occasion a demon whispered in Isaac’s ear while he slept ; that again
when his friends, whose duty it was to bring his bread, had failed for five
days to do so, a great loaf of bread was borne by angels into his presence ;
and that at another time Peter and Mark accompanied him when he was
summoned before an angry ruler, aud so confounded the latter by the glory
which environed them that his ungovernable rage was converted into stupi-
fying fear. The narrative is studded with Greek words ; the Arabic seems
not as yet to have influenced the Coptic written language. The word apo-
trites, Dr. Amelineau thinks, is corrupted from apokirtes rather than from

apoteretes , as has been maintained by M. Zotenberg. Etude d'histoire et

d'archeologie. E. Archinard. Israel et ses voisins Asiatiques, la Phenicie,
l'Aram et PAssyrie, de l’epoque de Salomon a celle de Sancherib. Avec
deux cartes dressees par l’auteur. (Geneve: E. Baroud et Cie, Libraires-
Editeurs, 1890.) This is an interesting and instructive book, written in a
beautiful style. While there is not much that is new, the arrangement is
more excellent and the object is more definite than what we generally meet
with in works which have a bearing on Old Testament history. The author

RECENT ORIENTAL LITERATURE.

701

proposes to give us facts rather than theories as to the history of the Jews,
to study in their developments the relations which the ancient Israelites en-
tertained with the neighboring nations. He has well attained his purpose.
In treating of the Phoenicians he seeks to explain, in order, their political
and economic influence upon Israel. Here his chapter upon the material
superiority of the Phoenician civilization, upon their industries and com-
merce, is especially good. His statements depend upon well-established
facts, and are deductions rather than theories. In his discussions of such
subjects as the siege of Samaria and the destruction of Sennacherib’s army
he is clear, comprehensive and impartial, stating and discussing fully enough
all that is known. Like Winckler and Sayce, he discounts the narratives of
Herodotus with regard to the destruction of Sennacherib’s army, seeing that
Sennacherib does not mention Pelusium, and that Herodotus might easily
have been deceived by the Egyptian priests, his informers, and that Sethos,
the Pharaoh, who, according to Herodotus, reigned at this time, is abso-
lutely unknown to the Egyptian records, and that he makes the army of Sen-
nacherib an army of Arabs. On the other hand, he defends the possibility
of the bowstrings’ destruction in one night by rats or mice, yet believes that
such was not the case, since the sign used in hieroglyphic writing for mouse is
the sign used also for havoc and destruction. In the end of the volume
there are fifty pages of notes on chronology, cartography and other interest-
ing subjects, such as “ the religious side of political law in the ancient
Orient,” “ Merodach-Balodan,” “ the name of Ben-Hadad,” and the cam-
paigns of Tiglath Pilezir II and of Shalmanezer in Palestine. In the maps
constructed by the author, we think, he has been altogether too exact in plac-
ing his dividing lines. The regular boundaries of such countries as Beth-
Chalupi, Charcha, Arpad and others cannot be justified by documentary evi-
dence, and might be misleading to those who do not know that they are, in
most cases, the figments merely of the designer’s imagination. Kiepert’s
method of map-making, such as we find in Schrader’s Keilinschriften und
das Alte Testament , or in his Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek, is much to be
preferred, and would accord better with Archinard’s appeal to facts as above

enunciated. Beitr'dge zur Assyriologie und vergleichenden semitischen

Sprachwissenschaft. Herausgegeben von Eriederich Delitzsch und Paul
Ilaupt. Hit Understiitzung der Johns Hopkins Universitat zu Baltimore.
Zweites Band, Heft I. This number of this useful and scientific wrork con-
tains the conclusion of the article on Hiob Ludolf, by J. Flemming. This
article consists of letters written in Ethiopic to Ludolf, with a translation
and notes by Flemming. Another contribution by the same writer is one
on “ Sir Henry Rawlinson and His Services to Assyriology.” Prof. Fried-
erich Delitzsch continues his explanation of the Babylonio- Assyrian letters,
and contributes also notes supplementary to Hagen’s Cyrus texts, and an
article on the Merodach-Balodan stone in Berlin. O. E. Hagen gives us a
complete history of the inscriptions to Cyrus, their editions and translations,
and adds a transcription and translation of his own, supplemented by notes
and an extended philological commentary. This collective edition of the in-
scriptions bearing on Cyrus will be welcome to all. The other article is by
C. W. Belser, and is entitled “The Babylonian Kuduren Inscriptions.”
Kuduren is an inscribed boundary stone, which was used to show the bound-
aries of a lot or field, as well as the rights of the possessor thereof, and to fix
these rights in a legal way, unchangeable for all time. The notes in most of
these articles will be useful to Old Testament, as well as to Assyrian,
scholars. For example, the note of Dr. Belser on zeru, as meaning arable
field, makes a better rendering possible for the plural of zera in 1 Sam. viii.
15, where the Latin, indeed, renders it by segetes. Sinailische Insckriften .

702

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

Yon Julius Euting. Herausgegeben mit Unterstiitzung der koniglich-
preussischen Akademie der "Wissenschaften, mit 40 autographirten Tafeln.
(Berlin: Druck und Yerlag von Georg Reimer, 1891.) This production is
perfect of its kind. For arrangement of material, for facility of reference,
and for thoroughness of treatment, it leaves nothing that can be desired.
Prof. Euting, facile princeps in Semitic epigraphy outside of cuneiform, has
been assisted in his philological notes by Prof. Niildeke, who has been called
by some one the Napoleon of Semitic studies. After mentioning the fact,
which we note for her honor, that his expedition to Sinai was made only
through the generosity of Frau Marie Grundelius, the author in his Intro-
duction gives us a journal of his travels, in which he was accompanied by
the veteran Arabic and Samaritan scholar, Dr. Y oilers. In the Appendix a
map showing the route taken by the author is given, as well as a second map
showing the great caravan routes of Syria and Arabia, along or near which
most of the inscriptions have been found. On pp. 7 and 8 there is a com-
plete list of all the works published, from Kircher in 1636 to Benedite in 1889,
which contain either explanations or copies of the inscriptions of the Sinai-
tic peninsulas. Further on Prof. Euting states it to be his opinion that the
Nabathean inscriptions were made not by Israelites during the wanderings,
nor by pilgrims or shepherds, nor by members of passing caravans, but by
merchants, who, as scribes, accompanied the caravans, and who were com-
pelled for a while to remain in this out-of-the-way corner of the wilderness
because their camels, that had broken down in the midst of their toilsome
journey from Yemen to Syria, could best recuperate in the pastures of these
valleys where the inscriptions have been found. Peculiar is the inscription
numbered 457, which reads : “ Remembered will be Taim’allahi, the son of
Ya’li, in the year 106, which is the same as that of the three Ccesars.” Since
the era of Bozrah began in March, 105 A.D., the year 106 would extend from
March, 210, to March, 211. The three Csesars were Septimius Severus and
his two sons, Caracalla and Geta. Septimius died on February 4, 211 A.D.
The possibility of error in reading such inscriptions as these is well illus-
trated under No. 223a. Gray had translated kolianta by “priest of Ta ,”
while Euting renders it by “ priestess. ” In Gray’s inscription No. 83,2, which
he read “ priest of the god Ta,” Euting reads, “ In the year of 40 of the
H.L.,” while Forster, in his work entitled The Israelitisli Authorship of the
Sinaitic Inscriptions (London, 1856), had got out of it the following :

“ Destroy springing on the people the fiery serpents,

Hissing injecting venom heralds of death they kill
The people prostrating on their back curling in folds
They wind round descending on bearing destruction.”

Corpus juris Abessinorum. Textum iEthiopicum Arabicumque ad

manuscriptorum fidem cum versione Latina et dissertatione juridico-his-
torica. Edidit Dr. Johannes Baclimann, societatis Germanorum orientalis
sodalis ordinarius, etc. Pars i: JusConnubii. (Berlini: F. Schneider &
Co., 1890.) In 1844 Ewald had said of the “Jus Rerum,” of which this is a
part : “ This valuable work, which may give us much information as to the
dark history of the Ethiopians, was still entirely unknown to Ludolf , cer-
tainly only because in Ethiopia itself it belonged to the less common books. I
withhold myself at present from entering upon a closer description, because
it is to be desired that the work may very soon become among us the object of
especial investigations and dissertations.” In the ninth column of the Pro-
legomena to his Ethiopic dictionary ( Lexicon linguae yEthiopicce) , Dillmaun
says that it was composed in the Arabic language about the beginning of the
thirteenth century by Abu Isaac ben Elassal, and that it was translated into
Geez in the fifteenth century, and that since then it has undergone various

RECENT ORIENTAL LITERATURE.

