y / JOHN DE WITT THE PLACE OF THE WESTMINSTER ASSElffiLY IN MODERN HISTORY /. Warfield Library THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW No. 35— July, 1898. I. THE PLACE OF THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY IN MODERN HISTORY.* THE work done by the Westminster Assembly of Divines, in one aspect of it, is "the ablest and ripest product " of the Reformation of the sixteenth centur3^ But, in another view, it is the starting point of that splendid religious and political develop- ment of the English-speaking peoples, which, on its religious side, is marked by the evangelical rexival and the modern Cliristian propaganda at home and abroad ; and, on its political side, is marked by the enfranchisement of the peoples of the United Kingdom, the building u)3 of autonomous colonies within the British empire, and the planting of the continental republic of the United States. Of course, every work done by man, just because it has place in the organic historical movement, has roots in the past and bears frmt in the future. Of the most of these works, we arc entitled to say that each of them is one of a vast number of equally im- portant steps which men are always taking in the march of hu- manity to its predestined goal. But we shall fall into a grave historical error if we assign to the finished work of the Westminster Assembly a function in the history of the English-sj)eaking peoples of any other Ijlau the highest and most critical import. The waters of the great Lakes move continuously through the St. Lawrence basin to the Atlantic Ocean. At no point is the movement uninteresting or without * An address delivered at the celebration, by Princeton Tbeological Seminary, of tbe two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Westminster Standards. 24 S70 TEE PBESBTTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIE V. significance. But between Lake Superior and the Gi.df of St. Lawrence there is a point of physical crisis. The waters, which down to this point have fiowed peacefully in their ample channel, are here assembled in a narrow space. Moving with incredible swiftness, they are constrained by the pressure of their rocky envi- ronment to formulate themselves into the sublimest physical object on the continent ; and then they pass in peace again to bless and beautify new lands and cities, until they are welcomed and em- braced by the great and wide sea. Thus, Niagara is both a great climax and a great point of departure. Such are all the great histor- ical events. All have this double character of end and beginning. Eich in themselves and in what they bring from the past, they are the finished harvest of their day. Abounding in vitality, and therefore pregnant of the future, they are " the seed com for seasons yet to come." Such above all other events was the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem of Judea ; such the triumph of Constan- tine over Maxentius and the march of the victor from the Milvian bridge to Rome ; such the posting of the Theses on the door of the city church of "Wittenberg ; and such, we claim, so far as the English-speaking peoples are concerned, was the work of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. A great historical event acquires its attribute of greatness from the historical greatness of the idea which it vitally embodies and expresses. If the idea is a history-producing idea, if it is really epoch-marking and era-making, then the eVent, which the idea has organized and which in turn organizes the idea for a new career, becomes a great historical event. And, therefore, in order to justify the claim we make for the Westminster Assembly and its work, that they are entitled to the distinction of a great historical event, we must show that the idea'which organized the Assembly, and which, in turn, the Assembly organized for a new career, was itself a great historical idea ; and by the term histori- cal I mean epoch-marking and era-making. For we must not lose sight of the truth that there is, after all, a difference in kind between personal greatness and historical greatness. Writers like Mr. Carlyle and his disciple, Mr. Froude, have done their best to confound the two and to make their readers believe that there is no profound difference between biography and histor3^ But the difference is real and is a differ- ence in kind. Personal greatness is the greatness of individual gifts in expression. Historical greatness is the greatness of great ideas in realization. Personal greatness and historical greatness do at times coalesce in a single movement. But there are other movements in which the idea uses the man of gifts against his THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY IN MODERN HISTORY. ^1 v.'ill. Who are the two men of modern history that, in the spheres of war and European politics, have done the most to destroy the right of kings and absolutism ? Frederick the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte, we all shall say. The one a believer in kingly right, the other a military despot ; both great men, and both the leading men of a great historical era. But the era is historically great, not because they of purpose made it what it was ; but because the idea which dominated the era was immensely more pervasive