PRESBYTERY OF NEW YORK 
 
 AGAINST 
 
 The Rev. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D. 
 
 # 
 
 ARGUMENT 
 
 OF THE 
 
 REV. JOSEPHJ. LAM PE, D.D., 
 
 A Member of the Prosecuting Committee. 
 

 
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PRESBYTERY OF NEW YORK 
 
 AGAINST 
 
 The Rev.CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D. 
 
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 ARGUMENT 
 
 OF THE 
 
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 REV. JOSEPH J. LAMPE, D.D., 
 
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 [A Member of the Prosecuting Committee. 
 

 
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INTRODUCTION. 
 
 
 Mr. Moderator and Brethren: 
 
 We all feel the pressure of Christian work and the responsi¬ 
 bility of caring for the spiritual interests of the Church and of 
 seeking the salvation of immortal souls so keenly, that we can¬ 
 not fail to regard a trial for heresy as a great evil, an evil so 
 great as to amount well-nigh to a calamity. 
 
 We all deeply deplore the state of things which confronts us. 
 
 But, however great the evil, and much to be deplored, trials 
 for heresy may become a necessity. As in the family, so 
 also in the Church, discipline may not only be necessary, but 
 become the supreme duty of the hour; and it would surely be 
 greatly to the discredit of the Church if, when that hour has 
 come, it should have neither the grace nor the courage to be 
 equal to the responsibility. 
 
 The inception of this trial was not left to the decision of any 
 one individual. After a calm and prayerful investigation, the 
 Presbytery itself decided that the emergency had arisen for the 
 commencement of judicial process. 
 
 The Presbytery of New York, in view of the widespread 
 disturbance which Dr. Briggs’s utterances were creating in 
 the Church, was obliged to do something to vindicate its own 
 good name, and to prove its fidelity. Under such circum¬ 
 stances it is more than ever our solemn duty to examine all 
 matters coming before us with the utmost thoroughness, can¬ 
 dor and impartiality. 
 
 In a case like this, impartial examination is difficult. It is 
 characteristic of our times to claim the utmost freedom of ut¬ 
 terance and belief. Every one of us demands the largest lib- 
 
4 
 
 erty as man’s natural birthright, and denounces intolerance as 
 one of the greatest evils. 
 
 But lovers of truth have ever thought it a privilege to sac¬ 
 rifice their liberty for her preservation, and intolerance itself, 
 in defence of truth, has become a virtue. It was in the defence 
 of truth that an Apostle of Christ, with rare courage, declared: 
 “,If any man preach any other Gospel unto you than that ye 
 have received, let him be accursed.”* 
 
 It is one of the glories of the Presbyterian Church that, on 
 the one hand, she has rendered grand service in securing for 
 the individual man his liberty, and that, on the other, she has 
 been intolerant of everything believed by her to be contrary 
 to the truth of God; and it is precisely this supreme loyalty 
 to the truth which has enabled her to render such splendid 
 services to the cause of freedom. 
 
 All relations, both human and divine, require, for their very 
 existence, an abridgment of individual liberty. This is true 
 alike of the family, the State and all other social organizations. 
 It would be very easy to press the point of liberty so far as 
 to render the existence of these institutions impossible; but all 
 agree that liberty shall be exercised only within the bounds of 
 necessary laws and regulations. If one who, in politics, holds 
 to the principle of protection, should join a society organized 
 for the purpose of promulgating the doctrine of free trade, and 
 should then begin to use his position and influence in the so¬ 
 ciety to circulate the principles of protection, he would have no 
 right to complain that his liberty was unjustly interfered with 
 if he should find vigor enough in that society to place him 
 quite outside of it. A natural sense of justice would lead every 
 one to say, That is right. 
 
 Every particular Church must have conceded to it the ele¬ 
 mentary right of organized existence. This involves the fur¬ 
 ther right of formulating articles of faith, expressive of her 
 conception of biblical truth, and indicative of what the basis 
 of her teaching shall be. And simple justice requires that 
 
 * Gal. i. 9. 
 
5 
 
 those who receive ordination at her hand on that basis should 
 stand honestly on it with her. A subscription of loyalty to the 
 Bible and our standards necessitates an abridgment of indi¬ 
 vidual liberty to that extent. 
 
 Neither God noi man compels any one to join his fortunes 
 with an> particular Church and creed; neither God nor man 
 compels any one to maintain such union any longer than is 
 consistent with his conscientious convictions; but both God 
 and man will hold a man morally responsible for the perform¬ 
 ance of solemn engagements voluntarily assumed. This is not 
 in any wise a question of liberty. It is, in the deepest sense, 
 a question of morality. Heresy hunting, persecution for spread¬ 
 ing erroneous doctrines, is simply impossible in this age of the 
 world. 
 
 It is given to every man to proclaim from the house-top 
 anything he may feel moved to utter, if it has the least tinge of 
 decency about it. Dr. Briggs has the liberty to do this on 
 his own responsibility. But he may not use this liberty at the 
 expense of the rights of others. The Presbyterian Church has 
 an equal right to be left free to say to what doctrines she will 
 gi\ e her testimony, and to refuse her imprimatur for the pro¬ 
 mulgation of opinions which she considers subversive of funda¬ 
 mental truth. 
 
 A Church would merit only the contempt of men if it should 
 offer articles of faith for subscription which it did. not seriously 
 hold; and equally so if, holding them seriously, it did not insist 
 on compliance with them on the part of those whom it had 
 placed in positions of trust and influence on the ground of ac¬ 
 cepting them. The whole thing would not only be immoral, 
 but demoralizing. Graver questions than mere individual lib¬ 
 erty are at stake here. Both the truth and the honor of the 
 Church are involved. As much as Dr. Briggs, the Presbyterian 
 Church is on trial to-day. 
 
 Scholarship, too, has been brought into the case to influence 
 your decision; and, for that reason, a few words must be said 
 here in reference to it. 
 
 It has been stated that Dr. Briggs knows more about the 
 
6 
 
 Bible than all his co-Presbyters taken together. And it has- 
 also been boldly said that the Presbyterian Church, in prose¬ 
 cuting him for heresy, takes a position in favor of a narrow and 
 superficial treatment of Scripture. No doubt some believe 
 these statements. But they believe what is not true. There 
 are many scholars as learned as Dr. Briggs. And our Church 
 is in hearty accord with the best scholarship. 
 
 The Presbyterian Church, throughout its entire history, has 
 taken the highest ground in favor of a broad and thorough 
 scholarship. It favors the best learning in every department 
 of research and culture. It maintains a standard of scholar¬ 
 ship as high as that of any other Church in Christendom, per¬ 
 sistently refusing to lower that standard, and insisting that all 
 its ministers, in addition to possessing a liberal education in 
 the arts, shall be able to read the Scripture in the orignal He¬ 
 brew and Greek. As a result of this course, it has produced a 
 long and distinguished line of scholars, who have been able, 
 not only to handle all matters pertaining to divinity with con¬ 
 summate ability, but also to prove themselves fully the peers 
 of the best scholars in other lines of research. Let him who 
 will, assert that the Presbyterian Church shrinks back from the 
 highest and best scholarship of the day. All fair-minded peo¬ 
 ple will say it is untrue. 
 
 But the Presbyterian Church places faith above mere scholar¬ 
 ship. It recognizes the truth that the one supreme and distin¬ 
 guishing characteristic of Christian people is, that they are be¬ 
 lievers . They are an army of believers, called of God to fight 
 the good fight, in which, not learning, but faith itself gives 
 them strength and courage, since by it they lay hold of the 
 arm of the Lord and make real the help of heaven for the con¬ 
 flict on earth. The power of the Church is measured by its 
 faith in the truth and promise of God. And so it has ever been 
 the suprerne duty of the Church to guard against that falling 
 away which comes through a desire for new things, and above 
 all, to see to it that there shall be faith on the earth at the com¬ 
 ing of her Lord. 
 
 A scholarship, which is not in subjection to faith, has al- 
 
7 
 
 ways led to doubt, negation and weakness. And the learning 
 of the world has largely, from the beginning, arrayed itself 
 against the revealed truth of God. For more than 1,800 years, 
 men who have boasted of their intellectual powers, their culture 
 and progress, have sneered at the simplicity of the Gospel of 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 This Gospel has ever been only foolishness to the Greeks. 
 It has not pleased God to call many of the wise, the mighty 
 and the noble. He has selected the base and foolish and 
 weak,* whom He has made strong by the grace of faith, to van¬ 
 quish the most powerful systems of human thought which have 
 arrayed themselves against His truth, and to advance His cause 
 in the earth. In her faith, the Church has been strong to do 
 all things. 
 
 But the Church welcomes the deepest and broadest Chris¬ 
 tian scholarship, and rejoices in the grand service it renders in 
 the cause of the truth. No one objects to submitting the sacred 
 Scriptures to the most searching scrutiny, if it be done with 
 reverence, candor and fairness. 
 
 Objections are raised only against the methods of what is 
 known as the higher criticism, the most distinguishing feature 
 of which is its audacity. Intoxicated with its own immensity, 
 it has brought itself under deserved suspicion. It brands a dis¬ 
 tinguished company of Christian scholars, who have done yeo¬ 
 man service in the maintenance and defence of God’s truth, as 
 mere traditionalists, who, in ignorance and prejudice, have de¬ 
 spoiled the people of their Bible by erecting impassable bar¬ 
 riers about it, and presents itself as the one great oracle of 
 truth and certainty. Nothing, it claims, has been settled by the 
 great thinkers of the Church during more than eighteen cen¬ 
 turies. 
 
 It is freely admitted that the defenders of higher criticism 
 exhibit a large amount of erudition and research, but when one 
 presses his way through all the material gathered, through the 
 language and the style, and arrives at the concept of the inner 
 
 * i Cor. i. 26-28. 
 
8 
 
 substance, he finds nothing but conjecture . The immense pile 
 rests simply on unverified conjecture, on mere subjective impres¬ 
 sions. 
 
 The questions of liberty and scholarship are not involved in 
 this case. We all favor both in loyalty to truth and faith. Nor 
 should any other extrinsic issue be brought in to influence the 
 decision of this court. It is the duty of every brother to de¬ 
 cide candidly on the matter in hand without personal prejudice 
 on the one hand or personal sympathy on the other. 
 
 Dr Bribers has laid down a well-considered scheme of thought 
 as the basis of what he proposes to teach. Any one who has 
 read his published works will admit that the Inaugural Address 
 gjygg Qg nothing but a condensed and matured statement of the 
 principles and doctrines which for years he has been advancing. 
 
 Dr. Briggs himself maintains that he has said nothing in his 
 address which he has not stated before. It is, therefore, entirely 
 fair to judge of the soundness or unsoundness of his teaching 
 by the views expressed in the Inaugural ; and the decision 
 ought to be on these matured declarations of Dr. Briggs,which 
 were made under circumstances so sacied and lesponsible. 
 
 He has not withdrawn any of them. The position remains 
 unchanged. Dr. Briggs delivered the Inaugural Address after 
 he had made an orthodox subscription. Last year, after he 
 had given his Response to the Charges and Specifications, in 
 which he was thought by many to have modified his objection¬ 
 able views, he republished the Inaugural in a new edition, and 
 stated in the Preface of it, that he saw no reason for changing 
 either the matter or form of it, and soon after published his 
 last book, “ The Bible, the Church, and the Reason,” which is 
 only the Inaugural over again in an aggravated form. And it 
 is plain from the extended argument which he has made that 
 he honestly holds the views expressed in these productions of 
 
 his. 
 
 Dr. Briggs has spoken as the counsel of his client, but he 
 has not put his client on the witness-stand. We have, there¬ 
 fore, no sworn or approbated testimony. He has put in evi¬ 
 dence a large amount of documentary evidence in form of 
 
9 
 
 articles and books extending back a number of years, and we 
 must give to these the value of documentary evidence. In 
 one of his earliest works he stated that the unity of Isaiah was 
 to be maintained against the divisive critics who hold that the 
 last part of that prophecy was written by the Great Unknown 
 in the latter part of the Exile. He may have changed his mind 
 on other points, and there is no harm in that, only it should 
 be remembered. 
 
 It is not denied that Dr. Briggs has made many orthodox 
 statements in the works which he has put in evidence. And 
 it is not for these that he has been accused, but for utterances 
 in the Inaugural which are believed to be heretical. And here 
 let me say that we agree with Dr. Briggs that no one is to be 
 condemned on mere inferences from statements he has made, 
 unless they be necessary inferences. 
 
 If, for instance, one should state that a person had reached 
 a certain place in one way, another one in a different way, and 
 a third in a different way still, then, although he has not 
 affirmed, in so many words, that there are three different ways 
 of reaching that place, his statements necessarily involve that, 
 and it would be childish to say that those who charged him 
 with it had accused him on a mere inference. 
 
 But before passing to the consideration of his argument on 
 the charges and specifications, it is necessary to give some 
 attention to a number of preliminary questions on which Dr. 
 Briggs has expressed himself. 
 
 The claim that the prosecution has disobeyed the order 
 of the court respecting the transposition of texts and the ex¬ 
 tracts from the Standards, is based on a technicality so insig¬ 
 nificant that any attempt to make capital out of it tends to 
 provoke a smile. The specification must set forth the facts 
 relied upon to prove the charge, and must declare, as far as 
 possible, the time, place and circumstances. The quotations 
 from Scripture and from the Standards are as much facts to 
 prove the Charge as are the extracts from the Inaugural. The 
 transfer of the texts and quotations with the preliminary state¬ 
 ments, “These declarations are contrary to the Scripture 
 
and Standards,” respectively to a position in advance of the 
 specifications, turns the charges and specifications into a bad 
 form; that is all. If the defense and the court prefer them in 
 that shape, the prosecution has had no recourse beyond that 
 of taking an exception. But the transfer does not alter the case 
 in any wise. The texts and the extracts from the Standards 
 remain, as before, a part of the facts upon which the prosecu¬ 
 tion relies for proof of the charges, and the defendant in 
 his argument has recognized them. Moreover, it should be 
 remembered that the Bible and the Standards are in court 
 both as law and evidence, and can be used as such by the 
 prosecution to maintain the charges and specifications. 
 
 Equally without basis is the pretense that charges 4, 5 and 
 6 should be thrown out because neither Dr. Birch nor Mr. 
 McCook discussed the evidence offered in support of them in 
 their opening. The fact that these gentlemen did not discuss 
 the evidence in detail, nor at great length, is wholly imma¬ 
 terial. They are not witnesses; they are advocates. The evi¬ 
 dence is before you; it is presented with the amended charges 
 and specifications; it has been discussed by Dr. Briggs as evi¬ 
 dence, and his discussion must be discussed in turn by me. 
 
 Still more remarkable is the statement that the special fea¬ 
 ture of the charges is that the doctrines mentioned therein are 
 essential, and Dr. Briggs maintains, respecting some of them, 
 that they are not essential. Whether they are so or not may 
 be more clearly seen after the arguments. But it is unneces¬ 
 sary to do more now than to call attention to his statement 
 in order to show that it is not the important feature of the 
 charge. However, the statement introduced a discussion of 
 the whole question as to what may or may not be an essential 
 doctrine; a discussion which introduced the consideration of 
 some other matters relating to law and procedure, which 
 should be considered prior to the general reply to Dr. Briggs’s 
 argument. For in his discussion were considered the methods 
 whereby might be determined whether or not a doctrine in the 
 Confession is essential, as well as the bearing of such deter- 
 
mination upon the compact said to be made between Church 
 and minister at the time of ordination. 
 
 Dr. Briggs’s methods of determining whether or not any doc¬ 
 trines are essential are unquestionably ingenious, but they are 
 his own, and therefore must be regarded merely as suggestions 
 until he can induce the Church to revise the Standards so as to 
 accept them. Possibly prior to such acceptance, some doc¬ 
 trines now mentioned only in the Confession and the Larger 
 Catechism, might be placed also in the Shorter Catechism. 
 Possibly also some clauses in the chapters of the Confession, 
 which might be removed without injuring the sense, might be 
 so linked that they could not be removed. There is no know¬ 
 ing what might have been, or what might be, had such meth¬ 
 ods been chosen in the beginning, or if they should be chosen 
 in the future. 
 
 •Let me remind this court that the word essential is not in 
 our Standards, and was not brought into use in 1788, when they 
 were adopted. The precedents cited by Dr. Briggs are valu¬ 
 able opinions, but they are no authority for us now. However, 
 the meaning of the term essential is sufficiently well shown 
 in the extract from John Blair, read by Dr. Briggs, in which 
 it was shown that the term refers not to doctrines essen¬ 
 tial to salvation merely, but to those which are essential to 
 the system of doctrine and to the mode of government, while 
 the authority by whom the question as to essential or non-es¬ 
 sential doctrines is to be decided is determined with equal 
 clearness by the authorities read by Dr. Briggs. For in the 
 act preliminary to the Adopting Act in 1729, the statement is 
 made that if any minister of Synod or candidate for the minis¬ 
 try have scruples, he should declare them to the Presbytery and 
 Synod, which should determine whether the doctrines, respect¬ 
 ing which he had scruples, were essential and necessary. 
 
 The Plan of Reunion of the Synods in 1758 is equally ex¬ 
 plicit, for Term II. states (Baird, pp. 614-615): “That when 
 any matter is determined by a majority vote, every member 
 shall either actively concur with or passively submit to such 
 
determination; or, if his conscience permit him to do neither, 
 he shall, after sufficient liberty modestly to reason and remon¬ 
 strate, peaceably withdraw from our communion, without at¬ 
 tempting to make any schism, provided always that this shall 
 be understood to extend only to such determinations as the 
 body shall judge indispensable in doctrine or Presbyterian Gov¬ 
 ernment. 
 
 So, also, in the disposition of the Harker case of 1763, in 
 which we find that the Synod decided that his principles “ are 
 contraryto the Word of God "and the approved Standards of 
 doctrine,” and, after mature deliberation, suspended him 
 from the ministry.* 
 
 Following this line of precedents, the Form of Government 
 gives to the General Assembly the power of deciding in all 
 controversies respecting doctrine and discipline, the rights of 
 both Church and minister being protected by the right of ap¬ 
 peal from the lower to the higher judicatories. 
 