703

changes at the hands of Abyssinian lawyers. The code consists of fifty-one
chapters, of which twenty-two are canon law and twenty-nine civil law. The
Jus Connubii, which is first published in this volume of Dr. Bachmann’s, is
the twenty-fourth chapter of the code and the second of the civil law, and is
entitled “ Concerning Espousals, Dowries, Matrimony and its Consequences.”
We notice that the objects of marriage are said to be three, “to bear chil-
dren, to extinguish lust, and to give mutual aid, or co'ire ” (aw tagdb'o). The
marriage of a second wife during the life of the first is to be avoided, “ be-
cause it rejects the honorable from their honor,” since a bishop must be the
husband of one wife, and besides, as Basil says, “ If a turtle dove not en-
dowed with reason avoids a second marriage, how much more do you think
should a rational animal ? ” A third wife is a calamity, but a fourth is not
to be permitted by law. After laying down the duties of a married pair, the
author of the code inveighs against lust, “ the mother of ignominy, debility,
toils, misery, and, in truth, the generatrix of carnal and spiritual labors.”
Marriage was not permitted within the fourth remove. Neither a sponsor,
nor his son, nor his grandson, nor the child of the sponsor’s wife was allowed
to marry his godchild. Since it was the duty of a guardian to provide for
his ward’s marriage, he wras forbidden to marry her to one of his own family
until she was twenty-seven years of age. A woman above sixty could not
marry, nor one whose husband had not been dead ten months, and even then
“ fiat cum precibus .” There are three things which may give grounds for
divorce. The first is a monastic life entered upon by both husband and wife
with consent of both. The second is anything which impedes the object of
marriage, among which is absence or imprisonment for many years, or epi-
lepsy caused by the possession of demons, or elephantiasis, or leprosy, or
murder attempted of one by the other, or even if “ inter eum uxoremque
suam quse malitia acciderit ac simulationes post simulationes,” in which last
case the bishop had power to declare the marriage null and void. The third
cause is adultery, fornication or uncleanness. On pp. x-xvi of the Introduc-
tion the author gives an account of the manuscripts in Ethiopia and Arabic
so far as known. He describes twenty-one in Ethiopia and thirteen in Arabic.
He has made a collation of five of the best Ethiopic manuscripts. He seems
to have had access to but one of the Arabic manuscripts — the Florentine —
from which he has copied copious notes explanatory of the Ethiopic text, or
presenting variations from the same. In the chapter which gives us the
sources of these laws the text is published in full in both languages, because
this chapter is undoubtedly in many respects the most important in the book.
Here Elassal makes known to us all the authorities and sources from which
he has codified his laws. Besides the Bible, he made use of the apostolic
canons, of the canons of Clement, of the didascalia, of the epistles of Peter to
Clement, of the canons of the councils of Ancyra, Carthagena, Gangra, An-
tioch, Nice, Laodicea and Sardica, of the canons of Hippolytus and of Basil,
of the canons of the kings and of the works of Dionysius, Gregory, Chry-
sostom, Christodoulus and Timotheus. Elassal, if we may judge from his
notes, used with facility authorities written in Greek, Syriac, Coptic and
Arabic. In describing each of the above-mentioned series of canons, he
states the number of chapters found, and often gives a summary of their

contents. Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens. Yon Hugo Winckler.

(Leipzig : Verlag von Eduard Pfeiffer, 1892.) To us the most interesting
part of Dr. Winckler ’s history is the discussion of the sources from which
it is derived. Herodotus he rejects as being an unreliable author, because
his narratives are either entirely false or at the most contain a kernel of
truth mixed up with infinitely much that is false. “ For the historian his
brilliant narrations can have but the value of myths. One can read with a

704

TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

smile only that the Persians were trained from their youth up to speak
naught but the truth. Poor father of history ! ” Ctesias is cast away by
the author as worthless. Abydenus is useful only as a supplement to Bero-
sus ; while the works of the latter teach us little which is not contained in
the cuneiform inscriptions. The canon of Ptolemy is the most valuable
source in Greek, since “ in all points, as far as we have been able to
examine it in comparison with the cuneiform sources, it has proved itself
to be trustworthy.” From an Assyrian standpoint “ the couple of Bibli-
cal narratives referring to Assyria need scarcely be considered.” The
cuneiform texts, since most of them are of official and contempora-
neous origin, are the most reliable sources which a historian can have,
and are almost the only sources used in this history. Yet these sources
are not always consistent with each other. For example, the different lists
of kings do not always agree with one another, so that it looks as if there
must have been different schools and systems of historical composition in
vogue in Babylon. The first list of kings given by the author differs from
the second in the statements as to the length of the reigns of some of the
kings. Again, it seems as if Berosus had had a different division from that
which till now the cuneiform texts have made known. And, lastly, the so-
called royal inscriptions of the Babylonians give us accounts merely of
the buildings which the kings had constructed, while those of the Assyrians
contain merely annals of their campaigns. A real chronography is not to be
found in Assyria. The so-called synchronistic history, or the history of the
relations of Assyria and Babylon, was made for the purpose of fixing the
different treaties of peace and alliance of the previous rulers of both lands
and the boundaries existing at the time of each treaty, while the Eponynm
canon had the practical object of settling the date of the private and public
documents, since in Assyria the year was denoted not by the name of the
ruling king, but by the name of one of the highest officers of the State.
But for Assyria the most important, because the most complete of the
texts, are the lists of the kings, in which each ruler narrates the deeds of
his reign. These the author divides into annals, which relate the events
in chronological order ; histories of wars, which consider separately the most
important campaigns without sticking closely to the chronological order;
and the so-called “ Prunkinschriften,” which commonly arrange the mate-
rial from a geographical or general standpoint. The information derived
from these lists, is supplemented by short inscriptions found on bricks,
seals, cylinders and boundary stones, which contain the names and titles of
kings, often with remarks or mention of political events, which not infre-
quently are the only source of our knowledge for great periods of time. Dr.
Winckler emphasizes in this work the view which he put forward with so
much ability in his Untersuchungen zur altorientalisclien Geschichte, that the
kings of Assyria stood in much the same relation to Babylon as the kings of
the Holy Roman Empire stood to Rome, Babylon having been for two thou-
sand years the centre of the religious life of the regions about the Tigris and
Euphrates. This fact is doubtless the reason for the prominence which
Babylon holds in the denunciations of the prophets. It was the heart of the
enemy which was arrayed against the kingdom of God. On the seventy-first
page of this history Dr. Winckler makes a statement which may be of inter-
est to those who discuss the antiquity of the Mosaic laws. He says : “ We
possess numerous tablets containing judicial decisions, commercial contracts
and similar documents which show us that the laws of Babylon were at that
time (2403-2098 B.C.) developed to such a perfection as can only be in a civ-
ilized state.” On p. 72 he adds: “A legal and commercial life so ordered
presupposes a codified system of law. We have remnants of such codes

RECENT GENERAL LITERATURE.

705

which show that the collections of laws were divided into series, which again
were divided into paragraphs bearing on different subjects.” Again, we are
told that the mental development of Babylon had already in this period
reached its highest point. In poetry later compositions were drawn up ex-
actly like the ancient models ; and the same is true of the formulas for exor-
cism and of the astronomical and astrological notes, while the epics and
fables of later times were but copies of those which existed at this early
period. It will be noted by the reader that the period referred to by Dr.
Winckler antedates, according to all chronological systems, the time of the
emigration of the family of Terah from Ur of the Chaldees.

Allegheny. Robert Dick Wilson.

VII. — GENERAL LITERATURE.

The Golden Bough. A Study in Comparative Religion. By J.G. Frazer,
M.A., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. London: Macmillan &
Co., 1890. 2 vols.

These handsomely published volumes are a detached study by the author,
who is preparing a general work on primitive superstitions and religion. He
treats at this length in them of a very curious and unique and hitherto unex-
plained rule for the succession and tenure of the priesthood in the grove of
Diana Nemorensis, on the shore of Lake Hemi (“ Diana’s Mirror”), in the
Alban hills near Aricia. The rule is graphically stated thus: “In this
sacred grove there grew a certain tree round which, at any time of the day,
and probably far into the night, a strange figure might be seen to prowl. In
his hand he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as
if every instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy. He was a priest
and a murderer, and the man for whom he looked was sooner or later to
murder him and hold the priesthood in his stead. Such was the rule of the
sanctuary. A candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office by
slaying the priest; and, having slain him, he held office till he was himself
slain by a stronger or a craftier.” From that sacred tree “ only a runaway
slave was allowed to break off, if he could, one of its boughs. Success in
the attempt entitled him to fight the priest in single combat, and if he slew
him he reigned in his stead with the title of King of the Wood (Rex Nemor-
ensis).”

In antiquity the origin and form of this worship of Diana at Nemi was
traced to the bloody ritual ascribed to that goddess in the Tauric Chersonese,
by which every stranger landing there was sacrificed on her altar. This rit-
ual was held to have been transferred to Italy by Orestes, who, after killing
Thoas, the king, fled with his sister, carrying the image of the Tauric Diana
to Nemi, where the rite assumed a milder form. Tradition here held that
the fateful branch was that golden bough broken off at the Sibyl’s bidding
by iEneas before his visit to the lower world. The flight of the slave repre-
sented, it was said, the flight of Orestes, and his combat with the priest was
a reminiscence of the human sacrifices once offered to the Tauric Diana. We
could hardly have a more striking contrast than that between the facts and
theories bequeathed us by antiquity (chiefly drawn from Greek legend and so
scanty and mythical as to yield no solution of the problem), and the survey
of a world-wide field, past and present, undertaken by the author in quest of
clues and explanations in the spirit and method of modem comparative
research. He asks two main questions: first, “Why had the priest to slay
his predecessor V ” and, secondly, “ Why, before he slew him, had he to pluck
45 .