and powerful and abiding than either or both of these great personalities, and used them as puppets to effect a political revolution which Frederick as a king hated, and which Napoleon as a Caesar would have blown to atoms with shotted guns. Such is tlie wide separation between personal and historical greatness. The one is the greatness of special gift ; the other is the greatness of great ideas realized. Now, what we are claiming for the Westminster Assembly of I)ivines is not personal but historical greatness. We are not concerned, in these commemorative services, to show that it had the picturesqueness of a deliberative body, led and dominated by one or two colossal personalities who towered far above their peers and who thus lent to its procedure what Mr. Matthew Arnold calls the quality of interest. Mr. Arnold disliked Puri- tanism, and, therefore, criticised American life, the outcome of Puritanism, as uninteresting : and it was uninteresting to him because it lacks the varietj'- and picturesqueness of a society marked by accepted personal inequalities. It is to his credit that^ on a nearer view of American life he did confess, in a private letter, that " he liked the way in which i\xe people, far lower down than in England, live with something of the life and enjoyment of the cultivated classes." But after all, American life was uninter- esting to him because it is not picturesque ; and for him it was not picturesque because there is not an adequate place assigned in it to dominating personality. Just so, the Westminster Assem- bly of Divines is uninteresting to not a few historians, because the quality of picturesqueness is lacking in it, because there is a strik- ing sameness and equality in the units which composed its active membership. But is this not really to say, that the idea which the divines were bringing to realization, dominated the men who were doing that work ; and that, therefore, the Assembly is larger and greater in its historical aspect than in its personal features ? As we are thus brought to the idea which organized the Assem- bly, and which the Assemble in its turn was reorganizing for new triumjihs, let me jirefacc its statement with the remark that we shall not wonder that the Assembly lacks the trait of picturesque- 372 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. ness and inequality, the trait which Mr. Matthew Arnold calls the quality of interest. For this constitutive idea, which compelled the Assembly's gathering, which dominated its sessions, and which appears as regulative in its finished work, is precisely the idea which, since that time, has been robbing English-speaking society of the trait of jjicturesqueness and inequality which the anti- Puritan litterateur found a trait so interesting. Can we gather from the study of these extended and highly specialized symbolical books and from their preceding and contem- poraneous history a formula of this vital and pregnant idea ? I am confident that we can. I am confident that we shall make no mistake if we say that it is embodied in the proposition, that the living and holy God is the one absolute sovereign, realizing in history His eternal and perfect plan, with means by His providence or without means by His Spirit when and where and how He pleaseth. This was the idea whose power in antecedent history brought the "Westminster divines together ; this was the idea which ruled them in the formulation of their symbols of doctrine and of government ; and it is this idea of the sovereign God unfolding in history, mediately and immediately. His own most wise and holy purpose, that, as reembodied by them, has prove J the most powerful of all forces in the subsequent history of the English-speaking peoples. Of course, we shall not have tliis idea before our minds in any adequate way, unless we emphasize the truth that the God, whom it presents as sovereign, is the free personal, and ethical God of Holv Scripture, and so in absolute contrast to the Force of the Materialist, the Idea or Nature of the Pantheist, and the cold and distant Supreme Being of the Deist. "For," as has well been said, " the Bililical representation of Deity not merely ex- cludes all those conceptions of Him wiiich cop.vert Him into a Gnostic abyss, and place Him in such unrevealed depths that He ceases to be an object of either love or fear, but it clothes Him with what may be called individuality of emotion or feeling. The Bible is not content with that inadequate and frigid form of theism, that deism, which merely asserts 'the diving existence and unity with the fewest predicates possible, but it enunciates the whole plenitude of the divine nature upon the side of the afi^ec- tions as well as of the understanding. When the Bible calls Him the living God, it has in view that blending of thought and emotion which renders the Divine Being a throbbing centre of self- consciousness. The Old and the New Testaments are vivid as lightning Avith the feelings of the Deity. And these feelings (lash out in the unambiguous statements of the Psalmist, God lovetli THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY IX MODERN HISTORY. iiTS the righteous, God is angry with the wicked ; in the winning Avords of St. John, God is h)ve ; and in the accents of St. Paul, Our God is a