 It is not necessary then for the prosecution to prove by his¬ 
 torical statements whether or not the doctrines alleged to 
 have been assailed are, or are not, essential to the system. 
 We must be guided by the Book of Discipline. It says, Sec. 
 3: “An offense is anything in the doctrine, principles or 
 practice of a church member, officer or judicatory, which is 
 contrary to the Word of God; or which, if it be not in its own 
 nature sinful, may tempt others to sin, or mar their spiritual 
 edification.” It would seem from this that, according to our 
 present Constitution, anything which contradicts Scripture or 
 which may work harm to others, is essential enough to call 
 for judicial process. Section 4 of the Book of Discipline shows 
 in what way the offense is to be proved. It states: “ Nothing 
 shall, therefore, be the object of judicial process, which can¬ 
 not be proved to be contrary to the Holy Scriptures, or to the 
 regulations and practice of the Church founded thereon.” It 
 is necessary, therefore, for the prosecution only to present 
 proof such as, on this alternate or double basis, shall satisfy 
 
 * Baird, p. 626. 
 
x 3 
 
 this or an appellate court that the doctrines are essential; for 
 the decision rests with the court. No man has the right to 
 interpret the Standards to suit himself, and practically to re¬ 
 vise them in case any doctrine appears unscriptural. Still less 
 has he the right to assert that the system contained in the 
 Confession requires that doctrines be sustained by “ express 
 language of Scripture,” for the Confession accepts doctrines 
 which can be fairly deduced from Scripture. 
 
 In this same connection was discussed the nature of the 
 subscription to the Confession and what it means. The opin¬ 
 ions of the Westminster divines, of the Scotch Church, or of 
 the Irish Church, are wholly foreign to the matter. The 
 meaning of subscription is made sufficiently clear in the 
 authorities quoted by Dr. Briggs: the Preliminary Act of 1729, 
 the Plan of Union of 1758, as well as by numerous authorities 
 since; the Balch case of 1798 (Baird, 621), the Kentucky case 
 of 1804-5 (Baird, 634), the Cumberland Schism case of 1811 
 (Baird, 644-5), the Craighead case of 1824 (Moore, 54). For 
 all of these show that the minister’s subscription to the Stand¬ 
 ards cannot be separated from his acceptance of the entire 
 Bible, from his approval of the Government and Discipline of 
 the Presbyterian Church, nor from the necessary promise of 
 subjection to his brethren in the Lord. 
 
 SOURCE OF AUTHORITY . 
 
 The first two charges relate to the sources of Divine Author¬ 
 ity. In them Dr. Briggs is accused of teaching that, apart 
 from the Holy Scripture, the Reason and the Church, as foun¬ 
 tains of divine authority, may and do savingly enlighten men. 
 That seems to be the obvious meaning of the citations from 
 the Inaugural Address which we have appended to the charges. 
 We contend that these statements of Dr. Briggs contradict 
 the essential doctrine of Scripture and of our Standards, that 
 the Holy Scripture alone can speak with divine authority on 
 questions of salvation, and that it is the rule of faith and 
 practice. 
 
14 
 
 I would call your attention, to begin with, to the fact that 
 Dr. Briggs has not answered the arguments of Dr. Birch and 
 Mr. McCook. He contends that the specifications are irrel¬ 
 evant to sustain the charges, and that the citations from 
 Scripture and the Standards do not prove them to be offenses. 
 I shall try to show that he is mistaken in this view. 
 
 It is of the utmost importance that we get the question at 
 issue clearly before our minds, and not allow it to be obscured 
 by side issues. 
 
 It is not denied that God has left some evidence of Himself 
 in the human reason; nor that it has a proper function to per¬ 
 form in determining the evidences on which the Divine Rev¬ 
 elation is commended to us, and in interpreting that Revelation 
 in accordance with the best attainable light. Nor is it con¬ 
 tended that God has not given authority to his Church for 
 purposes of instruction, discipline, edification and salvation. 
 
 Dr. Briggss words mean nothing if they do not clothe the 
 Reason and the Church with such a divine authority as em¬ 
 powers them to speak finally and with certainty on the great 
 questions of salvation and life. He claims that he does not 
 co-ordinate these fountains of divine authority, but it is also 
 clear that he does not subordinate the Reason and the Church 
 to the Scriptures. To say of anything that it is a fountain of 
 divine authority which can give us certainty on divine things, 
 is to state that the authority is infallible. It would, in fact, be 
 no divine authority if it were not infallible. That Dr. Briggs 
 uses the term “ divine ” in that definite sense, is clear from his 
 own words at the beginning of his Inaugural Address. He 
 there makes a careful distinction between fallible human and 
 infallible Divine authority. He states: “ What authority shall 
 be our guide and comfort in life is a fundamental question for 
 man at all times. ... If we undertake to search the forms 
 of authority that exist about us, they all disclose themselves 
 as human and imperfect. . . . The earnest spirit presses back 
 of all these human authorities in quest of an infallible guide 
 and of an eternal and immutable certainty.” Probability 
 

 might have been the guide of life in more superficial times, but 
 in this earnest age men will be satisfied only with certainty. 
 “Divine authority is the only authority to which man can 
 yield implicit obedience, on which he can rest in loving cer¬ 
 tainty, and build with joyous confidence,” and then adds: 
 “ There are historically three great fountains of divine author¬ 
 ity—the Bible, the Church, and the Reason.”* 
 
 The Church and the Reason are fountains of divine author¬ 
 ity, and, therefore, on his own definition, each of these can 
 speak with “ eternal and immutable certainty,” can act as an 
 “infallible guide ” of life, and hence man can yield implicit 
 obedience to each, and rest on each of them with loving cer¬ 
 tainty, and build with joyous confidence. It is not quite can¬ 
 did in Dr. Briggs, after having committed himself to the strict 
 meaning of the word “ divine,” to state as he does in the Re¬ 
 sponse to the Charges f and to repeat in his defense: “The 
 Reason is a ‘ great fountain of divine authority,’ and yet not an 
 ‘infallible rule of faith and practice/ 4 The Church is a great 
 fountain of divine authority, and yet not an ‘ infallible rule of 
 faith and practice.' The Bible is ‘ a great fountain of divine 
 authority,’ and it is also ‘ the only infallible rule of faith and 
 practice. ” This is simply quibbling, for, granting that Dr. 
 Briggs does not say in so many words that the Church and the 
 Reason give us a formal rule of faith and practice, what he 
 does say amounts to the same thing. 
 
 He invests them with such divine authority that they can 
 speak with “ eternal and immutable certainty ,” can be to men 
 infallible guides of conduct, and that we may yield them “im¬ 
 plicit obedience.” What more can any formal rule given by 
 the Scriptures do ? What is the difference between an infalli¬ 
 ble guide and an mfallible rule in the matter of salvation ? 
 
 In his Inaugural Address, Dr. Briggs distinctly affirms that 
 divine authority is for men an “ infallible guide ” of life, so that 
 “ we can yield it implicit obedience, rest and build on it in lov- 
 
 * Inaugural Address, pp. 23, 24. 
 f Page 20. 
 
i6 
 
 ing certainty and with joyous confidence ” ; and then immedi¬ 
 ately attributes that quality of divinity to the Reason, the 
 Church, the Bible, precisely alike. The three are exactly 
 alike in respect to their being fountains of divine authority. 
 
 It makes, however, but little difference whether you call this 
 co-ordination or not. We are not engaged in a war of words. 
 The meaning is too plain to be mistaken. Independently of 
 the Bible, the Church and the Reason, as fountains of divine 
 authority, are, according to Dr. Briggs, both sufficient and ef¬ 
 ficient, so that we can yield them implicit obedience and build 
 on them with loving certainty and joyous confidence. Dr. 
 Briggs affirms that multitudes have found the Church and the 
 Reason amply sufficient to make them acquainted with God. 
 In some instances this has been true where the Bible has been 
 found to be inefficient. And it must be admitted that, in these 
 cases, the Reason and the Church were superior to the Holy 
 Scripture. 
 
 Dr. Briggs has developed his idea of the three fountains of 
 divine authority sufficiently in statements to which attention is 
 called in the specifications under these two charges, to leave 
 no room for doubt as to his meaning. He there plainly teaches 
 that the Bible fails to satisfy the religious wants of some peo¬ 
 ple who, having tried it, and turning away from it in disap¬ 
 pointment, find that satisfaction in the Church and the Reason 
 respectively. 
 
 Newman could not find certainty and God in the Bible, 
 “ striving never so hard" but found a place among the faithful 
 through the institutions of the Church.* Martineau could not 
 find God in the Bible, but did find Him enthroned in his own 
 soul,t and thus, simply under the guidance of Reason, he came 
 to be a representative Christian every whit as good as evangeli¬ 
 cal Spurgeon. The expression, “ finding God,” in the Address 
 of Dr. Briggs, is a vague one, and it is difficult to determine its 
 exact meaning. Martineau found the personality of God in 
 
 * Inaugural Address, p. 25. 
 f Inaugural Address, p. 27. 
 
*7 
 
 argumentation; and that was really not a Christian, but a phil¬ 
 osophical find. Evidently, however, Dr. Briggs regards it as 
 a Christian find. And he affirms that there are multitudes who 
 have experiences similar to those of Newman and Martineau. 
 He states that God makes himself known to men in different 
 ways, and they “are influenced by their temperaments and, en¬ 
 vironments which of the three ways of access to God they may 
 pursued * And if there are three ways of access to God which 
 serve men equally well, then certainly the Bible is not the only 
 rule of faith and practice; and, since we have just seen that 
 Dr. Briggs makes each of the three sources an “ infallible guide 
 of life, it is also not the only infallible rule of faith and prac¬ 
 tice. This position of Dr. Briggs is made still more clear by 
 a statement he makes in his response to the charges against 
 him: “ I affirm,” he says, “ both the sufficiency of the Scrip¬ 
 tures, and the efficacy of the Scriptures when the Divine Spirit 
 accompanies them; but this is not to affirm that in fact all those 
 who use the Scriptures as a means of approach to God , do cer¬ 
 tainly find them efficient in their case, or that the Divine Spirit 
 
 may not work effectually upon some men through the Church 
 or the Reason.” f 
 
 There can be no question that Dr. Briggs conceives of the 
 Reason as being able to speak with certainty and final author¬ 
 ity on the burning question of human salvation. For he says: 
 “ Here in the Holy of Holies of human nature God reveals 
 himself to those who seek Him.” ^ 
 
 ** Unless God’s authority is discerned in the forms of the 
 Reason, there is no ground upon which any of the heathen 
 could ever have been saved, for they know nothing of the Bible 
 or Church. If they are not savingly enlightened by the light 
 of the world in the forms of the Reason, the whole heathen 
 world is forever lost.” § 
 
 And if they can thus find God savingly through the Reason, 
 
 * Inaugural Address, p. 28. 
 
 t Response to the Charges, p. 20. 
 
 X Inaugural Address, p. 26. 
 
 § Inaugural Address, pp. 88-89. 
 
i8 
 
 unaided by the revelation which God has given in the Scrip¬ 
 ture, then that revelation given in the written word is not 
 necessary to salvation as our standards affirm. 
 
 It is in this position which Dr. Briggs has taken that he con¬ 
 travenes the biblical doctrine which our Church holds to be a 
 cardinal one, and which assigns to the Scripture the place of 
 sole and sovereign supremacy as the rule of faith and practice. 
 It holds the Scripture to be “ most necessary ^ * 
 
 The agency of the Holy Spirit is not involved here. We all 
 admit the necessity of His gracious working. The Bible is not 
 efficient without His life-giving energy; but with that energy 
 it is efficient as nothing else can be; and we believe that He 
 ever accompanies the word which He Himself inspired, in 
 gracious power in those who are ready to hear. 
 
 Dr. Briggs's argument respecting the nature of Reason as a 
 source of divine authority contained much of mere interest 
 and more that was true. It was an eloquent defence of the 
 Spirit’s working in the heart of man—the christianized man. It 
 was equally eloquent as a plea in behalf of the position that 
 heathen may be saved without intervention of missionary or 
 Bible knowledge. It was a clear presentation of proof that 
 elect infants and incapables must be saved without Bible 
 knowledge; but all of these matters are wholly outside of the 
 matter at issue. We have nothing whatever to do here with 
 any discussion respecting salvation of heathen, even though 
 the Confession may poim. the way. We have no desire to ob¬ 
 struct it. Nor do we wish to dissent from his statements gen¬ 
 erally respecting saving faith, assurance of faith, prayer, and 
 the rest—though we might ask the question: How do we learn 
 of Jesus Christ so as to think of Him in our lonely hours ? All 
 that Dr. Briggs said on these subjects shows nothing more than 
 that man, in order to be the subject of saving grace and 
 have religious experiences, must have a rational and moral 
 nature, and that the reason is one of the channels through 
 
 *Confession of Faith, chap. I. sec. i. 
 
J 9 
 
 which gracious influences come to his soul. The Confession 
 shows that the Spirit works all these things through the 
 Word. Nor do we care to discuss whether or not an or¬ 
 ganization refusing to acknowledge Christ’s authoritative in¬ 
 stitution of the Eucharist is a Christian Church, though we 
 might do so, since the command to observe the Eucharist was 
 addressed no more to His immediate disciples than were the 
 gracious promises quoted by Dr. Briggs. Nor do we care to 
 discuss whether or not God rules a man when conscience 
 rules, lest some might ask whose conscience is meant. Nor 
 do we care to dwell upon Dr. Briggs’s appeal to the obscure 
 and antiquated Cambridge Platonists. We might as well point 
 to the Shakers for authority in theology. We do wish to 
 consider the question involved in Charge I., and we ask 
 you to read it. You see that the charge is not that the Rea¬ 
 son is a fountain of divine authority; that it does not involve 
 the question of salvation of infants, incapables, or heathen; 
 that it does not concern the gracious workings of the Holy 
 Spirit in the heart of one already acquainted with the Word 
 and interested in it; that it does not concern the working of 
 the Spirit in the heart of one unacquainted with the Scripture, 
 the Word of God; but that it does concern the working with 
 the Reason of one who is acquainted with the Scripture and 
 cannot And in it divine authority—that living certainty on 
 which he may rest; that it does concern the working of the 
 Spirit with the Reason of one who rejects the Scriptures as 
 we understand them. 
 
 It is not our faith only but the common faith of the Christian 
 world, based on the plain teaching of Scripture,* that so far as 
 adults are concerned, there is no salvation without the knowl¬ 
 edge of Christ and faith in Him.f “ How then shall they call 
 on Him in whom they have not believed ? and how shall they 
 believe in Him of whom they have not heard ? and how shall 
 
 * Romans x. 13-17; 1 Corinthians i. 18-24; 1 Thessalonians ii. 13; 2 Thess- 
 alonians ii. 13. 
 
 f Romans x. 14. 
 
20 
 
 they hear without a preacher ? ” The Holy Spirit promotse 
 their salvation through “ belief of the truth ” on their part. He 
 gives living power to the Word of God, so that it “ effectually 
 worketh in them that believe .” He bears “ witness by and with 
 the word in our hearts.” The Spirit works through the Word 
 and not through Church and Reason apart from the Word.* 
 
 This is not the doctrine of Protestants alone, but really of 
 the whole of Christendom. For in Christendom no source of 
 divine authority, of infallible truth and light and certainty, is 
 recognized other than the Holy Scriptures of God. For even 
 the corrupt Church of Rome seeks, through a perversion of 
 Scripture, to justify the authority it wields. Christianity stands 
 on the revealed Word of God. But this doctrine of the sover¬ 
 eign supremacy of the Scripture is certainly the cardinal doc- 
 trine of Evangelical Protestantism. 
 
 The Church is administered by fallible, erring men, and can 
 never speak of itself with the certainty of divine authority. 
 Dr. Briggs insisted that we fly in the face of the Confession, 
 the Form of Government and the Book of Discipline unless we 
 concede the Church to be a great fountain of Divine authority. 
 But the Standards subordinate the Church to the Holy Scrip¬ 
 ture, and Christ has given no authority to His Church except 
 that which is prescribed in the Scripture. And history gives 
 abundant illustration of the fact that whenever the Church de¬ 
 parts from the light of the Bible and administers the ordinances 
 and sacraments of Christ in any other than a biblical way, 
 then they become a source of error, corruption and supersti¬ 
 tion, instead of light, comfort and sanctification. 
 
 In fallen man the Reason is blind, and gropes in the dark. 
 If Reason could speak with the certainty of divine authority, 
 that certainly ought to be found in the great philosophies of 
 India and Greece, confessedly the best known products of 
 Reason. But there everything is doubt and uncertainty. 
 Even if you take reason in the widest sense claimed for it by Dr. 
 Briggs, you do not mend the matter. For the conscience, unless 
 
 * Confession of Faith, Chapter I., sec. 5. 
 
set right by the light of divine truth, is not correct; the relig¬ 
 ious feelings are more changeable than the moon; the aesthetic 
 sentiment is as capricious as April weather; and who will look 
 to the metaphysical categories in the joyous confidence of find¬ 
 ing divine authority ? Seriously, what does Dr. Briggs mean by 
 the metaphysical categories respecting the reason being a great 
 fountain of divine authority? The categories in philosophy are 
 logical and not metaphysical. Aristotle gives the following list of 
 categories in his Organon: substance, quantity, quality, relation, 
 place, time , position, possession, action, and passion. Kant, in 
 his Analytic gives the following categories as forms of the un¬ 
 derstanding: unity, plurality , totality, reality , negation, limi¬ 
 tation, substance and accident, cause and effect, community and 
 reciprocity, actuality, possibility and necessity. Is there not 
 something ridiculous in the idea that these formal concepts 
 help to make the reason a great fountain of divine authority ? 
 Dr. Briggs discoursed very eloquently about the light of the Lo¬ 
 gos coming to the reason of the heathen, and by the help of con¬ 
 science, the religious feeling and these categories, leading them 
 to a saving knowledge of God. But where are the heathen who 
 are thus enlightened ? Christian missionaries go to heathen lands, 
 and almost without exception find the heathen firmly opposed 
 to the Christ of the Gospel. Is the light of this Logos, by 
 which the heathen are savingly enlightened in the forms of 
 the reason, hostile to Jesus Christ, the Saviour of man ? The 
 Bible says that, when the the true Logos came, it was to 
 a world blind in the darkness of sin. His life was the light of 
 men. “And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness 
 comprehended it not.” (John i: 4,5.) It was necessary that 
 there should be witness borne to the light, that all men 
 through Him might be saved. The Apostle Paul was sent as 
 a preacher to the heathen world where people had the reason 
 together with the conscience, the religious feelings and the 
 categories, and yet he affirmed of them that they were 
 without God, without Christ, without strength and hope, 
 and in darkness and under the power of Satan. When 
 Christ called the Apostle to His service He said to him 
 
22 
 
 that He would send him to the Gentiles, who were also 
 not wanting in conscience and the religious feelings, for 
 this purpose: “To open their eyes, and to turn them 
 from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, 
 that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance 
 among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.” 
 (Acts 26: 18.) Evidently Christ and the Apostles, whatever 
 may be possible in regard to the salvation of exceptional cases 
 among the heathen, differed from Dr. Briggs in their view of 
 the reason of the heathen with their conscience, religious feel¬ 
 ings and metaphysical categories. The truth is, that to sinful 
 man, neither the Church nor the Reason can speak with the 
 certainty of divine authority without the light and help which 
 come from the Divine Spirit speaking in and through the Word 
 of God. 
 