706

TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

the golden bough?” The exhaustive collection of superstitious beliefs and
usages gathered from all sources in the ancient, and far more profusely from
the modern world, is grouped along the lines of inference and argument, all
based upon the general position that “the primitive Aryau, in all that
regards his mental fibre and texture, is not extinct. He is among us to this
day in the peasant, who, scarcely touched by the intellectual and moral forces
that have revolutionized the educated world, is, in his inmost beliefs, what
his forefathers were in the days when forest trees still grew and squirrels
played on the ground where Rome and London now stand.” And so it is
“ that in Europe, at the present day, the superstitious beliefs and practices
which have been handed down by word of mouth are generally of a far more
archaic type than the religion depicted in the most ancient literature of the
Aryan race.”

A preliminary inquiry first answered by these means is : Why was the priest
of Kemi called the “King of the Wood?” The union of priestly and
kingly functions, as in early Greek and Roman history, ending in a line of
kings stripped of political power, with only religious function left, and that
a merely official relation to supernatural deities, does not explain to us this
King of the Wood, who was himself the actual depository of divine powers
and was appealed to for sunshine and fecundity of fields and flocks. Yery
profuse illustration from modern savage life, with sometimes close comparison
with classic sacrificial divination, shows how temporarily or permanently
incarnate gods, with supposed powers of supernatural knowledge and proph-
ecy and miracle, as well as magically potent men, are the rule and not the
exception in primitive society; and, especially, we find many examples of
departmental kings of nature, such as kings of rain, of fire, of growth, etc.
With closer parallel we may look for evidence of a man-god or king whose
department was the wood. The characteristic and widespread tree worship
of the Aryan race in primitive forest-covered Europe, and the notions on
which it was and still is based, of pervading animism and polytheism, mold-
ing the superstitions and festivals and rites of peasants still, with great uni-
formity everywhere and with internal marks of great antiquity, suggest the
conclusion “ that the Greeks and Romans, like the other European Aryans,
once practiced forms of tree worship similar to those still kept up by our
peasantry.” Very suggestive comparison follows of the English and Euro-
pean May Day with the Little and Great Daedala in ancient Platsea and the
Anthesterinn festival at Athens, leading on to the inference that these various
forms of tree worship help to explain the regal priesthood of Aricia, and
show* the attributes of Diana there to have been those of a tree spirit or syl-
van deity, represented, as frequently, not only by the sacred tree but also by a
living person believed to embody in himself the tree spirit and often called a
“ king.” The most striking and exact parallel to the title and province thus
conjoined appears in the chief forest-god of the Finns, styled by them
“Golden King of the Wood.” Furthermore, our wood-king’s life w'as
believed to be bound up with that of the sacred tree, being safe from assault
so long as no bough w’as plucked from it. He came thus to represent the
immanent tree spirit as did the tree itself, and wras deemed a living incarna-
tion of it and, accredited with its varied miraculous powers, he naturally
became the king of blessings for fields and flocks in that sacred grove, w’hich
is known to have been an object of great reverence and care to those early
tribes around the Alban mount.

Why, now’, had the wood king to kill his predecessor? Our space allows
but the briefest condensation of the author’s far-extended reply, wfith its
more intricate and subtle analogies and inferences and treatment of primitive
conceptions, classical and modern. The king or man-god, possessed of the

RECENT GENERAL LITERATURE.

707

most beneficent powers, must not die a natural death and his soul or life,
conceived of as separable from and outliving the body, be lost to his wor-
shipers or be caught by a successor only at the moment of his natural death,
when impaired by disease or decaying strength. He must be slain, therefore,
and when in full vigor, by one who can catch and appropriate his divine life
at its best. “ So long as he could maintain his position by the strong hand it
might be inferred that his natural force was not abated ; whereas his defeat
and death at the hands of auother proved that his strength was beginning to
fail and that it was time his divine life should be lodged in a less dilapidated
tabernacle.” The author connects the rule at this point with the general
conception of the death and resurrection of vegetation, celebrated so widely
in Egypt and Asia Minor under the names of Osiris, Adonis, Dionysus and
others with ceremonies strikingly like those of modern Europe, some of the
most significant of them tracing back to human sacrifices “ designed as a
charm to make the sun to shine and the crops to grow.”

The second main question finds its answer in illustrating how the wood-
king’s life or soul was supposed to be simultaneously embodied also in the
golden bough, the two being a sort of twin incorporation of the tree spirit.
The divisibility of life, or, otherwise expressed, the plurality of souls, is
easily conceived by the savage, unshackled by dogma as he is and “ free to
explain the facts of life by the assumption of as many souls as he thinks nec-
essary.” Plucking the golden bough, therefore, was no unnatural prelimi-
nary to attacking the King of the Wood.

The closing chapters of the author’s work connect the golden bough with
the mistletoe, and through this the ceremonies at Hemi with the primitive
cult of the oak, once, it may be, the supreme Aryan god. “ The result of
our inquiry is to make it probable that, down to the time of the Roman Em-
pire and the beginning of our era, the primitive worship of the Aryans was
maintained nearly in its original form in the sacred grove at Xemi as in the
oak woods of Gaul, of Prussia and of Scandinavia, and that the King of the
Wood lived and died as an incarnation of the supreme Aryan god whose life
was in the mistletoe or golden bough.”

To all results of such inquiries as our author’s, gathering materials from
the most widely separated sources in time and space, only degrees of proba-
bility attach. The book is diffuse where it might have been condensed, and
overprofuse, we think, in its illustration from modern savage life. Yet it
has very much valuable suggestion for the student of classical antiquity, and
insight into the conceptions of primitive and uncivilized and un-Christianized
mankind.

Princeton. W. A. Packard.

Life and Letters of Robert Browning. By Mrs. Sutherland Orr.

Boston and Hew York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1891. In 2 vols., pp.

xii, 646 (in the two). Index.

This is a semi-authorized biography, Mrs. Orr having the aid and coopera-
tion of the poet’s sister in its preparation, and it appears in a uniform print
with Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. ’s authorized edition of the poet’s works.
There is no sign of the assistance of Mr. Barrett Browning, and it has been
prepared in direct opposition to Browning’s oft-expressed wish. It is to be
regretted that so great a man, the sure mark of not one, but of many biograph-
ers, should have had such an invincible determination to make the task of
writing his life as difficult as possible, and the result as unsatisfactory to his
admirers. The dislike he felt for all prying into his private affairs, actual
and anticipatory, was settled and morbid, and extended with equal intensity

08

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

to his wife’s life. This is the more remarkable in that he loved the biog-
raphies of others, and that he had plainly learned both in his wife’s case and his
own experience with the various Browning societies, the strong appetite of
the reading public for biographical details. The result shows itself in these
volumes. Instead of all those who knew and loved the man uniting in a
cordial effort to prepare a book worthy of his noble life, we have a semi-
authorized work, full of materials, but by no means prepared from full ma-
terials. The result is most readable, but as a biography utterly inadequate.
Let us not be thought to condemn the work. "We have enjoyed it heartily ;
it has all the marks of loving and painstaking care ; it is written from a
standpoint of closest sympathy, and of great familiarity with the works
and the person of Browning, and there is scarcely a dull or prosy page in the
more than six hundred beautifully printed octavo pages on which the pub-
lishers have spent all the book-maker’s art. But this does not bring the
work up to the mark which we have set for a biography of this truly Titanic
man.

This adjective “ Titanic” gives the key to our first criticism. From the
first page to the last, there is no recognition of the Titanic force in Brown-
ing. It was in his mind perhaps, for Mrs. Orr in referring to that glorious
poem, “ Prospice,” says that if he ever was what he claimed to be, crying

“ I was ever a fighter —

So one fight more, the last and the best,”

it was purely subjective. Grant that it was so, yet only a man of large mind
and strong grasp of the truths of nature and of God, could hope “ to hold the
mirror up to life” in writing the life of such a man. We feel that, per-
chance, it is true, as Mrs. Orr says over and over again, that the great poet
was the little man ; but we are not prepared to admit it without a struggle.
And we are happy in finding no word of his in the all too few letters from
his pen which write him down the little man. He comes out human enough,
but his vices are the vices of large but self-centred natures. Thus we find
him forgetful of the claims of others, oversensitive at neglect, expecting
too much, and bitter when he does not win the applause he expected and
doubtless did deserve. But on the other hand we find him swift in his rec-
ognition of others, kindly, helpful, and in his superb self-abnegation wast-
ing the wealth of years in his loving care of his poet-wife. It was of all things
the great man’s soul which struggled for utterance in his poems. The want
of service — the constant, fixed occupation — which fills most men’s lives, pro-
duced the littlenesses and the want of personal constancy in his life. Yet
he was singularly true in his loves — parental, filial and conjugal— in his friend-
ships and in his devotion to his task of becoming a poet, and, indeed, to
most it seemed that he by force of will worked out a destiny to which he was
not born. It is all this which Mrs. Orr has forced into the background, per-
ferring to judge him by his off-duty airs and graces, rather than his bearing
in the front where duty was to be done.