eousumiug fire." It is the free, living, ethical and emotional character of the God, wliose sovereignty the idea announces, that gives to the idea its energizing influence when it enters the individual soul. For, as the theologian from whom I have just quoted also says, " When one realizes, in some solemn moment, that no blind force or fate, no law of nature, no course and constitution of things, but a Being as self-conscious as himself, and with a personality as vivid in feeling and emotion toward right and wrong as his own identity, has made him, and made him respon- sible ; when a man in some startling but salutary passage in his ex- perience becomes aware that the intelligent and emotional I AM is penetrating his inmost soul, he is, if ever upon this earth, a roused man, an earnest and energized creature." To receive into our minds, then, this energizing and history-making idea in the fullness of its meaning, we must be alive to the truth, not only that God is sovereign and free, not only that all history is the unfolding of His plan and that in its unfolding He works immediately as well as mediately, Vmt also and especially that He is absolutely holy, and throbbing with emotion toward moral good and moral evil. For herein is its power to energize in the sphere of character and conduct. In the modern world, this great idea began its mission in the Pro- testant Reformation. But the Protestant Reformation at the begin- ning did not give to it the place it soon afterwards assumed. The sovereignty of God in the history and destiny of every soul was the belief of Luther, as centuries before it had been the belief of St. Augustine. It was not, however, until the lastilutes of the Chris-^ \tian Religion were written by John Calvin, that the great truth of the sovereignty of God was formulated and correlated to the 'other doctrines of Christianity in precisely the mode in which it became the great historical force it afterward proved to be in the spheres of religion and politics. ^ For Luther followed St. Augustine ; and there is an important dis- tinction to be made between the jjlacc which predestination holds in the doctrinal system of Augustine, and the place which the eter- nal purpose holds in the doctrinal system of Calvin. The profound experience of sin and grace of the North African father brought him to the conviction that God alone is the author of man's salva- tion, for man is unable not only to effect it, but to begin the new creation from death to life. And therefore the one ultimate explanation of the fact that regeneration is not universal is for him to be found in the sovereign and absolute predestination of God. 374: TEE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. Thus it stands in Augustine's mind as the corollary of man's sin- fulness and his spiritual inability. John Calvin wrote no body of systematic divinity, though the theologies of the Reformed schoolmen are rooted in the Institutes. Calvin disliked the mediaeval schoolmen ; he hated their theology, and he had a feeling not unlike contempt for their method. He ■was a Biblical scholar and a humanist. He wrote like a man of letters for the educated of his time ; but not for and not like the scholastic theologians. He saw clearly what he believed to be the great outstanding truths in theology ; and he stated them clearly and defended them passionately, without resorting to analysis and without consciously constructing a system. There- fore it is, that we cannot argue from the locality of the chapters on predestination in the Institutes to the place which the sover- eignty of God held in Calvin's mind. But we are at no loss to find that place, when we study the carefully wrought-oat sys- tems of Reformed theology which were grounded in the Insti- tutes. The students of Calvin gave to this sovereignty of God not a position in anthropology, as a corollary of human inability, but a position in the doctrine of God. There, as constitutive of the whole system and dominating it, as the ultimate reason and explanation of all history and destiny, they placed the eternal plan of the sovereign and holy Triune God. As a choice, it was called electio ; as a purpose, propositum : as a free decision, decrelum ; as it includes destiny, prsedestinatio ; as it is supremely authoritative, jiutus, like the commanding affirmation of Capitoline Jupiter. We cannot argue always from the position a doctrine holds in a system to the importance attached to it by those who hold the system. But it is a striking fact that while Augustinianism, holdinar predestination as a corollary, exerted no political influence and as a theology began to suffer an eclipse in the very century in which Augustine died ; and while Lutheranism, following Augus- tinianism, yielded to semi-pelagian conceptions before Luther's death ; the Reformed theology not only persisted in its integrity against the worst assaults, but from the days of Calvin has always been one of the most potent forces in Anglo-Saxon history that have wrought for civil liberty. And if I were asked why this has been the case, what is the secret of this power of the Re- formed theology thus constituted, not only to persist, but also to work so mightily in political history, I do not know what other answer to give than to say, it is because it has placed in the dominating position of its system, the great truth that the living and ethical God is the one absolute Sovereign of the universe, and historv is but the unfolding of His eternal plan: because constitu- THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY IN MODERN HISTORY. 