 The Holy Scripture teaches it to be a part of the divine wis¬ 
 dom that, since the world by wisdom, through the forms of 
 the reason, was unable to know God, to save men through the 
 preaching of His Word. “For, after that in the wisdom of 
 God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by 
 the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”* 
 
 Because of the insufficiency, the inefficiency and the errancy 
 of both Church and Reason, it became necessary for God to 
 embody His truth and will in the written Scripture, that we 
 might have certainty and be safely led. • Both Reason and 
 Church, without the Scripture, have always grossly erred; and 
 so perverted and blind is the human heart that, even with the 
 help of God’s Holy Word, they have again and again sadly 
 stumbled. 
 
 Nor is it any reply to this to say that the Church existed 
 before the Bible. For at that time God revealed His will di¬ 
 rectly to His people by means of His prophets. The Word of 
 God has always been the one source of authority, the only 
 fountain of light and truth for the Church. 
 
 This view is confirmed by Dr. Briggs’s own illustration. He 
 
 * i Cor. i. 21. 
 
2 3 
 
 points to Martineau, for instance, from whom he quoted, as 
 one who found God and certainty through the Reason. But 
 are we so sure about that ? There is an abundance of proof 
 that Martineau’s reason was sadly in error. For, in the last 
 book from his pen, he states: 
 
 “ The blight of birth-sin, with its involuntary perdition; the 
 scheme of expiatory redemption, with its vicarious salvation; 
 the incarnation, with its low postulates of God and man, and 
 its unworkable doctrine of two natures in one person, the offi¬ 
 cial transmission of grace through material elements in the 
 keeping of a consecrated corporation; the second coming of 
 Christ to summon the dead and part the sheep from the goats 
 at the general judgment—all are the growth of a mythical lit¬ 
 erature, or Messianic dream, or Pharisaic theology, or sacra¬ 
 mental superstition, or popular apotheosis.”* Is the Reason 
 which thus discredits and sneers at some of the most precious 
 doctrines of divine grace, a reliable fountain of divine authority ? 
 
 It is well known that Martineau denies the divinity of Christ, 
 and, as shown by the above quotation, rejects Him as a Sav¬ 
 iour. His reason leads him to this treatment of Christ. Yet 
 Dr. Briggs affirms that by means of this reason he found God 
 enthroned in his own soul, and calls him a representative 
 Christian, notwithstanding the fact that Christ himself has 
 most solemnly stated, “ No man can come to the Father but by 
 Me.” t 
 
 And we have cited Matt. xiii. 32-33, and Gal. i. 9, to show 
 that the Scripture does not encourage us to believe and teach 
 that those who thus treat Christ and His Word are subjects of 
 saving grace. Sections 5 and 6 of the first chapter of the Con¬ 
 fession were referred to in this connection to prove that if 
 men yield to the Holy Spirit they will find light and sal¬ 
 vation and certainty in the Holy Scriptures. 
 
 As a fountain or source of divine authority in matters of faith 
 and life, the Scripture stands absolutely alone in the world; and 
 
 * Seat of Authority in Religion, page 690.* 
 f John xiv. 6. 
 
24 
 
 that for the reason that it is the Word of God —God Himself, 
 speaking in and through it to men, giving them an expression 
 of His will, His loving purposes and His gracious designs tow¬ 
 ard them, just as Christ, the living Word, is the expression, 
 the manifestation to us, of the mind and character of the living 
 and true God. 
 
 The Bible occupies this unique position of sole supremacy as 
 an infallible standard of divine authority, since it alone gives 
 us ultimate truth , truth which solves the burning questions that 
 agitate the human soul, and on which, therefore, we can rest 
 with loving certainty and build with joyous confidence. 
 
 The Scripture alone gives us a satisfactory account of the 
 creation of the world and the end for which God made it; it 
 alone gives us a sufficient knowledge of the Being, Character 
 and Attributes of God, and of His relation to us as Creator, 
 King, Judge, Saviour and Father; it alone interprets for us, in 
 a true and comforting way, the mysteries of Divine Providence; 
 it alone gives us a reasonable account of the holy origin, the 
 sinful condition, the exalted character and the true destiny of 
 man; it alone deals fully and efficiently with the great issues 
 of sin and salvation, of duty and privilege, of life, death and 
 immortality. 
 
 And because it only contains these great truths, the Scrip¬ 
 ture is the only source of divine authority to sinful men, which 
 can speak to them infallibly on all questions of belief and life, 
 and on which only they can securely and safely trust. And 
 therefore it is that the Spirit bears witness “ by and with the 
 word ” only, in our hearts. 
 
 It is absurd to place the Reason and the Church, in any sense, 
 in juxtaposition with the Scripture. For, whatever might be 
 true in a sinless race of beings, they have no sure oracle to 
 pronounce to sinful men on any of the great questions to which 
 I have referred. But the Scripture claims for itself sole suprem¬ 
 acy as an infallible guide in faith and duty, always speaking 
 with the positiveness of divine authority, and never in the fal¬ 
 tering and apologetic tones which Reason and the Church are 
 compelled to use. 
 
2 5 
 
 It claims to extend in breadth and reach far beyond the 
 highest attainment of human perfection ;—* * * § it declares that 
 those who are plunged in distress through the evils of necro¬ 
 mancy, will seek light by rallying to the cry, “To the Law 
 and to the Testimony,” assuming that a right-minded, rational 
 people, possessed of that fear of God which is the beginning 
 and also the end of wisdom, will ask in their darkness, What 
 does God say ft This is a better rendering of the Hebrew 
 than the fanciful interpretation of Dr. Briggs. It declares that 
 when men come to shame and confusion it is because in their 
 foolishness they have rejected the Word of God, there being 
 no wisdom in them;J and that if an erring people had but at¬ 
 tended to the divine Word, “ they should have turned them 
 from their evil way, and from the evil of their doing.Ӥ 
 
 In every case the written word is all-sufficient. 
 
 And I desire particularly to call the attention of my breth¬ 
 ren to two things which are made plain in the New Testament. 
 
 One is that, with Christ, the Scripture (which then consisted 
 only of the Old Testament) was in every case an ultimate and 
 final authority. He never assigns any divine authority what¬ 
 ever to the Church and Reason aside from Scripture, but brings 
 both Reason and Church invariably to the bar of Scripture. In 
 his view, zvhat the Holy ScripUire says, God says. He met 
 every form of opposition and temptation, and solved all diffi¬ 
 culties by a simple and direct appeal to the Word of God writ¬ 
 ten. And this is true of small bits of Scripture, single sen¬ 
 tences. He invariably invested them with such ultimate and 
 final divine authority that a mere reference to them ended the 
 matter. “ It is written ” was ever with the Saviour a sufficient 
 and final answer. And the fact that that terse expression oc¬ 
 curs twenty-five times in the Gospel of Matthew alone, leads 
 us to see how frequently it was on the lips of Christ. But the 
 fact that Jesus treated the Scripture alone as an ultimate and 
 
 * Psalm cxix. 96. 
 
 f Isaiah viii. 20. 
 
 X Jeremiah viii. 8, 9. 
 
 § Jeremiah xxiii. 22. 
 
26 
 
 final authority, binding on faith and conscience, crops out in 
 various other ways in the Gospel. He showed the leaders of 
 the Church to be astray for the reason that they had made the 
 Word of God of none effect.* He convinced the rationalistic 
 Sadducees of error because they were ignorant of the Scrip¬ 
 ture. t And He accused the Jews of being perverted by sin 
 and prejudice in not receiving Him, since by searching the 
 Scriptures, which testified of Him, they might assure them¬ 
 selves of His claims. J 
 
 The other is , that the Apostles, following in the footsteps 
 of the Master, also made the Scriptures the ultimate and final 
 standard of appeal for authority in their preaching. They rea¬ 
 soned out of the Scripture, enforced the claims of the Gospel 
 by argument from Scripture, and set their hearers to search 
 the Scripture to ascertain whether the things which they pro¬ 
 claimed were true or not. An appeal to Scripture was always 
 final with the Apostles, and, in that sense, they never appealed 
 to either Church or Reason. For instance, when Paul had 
 stated: “The Scripture hath concluded all under sin,” that 
 settled the matter on that point, since it was the voice of God 
 speaking in Scripture. 
 
 Let any one study carefully the third chapter of Galatians, 
 and almost any chapter from Hebrews, and he cannot fail to 
 see that the Apostles considered any citation from Scripture, 
 however brief, as clothed with the authority of God, which must 
 not be questioned, but should be implicitly believed and fol¬ 
 lowed in life. 
 
 On the authority, then, of both Christ and His Apostles, the 
 Scripture alone is a sufficient, infallible, and safe fountain of 
 divine authority. It is the final and only standard of appeal. 
 And if that was true of the Old Testament Scripture it holds 
 good with increased force in regard to the New. It was writ¬ 
 ten that we might “ know the certainty ” of divine truth. It is 
 
 * Mark vii. 7-13. 
 
 \ Matthew xxii. 29. 
 % John v. 39, 40. 
 
2 7 
 
 the final part of the testimony which God gave of His Son, not 
 to believe which is to charge God, Himself, with lying, and 
 this thought is made particularly strong in i John v. io, be¬ 
 cause the witness of the Spirit in the believer’s heart is con¬ 
 trasted with the objective testimony which God has given 
 concerning His Son, either orally or in the written word. Dr. 
 , arbitrarily assigns a subjective meaning to the word 
 
 witness in both sentences of this verse. It is expressly stated 
 that in the last sentence it has reference to the unbeliever. 
 And the testimony of God concerning His Son to the unbe¬ 
 liever is objective in the Scripture or spoken word, while on 
 the other hand in the case of the believer, it is subjective, 
 in the heart, “ by and with the word.” Dr. Huther, in Meyer’s 
 Commentary, states, that this testimony of God “is the record 
 which He has given (as a permanent record) of his Son.” He 
 who does not believe in that makes God to be a liar. The 
 entire Scriptures are the oracles, the true sayings, the utter¬ 
 ances or words of God, according to which, he who will teach 
 in the Church of God, should speak. 
 
 And because the Scriptures hold this unique position, our 
 standards declare that they were given by the immediate in¬ 
 spiration of God, and as such are “ the Word of God written,” 
 most necessary for guidance and as a standard of final appeal 
 in all matters of doctrine and life. “ The Word of God which 
 is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, 
 is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy 
 Him.” * Quite in harmony with this vital doctrine of Holy 
 s Scripture, our Confession declares that Scripture to be the Su¬ 
 preme Judge, as the voice of the Holy Spirit, by which all con¬ 
 troversies in religion are to be judged, to the test of which all 
 decrees and opinions are to be brought, and in whose sentence 
 alone we are to rest, and is thus most necessary . 
 
 In setting up Reason and the Church as foundations of divine 
 authority, which give certainty, in addition to the Bible, Dr. 
 Briggs contradicts this vital doctrine. He surrenders the noble 
 
 * Shorter Catechism Answer to 2d Question. 
 
28 
 
 position of evangelical Protestantism, for which the Presby¬ 
 terian Church has so long contended with all her strength 
 against the claims of rationalists and a sacerdotal church. 
 
 This position, which leads Dr. Briggs to welcome rationalists 
 to the household of the faithful, and according to which Mar- 
 tineau is as good a Christian as Spurgeon, is entirely at vari¬ 
 ance with Presbyterian faith and life. If rationalists, like 
 Martineau, who reject the Bible as the Word of God, and with 
 it all the distinctive doctrines of saving grace, are to be con¬ 
 sidered good representative Christians, then we may as well 
 close our Theological Seminaries and churches and disband 
 our Boards of Home and Foreign Missions, and devote our¬ 
 selves to any other calling in which we may be able to glorify 
 God and serve our fellow-men. They involve a superfluous ex¬ 
 penditure, and practical men will not be slow in reaching that 
 conclusion. 
 
 This teaching of Dr. Briggs will also mislead the people in 
 that it will encourage them to look for the waters of salvation 
 to broken cisterns which cannot hold them, and ought there¬ 
 fore to be condemned by this court of the Church of Christ. 
 
 INSPIRA TION. 
 
 The third charge has reference to the subject of inspiration. 
 In it Dr. Briggs is accused of teaching that there are errors in 
 the original text of the Holy Scripture as it came from its in¬ 
 spired authors, and thus contradicts the essential doctrine of 
 that Scripture and of the Standards of our Church that the 
 Holy Scripture is the Word of God written, immediately in¬ 
 spired and the rule of faith and practice. 
 
 In what Dr. Briggs said on this charge, he really made 
 no attempt to answer the arguments of the prosecution, but 
 directed his discourse to a different end. He maintains that 
 those who oppose his views on this point have their judgments 
 warped by an ironclad dogma of verbal inspiration, that his 
 teaching is not contrary to the doctrines indicated, and that 
 
29 
 
 his view of inspiration is in harmony with both the Scripture 
 and the Standards. But the mere assertion of Dr. Briggs that 
 the offense charged is not in contravention of essential doc¬ 
 trine, cannot now be received as proof any more than the un¬ 
 proved affirmation of the prosecution can be so received. 
 
 I have spoken to this point already, but it is so important 
 that it must be referred to here again. 
 
 Dr. Briggs makes the following statement:* 
 
 “ Your attention is again called to the principle established 
 in the introduction to my defence. I showed you that it was 
 not sufficient that a doctrine should be essential and necessary 
 in your opinion. It must be essential and necessary to the 
 Westminster system. It is not enough that you, or certain 
 dogmatic teachers, or the General Assembly by a majority 
 vote, should declare a certain doctrine to be inconsistent with 
 an essential doctrine of the Westminster Confession. It must 
 be shown that it is really inconsistent with the Westminster 
 system itself. You cannot insist that your deductions and 
 reasoning should be accepted by me, if I hold the opinion 
 that your reasonings and deductions are false. If I can hold 
 the two doctrines without regarding them as inconsistent, 
 you cannot make them inconsistent to me. You may exact 
 of me that I shall be faithful to the doctrine of the true and 
 full inspiration of the Word of God written. But you cannot 
 exact of me that I shall say there are no errors in Holy Scrip¬ 
 ture—for the reason that the Confession does not assert this, 
 and I am not bound to your views of consistency or inconsis¬ 
 tency, but only to the Confession and to my own judgment. 
 If the prosecution had claimed and had tried to prove that the 
 Confession teaches as an essential doctrine attested by Holy 
 Scripture that there are no errors in Holy Scripture, then it 
 would have been easy to test every such citation and show 
 that no such teaching can be found.” 
 
 The principle which, according to Dr. Briggs, underlies his 
 
 * Defence of Professor Briggs, p. 87. 
 
3 ° 
 
 own defence, if interpreted as he interprets it, is an erroneous 
 principle. 
 
 What if a man were to teach Pantheism, and when charged 
 with contradicting the Westminster Standards were to say: “ I 
 hold Pantheism, but I subscribe to, and I believe the doctrine 
 of God contained in the Standards; you might convict me, if 
 you could point out any section in the Confession which teaches 
 that Pantheism is not a true interpretation of the doctrine of 
 God ? But you have no right to insist that I shall cease to 
 teach Pantheism, for the reason that the Confession does not 
 forbid it. If I can hold Pantheism and the doctrine of God 
 taught in the Confession, without regarding them as inconsis¬ 
 tent, you can not make them inconsistent to me.” You might 
 say: “No man could be so unreasonable, so thoroughly illogi¬ 
 cal as that.” But if it were to happen, you might well regard 
 a judicial process as necessary, and the courts of the Church 
 would then be called upon to decide whether the two doctrines 
 were consistent doctrines. In the passage from Dr. Briggs’s 
 Defence, quoted above, he denies that a church court, at least 
 that this court, has a right to determine whether he can hold 
 certain doctrines and consistently subscribe to the Presbyteri¬ 
 an Standards. He claims that it is fc his own right to determine 
 whether his doctrines conflict with essential and vital doctrines 
 of the Standards. It seems impossible that he should have 
 fallen into such an error. 
 
 Let it be admitted that in the opinion of the defendant the 
 doctrines which he has taught are not inconsistent with es¬ 
 sential doctrines of the Standards; but that they are consider ¬ 
 ed essential by the committee which represents the Presby¬ 
 terian Church. How shall the question be settled’? It is to 
 be settled judicially. It is to settle questions of just this kind 
 that trials like this are instituted. It is for the courts, and for 
 the courts alone, to decide whether such divergences are vital. 
 The committee has argued that the divergence is vital; Dr. 
 Briggs holds that it is not vital. He can not say that this 
 court has no right to determine the consistency of his doctrines 
 with the standards. 
 
3 1 
 
 The Craighead case does not justify you as a court, as I have 
 shown, in permitting an accused person to be the judge of his 
 own errors. And besides this, there are certain great princi¬ 
 ples of theology which imply inevitable and necessary infer¬ 
 ences. When, for example, Dr. Briggs argues, as he does, 
 that the doctrine of the sovereign free action of the Spirit of 
 God involves the further doctrine that heathen who have never 
 known about Jesus Christ are saved, he makes an inference of 
 the very kind against which, in the passage cited above, he 
 complains. The inference is contradictory of other parts of 
 the Confession, but it is none the less a deduction, such as he 
 claims the committee has no right to make with respect to the 
 doctrine of the Infallibility of Holy Scripture. As in the case 
 of the illustration which I have given above, it might be held 
 by a committee of prosecution that the confessional doctrine 
 of God was inconsistent with Pantheism, although nothing is 
 said about Pantheism in the Confession itself; so in the pres¬ 
 ent case, it is for this court to decide whether the great prin¬ 
 ciple of the Presbyterian Church, that the Holy Scriptures, the 
 Word of God written, are immediately inspired of God and are 
 infallible, is consistent with a denial of their historical accur¬ 
 acy, and their freedom from error. It is not enough to create, 
 as Dr. Briggs has done, a kind of limbo and consign to it, 
 under the name of traditionalism, whatever he may condemn 
 on the authority of certain opinions of men who, in many cases, 
 have no authority in the Presbyterian Church. The natural 
 and necessary inferences from the confessional doctrine of 
 Scripture, make it impossible for the accused to throw upon the 
 committee the burden of proving his inconsistency. This court 
 is called upon to decide the very question which the accused 
 claims he alone can decide for himself. Otherwise his plea of 
 not guilty is sufficient without the presentation of evidence or 
 argument. 
 
