Catechism was often earnestly enjoined upon ministers, teachers, and parents by the General Assembly.'

GENERAL CHARACTER.

The two Catechisms are, in the language of a Scotch divine, nimitable as theological summaries; though, when it is considered that to comprehend them would imply an acquaintance with the whole circle of dogmatic and controversial divinity, it may be doubted whether either of them is adapted to the capacity of childhood. . . . Experience has shown that few who have been carefully instructed in our Shorter Catechism have failed to discover the advantage of becoming acquainted in early life, even as a task, with that admirable "form of sound words."' 2

Both Catechisms have the peculiarity that each answer embodies the question, and thus forms a complete proposition or sentence in itself.

Both depart from the catechetical tradition by omitting the Apostles' Creed, which in other orthodox Catechisms is the common historical basis of the exposition of the Articles of Faith. It is, however, annexed to the Shorter Catechism, 'not as though it were composed by the Apostles or ought to be esteemed canonical Scripture, as the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer, but because it is a brief sum of the Christian faith, agreeable to the Word of God, and anciently received in the Churches of Christ.' A note is attached to the article on the descent into Hell (better, Hades or Sheol), to the effect that it simply means Christ' continued in the state of the dead and under the power of death until the third day.' This explanation (like that of Calvin and the Heidelberg Catechism) misses the true sense of the descent, and ignores its peculiar significance in the work of redemption for the world of the departed (comp. Luke xxiii. 43; Acts ii. 31; Eph. iv. 8, 9; 1 Cor. xv. 55, 57; 1 Pet. iii. 18, 19; iv. 6; Rev. i.

1 Mitchell, Minutes, p. 515, note. Innes (Law of Creeds, p. 195) says: "The Shorter Catechism has been for many generations the real creed of Scotland, so far as the mass of the people is concerned.'

2 M'Crie, Annals, pp. 177 sq. Neal (Vol. II. p. 42) judges similarly. "The Larger Catechism,' he says, 'is a comprehensive system of divinity, and the smaller a very accurate summary, though it has by some been thought a little too long, and in some particulars too abstruse for the capacities of children.' Baillie was of the same opinion (Letters, III. 59).

18). The eschatology of the Reformation standards is silent or de fective on the middle state, and most Protestant versions of the Bible confound Hell and Hades, which represent separate and distinct though cognate ideas.

THE LARGER CATECHISM.

The Larger Catechism occupied, as the Minutes show, a good deal of the Assembly's attention during the year 1647, and was discussed question by question. It was prepared before the Shorter. It is chiefly the work of Dr. Anthony Tuckney, Professor of Divinity and Vice-Chancellor at Cambridge.2 It is a masterpiece of catechetical skill, superior to any similar work, and exhibits in popular form a complete system of divinity, like the Roman Catechism and the Longer Russian Catechism of Philaret. It also serves in part as a valuable commentary or supplement to the Confession, especially on the ethical part of our religion. But it is over-minute in the specification of what God has commanded and forbidden in the Ten Commandments, and loses itself in a wilderness of details.3

THE SHORTER CATECHISM.

Dr. Tuckney was also the convener of the Committee which prepared the Shorter Catechism, but its concise and severely logical an

'This appears from the Minutes, p. 410. The report on the Shorter Catechism was first called for in the 896th session, Aug. 9, 1647. Mr. Palmer reported, and Messrs. Calamy and Gower were added to the Committee. The opposite view is clearly wrong, though advocated by Neal (Vol. II. p. 42), and even quite recently by Dr. M'Crie, who says (Annals, p. 177): 'The Larger Catechism was not prepared till some time after the Shorter, of which it was evidently intended to form an amplification and exposition.'

It is based in part on Ussher's catechetical Body of Divinity, perhaps also on the coneise theological compendium of John Wolleb, Antistes at Basle (1626).

3 Take for example Question 113:

'What are the sins forbidden in the third commandment?