375 tive of its system, is the great truth that the decrees of God are His eternal purpose, whereby according to the counsel of His will, for His own glory, He hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass ; and these decrees He executes in creation and providence with or without means as He pleaseth. I need not stop to point out how this great doctrine lays the foundation for religious confidence, and gives strength and sta- bility to religious character. As the divine decree itself cannot be the rule of our action, so the doctrine of the decree, when ex- erting its legitimate influence, does not in the first instance affect the human will. The decree is not to be obeyed and executed : it is to be believed and contemplated. As thus an object of faith and subject of meditation, the element of human nature on which it makes its powerful impact is not the volition, but the abiding disposition and so the character. It awakens reverence ; it in- duces patience and fortitude in the adverse experiences of life : it begets confidence and tranquillity of soul as we think of progress and the hidden consummation of our own redemption. Individ- ual life and the course of human history in the light of this great doctrine become not only solemn but sublime : for it is in its light alone that we can follow the thought of the great preacher who called "every man's life a plan of God." As the spirit of man, contemplating the eternal purpose, reverently bows in the realized presence of the one holy, wise, loving and absolute Sovereign of the Universe, in whose perfect counsel comprehending all history there is no possibility of chance ; what room is there in the human spirit for weak and feverish exitements or hysterical alternations of feeling ? And, on the other hand, what a powerful recreation ■ of both active and passive strength of soul this contemplation of the Sovereign God from its very nature must be ; as, indeed, its history reveals it always to have been ! But what we must especially note, at this point, is its tremendous power as a weapon against ecclesiastical privilege in priest and prelate ; and against monarchical absolutism, whether grounded in physical force, like the Tudors', or in divine right, like the Stew- arts'. For let the truth of the Sovereignty of God be lodged in the mimls pf ih.Q people, and work there to its legitimate conclusion; and Pope of Rome, and my Lord Bishop in England, and magic- working priests, and kingly throne alike must tremble, and the Citv of God — the Theocratic Commonwealth — must appear in time and space. And, therefore, James I was right when at the Hampton Court conference, seeing in the Scot's Presbytery the political embodiment of this very doctrine, he confessed that Presbytery and monarchy agreed no better than God and the devil. 376 THE PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. Wliat we might have expected this constitutive doctrine of the sovereign God to do in the sphei'e of government, just that it did in Britain. The time at my command does not permit me to recount in even the briefest way the history of the Eeformed theology in its bearing on the rehgious and poUtical life of Eng- land and Scotland up to the meeting of the "Westminster divines. I can only touch on some facts which help to illustrate and confirm the truth on which I have been insisting. The English Eeformation, though the way was prepared for it by the evangelicahsm of the Lollards, by the patriotism which ill-brooked the legantine courts in England, and by the humanism which, through Erasmus and More and Colet had changed the life of the universities, did not, as an outward movement, take its departure from Lollardism or Nationalism or the revival of letters. It was the king who inaugurated, as it was the king who limited it. AVhatever we may say of his impulse, he did free Eng- land from the dominion of the Pope. But he created a national hierarchy and he became the supreme governor of the Church. Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer did much, even in Henry's day, to bring the constitution of Church and State into line ^\itk the Protestant Reformation, even though Cromwell was cut oS by the sword of Henry, and Cranmer was limited by Henrj^'s reac- tionary spirit. The reign of Edward YI gave a new impulse to the Protestant movement ; and there were times when it seemed as. if the English Eefonnation and that of the Churches on the continent would become one movement in spirit, purpose and result. But Edward soon died ; and Mary Tudor ascended the throne, burning to avenge the wrongs of her Catholic mother and only too well taught by her husband, Philip of Spain, just how to do it. Her five years of rule, marked by a general apprehension of bloodshed, and illumined by the fires of not a few Protes- tant martjvTs, gave to many of the Reformed clergy the oppor- tunity of conference and fraternal communion with the Reformed Churches of Geneva and Germany and Holland. Their exile and their education abroad intensified their hatred of the papacy, and deepened their distrust of its ceremonies. Meanwhile, in England itself the Lollardism, which in the days of Henry YIII had become conscious Protestantism, and which while Mary was on the throne had been suppressed, reappeared in public places on the accession of Elizabeth in 1558 ; and was ready to listen with enthusiasm to the returned English clergy, as they denounced the Pope and demanded that even the appearance of his evil work be effaced from the English worship. But they returned with something more than this negative though burning THE W^STAflNSTER ASSEJfBLr ly MODKRX JITSTOnr. 