Jake
Puritan Board Senior
W.G.T. Shedd, Calvinism: Pure and Mixed - A Defence of the Westminster Standards (1893). The quote below is a reason against revising the Westminster Confession of Faith. I have added line breaks to ease reading:
Revision is inexpedient, because the Westminster Confession, as it now reads, is a sufficiently broad and liberal creed. We do not say that it is sufficiently broad and liberal for every man and every denomination ; but it is as broad and liberal for a Calvinist as any Calvinist should desire. For whoever professes Calvinism, professes a precise form of doctrine. He expects to keep with indefinite metes and bounds ; he is not one of those religionists who start from no premises, and come to no conclusions, and hold no tenets. The Presbyterian Church is a Calvinistic Church.
It will be the beginning of its decline, as it already has been of some Calvinistic denominations, when it begins to swerve from this dogmatic position. It must therefore be distinguished among the Churches for doctrinal consistency, comprehensiveness, and firmness. But inside of the metes and bounds established by divine revelation, and to which it has voluntarily confined itself, it has a liberty that is as large as the kingdom of God. It cannot get outside of that kingdom, and should not desire to.
But within it, it is as free to career as a ship in the ocean, as an eagle in the air. Yet the ship cannot sail beyond the ocean, nor the eagle fly beyond the sky. Liberty within the immeasurable bounds and limits of God's truth is the only true liberty. All else is license. The Westminster Confession, exactly as it now reads, has been the creed of as free and enlarged intellects as ever lived on earth.
The substance of it was the strong and fertile root of the two freest movements in modern history: that of the Protestant Reformation and that of Republican Government. No Presbyterian should complain that the creed of his Church is narrow and stifling.
It will be the beginning of its decline, as it already has been of some Calvinistic denominations, when it begins to swerve from this dogmatic position. It must therefore be distinguished among the Churches for doctrinal consistency, comprehensiveness, and firmness. But inside of the metes and bounds established by divine revelation, and to which it has voluntarily confined itself, it has a liberty that is as large as the kingdom of God. It cannot get outside of that kingdom, and should not desire to.
But within it, it is as free to career as a ship in the ocean, as an eagle in the air. Yet the ship cannot sail beyond the ocean, nor the eagle fly beyond the sky. Liberty within the immeasurable bounds and limits of God's truth is the only true liberty. All else is license. The Westminster Confession, exactly as it now reads, has been the creed of as free and enlarged intellects as ever lived on earth.
The substance of it was the strong and fertile root of the two freest movements in modern history: that of the Protestant Reformation and that of Republican Government. No Presbyterian should complain that the creed of his Church is narrow and stifling.