This ladylike standard follows us into the, to us, far more serious con-
sideration of his religious attitude. Thus, on page 463, we have this state-
ment: “The arguments set forth in ‘La Saisiaz ’ for the immortality of
the soul leave no place for the idea, however indefinite, of a Christian revela-
tion on the subject. Christ remained for Air. Browning a mystery and a mes-
sage of divine love, but no messenger of divine intention towards mankind.”
This is a typical statement. And in most of these statements there is the
juggling with the jargon of incertitude which we have in this. Yet in the
same sentences we have such statements as these, as made by him (p. 463) :
“ If Christ entered the room I should fall on my knees ; ” “I am an under-

REGENT GENERAL LITERATURE.

709

stander of men, and He was no man ” — quoting Lamb and Napoleon (p. 542).
“ The Evangelical Christian and the subjective idealist philosopher were
curiously blended in His composition,” is the author’s judgment of him in
another place. To those who recall the noble Christian spirit of such poems
as “ The Death in the Desert ” and “ Cleon ; ” and the strong trust pictured
in his dedication of the “ Ring and the Book,” in “ Prospice ” and in so many
other poems ; and the scorn he shows for the quibbles of the doubters in “ Ben
Karshook’s Wisdom ; ” something more direct than anything herein given is
wanted to shake our confidence in the essentially Christian temper of Brown-
ing’s mind.

We dwell on these points because they seem to go to the root of the matter,
and to make the loving tribute of a firm friend the greatest injury to the
memory of the poet. But beyond these things, Mrs. Orr seems to have sought
to say something new, rather than to write a complete history of Browning’s
life. To one familiar with the great mass of literature which has centred about
Browning, the omission of much of the best known biographical material is
very welcome ; but it makes these volumes needlessly ephemeral. Thus, in
telling the poetic story of Browning’s courtship and marriage and happy
wedded life, there is no allusion to the “Sonnets from the Portuguese,” the
very crown of glory of the whole. Nor do we have any adequate account of the
various biographical incidents connected with his greater poems, which cer-
tainly were obtainable. Nor yet are we fairly made to see the world, the true
world of men and women, in which the poet moved. Now and again the
friend suppresses a fact to which the public had a right ; now and again ex-
poses a fact connected with others which a more kindly hand had left unnoted.

Taken as a whole, these volumes offer rather a pleasantly written and ap-
preciative outline of Browning’s life adapted to the present hour, in the main
serious and safe, but requiring to be taken with considerable reserve as to his
religious attitude.

Lafayette College. Ethelbert D. Warfield.

How the Other Half Lives. Studies among the Tenements of New
York. With Illustrations. By Jacob A. Riis. New York : Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1890. 8vo, pp. 304, $2.50. Same work, cheaper edition,
12mo, $1.25 net. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1891.

The Children of the Poor. By Jacob A. Riis, author of How the
Other Half Lives. Illustrajed. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1892. 8vo, pp. xi, 300, $2.50.

The year of our Lord, 1890, witnessed the publication of two volumes, as
widely contrasted as books could well be in the interests which they repre-
sent, and also in the trains of thought which they set in motion in reply to
the two questions: Who is my neighbor? and, Is .life worth living? We
refer to Mr. Ward McAllister’s Society as I have Found It (and done my
best to make and keep it), and the earlier of the studies by Mr. Riis now
lying before us. They deal with different social strata and make a very dif-
ferent appeal to earnest minds. The momentous problems raised by the first
mentioned of these volumes are the great concerns engaging the attention
and energy of the reviser of visiting lists, the designer of visiting cards and
the regulator of their use, the grand master of ceremonies, the chef de cui-
sine, tailors, milliners and modistes of every class and degree, and all who
do, and all who would, belong to the very elect of social life, holding no life
worth living except within that charmed circle. The problems of Mr.
Riis’ volumes are of the most intense and painful interest to patriots and
philanthropists and Christians ; to the supporters of all our great charities,
organized and individual ; to the heads and subordinates of the health and

710

1EE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

police and educational departments in city and town ; to all who are and all
who should be advocates of municipal and social reform ; to property owners
who have consciences, or who hold themselves at all amenable to the great,
but too often silent, public conscience, and, beyond that, to a divine law and
a divine Judge; to all who are not infatuated to the verge of insanity in
their optimistic view of the times in which we live and the perfection of our
civilization.

The gravest and most formidable condonations of skepticism and atheism
are found in just such specific facts and just such widespread conditions
of things in this nineteenth of the Christian centuries as Mr. Riis here
sets before U3. It would require a novelist of the rarest power to conceive
and describe what is here vividly and with becoming feeling delineated as
awful reality. The revelations are appalling in the masses of fact and the
details of fact which they bring out in the successive chapters, clinching all by
a few pages of statistics in the Appendices. If it were destitution only that
called for relief the problem would be easy of solution. But the degradation
and callousness that are possible to humanity close beside churches and uni-
versities and art museums and refined and Christian homes ; the gross, in-
ventive, defiant developments of vice and crime; the ever-present, ever-
obstructive and diabolical greed that mocks alike at legislation and at philan-
thropy ; the close confederation of our debauched politics with many of the
worst factors and forces in our social state ; and the contented ignorance and
apathy of the great body of those from whose action, individual and collect-
ive, relief must come — these are the more confounding elements in the situa-
tion.

The capacity of our nation and of our local communities for exertion and
for self-sacrifice has been amply proved. Our power of national digestion and
assimilation is being tested in recent years as never before, but not so much
by the numbers as by the quality of the legions of immigrants who are pour-
ing in upon us, and whose residence, temporary or permanent, in our great
cities contributes some of its gravest elements to the complicated and oppres-
sive problem that Mr. Riis brings so powerfully before us. The sickening
facts that come out to public knowledge as the abominations of the “ sweat-
ing’’system and kindred devices of selfishness and greed are exposed, are
already influencing private action and will more and more compel concerted
and legislative action. Consumers’ leagues are orgauizing, the members of
which bind themselves not to deal with firms that refuse to pay living wages
to employes ; and we know Christian women who have for years refused to
buy cheap, ready-made clothing. Morals will more and more compel recog-
nition in economics as well as in politics. And the even more sickening
facts of the condition and stunting of childhood in the homes (can we use
that word here ?) of the poor, ought to strike a chord of sympathy in every
breast which will rouse to action. Mr. Riis’ evident care to avoid exagger-
ation ; his recognition of certain alleviations inherent in child-nature and
even in the situation itself ; his far from hopeless and even in some respects
cheerful outlook ; only give an additional emphasis to the horror of the ac-
tual situation, and an additional spur to effort for its betterment.

Mr. Riis has rendered an immense public service to society and to Chris-
tianity by his painful and powerful presentation of facts which are of univer-
sal and immeasurable importance and urgency. The great, earnest, middle
class in society may quietly ignore the pains and pleasures, the envvings and
plottings of the coteries represented by Mr. McAllister. But to the great host
for which Mr. Riis pleads they can never serenely pass on the message :
Stand by thyself ; come not near to me. Humanly speaking, the hopes of
society centre in it.

Princeton. Benjamin B. Warfield.

REGENT GENERAL LITERATURE.

711

Chambers’ Encyclopaedia. A Dictionary of Universal Knowledge.
New Edition. Yols. i-x. Large 8vo. London and Edinburgh : Wil-
liam and Robert Chambers ; Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott Company,
1888-1892.

“ The advantages of a good encyclopaedia are obvious,” says Prof. Joseph
H. Thayer, of Harvard Divinity School, in his recently published address,
Books and Their Use : “ it is a small library in itself— a library, moreover,
written for the most part by specialists ; and by its copious bibliographical
references putting one on the track of the principal works relating to any
subject which he may wish to study more in detail.” Similarly, Dr.
Philip Schaff, in his Theological Propaedeutic,'. “ A good alphabetical Cyclo-
paedia is a necessity for every educated man ( Encyclopaedia Britannica,
Chambers, Johnson, Appleton, Pierre Larousse, Brockhaus, Meyer, Ersch
and Gruber).” Both of these writers have earned the right to give advice ;
theologians themselves of unusual breadth and accuracy of scholarship, they
are giving hints to theologians in the making and to the working ministry,
as to how they may best and with least expenditure of time, labor and money
keep abreast of the ever-broadening field of knowledge. A good Encyclopaedia,
every one of us must have.

This settled, and we have another question very pressingly before us:
Which Encyclopaedia is the best ? It is not without significance that in Dr.
Schaff’s list the Encyclopaedia Britannica and Chambers stand together at
the beginning. They are respectively the best Encyclopaedia, each of its
class. For there are two radically different conceptions of the Encyclopaedia
in a formal point of view ; and these two great works represent the two con-
ceptions. An Encyclopaedia is, in any form, a general survey of the sciences
and arts, a summary of general knowledge, a stock-taking in all departments
of information. But the mode of presentation may be determined more by
a desire to secure formal completenesss in scientific statement, or more by
a desire to render the several departments of knowledge thoroughly acces-
sible. In the former case we get a series of elaborate and exhaustive treatises,
brought together in alphabetical order ; and the best example of this type of
Encyclopaedia is the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In the latter case the va-
rious masses of systematic knowledge are broken up to as great a degree as
is consistent with the clear explanation of the separate fragments ; and the
best example accessible of this type of Encyclopaedia is the new Chambers.
Which of the two is preferred, will, therefore, be rationally determined by
the purpose of the student. If he desires to acquire a series of treatises on
the main branches of knowledge, by mastering which he may obtain a com-
prehensive survey of the circle of sciences, he will provide himself with the
Britannica. If he desires to place at his elbow a comprehensive Dictionary
of Knowledge, to which he can turn as need arises, and which is easy to con-
sult and trustworthy in its information, he will provide himself with the
new Chambers. An Encyclopaedia like the Britannica possesses little ad-
vantage over a series of separate treatises : its alphabet is not extensive
enough, and its articles are too extensile, for ordinary consultation. He
that possesses it will not find that all his wants are provided for ; he still
needs the new Chambers for general use, while he keeps the Britannica
for his more leisurely investigation. Not only, then, must every educated
man have an Encyclopaedia, but every educated man needs an Encyclopaedia
of the type of Chambers.