 The question is fairly before us for settlement. And in 
 order to arrive at a just conclusion we must candidly compare 
 the teaching of the Scripture and the Standards on this sub¬ 
 ject with that of Dr. Briggs. 
 
3 2 
 
 But before proceeding to consider these questions I will dis¬ 
 pose of one matter to which Dr. Briggs has alluded. It is the 
 accusation he made against the General Assembly. 
 
 In regard to this I will only say that the Assembly in its 
 deliverance, following numerous precedents, declared only what 
 has always been the belief not only of Presbyterians, but of all 
 evangelical Christians, and in doing so acted clearly within its 
 constitutional power, for, according to our form of Govern¬ 
 ment, chapter 12, section 5, it is the duty of the Assembly to 
 bear “testimony against error in doctrine.” Dr. Briggs cites 
 John Wallis as a better interpreter of the Confession than the 
 General Assembly, but he neglects to notice that Wallis and 
 the Assembly do not differ on this point, for the former does, 
 not charge that there is error in the Scripture. 
 
 We are not raising any question as to the mode of inspira¬ 
 tion, but confine ourselves to the product of inspiration in the. 
 written Word. 
 
 Our Standards affirm of the Scriptures, that God Himself 
 committed them to writing, that all the canonical books “ are 
 given by inspiration of God,” and that, as such, they constitute 
 the “ Word of God written,” to which is to be ascribed, “ entire 
 perfection ” and “ infallible truth.”* 
 
 This is the Christian doctrine of inspiration of which that, 
 catholic and philosophic scholar, Prof. Henry B. Smith, has 
 given the following liberal definition: 
 
 “ Inspiration is that divine influence by virtue of which the 
 truths and facts given by revelation, as well as other truths 
 and facts pertaining to God’s Kingdom, are spoken or written 
 in a truthful and authoritative manner.” + It “ gives us a book 
 properly called the Word of God, inspired in all its parts. 
 The inspiration is plenary in the sense of extending to all 
 the parts, and of extending also to the words.” J In a ser¬ 
 mon on inspiration which Dr. Smith preached before the 
 Synod of New York and New Jersey in 1855, he said: “The 
 
 * Confession of Faith, Chapter I., sections 1, 2, 5. 
 f Introduction to Christian Theology, p. 204. 
 
 \ Introduction to Christian Theology, p. 209. 
 
33 
 
 divine influence which is its source extends to and pervades the 
 whole contents of the Scriptures, both historical and doctrinal; 
 it includes the whole of the strict divine revelations, and also 
 whatever the sacred writers related as historians and witnesses. 
 Inspiration is the organizing principle of the whole Bible, just 
 as the principle of life is the organizing energy in every 
 bodily frame, extending to all its parts, even those seemingly 
 most insignificant.” * 
 
 “ Its object is the communication of truth in an infallible man¬ 
 ner, so that, when rightly interpreted, no error is conveyed.” 
 “ The inspiration of the Bible involves its infallibility. Inter¬ 
 preted, as all works must be, by its real spirit, it gives us truth 
 without error . Light and life come from the ministry of the 
 Word.” t 
 
 I have made these extended quotations from Dr. Henry B. 
 Smith’s writings, for the double reason that his broad and pro¬ 
 gressive spirit is acknowledged by all, and further, that he has 
 given us a fair statement of this Christian doctrine as it has 
 always been substantially held in all parts of the living Church 
 of Christ. 
 
 The majority of Presbyterians undoubtedly hold to the the¬ 
 ory of verbal inspiration, repudiating, however, the idea of 
 mechanical dictation; while others accept, with Dr. Smith, the 
 plenary theory. Both theories are acknowledged as orthodox 
 in the Presbyterian Church, and there is, in fact, no essential 
 difference between the two, as Dr. Smith’s definition con¬ 
 clusively shows. 
 
 But it is impossible to include the views advanced by Dr. 
 Briggs under either theory. They are destructive of the very 
 idea of inspiration. 
 
 To begin with, we observe that Dr. Briggs exchanges the 
 current statement, “ The Scriptures are the Word of God,” for 
 “ The Scriptures contain the Word of God,” which he declares 
 to be the true doctrine, meaning thereby not the entire con- 
 
 * Sermon on Inspiration, 
 f Sermon on Inspiration. 
 
34 
 
 tents of the Bible from cover to cover, but only some parts of 
 it.* The Scriptures contain the Word of God, but they contain 
 also something besides that. And he insists that this is the 
 meaning of our confessional statement. But he forgets, as Dr. 
 Warfield has shown, “that the old Protestant distinction be¬ 
 tween the Word of God and the Scriptures made the Word of 
 God the broader term, inclusive not only of the Scriptures 
 (which it were far from doubting to be a part of the Word of 
 God), but also of all that God had spoken to the fathers by the 
 prophets, and, in these last days, by His Son; while the mod¬ 
 ern distinction makes the Scriptures the broader word, within 
 which is to be found much besides the Word of God. Hence, 
 the statement in the Shorter Catechism answer, that “ the 
 Word of God, which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old 
 and New Testaments is the only rule to direct us how we 
 may glorify and enjoy Him,” the phrase, “ which is contained 
 in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments,” is a defini¬ 
 tion of the “ Word of God ” which is our only rule, and is meant 
 to distinguish it from that asserted Word of God contained in 
 the ecclesiastical tradition of the Romanists and the new rev¬ 
 elations of the sectaries; and that therefore the statement is 
 far from throwing doubt on the confessional assertion that the 
 Scriptures are the “Word of God written,” but is rather a repe¬ 
 tition of it. t According to Prof. Henry B. Smith, this view 
 of Dr. Briggs was held by the Arminians and Socinians of the 
 seventeenth century, and is now the position of German Ra¬ 
 tionalism, which has infected the whole German theology. £ 
 To what extent the contents of Scripture are not the Word of 
 God, we may be able to determine further on. 
 
 The strange thing in Dr. Briggs’s view of inspiration is, that 
 it admits of errors in the original Scriptures. 
 
 Prof. Briggs affirms that the number of errors in the Bible is 
 very great, and that to say that they were not in the orginal 
 
 * Presbyterian Review, 1884, p. 381. The Bible, the Church and the Rea¬ 
 son, p. 99. 
 
 f Presbyterian and Reformed Review, 1892, pp. 375, 376. 
 
 \ Sermon on Inspiration. 
 
35 
 
 text is sheet assumption, on which no mind esn rest with cer¬ 
 tainty. It is a ghost of modern evangelicalism which the 
 creeds of the Church do not sanction, and which the Bible 
 itself does not teach. * * * § 
 
 He makes two statements on this subject, which give the 
 largest possible room for the entrance of error into the com¬ 
 position of Scripture. 
 
 The first is, that the errors occur in “the circumstantials” 
 of Scripture, in the non-essential parts, in the “ human set¬ 
 tings ” which hold “the precious jewel,” in that section of the 
 Bible that theologians commonly account for from the provi¬ 
 dential superintendence of the mind of the author.f 
 
 It is worthy of note here that, according to the teachings of 
 Di. Briggs, there are portions of the Bible which are non-es¬ 
 sential, circumstantial, human settings, and have no further 
 guarantee of divine authority than a general providential super¬ 
 intendence. He does not tell us to what extent these elements 
 pervade the contents of Scripture. But when we call to mind 
 that Dr. Briggs includes under this class of Scripture some of 
 its history, the narration of facts and incidents and personal 
 experience, geography, science, and those parts to which he 
 ascribes the character of fiction and legend, J we have a very 
 large part of Scripture which has become untrustworthy, owing 
 to the possible presence of errors in it, and which, therefore, 
 cannot be an infallible rule of belief and duty. 
 
 In regard to the composition of this portion of Scripture, Dr. 
 Briggs states: 
 
 “ It may be that this providential superintendence gives 
 infallible guidance in every particular; and it may be that 
 it differs but little, if at all, from the providential superin¬ 
 tendence of the fathers and schoolmen and theologians of 
 the Christian Church.” § The writers of some of this por- 
 
 * Inaugural Address, p. 35. 
 
 f Inaugural Address, p. 35. 
 
 \ Biblical History, pp. 22, 23, 25, 30; Biblical Study, p. 232; The Congrega¬ 
 tionalism Feb. 21, 1889. 
 
 § Inaugural Address, p. 35. 
 
 ■ 
 
3 6 
 
 tion of Scripture have a divine way of historical composition- 
 They bring God nearer to us, encompass us with heavenly 
 influence, and make us sensible of the touch of God. 
 
 But this is not inspiration at all. Dr. Henry B. Smith called 
 this theory a ‘ perversion of terms, and a resort to vague gen¬ 
 eralities which seem profound because they are somewhat un¬ 
 common. Almost any one of moderate capacity, after a few 
 easy lessons, can talk glibly in such a style.’T And then he 
 goes on to say that “ this is, in fact, a heathen rather than a 
 Christian mode of speech; Cicero long ago said, ‘ In every man 
 there is a divine afflatus.’ ” Almost any good writer or speaker, 
 with the fire of truth in his heart, can encompass us with heav¬ 
 enly influence and make us sensible to the touch of God. 
 
 This idea of a separation between the essentials and circum¬ 
 stantials, between the human setting and the precious jewel 
 of truth, is utterly impossible. Great and important doctrines 
 are vitally bound up with the incidental narration of personal 
 and historic facts, and the two stand or fall together. 
 
 On this point Dr. Henry B. Smith said: 
 
 “ All, even the most insignificant portions of the original 
 Scriptures, have their life from the Spirit, even as the prin¬ 
 ciple of life embraces the hairs of the head, as well as the 
 beating of the heart. All is shaped by the wise builder 
 into one glorious temple, which speaks of Him from the foun¬ 
 dation to the topmost stone.” “ Even the most trivial per¬ 
 sonal details may serve an important office, such as inspiration 
 could not neglect, in verifying the authorship and proving the 
 authenticity of epistles and prophecies.’’^ 
 
 The cloak of Paul, Elijah’s mantle, and the little wine com¬ 
 mended to Timothy, help to prove the genuineness of the 
 biblical writings. “ Genealogies instruct in the truth of the 
 Messiahship.” “ The fact of the death of Christ contains the 
 truth of the atonement; it is that truth/’ “ It is in vain, ’ says 
 
 * Biblical History, p. 30. 
 f Sermon on Inspiration. 
 \ Sermon on Inspiration. 
 
37 
 
 Dr. Smith, “ to try to limit inspiration to doctrine and truth, 
 excluding history from its sphere. The attempt is as unphil- 
 osophical as it is unscriptural.” * That is sound speech. 
 
 The same position has been maintained by all the great 
 divines of the Evangelical Church. It is certainly the faith of 
 Pi esbyterians, and this idea of an extensive field of erroneous 
 circumstantials in the Bible—the exact demarcation of which 
 no one is able to determine—is wholly subversive of that faith, 
 an idea against which our Church claims the right to protect 
 itself. It robs the Bible of its infallibility. 
 
 The other postulate of Dr. Briggs in regard to the Scriptures, 
 which makes way for the entrance of errors, has reference to 
 Scriptural language and expression. And this is by far the more 
 serious of the two, since it necessarily leads to the most de¬ 
 structive inferences, and a teacher of religion must be held re¬ 
 sponsible for inferences which will be necessarily drawn from 
 his propositions, although in this case the proposition itself is 
 heretical enough to merit our condemnation. 
 
 Says Dr. Briggs: 
 
 “ There is nothing divine in the text—in its letters, words, 
 or clauses.” “ Language is rather the dress of thought.” 
 
 “ The divine authority is not in the style or in the words, but 
 in the concept.” “ We force our way through the language ^ 
 and the letter, the grammar and the style, to the inner sub¬ 
 stance of the thought, for here, if at all , we shall find God.” + 
 
 Inspiration and divine authority do not extend to the print, 
 the text, the letters, the words, the clauses, the style, and the 
 grammar; that is, the entire visible text , all that you can see of 
 the Bible with your eyes, from the beginning of Genesis to the 
 end of Revelation. This is not divinely inspired; it is but the 
 human form or setting, which, in some way, holds the sub¬ 
 stance of the divine thought or concept. The concept only is 
 
 * Sermon on Inspiration, 
 f Inaugural Address, pp. 30, 31, 32. 
 
3 8 
 
 inspired. Now, I have not the slightest desire to do Dr. 
 Briggs an injustice by way of misstating his position. He com¬ 
 plains that his brethren do not understand him; and I think 
 that is partly true, for many of his brethren think him far more 
 orthodox on this point than he really is. “I will give his view 
 in his own words.” 
 
 In the Presbyterian Review he states that, “in the higher 
 and more distinctively religious meaning of the word, it is not 
 the biblical books throughout—it is only the Word of God 
 which is in the biblical books—that can be spoken of as 
 inspired .” They are the “formal envelope” enclosing the 
 “living divine organism of truth.” He affirms that “ the abso¬ 
 lute divine truth in the Bible must be discriminated from the 
 relative truths in which it is enveloped, or, in other words, the 
 divine substance has been given in human forms, and no one 
 will truly understand the Bible until he has learned to distin¬ 
 guish between this temporal, circumstantial and variable form, 
 from the eternal, essential and permanent substance.”* And 
 if that be the case, then the great mass of mankind will never 
 understand the Bible, since they will not be able to make that 
 distinction. No scholars, Dr. Briggs included, have as yet 
 '« been able to trace that dividing line. In Biblical Study he 
 expresses himself on this subject in the following words : 
 
 “ We cannot, in the symbolical or historical use of the term r 
 call this providential care of His Word, or superintendence 
 over its external production , inspiration. Such providential 
 superintendence is not different in kind with regard to the 
 Word of God, the visible Church of God, or the forms of the 
 sacraments.” f 
 
 There has been, then, according to Dr. Briggs, no definite 
 divine influence at work in the production of the Written Word. 
 
 Quite in harmony with this line of reasoning, Dr. Briggs, 
 about two years ago, in his book “Whither?” charged the 
 
 * Presbyterian Review, 1884, pp. 384, 385. 
 f Biblical Study, p. 161. 
 
39 
 
 Christian world with the fault of building their faith on a book, 
 on the “ authority of the external word of the letter of Scrip¬ 
 ture, instead of the living God and Saviour” (p. 282). That 
 charge would be entirely meaningless if God were, in any true 
 sense, the author of what is written in the book. 
 
 Still more recently he stated: “ These human features ren¬ 
 der it improbable that the Bible should be free from errors in 
 its human setting. The psychology may be crude, the meth¬ 
 ods of reasoning sometimes inexact, the rhetoric occasionally 
 extravagant, the language of some of the writers rude, their 
 conceptions provincial, their knowledge of the earth defective. 
 But how could it be otherwise if the divine revelation was to 
 come through such men as the ancient times were capable of 
 producing ? Holy Scripture does not claim inerrancy in its 
 human setting, and it does not in fact possess it.” * 
 
 “ The Evangelist seems to have overlooked the fact that one 
 of these passages is from Malachi 3: 1. Here are two slips of 
 memory on the part of the Evangelist, such as any writer is 
 liable to make ” t 
 
 This, then, is the matured conviction of Dr. Briggs. It is 
 what he teaches and means to teach. The entire text of the 
 Bible, from cover to cover, is but external form, the circum¬ 
 stantial human setting. It is of human production, and not 
 inspired of God. The concept, thought or substance back of*, 
 the visible text, alone is inspired; in order to find that, we 
 must force our way through the language, style and grammar. 
 In no other way shall we find God. 
 
 You may determine the exact historico-grammatical sense 
 of a passage of Scripture, and you cannot then say, this is now 
 the Word of God. It is only the word of man, who has had re¬ 
 vealed to him the substance of divine truth which in his own 
 way he has tried to express in writing. The preacher cannot 
 say of any text, from which he may discourse to the people, 
 
 * The Bible, the Church, and the Reason, p. 108. 
 f The Bible, the Church, and the Reason, p. 109. 
 
40 
 
 “ Thus saith the Lord.” It is only man's putting of God's 
 truth. 
 
 I will not raise any question here as to the possibility of con¬ 
 veying to the mind of man divine truth in the way of concepts 
 not expressed in the terms of language. To most people it 
 will occur that, inasmuch as infallible truth must be definite 
 truth, such truth cannot be grasped by the human mind except 
 in the definite forms of speech. How could the prophet know 
 that he had a message from God, except it were given him in 
 definite terms ? But be that as it may. It is a philosophical 
 question in dispute which we need not touch here. 
 
 We will take for granted, for argument’s sake, that God did 
 communicate the substance of the truth of Divine Revelation 
 to the writers of the Bible in the way of unformed concepts, 
 which, under His general Providence, He allowed them to 
 work into the Scriptures by their own power and wisdom in 
 the form of history, biography, dogmatic statements, fiction, 
 drama, legend or poetry, such as might be most congenial to 
 their natures and habits of mind. 
 
 The biblical books are thus, strictly speaking, the products 
 of human genius. The written Bible is the human setting 
 which holds, in various proportions, the jewel of divine truth. 
 
 It does not therefore differ essentially from the books of 
 other good men. They all express some divine truth. A per¬ 
 son reading even such a book as “Whither?” may become 
 conscious of the presence of a divine concept struggling to don 
 its dress. 
 
 The only way in which, on this theory, the Bible can differ 
 from other good books, is, that it may give us divine truth in a 
 greater degree, since the writers of it received a direct revela¬ 
 tion from God of the substance of divine truth. But we could 
 never be altogether certain of that. 
 
 Let me call the attention of my brethren here to the fact 
 that, on this point, Dr. Briggs squarely contradicts the biblical 
 doctrine as set forth in our Standards. That makes God to be 
 the Author of the written word. 
 
