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"The mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee." "We, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness." "The tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away."

ART. II-THE REFORMED OR CALVINISTIC SENSE.

By E. D. MORRIS, D. D., Professor in Lane Seminary, Ohio.

It was a noble desire of Henderson, one of the Scottish representatives in the Westminster Assembly, that the transactions of that venerable body should not only become effectual in uniting the evangelical churches of the three kingdoms, but should also prove the basis of a grand Protestant Union, embracing the various branches of the Reformed Church throughout Northern and Central Europe. This desire was informally communicated by Henderson and some of his associates to the churches of Holland, and to the celebrated Openstiern, then Chancellor of Sweden; and for a time their suggestion became the subject of earnest negotiations among leading minds in the Reformed circles. Had such negotiations eventuated in action-had such a general Union been formed on the basis of a sound, just, fraternal Calvinism, the subsequent career of the various European churches bearing the Calvinistic name, and the subsequent history of Protestantism itself, would have been essentially modified. The cunning arguments of Bossuet in view of the variations in that Protestantism by which even the youthful Gibbon was at one time led to sympathize with the Papal faith-would then have been fatally weakened. The visible unity of these churches

on such a foundation would not only have rendered such criticism ineffective, but also have furnished the surest protection against all other forms of Papal assault. It would have afforded to a free and spiritual Christianity a much more firm and advantageous position in the several countries, and among the various nationalities, represented in such Union. It would have obliterated by degrees those diversities of doctrine and of sentiment, which had originated in local causes merely; it would have enabled the several parties and sections to know and understand, to respect and love, one another. It would have tended to draw the Reformed and the Lutheran churches into closer fellowship, and to return the divided stream of the Reformation into one broad, deep, fertilizing current. It might have been an introductory and decisive step toward that comprehensive communion of saints, and that unifying of the Body of Christ, for which devout souls in our day are longing, and which all believers recognize as a condition precedent to the dawning of the millennial age.

The failure of these negotiations may be traced in part to external causes: diversities of race and language, varieties of temperament, culture, usage, and especially political policies and interests, stood in the way of such union, and frustrated every ardent endeavor to secure it. It is traceable partly to internal causes, existing in the constitution or incorporated in the belief of the various Reformed churches; found in the ambition of leading minds, or in the intestine strifes of party, or the complications of state control. If the external conditions had been favorable to Union, the sentiment of brotherhood had not attained such maturity, neither had the principles or the advantages of such Union been so far appreciated as to render the actual combination of all the Calvinistic churches, on the basis of any single creed, either practicable or desirable. If such appreciations had existed, and this sentiment of brotherhood had been far more widely diffused and more controlling, it still is questionable whether these external hindrances would not have presented an insuperable barrier to the Union sought. These causes, external and internal, not only prevented the churches of Holland and London, Switzerland and France,

from joining in such an alliance; they even precluded such an alliance among the several evangelical parties within the British Isles. The Reformed churches, therefore, remained in the state of separation, disintegrate and variant; and Bossuet found the specious occasion he desired, to show the schismatic character of Protestantism, and to prove that in Rome alone true unity, real concord, were to be found.

Among these obstructing causes, it should be specially observed that diversities in doctrine occupied only a subordinate place. The Westminster Confession had gathered into itself, and had considerately set forth, all that was essential in the various Reformed symbols which had preceded it; it had incorporated even more fully than the Heidleburg Catechism or the Helvetic Confessions, the substance of that strong, vital, indestructible Calvinism, which was the common life and glory of the Reformed churches. It had been framed amid circumstances which preserved it from the incompleteness, the narrowness, the partizanship, characteristic of some among the antecedent Confessions. It could therefore claim to be, in no ordinary sense, a representative expression of the doctrines embraced and held within the Calvinistic household; and to furnish a solid and spacious platform on which the various branches of that household might stand and rejoice together, as such an expression and such a platform. Henderson and his associates presented it to their brethren of like faith throughout Northern Europe; and if other causes had permitted on any basis the fraternal union thus desired, we may be assured that the Reformers would generally have recognized this Confession as both the latest and the best exposition of their common faith.