Chambers' Encyclopaedia, in the original edition, was an epoch-making
book ; it was begun in 1859 and completed in 1868. Having served its gener-
ation for twenty years more, a completely new edition was begun in 1888 and

712

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

completed within five years, under the competent editorship of Mr. David
Patrick, who has gathered to his aid almost a thousand helpers. The new
edition is brought fully up to date and is a marvel of compressed and acces-
sible information. There is of course a slip here and there : such as refer-
ring those who desire to know more about Dr. Charles Hodge to a life which
has not yet appeared, by Dr. Francis L. Patton (misspelled Patten). And
there is now and then something left to be desired, as for example that the
Biblical Articles, in general, should have been written by men with a little
less undue reverence for a temporary phase of German criticism and a little
more appreciation of English work on the subject. But these are but specks on
a fair surface. The new Chambers remains an indispensable vade-mecum for
every educated man.

Princeton. B. B. Warfield.

Buddhism, Primitive and Present, in Magadha and in Ceylon. By Regi-
nald Stephen Copleston, D.D., Bishop of Colombo, President of the Ceylon
Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. 8vo, pp. xv, 501. (London and New
York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1892.) Bishop Copleston’s thorough and
extended account of that stock of Buddhism which has been established and
continued in Ceylon, will be welcomed by every student of the world’s relig-
ions. It is learned, judicious and fresh, with the freshness that belongs only
to original contributions to knowledge. Not that it has anything startlingly
revolutionary or even novel to offer. The conclusions, historical and philo-
sophical and ethical alike, are practically those which have been reached
by the best previous investigators in this field, such as Profs. Oldenberg
and Rhys Davids. And not, even, that they have been reached in the inde-
pendence that means ignorance of the work of such previous students. But
that they are the careful results of an independent and diligent student on
the ground, who has explored the sources for himself and gives his findings
with due regard to all that has been said on the subject before. The book is
divided into four parts. In the first, which is introductory, the subject is
defined, the relation of Ceylonese Buddhism to the original stock developed,
and a general historical sketch given. The second part treats of Buddhism
in Magadha. The third, of Buddhism in Ceylon. While the fourth is an
exposition of the present state of Buddhism in Ceylon. It is in the latter
part of the volume that Bishop Copleston’s work is of most importance.
His long residence in Ceylon and his excellent opportunities for learning the
facts, make him here our first authority. He tells us that it is on the side of
the legends and cosmogony that Buddhistic teaching has most drifted in
Ceylon : the moral system of the Pitakas, with the dreary theory of human
life on which it rests, has held its ground and been little altered by time.
But as little has it leavened the life of the community. The most prominent
trait of Buddhistic morals is pity; we hear, in the stories, of the Lord
Buddha in one of his incarnations meeting a starving tiger, and freely giving
himself to satisfy the beast’s hunger. What a telling picture Sir Edwin
Arnold makes of this scene ! But even in this central matter the practical
effect has been little. Here are characteristic incidents :

“ An Englishman, driving out from Colombo towards a town some twenty miles distant, came
up with a little crowd around a woman, who had been knocked down by a bullock. As any
Englishman would have done, he put her in his carriage, with one or two of her companions to
support her, and had her taken slowly towards her home, which was a mile further on, himself
following on foot. He was shocked by hearing one of the women say, ‘ This must be a god ; no
man would do this.’ .... In case of an accident, it is often impossible to persuade a bystander
to help. A man may lie by the roadside and entreat passer-by after passer-by to help him out of
the sun into the shade, and not one will stop ” (p. 481).

Aud in general :

“lam painfully aware, as I write this, how little Christian conduct often corresponds to Chris-

RECENT GENERAL LITERATURE.

713

tian standard ; but at any rate, ‘ Christian behavior ’ means— on all lips—' good behavior I
suppose no one ever heard a Singalese use ‘ Buddhist conduct ’ as a synonym for ' good conduct.’ ’

Buddhist ethics is rooted in selfishness; and is an excrescence on its system
of philosophy ; but, after all, in its best and worst estates alike, heathen
ethics lacks, everywhere and always, the force to realize itself. Conscience

operates everywhere, but only Christ gives the Holy Ghost. A Review of

the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution. By C. M. Williams.
8vo, pp. xv, 581. (New York and London: Macmillan & Co., 1893.) In
the words just quoted from Bishop Copleston, unveiling the ethical practice
of nature as distinct from ethical theory, we have also a complete reply to
the attack on Christian ethics which writers like Mr. Williams are prone to
make, as e. g. on pp. 519 sq. of this volume. He would have Christians
remember that the Golden Rule is not only not the only command in their
Scriptures, but' also that

•“this conception of love to others, which Christians have continually cited as testimony of
the divine origin of their religion, is not confined to Christianity, or even original with it. Many
other religions contain it. The Buddhist religion enjoins towards all creatures such love as that
with which a mother ‘ watches over her own child, her only child ’ ” (p. 520).

But what other religion practices these lofty precepts ? No doubt Mr. Wil-
liams does not admit that Christians practice them either. He says :

“The doctrine of the Atonement takes away that sense of personal responsibility which is
most essential to morality, and this removal of responsibility explains the ease with which
-Christians of all ages have combined a fervid religiosity with vice aud crime " (p. 519) ;

and much more to the same effect. But what is to explain, then, the greater
ease with which all non-Christians combine high moral theory with unblush-
ing vice, so that in all ages and in. all life, “Christian behavior” is the
synonym of “ good behavior ?” The united testimony of the world to fact
is against Mr. Williams’ theoretical arraignment. Mr. Williams’ book con-
sists of two fairly equal parts. In the first he gives careful but very dryly
written abstracts of the systematized ethical teaching of the chief evolution-
ary moralists: Darwin, Wallace, Haeckel, Spencer, Fiske, Rolph, Barratt,
Stephen, Carneri, Hbffding, Gizycki, Alexander, Ree. The second part con-
sists of a series of chapters in which he discusses such topics as “ The Con-
cepts of Evolution,” “ Intelligence and End,” “ The Will,” “ The Mutual
Relations of Thought, Feeling and Will in Evolution,” “ Egoism and Altru-
ism in Evolution,” “Conscience,” “The Moral Progress of the Human Species
as Shown by History,” “ The Results of Ethical Inquiry on an Evolutionary
Basis,” “ The Ideal and the Way of its Attainment.” In these chapters, which
are somewhat scrappy, and do not together constitute a system, he develops
critically and constructively his own position. The volume may constitute a
useful compend of the teaching of the principal exponents of evolutionary
ethics; but as a guide to truth— it has no light to offer. The reader may pro-
fitably compare the certainly impartial estimate of it from the pen of Mr.

Alfred W. Benn, in The Academy, No. 1095 (April 29, 1893). The Aesthetic

Element in Morality and its Place in a Utilitarian Theory of Morals. By Frank
Chapman Sharp, Ph.D. 8vo, pp. 131. (New York : Macmillan & Co., 1893.)
If we may judge from the letter-press, this little volume is the product of a
German printing office. We conjecture that it is the author’s doctorate thesis.
Considered in this light it is a very creditable performance. What is attempted
is the study of beauty as exhibited in conduct and character, with a view to
exhibiting the aesthetic emotion as fundamental in ethical theory. The
writer divides all moral theories into the teleological, inclusive of Utilitari-
anism and the doctrine that character is the end of action (e. g., Paulsen,
T. H. Green, etc.), and what he calls the deontological, including the two
classes represented, the one by such thinkers as Butler, and the other by such