4 1 
 
 A few words should here be said on the confessional doctrine 
 of inspiration and the canon. In chapter I. section I, it is 
 stated, that for the better preserving and propagating of the 
 truth, etc., God committed His revelation of Himself “ wholly 
 unto writing.” Dr. Briggs did not give the true statement of 
 this section when he said that all that was wholly committed 
 to writing was “the knowledge of God, and of His will, which 
 is necessary unto salvation.” The Confession does not say 
 that, and those who wrote it certainly did not mean to state 
 that; for, as I will show directly, the controlling divines of the 
 Westminster Assembly believed that the whole Bible, from 
 the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation, was written 
 by the verbal dictation of the Holy Spirit. Hence they stated 
 God committed the same wholly unto writing. Naturally, 
 therefore, they declare in the second section that the 66 books 
 of the Holy Scripture are the Word of God written. Inspira¬ 
 tion was God’s method of committing them to writing, and 
 this is in section 8 declared to be immediate in the Hebrew 
 •and Greek languages. In the third section the Scripture is 
 fenced off from human writings. And in the fourth it is af¬ 
 firmed that the authority of the Holy Scripture depends not on 
 the testimony of any man, but wholly upon the God of truth, 
 the Author thereof, and is to be received for the reason that 
 it is the Word of God, or, as it is stated in the Larger Cate¬ 
 chism: “4. The very Word of God.” And it is plain, from what 
 I have already said, that by this the authors of the Confession 
 meant the entire written Word. 
 
 Dr. Briggs’s subjective test of the canonicity of Scripture is not 
 that of the Confession, for the Confession establishes the canon on 
 objective testimony, and makes the saving energy and authority*' 
 of Scripture to depend on the witness of the Spirit in the heart 
 by and with the Word, according to section 5. John Ball,*whom 
 Dr. Briggs has cited, and some of whose writings form a large 
 and important part of the Westminster Standards, makes it 
 very clear in what way they established the canon of Scrip¬ 
 ture. In his short treatise he says: 
 
 Q. How may it be proved that those books are the Word 
 of God immediately inspired by the Holy Ghost to the Proph¬ 
 ets and Apostles ? 
 
 * See Mitchell. The Westminster Assembly, pp. 377, 403, 419. 
 
42 
 
 A. First, By testimony of the Church; secondly, Constancy 
 of the saints; thirdly, Miracles wrought to confirm the truth; 
 and fourthly, By the antiquity thereof. 
 
 The error of Dr. Briggs begins with limiting inspiration to the 
 communication of truth to the prophets by the Lord, or to revel¬ 
 ation in the strict sense. He denies it in respect to the written 
 word. 
 
 God revealed truth to many men like Enoch, Noah, Abra¬ 
 ham and Elijah, whom, so far as we know, He never inspired 
 to write the divine word. 
 
 Inspiration takes revelation for granted; and, as connected 
 with it, has reference to that divine action on the mind of man, 
 which assures the right communication of it to others in lan¬ 
 guage. It also assures the truthful communication of every¬ 
 thing which God desires to communicate to mankind. “ All 
 Scripture is given by inspiration of God,” but not all Scripture 
 is revelation, in the strict sense. 
 
 Inspiration has for its object both the writers and their writ¬ 
 ings, but its one ultimate and objective point is the writing , the 
 Scripture , for if it had stopped short of that in the writer, it 
 would have missed its end entirely. 
 
 For if the Divine Spirit, who imparted the revelation to the 
 prophets in completeness and without mistake, did not also 
 guard the act by which it was recorded with the same care, 
 then “ it perished as such, with the men to whom it was im¬ 
 parted, and all that the world has is the fallible impression it 
 made on their minds, or their fallible account of that impres¬ 
 sion.” * 
 
 Inspiration is a special divine influence, acting not only on 
 man, but through him, for the production of a Scripture of in¬ 
 fallible truth. 
 
 Dr. Henry B. Smith affirms that it extends to both the mat¬ 
 ter and form of the Bible; the matter in the form in which it is 
 conveyed and set forth. + It extends to the language, for 
 
 * The Bible Doctrine of Inspiration, p. 97. 
 f Sermon on Inspiration. 
 
43 
 
 “ holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy 
 Ghost.” It is impossible to limit inspiration to the concept, 
 for Peter tells us that some of the writers did not understand 
 the meaning of what they wrote. They were “ searching what 
 or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them 
 did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, 
 and the glory that should follow.” * 
 
 The point which I desire to emphasize is, that inspiration, in 
 its biblical and confessional sense, has for its object to produce 
 the Written Word. It is the Writings, the Scriptures, which 
 are inspired of God. I shall give further proof of this directly. 
 I do not intend to say that the human element has no part in 
 Scripture. It was utilized throughout, but the divine is every¬ 
 where supreme and controlling. 
 
 The writers of the Bible speak for God, in His name, and by 
 His authority. They were His spokesmen, proclaiming and 
 conveying His truth. The human instrumentality, with all 
 its peculiarity, was utilized by the divine Spirit for the convey- 
 ance of God’s infallible message to men. 
 
 And it is the union of absolute truth and divine authority 
 which constitutes the claim of the Scripture to our faith and 
 obedience. 
 
 A special inspiration was necessary, that in a world of sin 
 and error we might have the unerring truth of God, to whose 
 infallible guidance we might entrust ourselves. 
 
 Other books give us truth mixed with error, but the inspired 
 Book gives us truth without error. Inspiration gives us truth¬ 
 fulness as its product in the Holy Scripture. It may not be 
 the completeness of truth, for part of the truth can be truth¬ 
 fully written; it may not be truth expressed in the most per¬ 
 fect and beautiful form, for the unlearned peasant can speak 
 truth as well as the most polished scholar; it may not be truth 
 at all, but the false sayings and evil deeds of the wicked are 
 truthfully reported. 
 
 The authors of the Bible wrote the simple truth which God 
 
 * i Peter i. n. 
 
44 
 
 desired mankind to know. But, says one, what practical use 
 is there in talking about the inerrant originals ? They are not 
 in existence. The Bible as we have it has discrepancies in it, 
 and we are obliged to get on with them as best we can. That 
 is true. We all accept the position. And a reverent scholar¬ 
 ship will do its best to explain the discrepancies in a way that 
 will harmonize with the perfect truthfulness of God’s Word. 
 But when, starting from the fact that the Bible, as we have it, 
 is not free from discrepancies, some boldly assert that there 
 were errors in the original autographs of Scripture, and that 
 we must accept that as an established truth, then we demur. 
 No one is warranted in making such an assertion. 
 
 This is a point of the highest importance, since it will vitally 
 affect the faith and life of the Church. There is a vital differ¬ 
 ence here. It is the difference between divine truth and human 
 error, between a book which is truly of God, and one which is 
 not. It makes a vast difference whether the water which 
 I drink comes from a perfectly pure spring, and has gathered 
 only a few foreign substances on its way to me, or comes from 
 a fountain which is itself foul. For, in the former case, I may 
 find the source of the difficulty, and remove it, and so supply 
 myself with water in all the sparkling purity in which it flows 
 from its” source. But in the latter case I should despair of 
 ever having pure water, unless another fountain were dis¬ 
 covered. 
 
 And so, if the original Scriptures were absolutely true, as 
 God their Author is true, then we have in that truth a firm 
 assurance that all copies, in spite of the blemishes which have 
 gathered on them through copying, transmitting and human 
 carelessness, are yet immeasurably true; then also we can 
 understand the better why it is that in all copies, translations 
 and languages, the Word comes with the same divine power 
 and authority; and we may also cherish the hope that in 
 God’s good Providence we may light again on the inerrant 
 originals. 
 
 But it is not merely on account of its great importance to 
 
45 
 
 the Church that this doctrine should be believed and defended 
 at all hazards, but for the reason that it is taught in the Word 
 of God. 
 
 Having thus shown that Dr. Briggs teaches a view of in¬ 
 spiration which destroys the infallibility of the Scriptures, 
 since, according to it, the written Word is only of human 
 production, we might cease our argument here, and claim 
 that by taking such a position he has gone quite outside of 
 the bounds of the faith held by Presbyterians, who believe 
 in the infallibility of the Bible on the ground of the complete 
 inspiration and truthfulness of the written Word of God. But 
 Dr. Briggs contends that, not ours, but his view of inspiration 
 is the doctrine both of the Scripture and the Church. It is 
 necessary, therefore, to show the entire untenabieness of this 
 claim. 
 
 The Bible claims for itself, as written, full inspiration and 
 entire veracity. 
 
 But to prove the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures 
 on the authority of the writers involves, according to Dr. 
 Briggs, a vicious circle, a fallacy, which has driven men away 
 from the Bible. But rightly understood, that argument does 
 not move in a circle, nor does it involve a fallacy. If there 
 was such a thing as inspiration, only the prophet himself and 
 God could be personal witnesses to that fact, and these two 
 are perfectly trustworthy witnesses. 
 
 The writers also of the Scripture support each other, and we 
 receive their testimony in respect to their divine inspiration and 
 authority for the reason that they are credible ivitnesses. And 
 that credibility is established independently of their claim to 
 inspiration. In the last resort it rests on the testimony of 
 Christ, the incarnate God Himself, who commissioned them 
 to teach, and gave them the Spirit of truth for that purpose; 
 for, in uttering His truth He bore “them witness, both with 
 signs and wonders and with divers miracles and gifts of the 
 Holy Ghost according to His own will.” * The testimony, 
 
 * Heb. Ii. 4. 
 
4 6 
 
 therefore, which the writers of the Bible bear to their divine 
 authority to speak for God is to be believed for the reason that 
 it is properly attested and worthy of belief. Their claim was 
 acknowledged by the living Church of their own generation. 
 The historical fact that their writings continued to be received 
 as canonical shows that the acceptance of their claim did not 
 terminate with their own lives, nor with the passing away of 
 the generation in which they lived. 
 
 We have thus the living testimony of the living Church of 
 their own day; and that testimony will be valid to the end of 
 time. It is of infinitely greater value, on the point at issue, 
 than that which the critics elicit from the canons of subjective 
 impressions. 
 
 The Holy Scripture claims for itself two things in respect to 
 this matter: 
 
 One is, that it is inspired of God throughout. It fully 
 bears out our confessional statement, that the canonical 
 books of the Old and New Testaments, taken as a whole, 
 are the “Word of God written.” They make the one Holy 
 
 Scripture. 
 
 It speaks of its contents as the Laws, the Statutes, the Com¬ 
 mandments, the Judgments, the Testimony, the Covenant, the 
 Words and the Oracles of God, terms which would have no 
 meaning if the divine authorship did not also extend to the 
 language of Scripture. Of numerous passages cited in the 
 New Testament from the Old, in which God was not the 
 speaker, it is affirmed that they were spoken by the mouth of 
 God, and of the Holy Spirit. * 
 
 In Zechariah we have the definite statement that the words 
 of the Holy Scripture are “ the words which the Lord of 
 
 * Acts iv. 25; Matt. xv. 4; Matt. xix. 4, 5; Mark xii. 36; John x. 34, 35; 
 Gal. iii. 22; Heb. i. 6, 7, 8; iii. 7; iv. 4, 7; vii. 21; x. 15; 1 Peter ii. 6. 
 
47 
 
 Hosts hath sent by His Spirit by the hand of the former 
 prophets .” * 
 
 It is expressly declared that “ all Scripture is given by 
 inspiration of God; ” and both the connection in which this 
 text stands and linguistic analogy t demonstrate the correct¬ 
 ness of the wording of the received text. Evidently the words 
 “all Scripture,” of verse 16, are identical with the Holy 
 Scriptures of verse 15, by which the entire Old Testament was 
 meant. But the revised version, “every Scripture inspired of 
 God,” only strengthens the point to which I am now speaking, 
 for the word “ Scripture ” is invariably used in the Bible for an 
 inspired writing; and it is therefore as unbiblical as it is anti¬ 
 confessional to imply, as Dr. Briggs seems to do in his re¬ 
 sponse, that there are Scriptures which are not inspired. It 
 was the whole Old Testament Scripture which was able to 
 make Timothy wise unto salvation; and it had that excel¬ 
 lence for the reason that all those Scriptures were inspired 
 of God. 
 
 And the holy contents of the book, so lofty in its spiritual 
 and moral elevation, confirm this statement. Also its struct¬ 
 ural unity, around which are arranged, in symmetrical beauty, 
 the great varieties of subject-matter, and numerous incidental 
 statements of more than a score of writers who lived in differ¬ 
 ent climes and countries, and at a distance from each other, 
 in time, of more than fifteen centuries, so that the Bible is really 
 but one book, manifesting but one mind, and unfolding but 
 one theme, gives added proof that it is the product, in all its 
 parts, of the infinite wisdom and goodness of the one Divine 
 Spirit. 
 
 Peter claims the same divine authority for his own writings 
 
 * Zech. vii. 12. 
 
 f The true reading of Matt. ii. 3, is not every Jerusalem , but “ all Jerusalem 
 in Luke vii. 6, not every fie.h , but “ all flesh," and in Acts ii. 36, not every 
 house of Israel, but “ all the house of Israel.’ 
 
4 s 
 
 which he assigns to the Old Testament Scriptures, and assigns 
 it equally to those of Paul. 
 
 It is stated in express terms that the divine inspiration ex¬ 
 tends to both thought and language ; for Peter declares that 
 “no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. 
 For the prophecy came not at any time by the will of man, but 
 holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy 
 Ghost.” * 
 
 And Paul writes to the same point when he states : “ Now 
 we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which 
 is of God; that we might know the things which are freely 
 given us of God,”—all of which might refer to concepts,—but 
 he proceeds to say, “ which things also we speak , not in the 
 zvords which man s wisdom teacheth , but which the Holy Ghost 
 teacheth , comparing spiritual things with spiritual.” f 1 
 
 In these two statements of Peter and Paul, taken together 
 with the connection in which they stand, we have the biblical 
 view of inspiration. It contains the following particulars : 
 First , the Spirit made known to the writers the things to be 
 communicated; second , they were inspired clearly to stee the 
 matter to be conveyed; thirds they were conscious that the Holy 
 Spirit made knozvn the truth to them and illumined their minds; 
 fourth , while they themselves gave expression to the divine 
 message they were conscious also that the Holy Spirit assisted 
 them in that expression; and fifth , what they thus spake and 
 wrote was, in a real sense, the message of the Spirit of God, 
 both in respect to matter and expression, and, therefore, so 
 sure, true and trustworthy that only the spiritually blind would 
 fail to receive it. And it is worthy of note that this definition 
 of inspiration by the apostles is in exact accord with the prom¬ 
 ise Christ made to them that they should receive “ the Spirit 
 of truth to guide them into all truth.” J 
 
 * 2 Peter i. 21. 
 f 1 Cor. ii. 12, 13. 
 X John xvi. 13. 
 
49 
 
 He certainly reads the New Testament to little purpose, who 
 does not perceive that the writers of it, in places too numerous 
 to instance, both directly and indirectly, teach the inspira¬ 
 tion of the Old Testament writings in the strictest and fullest 
 sense. Men of a progressive and liberal way of thinking, who 
 do not themselves believe in the doctrine, admit this. 
 
 Canon Farrar states that Paul’s view of the nature of inspira¬ 
 tion led him to make “ The words of Scripture co-extensive 
 and identical with the words of God;” and that he used “the 
 word and letter of Scripture as full of divine mysterious oracles, 
 which might not only be cited in matters of doctrine, but even 
 to illustrate the simplest matters of contemporary fact.”'* 
 Richard Rothe, a German writer on Dogmatic Theology, 
 who himself holds only to a minimum of inspiration, if he holds 
 to any, makes this remarkable admission: “The New Testa¬ 
 ment authors look upon the words of the Old Testament as 
 immediate words of God, and put them forward as such, even 
 those of them which are not recorded as direct declarations of 
 God. They see nothing in the sacred volume which is simply 
 the word of its human author, and not at the same time the 
 very word of God Himself. In all that stands * written ’ God 
 Himself speaks to them, and so entirely are they habituated 
 to think only of this, that they take the sacred word written 
 itself, as such, to be God’s word, and hear God speaking in it 
 immediately. ... It admits of no doubt that the apostoli¬ 
 cal writers . . . refer the prophetic inspiration to the 
 
 actus scribendi of the biblical authors.” + 
 
 And this holds good with equal, if not greater force, of their 
 own writings in the New Testament. They do, indeed, make 
 that claim for them. But how has it come to pass that a doc¬ 
 trine in which, to say nothing of the Old Testament authors, 
 all the New Testament writers agree, a doctrine which they 
 make to the utmost emphatic, working it into the very warp 
 
 * Life of St. Paul. One volume, pp. 27, 28. 
 
 f Quoted by Dr. B. B. Warfield in Homiletical Review, May, 1891, pp. 413, 
 414. 
 
5o 
 
 and woof of their writings, is no longer to be believed in the 
 Presbyterian Church, but is to be thrown aside as incredible on 
 the demand of a body of critics who have as yet found nothing 
 trustworthy to put in its place ? If this is now to be the posi¬ 
 tion of the Presbyterian Church, what then becomes of our 
 boasted doctrine of the infallibility of the Holy Scripture ? 
 Wherein can it longer be the rule of either faith or conduct ? 
 
 The most marked feature of our Church hitherto has been 
 its scriptural character. It has based its doctrines, polity and 
 life on the divine authority of the Holy Scripture. It has re¬ 
 ferred everything to a “ Thus saith the Lord" This has given 
 it power and gained for it the confidence of mankind. Where 
 shall be the seat of our infallible authority hereafter ? Shall it 
 be the Church, the Pope, the Reason, or shall we still abide 
 by the Old Scriptures of God which have led and blessed us 
 so long ? Whither are we tending ? The Church of God at 
 large looks to this Presbytery to give a right answer to that 
 question in bearing unfaltering witness for the truth committed 
 to us. 
 
 The other claim which Scripture makes for itself is, entire 
 truthfulness ( inerrancy , if you please). 
 
 The true biblical doctrine of the inspiration of the Scriptures 
 necessarily implies their infallible truthfulness. It could not 
 be infallible if not truthful. Dr. Briggs makes inspiration refer 
 only to truths revealed to the writers of the Bible by the Lord, 
 and to that extent he would undoubtedly make it a guarantee 
 for entire truthfulness. He would certainly not contend that 
 .. God, in revealing truth to men, communicated error. But we 
 have shown that, according to the true doctrine, inspiration 
 extends to all parts of the written Word, so that God is in a 
 true sense the Author thereof, and this cannot fail to assure us 
 . of its exact veracity. 
 
 We would have to change our idea of God completely to ad¬ 
 mit any other supposition. He is the embodiment of truth, 
 and “ is not a man that He should lie.” But it is unnecessary 
 to press this point any further than to insist that it leads to a 
 strong presumption in favor of the perfect inerrancy of the 
 
5 1 
 
 original Scriptures. It is a presumption so strong that the 
 contrary must be clearly shown before it can be abandoned. 
 