'The sins forbidden in the third commandment are, the not using of God's name as is required; and the abuse of it in an ignorant, vain, irreverent, profane, superstitious, or wicked mentioning, or otherwise using his titles, attributes, ordinances, or works, by blasphemy, perjury; all sinful cursings, oaths, vows, and lots; violating our oaths and vows, if lawful; and fulfilling them, if of things unlawful; murmuring and quarreling at, curious prying into, and misapplying of God's decrees and providences; misinterpreting, misapplying, or any way perverting the Word, or any part of it, to profane jests, curious or unprofitable questions, vair janglings, or the maintaining of false doctrines; abusing it, the creatures, or any thing contained under the name of God, to charms or sinful lusts and practices; the maligning, scorning, reviling, or any wise opposing God's truth, grace, and ways; making profession of re ligion in hypocrisy or for sinister ends; being ashamed of it, or a shame to it, by uncomformable, unwise, unfruitful, and offensive walking or backsliding from it.'

swers are traced to the Rev. John Wallis, M.A., an eminent mathematician, who as a young man fresh from Cambridge was appointed an amanuensis of the Assembly.' He afterwards became Professor of Geometry at Oxford and one of the founders of the Royal Society. He was probably the last survivor of the Westminster divines, for he died 1703, aet. eighty-eight. Gillespie's name is traditionally connected with the question What is God?' He is said to have answered it in prayer, apparently without meditation, when the Assembly were in suspense for words to define the Being of beings. But the Scotch Commissioners had little to do with the Shorter Catechism, as most of them had left before it was discussed in the Assembly.3

The Shorter Catechism is one of the three typical Catechisms of Protestantism which are likely to last to the end of time. It is fully equal to Luther's and to the Heidelberg Catechism in ability and influence, it far surpasses them in clearness and careful wording, and is better adapted to the Scotch and Anglo-American mind, but it lacks their genial warmth, freshness, and childlike simplicity. It substitutes a logical scheme for the historical order of the Apostles' Creed. It deals in dogmas rather than facts. It addresses the disciple as an interested outsider rather than as a church-member growing up in the nurture of the Lord. Its mathematical precision in definitions, some of which are almost perfect, though above the capacity of the child, is a good preparation for the study of theology. Its use among three denominations (Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Regular Baptists) proves its solid worth. Baxter called it 'the best Catechism he ever saw, a most excellent sum of the Christian faith and doctrine, and a fit test to try the orthodoxy of teachers.' Thomas Carlyle, in speaking against modern materialism, made this confession (1876): 'The older I grow and I now stand upon the brink of eternity-the more comes back to me the first sentence in the Catechism which I learned when a child, and the fuller and deeper its meaning becomes: "What is the chief end of man? To glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.":

In the Minutes, p. 488, Wallis is mentioned in connection with the Shorter Catechism. He published an exposition of it. Masson's Milton, Vol. II. p. 515.

3 The Scotch Commissioners took leave Dec. 25, 1646. The last mention of them is Nov. 9, 1647, when Rutherford took his leave.-Minutes, pp. 471, 487. Dr. Mitchell informs me that the fourth question is probably derived from 'A Compendious Catechism' (by J. F.), printed at London in April, 1645: God is a Spirit, One, Almighty, Eternal, Infinite, Unchangeable Being, Absolutely Holy, Wise, Just, and Good.'

For a fuller comparison, see pp. 543-545.

For example, Questions 4, 21, 92.

§ 97. CRITICISM OF THE WESTMINSTER SYSTEM OF DOCTRINE. The Westminster Confession, together with the Catechisms, is the fullest and ripest symbolical statement of the Calvinistic system of doctrine. In theological ability and merit it is equal to the best works of the kind, and is not surpassed by the Lutheran Formula of Concord or the Roman Decrees of the Councils of Trent and the Vatican. Its intrinsic worth alone can explain the fact that it has supplanted the older Scottish standards of John Knox and John Craig in the land of their birth, and that it was adopted by three distinct denominations: by the Presbyterians in full, and by the Congregationalists and the Regular Baptists with some slight modifications. Of these the Congregationalists had but a small though very able representation in the Westminster Assembly, the Baptists none at all. It has at this day as much vitality as any of the Protestant symbols and more vitality than most of them. It materially aids in shaping theological thought and religious activity as far as the English tongue prevails. Altogether it represents the most vigorous and yet moderate form of Calvinism, which has found (like Christianity itself) a more congenial and permanent home in the Anglo-Saxon race than in the land of its birth.