714

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

as Kant and Martineau. The teleologists look npon morality as the product
of an ideal, and start with the idea of the good ; the deontologists find the
essence of morality in the feeling of obligation, and start from the idea of
duty. The author stands upon Utilitarian ground, and values character
only as a source of useful action. His contention in this thesis is that where
intrinsic worth is attributed to character, the quality affirmed is no other
than beauty. Beauty of character he considers nothing more nor less than
one of the sources of aesthetic emotion ; and its attraction to be due to the
pleasure it affords, the worth of which is not to be measured by a different
scale from that which we apply to the other emotions. The thesis is well
written and interests the reader ; the principles defined in it are fundamen-
tally different from those cherished by the present writer. By the way, the
author’s reading in theology might be extended with advantage. We meet
at the close of the book with such a sentence as this: “Were the Supreme
Being such a one as Augustine and Calvin imagined Him, we should despise
the wretched slaves that licked the dust at His feet.” The reader’s first
impulse is to say, Whew ! His next is to wonder why Calvin and Augus-
tine should be mentioned at all, when the author knows so little of them as
to attribute to them the doctrine that the authority of God resides in His
infinite power alone, and that the distinction between right and wrong is a
product of His arbitrary “will.” “Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian

spring.” The Interpretation of Nature. By Nathaniel Southgate Shaler,

Professor of Geology in Harvard University. 12mo, pp. xi, 305. (Boston
and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1893.) This is a second edition
of the Winckley Lectures, delivered in 1891, at Andover Theological Semi-
nary. Prof. Shaler’s attitude is one of kindly though outside friendliness
towards a religious interpretation of nature. This attitude seems due to the
failure of the purely mechanical explanation of nature, which has borne
itself in upon him as upon so many of the higher scientific minds. But his
standpoint is still phenomenal and naturalistic. In his perceptions of na-
ture, the mystery and the mysticism of nature have broken in upon the hard,
old mechanical theories for which alone he once had an eye ; but he is left by
their tardy perception rather in expectancy, than with any true convictions
as to the meaning of that “ one increasing purpose ” which runs through all
nature. To him, still, the present estate of man is “ the result of the
physical and organic influences to which he has been subjected during all his
course from the lowest life to the present time ;” and religions are “ the pro-
ducts of human history.” It is therefore the naturalistic evolutionary con-
ception of life and history which is kept prominent through all the discussion.
And though there is a dim perception apparent of a primal endowment
and impulse which the evolving process works out, yet the conception of
psychic capacities inherent in matter as matter — unorganized and reduced
to its mere chemical elements — suggests itself more strongly to him than that
of an originating and directing Mind, whose instruments physical and
psychic causes alike are. Prof. S baler writes always in an excellent tone
and spirit and is on the upward trend ; may it prove with him a “ continuous

trend.” Evolution and Man's Place in Nature. By Henry Calderwood,

LL.D., F.R.S.E., Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Edinburgh.
12mo, pp. xv, 349. (London and New York: Macmillan & Co., 1893.) It
would be difficult to imagine a better corrective of Prof. Shaler’s general
attitude than this strong and lucid book of Prof. Calderwood’s. Dr. Calder-
wood, too, stands frankly on the standpoint of evolution of organic life, as
maintained by Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace. But his thought ranges more
widely ; and he presents with equal force the two sets of phenomena
and the two spheres of knowledge which drive us to assert as to man, a

REGENT GENERAL LITERATURE.

715

duality of life, physical and rational, harmonized in the individual ; and as
to nature, a divine background and cause. “ Of Mature, as interpreted by
Science, there is no key other than is found in recognition of an Immanent
and Intelligent Cause, in the midst of all and concerned with all, that belongs
to the history of Being. This is the first Cause— the eternal Personality —
related to the spiritual life of rational souls, as He can be related to no other
type of existence within the wide sphere of creation.” We owe Dr. Calder-

wood a new debt of gratitude for this timely book. An Outline of Legal

Philosophy. By W. A. Watt, M.A., LL.B., Member of the Faculty of Pro-
curators in Glasgow. 8vo, pp. x, 184. (Edinburgh : T. & T. Clark ; New
York: Imported by Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893.) A clear, well-ordered
and most instructive attempt “ to state shortly and simply some of the main
principles which underlie the facts of law.” “The standpoint is approxi-
mately Hegelian.” Such an attempt to introduce the lay reader to those
fundamental principles on which all law rests must be welcomed by every one
who seeks to live as “ a good citizen.” Law itself may be a jungle to him ;
“ chaos tempered by Digests ” is how it has been described : but there is no rea-
son why he should exonerate himself from the duty of grasping the principles
that lie beneath this chaos of case-law. The complex legal life which society
forces on all of us demands this of us. And such a lucid and readable book
as Mr. Watt’s takes away our excuses. Three Centuries of Scottish Liter-

ature. By Hugh Walker, M. A., Professor of English in St. David’s College,
Lampeter. 12mo, 2 vols., pp. x, 219,254. (Glasgow: James Maclehose &
Sons ; New York : Macmillan & Co., 1893.) Prof. Walker defines his object
in this readable history of Scottish literature to be to trace the literary
movement in Scotland for the three centuries between Lindsay and Scott.
The earlier period of Scottish literature from its dawn to the time when
the desire for religious reform began to affect literature vitally, he con-
siders has been sufficiently dealt with by others. After Scott, he thinks
the literature produced by the sons of Scotland ceases to be distinctively
national. Within the period he has chosen he thinks it remained intensely
national ; and the distinctive characteristic of the period as a period he finds
in the influence of the idea of religious reform — beginning before the Refor-
mation in Lindsay, and culminating, in the slow response of literature to the
historic impulse of the Reformation, only in Burns and Scott, “ the mature
fruit of the teaching of Knox and of the accession of the Stuarts to the Eng-
lish throne.” Prof. Walker writes directly and tells his story simply and
with adequate care, and we may add with sufficient fullness, when we remem-
ber that his purpose is to trace the literary movement, not to give a succinct
account of the succession of writers. Despite this, however, the fault of
the book is to be found in its omissions. For example, in a literary period
whose characteristic is that it is a response to a religious impulse, one would
think the religious writers would count, for something ; and Scotland has not
in these three hundred years been without her theologians who wrote litera-
ture. But, after Knox, Prof. Walker passes them severely by. We are
bound to admit, however, that his incidental allusions to matters of religion
and theology do not lead us to regret that he has been so chary of a fuller
treatment of the relevant literature. He justly defends Knox from charges
of complicity in persecution, but adds that his sentiments “ would have jus-
tified atrocities like the worst of Calvin’s acts ” (i. 119) — whence the reader
might infer that Calvin was something of a Torquemada, and not (as was
the truth) the most tolerant and gentle-minded of the religious leaders of
his day. He girds at Knox’s humble profession of inability to comprehend
the ways of God (p. 110), as if that were inconsistent in, instead of the very
characteristic of, the predestinarian. In the sphere of religious thought

716

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

and .theological history, in a word, Prof. Walker would have been incompe-
tent. He has kept himself to the line of his competence and has produced a
book which every lover of Scotch literature will be delighted to have and to

read. Greek Poets in English Verse. By Various Translators. Edited,

with Introduction and Notes, by William Hyde Appleton, Professor of
Greek in Swarthmore College. 12mo. (Boston and New York : Houghton,
Mifflin & Co., 1893.) Prof. Appleton’s idea is a kind of “ Golden Treasury ”
of Greek poetry, and he has executed his idea very well indeed. A good and
catholic taste is shown in the selections, which are well calculated to
carry to the reader as true a conception of the wealth of Greek verse as
can be done by a single small volume of translations. The Introduction may
have done duty as a_ lecture before its appearance here in print : it has some of
the limitations of a lecture. The publishers have put the volume out in a
form the daintiness of which is worthy of such an anthology. A Per-

plexed Philosopher. Being an Examination of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Vari-
ous Utterances on the Land Question, with some Incidental Reference to his
Synthetic Philosophy. By Henry George. 12mo, pp. 319. (New York:
Charles L. Webster & Co., 1892.) We may think what we please of Mr.
Henry George’s gospel of social amelioration ; there cannot be two opinions
as to his vigor as a controversialist, or as to the force and acuteness of his logic,
or as to the clearness of his expository style. He makes the most abstruse sub-
jects a pleasure to read about. In the present publication he subjects Mr. Spen-
cer’s “ various ” — the word is to be taken literally — deliverances to a telling
comparison and criticism, with a view to breaking the force of his more recent
recantation of his earlier views on the land question, which were more to

Mr. George’s mind than his revised opinions are. The Duties of Alan.

Addressed to Workingmen. By Joseph Mazzini. 16mo, pp. iv, 146. (New
York : Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1892.) It is of man’s duties rather than of
his rights that Mazzini would speak to workingmen, and therein he follows
the universal habit of the Scriptures in addressing all classes. His words are
earnest and full of faith both in God and in the people, and are well worth

attention even yet. Thrilling Scenes in the Persian Kingdom. The Story

of a Scribe. By Edwin MacMinn. 12mo, pp. 323. (New York: Hunt &
Eaton, 1892.) A well-told account of the thrilling scenes in Persia in the

time of Nehemiali. Married Life. A Blessing to the Truly Married.

Arranged by Mrs. Dora E. W. Spratt. 16mo, pp. 59. (Philadelphia: B.
Griffith, 1893.) A tasteful souvenir of the wedding-day, beginning with a
blank for the marriage certificate, and ending with blanks for a record of the
wedding guests, while a number of appropriate poetic selections stand

between. Kentucky Pioneer Women. Columbian Poems and Prose

Sketches. By Mary Florence Taney. Small 4to, pp. 99. (Cincinnati :
Robert Clarke & Co., 1893.) The authoress chronicles in this dainty vol-
ume, in prose and verse, the virtues of about a dozen Kentucky women.
Her enthusiasm is justified: these were worthy women. Now and then a
slight error of fact meets us. We prefer the prose sketches to the verse.

We wish the pretty little volume good speed. Personal Recollections of

Nathaniel Hawthorne. By Horatio Bridge, Paymaster-General U. S. Navy
(Retired). Illustrated. 12mo, pp. ix, 200. (New York : Harper & Broth-
ers. 1893.) Mr. Bridge was certainly well advised to take the public into
his confidence, and give them these agreeable and instructive memorials of
his friend. He modestly disclaims the “ literary ability and critical skill”
essential for writing “a biography of the great romance writer,” or “an
analysis of his writings:” and limits himself to simply jotting down his
reminiscences and impressions during a life-long intimacy. The result is
an unexpectedly vivid picture of Hawthorne as a man.