 But it is urged that the Scripture does not claim inerrancy 
 for itself. It would be more correct to say that it does not 
 make the direct claim very prominent. It affirms it often 
 enough to be quite effective. 
 
 If we should have an asseveration of perfect truthfulness at 
 every verse or chapter, it might raise a suspicion of untruthful¬ 
 ness, since no one is less likely to be truthful than one who is 
 constantly affirming it of himself. The Scripture claims to be, 
 as the word of God, the “Scripture of truth,” working effect¬ 
 ually to salvation in them that believe, which could not be 
 affirmed of error in any conceivable way. God’s command¬ 
 ments are “ sure ” ; His law is “ the truth ” ; His “word is true 
 from the beginning ” ; not one jot or tittle of it shall fail, but 
 everything is to be fulfilled; the record of Scripture is made 
 with such painstaking veracity that it gives us infallible cer¬ 
 tainty, so that whatever is written in the law and the prophets 
 may be surely believed. 
 
 But the Bible makes a still higher claim for itself than simple 
 truthfulness. A truthful statement may be an imperfect one, 
 since completeness of statement is not necessary to truthful¬ 
 ness. But the Word of God claims perfection for itself, and a 
 perfection which reaches far beyond the utmost human perfec¬ 
 tion and which has been established by its trial. And when 
 we remember that it has a breadth and depth so vast that the 
 most profound Christian scholars, after devoting to it a life¬ 
 time of reverent, patient study, feel themselves only in the 
 border-land of its inexhaustible wealth of divine truth, who 
 will deny that this claim to perfection is well founded ? How¬ 
 ever, I am arguing simply for the entire truthfulness of the 
 Divine Word, which certainly derives strong support from its 
 claim to perfection. But this characteristic of strict veracity, 
 in all things, appears in the Scriptures far more clearly and 
 foicibiy in incidental ways than in direct affirmation. 
 
 It is stated that “ whatsoever things were written aforetime 
 were written for our learning, that we, through patience and 
 
5 2 
 
 comfort of the Scripture, might have hope.” * But error can in¬ 
 duce neither patience nor comfort, and will surely blast every 
 hope built on it. He only who builds his hope on God s in- 
 errant Word shall never come to shame. 
 
 But further, the entire truthfulness of Scripture is everywhere 
 assumed on its pages, so that most important conclusions aie 
 reached from it with absolute certainty. From the single 
 word “whosoever,” used by the Prophet Joei, Paul elaborately 
 argues that there is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 
 from the word “every” in the verse, “As I live, saith the 
 Lord, every knee shall bow to me,” it is solemnly affirmed in 
 Rom. xiv. ii, “ We shall all stand before the judgment seat of 
 Christ”; in arguing that eternal life is not given for human 
 merit, but is received by faith alone, in Gal. iii. 16 the Apostle 
 makes the argument turn on the fact that the woid seed is 
 used in the singular instead of the plural; in Heb. xii. 27, the 
 immutability of the Gospel Kingdom is affirmed on the basis 
 of the adverbial phrase “once more,” used by Haggai; and in 
 John x. 35, Christ makes an argument on the inviolability of a 
 single word of Scripture, which cannot be broken. But it is 
 not necessary further to pursue this train of thought. A large 
 number of additional places can be indicated where the minute 
 truthfulness of Scripture is thus assumed and the most impor¬ 
 tant inferences drawn from it. 
 
 But the Scriptures are a communication from God; they 
 bring us light and truth on the questions of salvation and eter¬ 
 nal life which nature and reason cannot impart; they speak to 
 us with the authority of God, and demand our belief as faith¬ 
 ful sayings worthy of all acceptation; everything written was 
 intended to induce our belief; and so strongly do they urge 
 their claims to be implicitly believed, that they declare the 
 absence of a belief in them to be a sin which the Lord will 
 punish severely. The Jews were declared guilty by Christ for 
 the reason that they did not believe what Moses had written. 
 Unbelief is, in fact, the greatest sin, since it impeaches the 
 
 * Rom. xv. 4. 
 
53 
 
 truthfulness of God, in refusing to credit the record which He 
 has given us in the Word concerning His Son. 
 
 Now, all this would simply be preposterous if the Word 
 of God were mixed with human errors in Scripture as Dr. 
 Briggs affirms. 
 
 The character which the Word of God gives to itself, and 
 the solemn claims it makes upon us for implicit belief, are con¬ 
 sistent with nothing else than its absolute truthfulness. Thus 
 only it is possible that “ man shall live by every word that pro- 
 ceedeth out of the mouth of God,” by which our Saviour meant 
 the written Scripture. And in this connection it is well to no¬ 
 tice, as a most eloquent testimony to the literal and complete 
 inspiration of the written Word of God, that whenever men 
 have taken this book and have spoken from it with a “thus 
 saith the Lord,” they have touched the consciences of men, led 
 them in faith and repentance to the Saviour, turned the world 
 upside down, banished innumerable wrongs and falsehoods, and 
 renewed human society in a life of moral and spiritual beauty. 
 
 We thus see that the Scripture bears ample testimony to the 
 received doctrine of its own complete inspiration as the Word 
 of God written, and its entire truthfulness. 
 
 It is this scriptural doctrine, believed and revered by the 
 devout people of Christ, which Dr. Briggs squarely contradicts. 
 He throws it aside, and gives us another entirely different doc¬ 
 trine, according to which the written Word is not inspired, and 
 cannot be an infallible guide. He tries to justify himself by 
 asserting that the doctrine of inspiration as now held by the 
 Church, and as we have defined it, is comparatively modern, a 
 perversion of the true doctrine which has never been held by 
 the historic Church of Christ, and particularly not by the West¬ 
 minster divines. 
 
 Canon Westcott has, with painstaking care, collated a large 
 amount of testimony which proves conclusively that during the 
 early centuries of the Christian era, no other doctrine was held 
 in the Christian Church.* Professor Henry B. Smith has called 
 
 * Introduction to the Study of the Gospels, Appendix B. 
 
54 
 
 v 
 
 attention to the fact that for more than 1,600 years it was ques¬ 
 tioned only by a few individuals."* 
 
 And in modern times it has been the unshaken faith of the 
 entire Protestant Evangelical Church, whose great divines 
 have ably defended it, showing that such difficulties as we find 
 in our copies of the Scriptures could be explained in entire 
 consistency with their full inspiration, infallible authority and 
 perfect truthfulness. And the present trouble has its origin in 
 the fact that men of rationalistic tendencies would surrender 
 this vital citadel to the enemy without its being conquered. 
 Against this infidelity to the old faith and to the precious 
 truths committed to us, the great body of our Church protests. 
 It is not our accepted view of inspiration, but that put forward 
 by Dr. Briggs, which is the new and modern one. He asserts 
 that the Reformers conceded the presence of errors in the origi¬ 
 nal Scriptures, but he has not given a single good proof of 
 that remarkable statement. And it certainly requires the clear¬ 
 est proof to induce us to believe that those men, who held to 
 the strictest view of verbal inspiration, taught °lhat the Scrip¬ 
 tures had come from the hand of God with errors .in them. 
 
 The case of Luther proves the contradictory of this We 
 'know that, owing to his views on justification by faith, he 
 had at first some difficulty in admitting certain books into the 
 canon of Scripture. On clearer light these difficulties dis¬ 
 appeared from his mind. 
 
 In “ The Bible, the Church and the Reason," a book which 
 Dr. Briggs has put in evidence, he gives three extracts from 
 Luther’s works and one from DeWette, to show that Luther 
 admitted that there are errors in the original autographs of 
 Scripture. But those citations prove no such thing, as any one 
 may learn from a careful perusal of them. In the first three quo¬ 
 tations it is plain that Luther was laboring to harmonize diffi¬ 
 culties, and the last one of the three suggests the way in 
 which harmony might be reached. In the extract from De- 
 Wette’s collection of letters, Luther merely declares that he is 
 
 * Sermon on Inspiration. 
 
55 
 
 not satisfied with some one’s explanation of the Scripture dif¬ 
 ficulty named; but he does not say that he despaired of find¬ 
 ing a harmony. 
 
 It will scarcely be possible to show from Luther’s extended 
 writings that he ever doubted the literal inspiration and the 
 entire truthfulness of the written Word of God in the canoni¬ 
 cal books of Scripture. He was a great stickler for the literal 
 correctness and absolute authority of the very words of Scrip¬ 
 ture, as the following extracts from his writings will abundantly 
 show. 
 
 Luther calls the Bible “ God’s letters,” and accuses the Pope 
 of a desire to destroy them. * He says: “It is the ivord of 
 truth , or the true word." + 
 
 Speaking of those who affirm that the Word of God cannot 
 be true for the reason that many who hear it do not believe it, 
 and are not made godly by it, Luther says: “ Then we are to 
 judge the Word of God by the hallowed effects it may have on 
 those who hear it. But the Word of God is absolutely true, 
 even if all who hear it should not believe on it. They will 
 know it at the last day.” J 
 
 “Thy word is very true, therefore it admits of no addition 
 from human teaching.” § 
 
 “ The Word of God, which is in itself perfect, must for that 
 reason not be changed.” || 
 
 “ Holy men have erred in their writings, and sinned in their 
 lives, but the Scriptures cannot err.”^[ 
 
 “ It is impossible to fathom and to explore to its depth a 
 single word of the Holy Scripture. It bids defiance to all 
 scholars and theologians. For the words of the Scripture are 
 the words of the Holy Spirit, and, therefore, they are too high 
 for all men.” ** 
 
 * History of the Reformation, by D’Aubigne. Vol. ii. p. 229. 
 
 \ Plochmann and Irmischer. Vol. viii. p. 134. 
 
 \ Plochmann and Irmischer. Vol. xliv. p. 165. 
 
 §Walch. Vol. v. p. 1838. 
 
 || Plochmann and Irmischer. Vol. lvii. p. 66. 
 
 Plochmann and Irmischer. Vol. xxviii. p. 33. 
 
 ** Plochmann and Irmischer. Vol. lvii. p. 13. 
 
t 
 
 5 6 
 
 “ The Bible is God’s Word and Book.” The creation is, and 
 remains as it is written in Scripture, and notwithstanding all 
 the attempts of its enemies to destroy it, “ the Book has ever¬ 
 more remained fixed and altogether perfect as it was written.”* * * § 
 “ I will have nothing but the Word of God, and do not ask 
 for wonders and visions; nor will I believe an angel if he should 
 teach me contrary to the Word of God. I believe the words 
 and works of God alone; for the Word of God has been true 
 from the beginning, and has never failed. I know from prac¬ 
 tical experience that everything occurs as it is written in the 
 Word of God.” + 
 
 Speaking in defence of his position to Chancellor Wehe, 
 Luther said : “I will never allow any man to set himself 
 above the word of God. ... I can endure everything, but 
 I cannot abandon the Holy Scripture. ... I would rather 
 lose my life—rather have my arms and legs cut off, than for¬ 
 sake the clear and true word of God.” £ 
 
 i( The Bible or Scripture, is not such a book as originates 
 from reason or human wisdom. The arts of jurists and poets 
 are of the reason, and can again be understood and compre¬ 
 hended by the reason. But the teaching of Moses and the 
 propnets does not come from reason nor from human wisdom. 
 Therefore, he who attempts to comprehend Moses and the 
 prophets by the reason, and to measure and explain the 
 Scripture according to the dictates of reason, will miss the 
 meaning of it altogether. For all heretics, from the beginning, 
 have arisen from this fact, that they have thought that what 
 they read in Scripture, they could explain by the light of 
 reason.” § 
 
 “ Replying to those who affirmed that there are contradic¬ 
 tions in the Scriptures, Luther said : “ It is impossible that the 
 Scripture should contradict itself. Only ignorant, coarse, and 
 hardened hypocrites think so.” But to those who are devout 
 
 * Plochmann and Irmischer. Vol. Ivii. p. 2. 
 
 •} Plochmann and Irmischer. Vol. Ivii. p. 45. 
 
 t History of the Reformation, byD’ Aubigne, vol. ii., pp. 283, 284. 
 
 § Plochmann and Irmischer, Vol. iii., p. 335. 
 
1 
 
 57 
 
 and properly enlightened, the Scripture ‘‘gives testimony for 
 her Lord and holds with Him. Therefore you should have a 
 care how you compare and harmonize those texts of which 
 you say that they do not agree with each other.” * 
 
 Exhorting Christians to guard against the errors of false 
 teachers by receiving implicitly all that God has revealed in 
 the Holy Scripture and only that, he stated: “ For one letter, 
 yes, a single jot of the Scripture is of more and greater con¬ 
 sequence than heaven and earth. Therefore we cannot con¬ 
 sent that the most insignificant part of it should be displaced.”f 
 
 Melanchthon, in reply to Dr. Eck’s attack on Luther, defined 
 the great Reformer’s position in these words: “There is but 
 one Scripture, inspired by the Holy Ghost, and pure and true 
 in all things.” . . . “The meaning of Scripture is one and 
 
 simple like heavenly truth itself. It is obtained by comparing 
 Scripture with Scripture; it is deduced from the thread and 
 connection of the discourse. There is a philosophy that is en¬ 
 joined by us as regards the divine Scriptures, and that is, to 
 bring all human opinions and maxims to it, as to a touchstone 
 by which to try them.” { Luther testifies for an inerrant Bible. 
 
 Dr. Briggs also cites the great name of John Calvin to up¬ 
 hold him in his views of an errant Bible. But he meets here 
 with no better success. The citations which he gives do not 
 fasten such a doctrine of Scripture on the great reformer. 
 
 It is not true that in his notes on Matthew xxvii. 9, he charged 
 the Apostle with making a mistake, but says that the name of 
 Jeremiah “crept in” for that of Zechariah, and it must have 
 crept into a copy of the original correct version. In Acts 
 vii. 16, he does not connect the name of Luke with the mistake 
 in the name of Abraham. It is an infinitive construction: “In 
 nomine Abrahae erratum esse palani est .” (“ It is well known 
 that there is an error in the name of Abraham.”) And the fact 
 that he suggests an emendation of the text leads us to infer 
 rather that in his mind there was an original, perfect text, for 
 which the imperfect one should be exchanged. 
 
 In the extracts which Dr. Briggs has made from Calvin’s 
 
 * Walch, Vol. viii., p. 2140. f Walch, Vol. viii., p. 2661. 
 
 \ History of the Reformation, by D’Aubigne, Vol. 2, p. 76. 
 
5 » 
 
 Commentaries on Rom. x. 6 and Heb. xi. 21, Calvin shows 
 that the inspired writer had not in either case violated the law 
 of quotation, but had given the true sense of the Old Testa¬ 
 ment passages. He even speaks of the “pure and original text ,” 
 and this shows that he held the original text to be free from 
 error Calvin considered it wicked to charge a New Testa¬ 
 ment writer with having misused the Scripture. Under Eph. 
 iv. 8 he says: “ Wicked men charge Paul with having made an 
 unfair use of Scripture." On 1 Cor ii. 9, having intimated that 
 such a charge comes from the “ calumnies of the wicked,” he 
 states: “ It is further removed from Paul’s meaning, on which 
 we ought to place more dependence than on any other consid¬ 
 eration. For where shall we find a surer or more faithful in- 
 preter than the Spirit of God of this authoritative declaration 
 which He himself dictated to Isaiah—in the exposition which 
 he has furnished by the mouth of Paul ? ” 
 
 But Calvin’s views of the origin of the Holy Scriptures were 
 such that it was simply impossible for him ever to have stated 
 that an inspired writer had made an error in the original au¬ 
 tograph. He held that the Holy Spirit verbally dictated the 
 Scripture. He stated “ that the prophets did not speak at 
 their own suggestion, but that, being organs of the Holy 
 Spirit, they only uttered what they had been commissioned 
 from heaven to declare. The law and the prophets are not a 
 doctrine delivered according to the will of man, but dictated 
 by the Holy Spirit.”* He affirmed that the New Testament 
 writers were inspired in the same extent and degree as those 
 of the Old.fi 
 
 On 2 Pet. i. 21, he states: “That the beginning of right 
 knowledge is to give credit to the holy prophets which is due 
 to God . . . they dared not to announce anything of their own 
 and obediently followed the Spirit as their guide, who ruled in 
 their mouth as in his own sanctuaryd’fi Again he uses these 
 words: “ Whatever is delivered in Scripture we ought to learn; 
 for it were a reproach offered to the Holy Spirit, that He has 
 
 * Commentary on 2 Tim. iii. 16. 
 
 f Commentary, Rom. xv. 4. 
 
 %z Pet. i. 21, Commentary. 
 
59 
 
 taught anything which it does not concern us to know.” * * * § He 
 held it to be ciiminal either to add or take away anything from 
 the Sacred Scriptures, f 
 
 “The whole order of the world,” he declares, “ bears testi¬ 
 mony to the steadfastness of Gods Word— that Wovd which is 
 most true. f The Word of God has been from the beginning 
 certain and infallible truth, and will continue so even to the 
 end.” § “ The greatest human perfection,” he affirms, “ is noth¬ 
 ing when compared with God’s Word, inasmuch as all other 
 things will soon come to an end, whereas, the Word of God 
 stands ever firm in its own eternity.” || 
 
 In his catechism, giving an answer to the question: “How 
 are you to use the Holy Scriptures in order to profit by it ? ” he 
 says. By embracing it with entire heartfelt persuasion, as 
 certain truth come down from heaven.” IF 
 
 When for his earnest defence of the Bible he was accused of 
 stirring up fiery contests about nothing, he said: “ My answer 
 is, that when divine truth is avowedly attacked, we must not 
 tolerate the adulteration of one single iota of it. It is certainly 
 no trivial matter to see God’s light extinguished by the devil’s 
 darkness; and besides, this matter is of greater moment than 
 many suppose.” ** Calvin held to an inerrant Bible. 
 
 Now, inasmuch as Calvin always uses language with admi¬ 
 rable precision, any seemingly doubtful statement of his in 
 exegesis must be interpreted in harmony with his many posi¬ 
 tive expressions on the literal inspiration and entire truthful¬ 
 ness of God’s written Word. 
 
 The French historian, Guizot, had no doubt that Calvin held 
 to the inerrancy of Scripture. He said: “ Like Calvin, many 
 pious and learned men uphold the plenary inspiration of the 
 Holy Scripture; they assert that not only the thoughts, but 
 the words in which they are clothed are divinely inspired— 
 every word on every subject, the language as well as the doc¬ 
 trine.” ft 
 
 The Reformers could hold no other view on this question. 
 The Word of God was to them the sword of the Spirit and the 
 unfailing source of defence. 
 
