Page:On the Revision of the Confession of Faith.djvu/28

of early Protestantism and of the Dutch anti-Arminian polemic was no longer felt necessary. Especially in England, where the Romanizing and Arminianizing school of Laud had recently been in the ascendency, and had not scrupled to make tyrannical use of its power, men of all shades of Augustinianism were compacted together in a common love, and were little inclined to narrowness or ecclesiastical tyranny. They had "been burnt in the hand by that kind before," as Dr. Tuckney, one of the chief members of the Assembly, expressed it. Thus, in the good providence of God, three important prerequisites to the framing of a Confession of permanent value were brought into conjunction: (1). The truth was prepared for well-considered and moderate statement, as over against its three permanent enemies—Romanism, Arminianism, and Prelacy. No Confession framed before the threshing out of these three controversies would have at all served the needs of the period which has intervened between the meeting of the Westminster Assembly and to-day; and no Confession framed with its chief polemical sides turned toward them can be said to be growing obsolescent so long as these tendencies are as aggressive as they are to-day. (2). In the course of these controversies, all the important forms of Calvinism had been developed, so that a Confession framed with the intention of including them all is still inclusive of all the important types of Calvinistic thought. And (3). The experience of the Calvinists during the Laudian oppression had compacted them into a single body, enabled them to look upon their differences as relatively unimportant, and inclined them to seek to frame a Confession which should be inclusive of all soundly Calvinistic thought, and which should exclude only those errors which cut to the roots of the system which all Calvinists unite in believing to be the truth of God.