INDEX OF BOOKS REVIEWED.

*** For Index of Articles, see the Table of Contents.

Adams, Three Episodes of Massachusetts

History 521

Adams and Woods, Columbus and the Dis-
covery of America 522

Addis, The Documents of the Hexateuch, 153
Adeney, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther, 482
Albert, Die Geschichte der Predigt in

Deutschland bis Luther 681

Alexander, The Leading Ideas of the Gospel,

318

Allen, Representative Assemblies of To-day,

523

Amelineau, Histoire du Patriarche Copte

Isaac 700

Applegarth, Quakers in Pennsylvania, 329
Appleton, Greek Poets in English Verse, 716
Archinard, Israel ct ses Voisins Asiatique, 700

Arthur, The Tongue of Fire 341

Auerbach, Quellensatze zur Kirchenge-
schichte 681

BACHMANN, Corpus juris Abessinorum, 702

Baentsch, Das Bundesbuch 152

Baldensperger, Das Selbslbewustsein Jesu,

145, 160

Baldwin, Handbook of Psychology . . 352

Ball, The Apocrypha 151

Ballantine, Our Scholars for Christ . 174

Barbour, The End of Time 524

Barrett, Character Building 506

Bartlett and Peters, Scriptures, Hebrew and

Christian ... 317

Batcheler, The Ainu of Japan .... 526

Bathe, An Advent with Jesus .... 340

Bernard, Rant's Kritik of Judgment . 350

Bixby, The Crisis in Morals 345

Black, Maryland s Attitude in the Struggle

for Canada 328

Black, The Book of Judges 479

Blake, How to Read Isaiah 131

Blake, How to Read the Prophets, Jeremiah,

479

Body, The Life of Love 696

Bolliger, Das Schriftprinzip der protestan-

tischen Kirche 487

Boston Homilies for i8<)2 173

Bouriant, Fragments du text Grec du livre
d Enoch et de quelques ecrits attribues a

Saint Pierre 319

Bowen, Froebel and Education by Self-
activity 682

Brand and Ellis, Finney Memorial Addresses,

330

Bratke, Das neuentdeckte 4P Buck des
Daniel- Kommentars des Hippolytus, 164

Braun, John Hughes 486

Bridge, Personal Recollections of Hawthorne,

716

Bright, Morality in Doctrine .... 340

Briggs, The Higher Criticism of the Hexa-
teuch 206

Brown, Church and State in Scotland, 156
Buckley, Ingersollunder the Microscope, 175
Buckley, Faith Healing, Christian Science

and Kindred Phenomena 693

Burrell, The Gospel of Gladness . . . 171

Burrell, Hints and Helps on the Sunday-

school Lesson for /8gj 341

Burton and Stevens, Outline Handbook of

the Life of Christ 3J8

Butler, Bible Work, Vols. v and vi . 152

Butler, Mexico in Transition .... 527

Calderwood, Evolution and Man s Place

in Nature 7I^

Campbell, The Puritan in Holland, England

and America jn

Candlish, The Biblical Doctrine of Sin, 690
Carnegie, Through Conversion to Creed, 677

Chambers, Encyclopedia j\\

Charteris and McClymont, Guild and Bible
Class Text Books ........ 339

City, The, and the Land ( Palestine Explora-

tion Society) 3^

Clark, New Harmony of the Gospels . 316

Compayre, Abelard and the Origin of Uni-
versities .... 682

Conway, Life of Thomas Paine ... 517

Copleston, Buddhism in Ceylon . . . 712

Cornill, Einleitungin das Alte Testament , 477

Craig, Inaugural Address 166

Critical Review, The 339

Cuyler, Stirring the Eagle's Nest . . 340

Cuyler, The Fight of Faith ..... 506

Dahl, Der Stand der Heidenmission in den

Jahren 1845 u,,d t8gi 176

Dale, Fellowship with Christ .... 508

Darrow, Mortgage Investments . . . 528

Dawson, The Church of To-morrow . 337

Dawson, Quest and Vision 524

Davis, V ocabulary of New Testament Words,

678

Deane, Pseudepigrapha 145

Delitzsch, Commentary on Isaiah . . 153

Delitzsch and Haupt, Beitrdge zur Assy-

riologie 7oi

Dieckhoff, Die Inspiration und Irrthumslo-

sigkeit der heiligen Schrift .... 487

Dix, The Sacramental System .... 691

Dixon, Milk and Meat 697

Dobson, Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 524
Dods, Erasmus and Other Essays . . 328

Doherty and Hurlbut, Illustrative Notes on
the Sabbath-school Lessons for iSgj, 176

718

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

EGGLESTON, The Schoolmaster in Literature , ]

527

Ellwood, Table Book and Test Problems in

Mathematics 528

Ellis and Brand, Finney Memorial Addresses,

330

Euting, Sinaitische Inschriften . . . 701

Faber, The Gospel of the Incarnation, 696

Falconer, Cecilia de Noel 528

Farrar, The Voice from Sinai .... 174

Farrar, The First Book of Kings . . 482, 506
First Millennial Faith, The .... 691

First Steps for the Little Ones .... 174

Fisher, The Colonial Era 522

Fisher, Manual of Christian Evidences, 676
Fisher, Manual of Natural Theology . 676

Fiske, The Discovery of America . . 508

Fliigel, Thomas Carlyle' s Moral and Re-
ligious Development 348

Ford, Writings of Christopher Columbus, 521

Foster, Studies in Theology 684

Frazer, The Golden Bough 703

Freeman, Sicily, Phoenician, Greek and

Roman . . 521

Fremantle, Principal Works of Jerome, 680
Fripp, The Composition of Genesis . . 154

From the Pulpit to the Palm Branch . 174

Froude, Divorce of Catherine of Aragon, 521
Froude, The Spanish Story of the Armada,

521

Fulton, Index Canonum 484

George, A Perplexed Philosopher . . 716

Gess, Die Inspiration der Helden der Bibel,

etc 488

Gestefeld, A Chicago Bible Class . . 173

Gibbins, History of Commerce in Europe, 521
Giberne, Besides the Waters of Comfort, 172

Giberne, The Andersons 172

Giberne, Sun, Moon and Stars . . . 506
Gilman, Conduce as a Fine Art . . . 349

Gloag, The Life of St. John 318

Gospel in Picture and Text, The . . . 175

Gould, The Social Condition of Labor, 523
Green, A Short History of the English Peo- 1

pie . 521 ,

Greenwood, Empire and Papacy in the Mid-
dle Ages 484 '

Gregg, Short History of the Presbyterian

Church in Canada 330

Gregor)' of Xyssa, Dogmatic Treatises 483
Groat, A Study of the Book of Books . 696 1

Griitzmacher, Benedict von Nursia . 681

Guyau, Education and Heredity . . . 346 ^

HALL, Divine Brotherhood 174

Hall, Antiquities of the Exchequer . 522

Hamilton, The Modalist 347

Hardy, Life of Neesima 324

Harnack, Brot und Wasser im Abendmahl,

163

Harnack, Bruchstucke des Evangeliums und
der Apoka/ypse des Petrus .... 319

Harnack, Texte und Untersuchungen .ix,2,^ig
Harnack, Outlines of the History of Dogma,

486 |

Harris, The Newly Recovered Gospel of St.

Peter 319

Harris, Hegel s Logic 350

Harrison, The Church in Relation to Sceptics,

677

Hart, The Formation of the Union . . 522

Hastings, The Expository Times . . . 338

Haupt and Delitzsch, Beitrage zur Assy-

riologie 703

Hausrath, Arnold von Brescia . . . 485

Haven, Christus Consolator 695

Hawley. The War in the Crimea . . 520

Hays, Presbyterianism .... . . 323

H eal y The Ancient Irish Church . . 681

Henderson, Palestine 479

Henderson. Select Historical Documents of

the Middle Ages 484

Herron, The Call of the Cross . . . . 340

Hervey, The Book of Chronicles . . . 154

Hodges, Christianity Between Sundays, 173
Holter, Die Pflichten der Familie und die

Kirche in der Erziehung 695

Holland, Pleas and Claims for Christ, 340
Holtzmann, Das Neue Testament und der

romische Siaat 161

Hooper, Lead Me to the Rock . . . 340

Hornel, Our Heavenly Rest 173

Howard, The Schism between the Oriental

and Western Churches 681

Hughes, Loyola and the Educational System

of the Jesuits 327

Hulbert, Revised Normal Lessons . . 508

Hulst, Supra en Infra 167

Huntington, A Baker s Dozen .... 171

Hurlbut and Doherty, Illustrative Notes on
the •Sabbath-school Lessons for /8gj, 176

Hurst, A Short History of the Christian

Church 487

Hvslop, Elements of Logic 350

ILIOWIZI, The Quest of Columbus . . 523

Ingle, The Negro in the District of Columbia,

523

Innis, Church and State 499

JACKSON, Papers of the American Society of

Church History 683

James and Robinson, The Gospel According
to Peter and the Revelation of Peter, 319

Jenkins, Presbyterianism 682

Jennings, The Mosaic Record of Creation

Explained 696

Jessopp, Studies of a Recluse .... 521

Jewett, Isral E. Dwinell 330

Johnson, What is Reality ? 341

KERR, Introduction to the Study of the Books

of the New Testament 312

Kier, Bedarf es einer besonderen Inspira-

tionslehre t 488

Knox, A Winter in India and Malaysia, 172
Koelling, Prolegomena zur Lehre von der

Theopneustie 487

Koelling, Der Lehre von der Theopneustie ,

487

Kohler, A us dem babylonischen Rechtsleben,

699

Krause, Fin Stuck Kirchen-Geschichte aus
den deutsch-russischenOs/seeprovinzen, 683
Kuyper, De Verflauwing der Grenzen . 330

LAIDLAW. The Miracles of Our Lord, 316

Lau, John Tauler . . . 682

Lea, Formulary of a Papal Penitentiary, 321
Lea, Superstition and Force .... 522

Lee, The Inspiration of Holy Scripture, 166
Liddon, Passiontide Sermons .... 5°4

Lightfoot, Dissertations on the Apostolical

Age 3J7

Lilley, The Lord's Supper 332

INDEX.