 * Commentary, Rom. xv. 4. 
 
 f Tracts, vol. 2, p. 133. 
 
 % Commentary on Ps. cxix. 89. 
 
 § Commentary on Ps. cxix. 160. 
 
 I Commentary on Ps. cxix. 96. 
 *T Tracts, vol. 3, p. 82, 
 
 ** Tracts, vol. 3, p. 418. 
 ft Life of Calvin, chap. 4. 
 
6 o 
 
 Dr. Briggs himself says that Andrew Rivetus was one of 
 the most prominent divines of the Reformation period. He 
 cites him on the question of authenticity, but the quotation 
 plainly indicates what the Reformers held as to inspiration. 
 Rivetus’s words are: “This only is to be held as certain, 
 whether David or Moses or any other composed the Psalms, 
 they themselves were as pens, but the Holy Ghost wrote 
 through them; but it is not necessary to trouble ourselves 
 about the pens when the true author is established." * 
 
 Dr. Briggs also seeks to fortify himself in his views by af¬ 
 firming that the Westminster divines did not hold to that 
 plenary inspiration of the Holy Scriptures which insures their 
 entire truthfulness. As far as my knowledge extends, he is 
 the first one to make that assertion. He says it is a modern 
 notion forced on the Church by traditionalists and evangelicals. 
 He would have people believe that we are reading an opinion 
 into the Confession which the framers of it never intended to 
 embody in it. He stoutly affirms that neither the Bible nor 
 any of the Reformed creeds teach the doctrine of the inerrancy 
 of Scripture, and he is sure that the Westminster divines held 
 exactly the contrary. 
 
 How he can reiterate in his different publications what 
 to me seems so obviously untrue, passes my comprehen¬ 
 sion. Certainly, it has been held for 250 years that our 
 Confession taught at least the plenary inspiration and the 
 perfect veracity of Holy Scripture, and presumably that is 
 what the authors of it meant to state. This will appear all 
 the more probable from the fact, as we shall soon show, 
 that they themselves held the strictest theory of verbal in¬ 
 spiration. 
 
 It probably never occurred to them, when they stated 
 that God, who is truth itself, is the Author of the Scriptures, 
 that He committed them to writing, immediately inspired 
 them, so that they are the Word of God written, and that 
 Scripture is to be believed because it is the Word of God, 
 
 * Biblical Study, pp. 167, 16S. 
 
that any one could ever suggest the idea that they did not 
 mean to teach the plenary inspiration and perfect truthfulness 
 of Scripture. 
 
 Th ere were some in the Westminster Assembly who held 
 the view that the Bible is fully inspired in respect to faith and 
 morals, but contained errors in matters of minor detail, but 
 that was a condemned minority opinion, which is of no more 
 value in helping us to construe the Confession of Faith than 
 minority opinions contained in the Federalist are authority to 
 show what the framers of our national constitution meant to 
 express. 
 
 All the controlling minds of the Assembly, most of their 
 like-minded contemporaries, and many contemporaries who 
 were not like-minded—in fact, the great body of the Evangeli¬ 
 cal Church—believed the theory of verbal inspiration, and the 
 infallible truthfulness of Scripture. 
 
 In The Bible , the Churchy and the Reason , and also in “ Whith¬ 
 erf” Dr. Briggs cites Samuel Rutherford as one of the West¬ 
 minster divines “ who did not teach the inerrancy of the orig¬ 
 inal autographs.” But an examination of his writings will 
 show that that is exactly what he did teach. In arguing with 
 John Goodwin, who was not willing to call copies and transla¬ 
 tions of the Bible the Word of God, Rutherford came near 
 claiming inerrancy for the translation, stating: “ For though 
 scribes, translators, grammarians and printers, may all err, it 
 followeth not that an unerring Providence of Him that hath 
 seven eyes hath not delivered to the Church the Scriptures 
 containing the infallible truth of God.” 
 
 Rutherford regarded the whole Scripture in the originals to 
 be “the infallible Word of God,” written by “prophets who 
 cannot err.” Indeed, he looked on the language of Scripture 
 as spoken by the Holy Spirit, so that “ if any one should say ” 
 anything contrary to a Scripture statement, he would “con¬ 
 tradict the Holy Ghost.” He said: “We believe all things 
 written, be they fundamental or no, for God hath written them 
 all for us.” “ The Word of God is full of divinity . . . and 
 certainty.” “We have a more sure word of prophecy, the 
 
02 
 
 Scriptures, yea, surer than the Father’s voice from heaven, 
 which was an immediate oracle, indeed.”* 
 
 It is evident also that John Goodwin, his antagonist, himself 
 held the same high views on the inspiration of the autographs 
 of Scripture as Rutherford did. 
 
 Goodwin himself stated: “ I never denied, but have a thou¬ 
 sand times over affirmed, and by many arguments and demon¬ 
 strations evinced the Scriptures to be the Word of God. . . . 
 But in exactness of speaking the English translation is not the 
 Word of God.” f 
 
 d he case of Richard Capel is precisely similar to that of 
 Rutherford. He was chiding those who were making so much 
 of the uncertainties and errors which had come into the Scrip¬ 
 ture through the fallibilities of scribes and translators, saying, 
 “ These be terrible blasts, and do little else when they meet 
 with a weak head and heart but to open the door to atheism, 
 and quite to fling off the bridle, which only can hold them 
 and us in the ways of truth and piety: this is to fill the con¬ 
 ceits ol men with evil thoughts against the purity of the 
 originals .” 
 
 “ It ls granted,” he says, “that translators were not led by 
 such an infallible Spirit as the Prophets and Apostles were.” 
 
 Translators and transcribers might err , being not endued 
 with that infallible Spirit in translating and transcribing, as 
 Moses and the Prophets were in their original writings!' To 
 him, then, the originals were “the dictates of the Spirit,” and 
 their writers, being imbued with the infallible spirit, might not 
 err. X 
 
 William Lyford is another witness whom Dr. Briggs cites for 
 the errancy of Scripture. But Lyford was far from intending 
 anything of the kind. His contention was that the Word of 
 God was competently conveyed in the English translation, but 
 ho states explicitly that the difference between the originals 
 
 • A free Disputation against Pretenses of Liberty of Conscience, pp. 370, 
 37 i. 353 . 354 , 373 , 366, 193. 
 f The Divine Authority of the Scriptures, p. 8. 
 
 X Remains, pp. 12, 38, 43, 48. 
 
^3 
 
 and translations arises from the fact that “ the translators 
 were not assisted immediately by the Holy Ghost,” while 
 “ such extraordinary assistance is needful to one that shall in¬ 
 dite any part of Scripture.” “ The Divine Truth is perfectly, 
 immediately and most absolutely in the original Hebrew and 
 Greek.” * 
 
 Matthew Pool and John Ball merely denied that the verbal 
 inspiration of Scripture can be proved by the testimony of the 
 Holy Spirit in the heart, a statement which no one will deny. 
 
 But they must have held that it could be established in an¬ 
 other way since they both believed in it. 
 
 For John Ball states in his Catechism: 
 
 Q. What call you the Word of God ? 
 
 A. The Holy Scriptures immediately inspired, which are 
 contained in the books of the Old and New Testaments. 
 
 Q. What is it to be immediately inspired ? 
 
 A. To be immediately inspired is to be as it were breathed, 
 and to come from the Father by the Holy Ghost without all 
 means. (Here we have the meaning of the word “imme¬ 
 diately as used by the Westminster Divines in connection 
 with inspiration.) 
 
 Q. Were the Scriptures thus inspired ? 
 
 A. Thus the Holy Scriptures in the originals were inspired, 
 both for matter and words. 
 
 Q. Is it expedient to know that these books are the word 
 of God ? 
 
 A. It is very expedient and necessary that all Christians of 
 age and discretion should know that the Scriptures are the 
 very word of God. 
 
 Q • What is it to know them to be the word of God ? 
 
 A. It is to know them to be the immediate and infallible 
 truth of God that is to be received, obeyed and believed, f 
 
 * Plain Man’s Sense Exercised, pp. 49, 50. 
 
 f A Short Treatise Containing all the Principal Grounds of the Christian 
 Religion, pp. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. 
 
6 \ 
 
 And Matthew Pool, who was the great Presbyterian critic of 
 the Scripture in the i;th century, has given this clear state¬ 
 ment of his views on the subject: “ The writers of the Bible 
 were the special instruments of the Holy Ghost who sanctified 
 them to the work of preaching and penning what He dictated 
 to them. * “ The Word of God is without the least mixture 
 
 of any falsehood or sin, both which are frequent in the works 
 and precepts of men.” + 
 
 Dr. Briggs also calls in Richard Baxter to testify in favor 
 of the view that inspiration does not rule errors out of Scrip¬ 
 ture. Baxter was not a member of the Westminster Assembly, 
 but was alike-minded contemporary, a man of a broad and 
 well-balanced mind, a great scholar and a warm-hearted Chris¬ 
 tian. He is a witness of the highest order. 
 
 The quotations given in The Bible , the Church , and the 
 Reason , and in “ Whither ,” do not prove the point, and 
 Baxter has expressed himself so unequivocally in the matter 
 that .there is really no excuse for misunderstanding him. 
 In his treatise on the Reasons of the Christian Religion, he 
 states the objection: “ The Scripture hath many contradictions 
 in it, in point of history, chronology and other things; there- 
 foie it is not the Word of God.” To which he replies: “Noth¬ 
 ing but ignorance maketh men think so; understand once the 
 true meaning, and allow for the errors of printers, transcribers 
 and translators, and there will no such thing be found. Young 
 students in all sciences think their books are full of contradic¬ 
 tions, which they can easily reconcile when they come to un¬ 
 derstand them.” He then states that there were two opinions 
 on the subject of inspiration: One was to the effect that inspira¬ 
 tion secures the truthfulness of the writers of the Bible in all 
 matters of faith and salvation, but not in every word of chrono¬ 
 logical and historical narration. 
 
 * Pool’s Commentary, i Pet. i. 21. 
 f Pool s Commentary, Psalm cxix. 140. 
 
65 
 
 r 
 
 This view he discards, and gives as his own that which he 
 declares to be the true doctrine, namely: “ That the Scriptures 
 are so entirely and perfectly the product of the Spirit’s inspira¬ 
 tion that there is no word in them which is not infallibly true.” 
 
 “ I think,” he said, “ that no one error or contradiction in any 
 matter can be proved in the Scripture He did indeed state 
 that he could “ prove the truth of the Christian religion with¬ 
 out assuming the freedom of the Scripture from all error; ” yet 
 he “ doubted not to prove this their perfection against all the 
 cavils of infidels.”f 
 
 Chillingworth, in his discussion with the Roman Catholics, 
 makes it plain that they also held to the complete inspiration 
 and truthfulness of the Bible, but they contended that the 
 Scripture was not sufficient, but needed to be supplemented 
 by an “ unwritten word of God ” coming through tradition or 
 the Church. Chillingworth accepted the following words, put 
 in his mouth by his Romanist antagonist, that “ every book, 
 chapter, and text of Scripture is infallible, and wants no due 
 perfection,” but argued that the entire Canonical Scripture only 
 was the perfect rule of faith, and that this Scripture, as “the 
 Word of God Written,” was in every way sufficient for man’s 
 needs.J And this shows us how that expression, “the Word 
 of God Written,” came to be incorporated in our Confession, 
 and what the framers of it meant by it. 
 
 In their view the terms “ Scripture ” and “Word of God” 
 were synonymous. By the statement of the Shorter Catechism, 
 “ the Word of God which is contained in the Scriptures,” they 
 intended to rule out the Roman Catholic idea that there was 
 also a word of God in the Church and Tradition, and it is 
 therefore identical with the confessional statement, the Scrip¬ 
 tures are “ the Word of God written.” 
 
 * Baxter’s Works, London, Vol. 21, pp. 347, 34S. 
 f Baxter’s Works, Vol. 20, p. 118. 
 f Chillingworth’s Works, London, Vol. 1, p. 205. 
 
66 
 
 And when Dr. Briggs insists, in the interest of an errant 
 Bible, that our Standards teach that there are other things 
 contained in the Scriptures in addition to the Word of God, he 
 endeavors to force into them a meaning which the framers of 
 them had not the remotest intention to express. 
 
 Dr. Henry Hammond, author of the “ Paraphrase and An¬ 
 notation of the New Testament,” was named to be one of the 
 Westminster divines, but never sat with them. He was a 
 royalist and considered to be an Arminian in his theological 
 views. He was therefore not a like-minded contemporary. 
 That he exerted a wide influence is evident from the fact that 
 a catechism which he published, reached its 16th edition. His 
 views on inspiration may be gathered from the following com¬ 
 ment on 2 Pet. i. 21 : “For none of the prophets of any time 
 have undertaken that office on their own head, and prophesied 
 their own fancies, or persuasions, but all the Scripture prophets 
 have been called and sent by God on his messages, and in¬ 
 spired and instructed by the Holy Spirit of God every word 
 which they delivered.” 
 
 John White, one of the most active members of the West¬ 
 minster Assembly, holding the place of one of the two assess¬ 
 ors, and exerting an influence in shaping the decisions of the 
 Assembly, second to none, may be regarded as a thoroughly 
 fair exponent'of the doctrines then prevailing. On the ques¬ 
 tion of inspiration, he made this statement : “ Yea, beyond all 
 this, the Holy Ghost not only suggested unto them the sub¬ 
 stance of the doctrine which they were to deliver .and leave 
 upon record unto the Church (for so far he usually assists faith¬ 
 ful ministers in dispensing the Word in the course of their 
 Gospel ministry), but besides, has supplied unto them the very 
 phrases, method, and whole order of those things that are 
 written in the Scriptures, whereas, he leaves ministers in 
 preaching the Word to the choice of their own phrases and ex¬ 
 pressions, wherein, as also in some particulars which they de¬ 
 liver, they may be mistaken. . . . Thus, then, the Holy 
 
6y 
 
 'Ghost not only assisted holy men in penning the Scripture, but, 
 in a sort, took the work out of their hands, making use of noth¬ 
 ing in the men but of their understanding, to receive and com¬ 
 prehend, their wills to consent unto, and their hands to write 
 down that which they delivered.” * 
 
 John Lightfoot, of Ashley, besides being one of the most 
 honored and influential members of the Westminster Assem¬ 
 bly, was also an oriental and biblical scholar of considerable 
 note. He is a good witness, and the last one to whom I will 
 refer. 
 
 In his sermon on the “ Difficulties of Scripture, ’ he said: 
 
 “ The Holy Ghost hath purposely penned the Scripture so 
 as to challenge all serious study of them. 
 
 “ Peter tells that there are divers things in Paul’s epistles 
 hard to be understood; and why did the Holy Ghost dictate 
 them so hard by Paul ? And why did not Peter explain them 
 who had the same Spirit ? Because the Holy Ghost hath 
 penned the Scripture so as to challenge all serious study. He 
 could have penned all so plain that he that runneth might have 
 read them; but he hath penned them in such a style, that he 
 that will read them must not run and read, but sit down and 
 studv.’f 
 
 “ It became the Holy Ghost, the penner of Scripture, to 
 write in majesty, that the wits and wisdom of all the men in 
 ’the world should bow before it.” J 
 
 “ The Scripture is delivered to us so, as we are rather deliv¬ 
 ered up to Scripture. . . . We are delivered up to Scrip¬ 
 
 tures as they are to be our Masters, and not we theirs. As 
 another Apostle’s expression is: “We are to be doers of the 
 
 * Directions for the Profitable Reading of the Scriptures, p. 61. 
 f Works of John Lightfoot, Vol. 7, p. 208. 
 
 \ Vol. 7, P, 212. 
 
68 
 
 law and not judges; to be students of Scripture, and not their 
 
 • 1 _ mas. 
 
 judges. * 
 
 “Ye know who say: ‘ I will not believe the Scripture of them¬ 
 selves, unless they could show me their own authority.’ . 
 Let them choose, whether they will believe it or no, may God 
 say, but at their own peril. He never intended to satisfy ev¬ 
 ery man’s curiosity and crossness and cavilling, but he hath 
 given the Scripture in authority and majesty, and if men will 
 bow and submit to it, well and good; and if not, let them see 
 how they will answer it another day.”t 
 
 Thus it is conclusively shown what was the predominating 
 opinion among the divines of the Westminster Assembly on 
 this doctrine respecting the Holy Scriptures. With them in¬ 
 spiration meant verbal dictation by the Holy Spirit, and in 
 view of that, it is inconceivable that they should have expressed 
 in the Confession Dr. Briggs’s doctrine of the Holy Scripture. 
 That doctrine they vigorously combated. And, while this 
 opinion can have no possible binding force on our belief, it 
 shows that if our standards are to be understood in their his¬ 
 torical sense, a much stricter meaning must be given to their 
 statements on inspiration than is here insisted on. When our 
 standards were framed the Church believed in the infallible 
 truthfulness of every word of Scripture, for the reason that the 
 Holy Spirit was the author of it. 
 
 Of far greater importance to us than the opinions of the 
 Westminster divines on this question, are the views of our 
 American divines. 
 
 The citations I have made from the writings of Dr. Henry 
 B. Smith fairly represent the view which has been held from 
 the beginning in the American Presbyterian Church on the 
 doctrine of Holy Scripture. 
 
 All the evangelical churches in the United States, indeed, 
 have, without exception, until very recent times, avowed their 
 
 * Vol. 7, p. 213. 
 t Vol. 7, p. 213. 
 
6 g 
 
 faith in the complete inspiration and the entire truthfulness of 
 the written Word of God. President Timothy Dwight, speak¬ 
 ing at the beginning of the present century, voiced the com¬ 
 mon sentiment of American Christians when he said: “ What¬ 
 ever else may be false, all that God has declared is true; and 
 it is to he received implicitly, by whatever human opinions it 
 may be opposed. . . ‘ Let God be true, but every man 
 
 a liar.’ Acknowledge His truth by giving implicit credit to His 
 declarations. To believe a scriptural doctrine which we can 
 explain, is not to confide in the veracity of God, but in our 
 own explanation. This is not the evidence on which He 
 originally requires us to believe. He demands that we give 
 credit to His veracity, and that absolutely without reserve or 
 qualification. If this be not done by us, our faith is radically 
 defective. All the declarations of God in Scripture are to be 
 implicitly received , and they are to be received in their obvious 
 meaning .” * 
 
 But this has particularly been the doctrine held by Ameri¬ 
 can Presbyterians, as the following excerpts from the works of 
 a few of our leading divines will conclusively show. They be¬ 
 lieved it so thoroughly that they took it for granted in all their 
 sermons and writings. 
 