The doctrines of the Confession are stated with unusual care, logical precision, clearness, caution, and circumspection, and with an eye to all their various aspects and mutual relations. Where they seem to conflict or can not be harmonized by our finite intelligence-as absolute sovereignty and free agency, the fall of Adam and personal guilt, the infinite divinity and the finite humanity of Christ-both truths are set forth, and room is left for explanations and adjustments by scientific theology within the general limits of the system. The important difference between a public confession of faith and a private system of theology was at least distinctly recognized in principle, although (as we shall see presently) not always consistently carried out.1

The style of the Confession and Catechisms is clear, strong, dignified, and well adapted to the grave subject. The selection of Scripture proofs is careful and judicious, and reveals a close familiarity with the sacred writings.

In the debate on predestination Dr. Reynolds wisely said, 'Let us not put disputes and scholastic things into a confession of faith.'-Minutes, p. 151.

The merits of the Westminster standards have been admitted not only by Presbyterians,' but also by liberal Episcopalians, and even by Methodists, who entirely dissent from its theology.3

1

2

Principal Baillie wrote (Jan. 26, 1647, Letters, Vol. III. p. 2): The Confession is much cried up by all, even many of our greatest opposites, as the best confession yet extant.' The moderate and judicious Richard Baxter esteemed the Westminster Confession and Catechisms the best books in his library next to the Bible, and says (in his Confession, ch. i. § 5): 'I have perused oft the Confession of the Assembly, and verily judge it the most excellent, for fullness and exactness, that I have ever read from any Church; and though the truths therein, being of several degrees of evidence and necessity, I do not hold them with equal clearness, confidence, or certainty; and though some few points in it are beyond my reach, yet I have observed nothing in it contrary to my judgment, if I may be allowed those expositions following.' The saintly Archbishop Leighton, though he left the Church for which his father had suffered such cruelties from Laud, taught the doctrine of the Confession to the end of his life.

'J. B. Marsden (The History of the Later Puritans, 1852, pp. 80, 81), while judging severely of the Assembly on account of its treatment of Episcopacy, thinks the Westminster Confession inferior to none of the Protestant Confessions except in originality, and adds: 'It does not, however, detract from the real merit of these later divines, that they availed themselves of the labors of the Reformation; or that Bullinger and Calvin, especially the latter, should have left them little to accomplish, except in the way of arrangement and compression. The Westminster Confession should be read by those who can not encounter the more ponderous volumes of the great masters from which it is derived. It is in many respects an admirable summary of Christian faith and practice. None can lay it down with a mean opinion of the Westminster divines. The style is pure and good, the proofs are selected with admirable skill, the arguments are always clear, the subjects well distributed, and sufficiently comprehensive to form at least the outline of a perfect system of divinity.' It is but just to add that Marsden goes on to censure what he calls its rigid ultra-Calvinism, which has always repelled the great majority of English Christians.' Dean Stanley, who has no theological sympathy with the Westminster Confession, says that of all Protestant Confessions it far more nearly approaches the full proportions of a theological treatise, and exhibits far more depth of theological insight, than any other.' He adds, however, that 'it reflects also far more than any other the minute hair-splitting and straw-dividing distinctions which had reached their height in the Puritanical theology of that age, and which in sermons ran into the sixteenthly, seventeenthly sections that so exercised the soul of Dugald Dalgetty as he waited for the conclusion of the discourse in the chapel of Inverary Castle. It accordingly furnished the food for which the somewhat hard and logical intellect of Scotland had a special appetite' (Lectures on the History of the Church of Scotland, delivered in 1872, Am. ed. p. 88). In another place Stanley calls the Westminster formulary that famous Confession of Faith which, alone within these islands, was imposed by law on the whole kingdom; and which, alone of all Protestant Confessions, still, in spite of its sternness and narrowness, retains a hold on the minds of its adherents, to which its fervor and its logical coherence in some measure entitle it ' (Memorials of Westminster Abbey, p. 513).

Dr. Currey, for many years editor of the Methodist Advocate,' of New York, in an editorial on Creeds (Aug. 6, 1874), calls the Westminster Confession of Faith the ablest, clearest, and most comprehensive system of Christian doctrine ever framed. That venerable instrument purposely embodies in its unity the dogma of absolute predestination, which necessarily becomes the corner-stone of the edifice, so giving it shape and character. But, despite that capital fault, it is not only a wonderful monument of the intellectual greatness of its framers, but a comprehensive embodiment of nearly all the precious truths of the gospel. If set forth without ecclesiastical authority, for the cdification of believers, it would, despite