719

Lindsay, The Progressiveness of Modern

Christian Thought 694

Lowell, The Eve of the French Revolution,, 522

MacArTHUR, Divine Balustrades . 340

McClymontand Charteris, Guild and Bible

Class Text Books 339

McCosh, Our Moral Nature : A Brief Sys-
tem of Ethics 352

MacDonald, Religion and Myth. . . 686

MacDuff, The Pillar in the Night . . 508

MacGarvey, New Commentary on Acts,

Vols. i and ii 317, 679

Macgregor, So Great Salvation . . . 690

Maclnnis, Jovfully Ready 341

Maclaren, The Psalms 480

MacMinn, Thrilling Scenes in the Persian

Kingdom 716

Magazine of Christian Literature . 339

Mahaffy, Problems in Greek History . 520

Mallison, The Indian Mutiny .... 520

Mannhardt, Menno Simon 682

Marvin, Cotton Mather . 329

Mazzini, The Duties of Man .... 716

Merriman, The Pilgrims, Puritans and

Roger Williams . . .■ 329

Meyer, Moses, the Servant of God . . 507

Miall and Skeats, History of the Free

Churches of England 157

Milligan, 7 he Ascension and Heavenly

Priesthood of our Lord 169

Mills, Victory through Surrender . 507

Moeller, History of the Christian Chur ch , 327
Moutarde, La Reforme en Saintonge . 485

Murray, Francis Wayland 156

Musick, Genesis of Life and Thought, 351

NEVINS, Witchcraft in Salem Village, 485
Noble, Crumbs of Comfort 172

OLIVER, What and How to Preach . 507

Orr, Life and Letters of Robert Browning,

707

Otts, The Fifth Gospel 316

PARKER, The People' s Bible, Vol. xvii, 174
Parkman, A Half Century of Conflict, 516
Payne, History of the New World . . 509

Peiser, Babylonische Vertrdge, etc. . . 698

Perkins, France Under the Regency . 521

Perthes, Theologische Hilfslexicon . . 175

Peters and Bartlett, Scriptures , Hebrew and

Christian 317

Petrie, Ten Years Digging in Egypt, 526
Pierson, The Heart of the Gospel . . 173

Pierson, The Divine Art of Preaching, 340
Plath, Was bedeutet die Entdeckung
Amerikas fur die Kirche f ... . 328

Porter, Prophecy 507

Porter, Simon Bar-Jona 679

Potwin, What Girls Can Do .... 172

Prayers from the Poets 175

Princeton Sermons 499

Purves, St. Paul and Inspiration . . 166

RAINEY, Epistle to the Philippians . 679

Rhodes, History of the United States, 519
Riis, How the Other Half Lives . . yog
Riis, The Children of the Poor . . . 709

Roads, Christ Enthroned in the Industrial

World 697

Robertson, Early Religion of Israel . 141

Robinson and James, The Gospel According
to Peter, etc 319

Rohnert, Die Inspiration der h. Schrift, 487
Rowland, The Life of George Mason . 517

Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy . 351

Rupprecht, Anschauung der kritischen
Schule Wellhausens 482

SAINT-AMAND, The Duchess of Berry, 525
Sanday, Two Present Day Questions, 684
Schaff and Wace, Post-Nicene Library, 326,

483, 680

Schaff, Theological Propcedeutic . . 683

Schmalenbach, Hengstenbergs Leben . 155

Schnitzer, Berengar von Tour . . . 485

Schofield, A Study of Faith Healing . 693

Schultze, Untergang des griechisch-romi-

schen Heidentums 165

Schumann, Die wellhausensche Pentateuch-

theorie 150

Sermon Bible, The 176, 507

Shahan, The Blessed Virgin in the Cata-
combs . 693

Shaler, The Interpretation of Nature, 714
Sharp, The /Esthetic Element in Morality,

713

Sharr, Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, 165
Shiells, The Story of the Token . . 486

Shedd, Calvinism, Pure and Mixed . 689

Silver Shield Stories 172

Simpson, Visions 173

Sinclair, The Crowning Sin of the Age, 338
Skeats and Miall, History of the Free
Churches in England ...... 157

Sloane, The French War and the Revolu-
tion 522

Smith, Fan Fan Stories 172

Spencer, Did Moses Write the Pentateuch f

481

Spratt, Married Life 716

Spurgeon, The Gospel of the Kingdom, 695

Stalker, Men and Morals 341

Stedman, The Nature and Element of Poetry,

S23

Stephen, Horce Sabbaticce 524

Stevens and Burton, Outline Handbook of

the Life of Christ 318

Stoddard, Spanish Cities 527

Strong, The New Era 697

TaLLQUIST, Babylonische Schenkungsbriefe,

699

Taney, Kentucky Pioneer Women . . 716

Taylor, Outline Analysis of the Books of the

Bible . . . 172

Terry, Biblical Hermeneutics .... 317

Thayer, Dawn of Italian Independence, 522
Thoburn, The Deaconess and Her Vocation,

506

Thomas, Theodore von Studion , . . 327

Thompson, The Divine Order of Human

Society 335

Thomson, Books Which Influenced Our

Lord and His Apostles 145

Thwaite, The Colonies 522

Toy , Judaism and Christianity . . . 685

Troup, Words to Young Christians . 696

Trumbull, The Blood Covenant . . . 688

Tuck, Revelation by Character . . . 696

Two Kinds of Truth, The 344

VAN den BlESEN, Authorship and Compo-
sition of the Hexateuch 478

Van Dyke, Straight Sermons . 507

Van Horne, Religion and Revelation, 676
Van Leeuwen, Prolegomena van Bijbelsche
Godgeleerdheid 143

720

THE PRESS YTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW.

Vescovana, .S'. Ignazio di Loyola e Martin

Lutero ... 328

Vincent, The Story of a Letter— Ephesians,

679

Volter, Die Ignatianischen Briefe . . 326

Von Moltke, The Franco-German War, 520
Von Moltke, Letters to His Mother and
Brothers 320

WAKEFIELD, Standard Eclectic Commen-
tary on the International Lessons for 181)3,

341

Waldenstrom, The Lord is Right . . 504

Walker, The " Heads of Agreement'' 137
Walker, Our Church Heritage . . 683

Walker, Three Centuries of Scottish Litera-
ture 713

Wallace, The Logic of Hegel .... 330

Ward, Life of Bishop White . . . 486

Warfield, The Canon of the New Testament,

318

Warfield, The Gospel of the Incarnation, 499
Watson, The Book of Genesis . . . . 480

Watt, Outline of Legal Philosophy . . 715

Weeks, Church and State in North Carolina,

682

Weiss, Meyer s Markus und Lucas . 318

Weizsacker, Das Neue Testament . . 317

Wells, The Pastor in the Sick Room, 501, 507

Wendt, Die Lehre Jesu 149

Wendt, The Teaching of Jesus . . . 149

West, Alcuin and the Rise of Christian
Schools 327

Westminster Question Book for 1893, 174

Weymouth, The Resultant Greek Testament,

316

Whiton, Gloria Patri 688

Williams, Systems of Evolutionary Ethics,

713

Willink, The World of the Unseen . . 693

Wilson, Division and Reunion . . 522

Winckler, Keilschriftliches Textbuch zum

Alien Testament 698

Winckler, Gcschiche Babyloniens und Assy-

riens 703

Wolfhard, Augustin : De Caiechizandis

Rudibus . . 327

Woodburn, Causes of the American Revolu-
tion 522

Woods and Adams, Columbus and the Dis-
covery of America 522

Wordsworth, The Decalogue .... 507

Wrede, Untersuchungen zum ersten Kle-

mensbriefe 162

Wright, Adam's Daughters 172

Yardley-Wilmot, Development of Navies
During the Last Half Century . . 520

ZaHN, Brot und Wein im Abendmahl, 164
Zahn, Das Evangelium des Petrus . . 680

Zenos, Inaugural Address 166

Ziehen, Introduction to Physiological Psy-
chology 351

1

*

For use in Library only

4180 K

FOR USE IN LIBRARY ONLY

FOR use IN LIBRARY ONLY.