I. This view of the Westminster Confession may be illustrated by an enumeration and survey of the various Calvinistic symbols which had preceded it, during the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries. Passing backward from the years 1646-48, when the Confession was finished by the Assembly, and submitted to the inspection of Parliament, we find the first of these symbols in the Canons of the Synod of Dort, first authoritatively promulgated in 1619, as containing the

accepted doctrine of the Reformed Church throughout the Netherlands. This Synod, although composed mainly of representatives from that Church, might almost be regarded as ecumenical, inasmuch as it contained delegates from Sweden, from different parts of Germany, from France and Switzerland, and even from England and Scotland. Convened primarily by the authority of Maurice of Orange, for the purpose of arresting the growing influence of Arminianism, then intrenched in the University of Leyden, it still aimed to be a body representing the entire circle of Calvinistic opinion; and its canons, though directed mainly against the Remonstrant party, and unhappily affected with the controversy with them, may still be accepted as an important representation of the Calvinistic faith.

The year 1571 is memorable as the date of three national creeds, prepared independently of each other, and characterized by provincial peculiarities, yet combining remarkably to illustrate the degree of unity in doctrine prevalent among the Reformed churches. The first of these is the Belgic Confession, originally drafted ten years earlier, as a private declaration of belief, but at this date revised and adopted by the churches of Holland; a symbol closely connected therefore with the canons of the Synod of Dort, and by that Synod subsequently ratified as a valuable exposition of sacred truth. The second is the Gallic Confession, first composed in 1559, by a Synod representing the Calvinistic churches of France, and convened at Paris, but finally approved, and made the formal basis of French Protestantism, twelve years later, at Rochelle. The third of these provincial symbols is the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England; drafted at first by Cranmer and Ridley, and adopted by act of Synod in 1552, then revised by the bishops of the English Church, and accepted by Synod in 1562, and finally sanctioned by Parliament in the year already given; a symbol in substantial harmony with the other Calvinistic Confessions of that era as to doctrine, but proclaiming the prelatical polity, and verging toward Lutheranism in its conception of the sacraments.

With this triad of Reformed symbols, there should be asso

ciated a second triad, promulgated a few years earlier, and, like these, independent and provincial, yet historically and in their essential features closely allied both to these and to one another; namely, the Scotch Confession, the second or main Helvetic Confession, and the Hiedelberg Catechism. Of these the first was but the transplantation into Scottish soil of that system of divine truth, which the vivid brain and earnest heart of John Knox had learned in the society of Calvin at Geneva, and which he had so preached after his return, as to set all Scotland in a glow of fervid approbation. The second may be regarded as the maturest product of the Genevan school of theology, in the decade immediately succeeding the decease of Calvin; a symbol afterwards condensed into several local Confessions, and in its full form widely accepted, not merely in Switzerland, but also in Hungary, Poland and France. The third had its origin in the struggles of Calvinistic princes to establish the Reformed faith, instead of Lutheranism, throughout the Palatinate; and is characterized by a remarkable degree of moderation in statement, and of conciliation in tone. "In doctrine," says another, "it teaches justification with the Lutheran glow and vitality, predestination and election with Calvinistic firmness and self-consistency, and the Zwinglian theory of the sacraments with decision."

Following the ascending line of Calvinistic symbolism to a point still closer to the era of the Reformation, and passing by the two minor Confessions proposed by Calvin himself in exposition of certain particular doctrines, we are brought to a third triad of creeds or symbols, historically connected with those already named, and of special interest as indicating the first formal divergence, in respect of doctrine, between the Reformed and the Lutheran churches: the First Helvetic or Second Basle Confession, subscribed by the seven Protestant cantons of Switzerland in 1536, the First Basle Confession, adopted by the cities of Basle and Mühlhausen in 1532, and the Fidei Ratio written by Zwingle in 1530. This primary group of Reformed symbols, all of Swiss origin, are the products of that formative period, when both the Helvetic and the German reformers were still struggling together against the might of the

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