377 hatred of Rome. The idea of the alisolute sovereignty of the liv- ing and ethical God, who executes His purpose mediated or inrine- diatcly as He pleases, entered as a new power into the life of Eng- land and ot the English Church. Thus English Puritanism was born ; its positive principle, the constitutive ]u-inciple of the theology of John Calvin, ■ its negative principle, opposition to all hierarchical ]iretensions and all sacramentarianism in doctrine or in ceremony. The ])eople welcomed it. The national party wondered at it. The crown opposed it. For the crown was now worn by Elizabeth, the true daughter of Henry VIII — a Tudor in her love of power and absolutism ; ambi- tious to be the head of the State spiritual and ecclesiastical as well as of the State temporal and political ; no more a Protestant than her father was; loving dress and State ceremony; and bound to subdue all the elements of English life, religious and secular, to her imperious will. Thus, between Elizabeth the queen and the Puritan party in the English Church began a long, severe and doubtful conflict. Here, then, was the Puritan iiarty, demanding purity in doctrine, meaning the Reformed theology ; purity in wor- ship, meaning tlie destruction of all semblance of sacramentarian- ism in hierarchy and in religious rites ; purity in life, meaning that the Church of God should have the sole and suflicient power to discipline offenders. How did Elizabeth meet these demands ? She met them: by the Act of Supremacy, which made her the Church's governor ; by the Act of Uniformity, which fixed the obnoxious rites in the English liturgy, and made them obligatory in everv congregation; by the new hierarchy, with Matthew Parker as primate, whose members were her appointed and subservient officers. And the Puritans' demand that the Church should exercise discipline, Elizabeth answered by the High Com- mission, organized to discipline the Puritans themselves. So the fight began ; and it persisted through her reign. I cannot speak of its battles or of the leaders on either side. But surely, it were not right, at such a time as this, not to give a sentence of commemoration to that great Puritan of Elizabeth's reign, Thomas Cartwright, whose accession to the Chair of Divinity at Cambridge Froxide rightly calls " the apparition of a man of genius;" who learned his theology and his polity at Geneva; and who, at this early [day, fought the Puritan battle with au ability and courage not surpassed by any of the Westminster men; Meanwhile in the northern kingdom of Scotland a similar con- flict was going forward, but under different conditions. John Knox came to Scotland in 155'J. The next year, with Murray as regent, a free parliament was called ; the first Scottish Confession 378 THE PRE8B7TERIAN AND REFORMED REVIEW. was adopted ; the Church was settled upon a regimen of Presbytery ; and, in December, the first General Assembly was convened. And all just in the nick of time. For the next spring, the widowed queen of Francis II, having by her hiisband's death lost her high seat as queen consort on the French throne, came to Scotland to take her place as Mary Queen of Scots. Then began the conflict between the crown and the hierarchy on the one hand, and the nobility, clergy and people on the other ; in which, at the begin- ning, Mary and John Knox were the protagonists. In its essence it was the same conflict that was going forward in England. The same theology, with the same constitutive idea, organized the Scottish that organized the English Puritans. Not Thomas Cart- wright only, but John Knox also, got new light and new inspira- tion at Geneva. Still, there was a difference. In Scotland, the. independence of the organized Church was preached as the crown right of the Mediatorial King ; while in England, the absolute sovereignty of God alone carried with it the rights of the people. In Scotland, through the reign of Mary, the regency of Morton, and the reign ot James VI before the death of Elizabeth, the Church, led first by John Knox and later by Andrew Melville, was upon the whole successful. The second Book of Discipline was approved ; and James took the covenant. Though he after- wards tried to impose bishops on the Church, yet in 1590 he praised Presbytery as ordained of God, and two years later as- sented to the law by which that order was restored in his kingdom. But very soon an event occurred which, on the one hand, led to a severer pressure than ever on the Puritan churchmen of both kingdoms; and, on the other, to a closer union between the Scotch and the English Puritans. This was the union of the two coun- tries under