 Dr. Jonathan Dickinson was born toward the close of the 
 17th Century. He was one of the principal founders of the 
 College of New Jersey, a staunch defender of the Calvinistic 
 faith, and being in his prime when our Standards were first 
 adopted in 1729, he took a leading part in shaping the affairs 
 of our Church at that time. Inheriting an intense love of 
 liberty from his New England ancestry, he was opposed to as¬ 
 signing the highest authority to statements of doctrine by 
 “ uninspired mend and therefore exerted himself to make our 
 Standards as broad as would be consistent with the truth of 
 God's Word. But he recognized clearly the authority which 
 
 * Dwight’s Sermons, Vol. I. pp. 27, 44. 
 
7o 
 
 1 
 
 attached to the writings of inspired men; and his words on the 
 doctrine of Scripture express the belief of the Presbyterians of 
 his day. He said: “The blessed book of God contains the 
 immediate dictates of the Holy Ghost—2 Tim. iii. 16. What- 
 soever, therefore, is written in the divine oracles, is witnessed 
 by the Spirit himself; for He is the Author of them. And we 
 must receive nothing as the witness of the Spirit , which is not 
 agreeable to this sure and infallible standard and only suf¬ 
 ficient rule of faith and practice." * * * § 
 
 President Samuel Davies, a little later in the i8th Century, 
 contended that the statements of the Word of God were “the 
 authentic declaration of Eternal Truth," on which alone a Chris¬ 
 tian should build his hope, since “ the declarations of that 
 Holy Word alone give us certain information; " and that “ both 
 the divinity and truth of Scripture ” could be conclusively estab¬ 
 lished by the combined forces of “intrinsic and extrinsic evi¬ 
 dence."t 
 
 President Jonathan Edwards also expressed himself clearly 
 and fully on this important question. He affirmed that matters 
 of faith and morals and the historical narratives were alike 
 from the Spirit of God.J 
 
 “ God,” he said, “ hath not left us to an uncertain guide; but 
 hath Himself given us a revelation of the truth in these mat¬ 
 ters, and hath done very great things to convey and confirm 
 to us this revelation; raising up many prophets in different 
 ages, immediately inspiring them with the Holy Ghost, and 
 confirming their doctrine with innumerable miracles or won¬ 
 derful works out of the established course of nature, vea, he 
 raised up a succession of prophets which were upheld for sev¬ 
 eral ages. By means of all, God hath given us a book of di¬ 
 vine instruction, which is the sum of divinity.Ӥ 
 
 He further states: “ The spirit of error does not desire to 
 
 * Sermons and Tracts, by Jonathan Dickinson, p. 301. 
 
 t Davies’ Sermons. Hope of the Righteous, and Divine Authority of the 
 Christian Religion. 
 
 f Edwards’s Works, Vol. 3, p. 544. 
 
 § Edwards’s Works, Vol. 4, p. 8. 
 
beget a high opinion in men of the infallible rule. . . The 
 
 devil has ever shown a mortal spite toward that holy book, the 
 Bible. . . Every text in it is a dart to torment the old ser¬ 
 
 pent. He has felt the stinging smart a thousand times; there¬ 
 fore he is enraged against the Bible, and hates every word of 
 it. And, accordingly, we see it common in enthusiasts, that 
 they depreciate the written rule, and set up the light within 
 or some other rule above it.”* * * § 
 
 Let us now cite a few witnesses to speak for the faith of our 
 Church at the period when our standards were finally adopted, 
 as we have them now. Dr. Samuel Stanhope Smith said: 
 “ Here it is, that men introducing their own speculations and 
 mingling their own philosophic systems with the Word of God, 
 have corrupted its simplicity. . . Are the Divine Scriptures 
 
 then of doubtful interpretation ? No, they are full of light. . . 
 
 They are a fountain of truth.”t 
 
 Dr. Alexander McWhorter, the beloved pastor of the First 
 Church of Newark, stood in the front rank of the Presbyterian 
 ministry of his day. He “ was one of those eminent men who, 
 in 1788, had the principal agency in settling the Confession of 
 Faith and forming the constitution of the Presbyterian Church 
 and in transferring the authority of the highest judicatory 
 from the Synod to the General Assembly.” if His views on 
 the doctrine of the Scriptures can therefore be regarded as 
 fairly representative of the opinions of those who adopted our 
 present Standards. He called the Scriptures “the holy ora¬ 
 cles of God,” and in a sermon on insoiration he said : “ Seeing 
 the truth of Scripture can be established, as it were, by ocular 
 demonstration, how should all be induced to search them 
 * * * steadfastly and perseveringly believe that all Scripture 
 
 is given by inspiration of God.Ӥ On another occasion he said 
 of the Bible that “it is styled God’s law because the Scrip- 
 
 * Edwards’s Works, Vol. 1, p. 542. 
 
 f Principles of Nature and Revealed Religion, p. 531. 
 
 \ Sprague’s Annals of the American Presbyterian Pulpit, Vol. 1, p. 211. 
 
 § McWhorter’s Sermons, Vol. i, p. 34. 
 
7 2 
 
 tures are given by the Supreme and sovereign Legislator—His 
 Way, because they contain the order of His dispensations, and 
 the course of man’s obedience — His Commandments, be¬ 
 cause issued by the most absolute authority—His Testimonies, 
 because attested or witnessed to the world by the most ir¬ 
 refragable evidence—His Precepts, because they are the pre¬ 
 scriptions of heaven to man—His Word, because they are the 
 declarations of His will—His Judgments , because by them we 
 shall be judged—His Righteousness, because holy, just and 
 good, and the standard of perfect justice—His Statutes, be¬ 
 cause fixed, immutable and of perpetual obligation — His 
 Truth, because they are faithful sayings and founded on prin¬ 
 ciples of eternal verity.”'* * * § 
 
 The Rev. John Witherspoon, D. D., was also one of the most 
 prominent and influential of our Presbyterian divines in the 
 revision movement of 1785 to 1788. He was chairman of the 
 committee “appointed to take into consideration the Consti¬ 
 tution of the Church of Scotland and other Protestant Churches; 
 and to form a complete system for the organization of the 
 Presbyterian Church in the United States.” t In his, extensive 
 productions he so constantly takes for granted the full inspira¬ 
 tion and the absolute divine authority of every word and sen¬ 
 tence of Scripture that he nowhere combats the contrary view. 
 All his references to the doctrine respecting the Bible are made 
 in incidental ways, and are therefore all the more valuable as 
 true indications of the faith of our Church on these questions 
 at that time. 
 
 He speaks of the Word of God as “ the Scrip hires of 
 truth, from which virtue derives all its meaning and force;], 
 ” the Book of God ,’ in which He himself speaks to men 
 for their condemnation or approval;§ “God's written Word," 
 wherein He hath clearly and explicitly written His name;|I 
 
 * McWhorter’s Sermons, Vol. 2, p. 107. 
 
 t Sprague’s American Presbyterian Pulpit, Vol. i, p. 14. 
 
 X Witherspoon’s Works, Vol 1, p. 69. 
 
 § Witherspoon’s Works, Vol. 1, p. 254. 
 
 J Witherspoon’s Works, Vol. 2, p. 49. 
 
73 
 
 *< the Sacred Writings of inspired penmen ,’ which make plain 
 the absolute necessity of salvation through Christ, The 
 Inspired Writings giving us “most certain proofs of true 
 religion;”+ “ the Sacred Volume consists of history ” which “ is 
 an improving study.’ £ He states: “ There is a preciousness in 
 every truth that hath the stamp of divine authority upon it, 
 and therefore to neglect any of them and count them trifling , 
 or of little moment , argues a want of reverence for the Word 
 of God. The Holy Scriptures, as they are full and complete, 
 containing everything that is necessary, so they are perfect 
 and faultless , containing nothing unnecessary. Serious per¬ 
 sons have often borne testimony to the great utility of such 
 parts of the Sacred Oracles as are commonly treated with 
 most indifference. Nay, I cannot help thinking that the ven¬ 
 eration due to God, who doth nothing in vain, obliges us to 
 believe the utility of those passages whose purpose we our¬ 
 selves may not as yet have clearly perceived.Ӥ Manifestly, 
 Dr. Witherspoon did not share in the views of Dr. Briggs in 
 regard to circumstantials and non-essentials in Scripture. 
 
 The Rev. Ashbel Green, D. D., quoting this sentence from 
 Dr. Dick on Inspiration approvingly, “ It is most conformable 
 to truth, that in their expressions as well as in their sentiments 
 the writers of the Bible were under the infallible direction of 
 the Spirit’’—states further, that the Bible “ can be satisfacto¬ 
 rily accounted for in no other way than by saying that these 
 writers were all guided by one and the same Spiiit of infallible 
 
 truth.”1! 
 
 Nearly sixty years ago The Rev. Arcnibald Alexander, 
 D.D., expressed himself in the following vigorous terms: 
 
 “There is something reprehensible, not to say impious, in 
 that bold spirit of modern criticism which has led many emi- 
 
 * Witherspoon’s Works, Vol. i, p. 276. 
 
 •}• W T itherspoon’s Works, Vol. 1, p. 27ft. 
 
 X Witherspoon’s Works, Vol. I, p. 426. 
 
 $ Witherspoon’s Works, Vol. 2, p. 243. 
 
 | Lectures on the Shorter Catechism, Vol. 1, pp. 7 1 . 79 * 
 
74 
 
 nent biblical scholars, especially in Germany, first to attack 
 the authority of particular books of Scripture, and next to call 
 in question the inspiration of the whole volume. To what ex¬ 
 tent the licentiousness of criticism has been carried, I need not 
 say, for it is a matter of notoriety that of late the most dan¬ 
 gerous enemies of the Bible have been found occupying the 
 place of its advocates, and the critical art, which was intended 
 for the correction of the text and the interpretation of the sa¬ 
 cred books, has in a most unnatural way been turned against 
 the Bible, and finally the inspiration of all the sacred books has 
 not only been questioned, but scornfully rejected by profes¬ 
 sors of theology . And these men, while living on endowments 
 which pious benevolence had consecrated for the support of 
 religion, and openly connected with churches whose creeds 
 contain orthodox opinions, have so far forgotten their high 
 responsibilities and neglected the claim which the Church had 
 on them, as to exert all their ingenuity and learning to sap the 
 foundation of that system they were sworn to defend. They 
 have had the shameless hardihood to send forth into the world 
 books under their own names, which contain fully as much 
 of the poison of infidelity as ever distilled from the pens of the 
 most malignant deists whose writings have fallen as a curse 
 on the world.”* 
 
 Coming into the present century a little further, Dr. Gardi- 
 nci Spring defines inspiration in the following discriminating 
 manner : “ With respect to matters of faith, both the matter 
 
 and the words were inspired, and the writers of them were just¬ 
 ly called the amanuenses of the Holy Ghost” ; with respect to 
 “Scripture facts handed down by written traditions and col¬ 
 lected from other authentic sources, to them the writers were 
 divinely directed, and in the presentation of them they were 
 enabled, by the Divine Spirit, to distinguish the false from the 
 true”; with respect to “things or facts directly perceived, 
 seen and heard by the writers themselves, in recording them 
 
 Preface to Canon of the Old and New Testaments. London Edition 
 PP. 7 , 8. 
 
e 
 
 75 
 
 the Divine Spirit assisted their memories, so that they put 
 down what they did really see and hear. In one word, the 
 God of heaven has given such a direction to the writers of this 
 volume, that He is responsible for the book itself.”* * * § 
 
 Albert Barnes, referring to the perfection of the Holy Scrip¬ 
 ture, states: “The sacred writers were kept from error on 
 those subjects which were matters of their own observation, or 
 which pertained to memory, and that there were truths impart¬ 
 ed to them directly by the Spirit of God, which they could 
 never have arrived at by the unaided exercise of their own 
 minds.”t 
 
 Again, he says : “ God has borne witness in His Word, pledg¬ 
 ing His veracity as to the correctness of the statements which 
 are thus made.”J 
 
 Dr. Thomas H. Skinner calls the statements of Scripture 
 “the outward witness of the Holy Spirit,” which is to-be re¬ 
 ceived as “ perfect certitude,” for the reason that it is the Word 
 of God.§ 
 
 Thus it is seen that men of all “ sides ” and “ schools ” in the 
 American Presbyterian Church have been in entire agreement 
 in their views respecting the Holy Scripture. It will not be 
 possible to cite a single individual of the long line of represen¬ 
 tative Presbyterian divines in our country, who has not held 
 the belief of the plenary inspiration and absolute veracity of 
 the written Word of God. And when the founders of the Pres¬ 
 byterian Church in this country adopted our Standards, they 
 did so because they understood them to teach these doctrines 
 respecting the Holy Scripture. 
 
 The Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, 
 in its organized capacity, after searching discussion in 1728 and 
 1729, and again in the years from 1785 to 1788, adopted the 
 Standards as we have them now, not because they were framed 
 by the divines of the Westminster Assembly, but because they 
 
 * Bible not of Man, pp. 289, 290. 
 
 f Commentary on 2 Tim. iii. 16. 
 
 \ Commentary on Psalm xix. 7. 
 
 § Discussions in Theology, p. 270. 
 
76 
 
 represented the belief of those adopting them, and especiall) 
 their belief as to the Bible. 
 
 The subscription which we make to them was intended to 
 be so true and full that, if a minister should change his views 
 after having made the subscription, he should report that fact 
 to Presbytery, in order that Presbytery may determine whether 
 or not the changed views can be tolerated under the Confes¬ 
 sion. 
 
 Our Church has been very jealous of the purity of these 
 Standards, and has insisted on a sincere acceptance of its doc¬ 
 trines for the reason that it has considered such an acceptance 
 necessary to the maintenance of Bible truth. 
 
 The Assembly of 1824 adopted, among others, these resolu¬ 
 tions : 
 
 “That, though the Confession of faith and Standards of 
 our Church are of no original authority, independent of the 
 Scriptures, yet we regard them as a summary of those Divine 
 truths which are diffused throughout the sacred volume. 
 
 “ They, as a system of doctrine, therefore, cannot be aban¬ 
 doned in our opinion, without an abandonment of the Word of 
 God. They form a bond of fellowship in the faith of the Gos¬ 
 pel, and the General Assembly cannot but believe the precious 
 immortals under their care to be more safe in receiving the 
 truth of God's holy Word, as exhibited in the Standards of our 
 Church, than in being subjected to the guidance of any in¬ 
 structor, whoever he may be, who may have confidence enough 
 to set up his own opinions in opposition to the system of doc¬ 
 trines which men of sound learning, full of the Holy Ghost, 
 and mighty in the Scriptures, have devised from the Oracles of 
 the living God. It should never be forgotten that the Chuich 
 is solemnly cautioned against being carried about by every 
 wind of doctrine. 
 
 “ This confession of Faith, adopted by our Church, contains 
 a system of doctrine professedly believed by the people and 
 the pastors under the care of the General Assembly, nor can 
 it be traduced by any in the communion of our Church, with¬ 
 out subjecting the erring parties to that salutary discipline 
 
77 
 
 which hath for its object the maintenance of the peace anc. 
 purity of the Church, under the government of her great Mas¬ 
 ter.” * 
 
 It will thus be seen that the full literal inspiration of the 
 written Word of God, and its entire truthfulness, has been held 
 by the great majority of disciples in the true historical church 
 of Jesus Christ from the days of the Apostles until now. The 
 testimony in its favor has been unbroken. Only in compara¬ 
 tively modern times has there been even a respectable minority. 
 
 And it should be clearly understood that we are now asked 
 to abandon a doctrine in regard to the contents and origin of the 
 Holy Scripture which was taught by the Lord Jesus Christ Him¬ 
 self, reaffirmed by His Apostles, and has been believed by the 
 great body of His true disciples from that day to the present 
 time. And it should also be noted here that they have belie\ ed 
 this doctrine to the exclusion of that advocated by Dr. Briggs.. 
 This doctrine of an errant Scripture has been known and urged 
 all along the Christian centuries, but has been heretofore held 
 only by heretics and infidels. It is plain that the issue v ass 
 made as early as in Augustine s time. In a lettei to Jerome 
 he states : “ For it seems to me that most disastrous conse¬ 
 quences must follow upon our believing that anything false is 
 found in the sacred books. That is to say, that the men by 
 whom the Scriptures have been given to us, and committed 
 to writing, did put down in those books anything false. 1 
 In another letter, also to Jerome, he speaks still more plainly: 
 “ Then indeed without any fear of offense, sport is carried on 
 as it were on the greensward : but I should marvel if wc aie 
 not made sport of. For I say it frankly to your affection, I 
 have learned to bestow upon those books of the Scriptures 
 only which are now called canonical such reverence and 
 honor as to believe with absolute positiveness that not any 
 author of them has made any mistake in writing. And if I 
 meet with anything in these writings which would seem to be 
 
 * Moore’s Digest, p. 54. 
 
 \ Augustine’s Letters, London Edition,\ol. ii., p. 80 
 
78 
 
 m conflict with truth, I clo not hesitate in saying that it is 
 nothing else than that either a manuscript is faulty or that the 
 exegete has not succeeded in getting at the sense of the words 
 or that I have failed altogether in penetrating into the sense. 
 
 “ Others, however, I read in such a manner that, no matter in 
 respect to what sanctity of life and acccuracy of scholarship they 
 may be pre-eminent, I do not on that account deem it true 
 because they themselves have so held; but because they were 
 able to persuade (me) of that which is not foreign to truth, 
 either through those canonical writers or through plausible 
 proof, nor do I believe, my brother, that you think otherwise. 
 I utterly refuse to believe, I say, that you wish to have your 
 books read in such a manner as if they were those of the 
 prophets and apostles; as to whose writings it is wicked (nefa- 
 rium) to doubt that that they lack all error.”* 
 
 The views of Origen and Jerome, as put in evidence by Dr. 
 Briggs, do not show that they held that there are errors in the 
 Scripture. This disposes of all the witnesses introduced by 
 Dr. Briggs, in favor of an errant Bible, from the Fathers down 
 to and including the Westminster divines. 
 
 That this has substantially been the unbroken belief of the 
 Church of Jesus Christ until recent times, even among the most 
 liberal members of the evangelical wing of it, is evident from 
 a statement which Dr. Philip Schaff has made on the subject. 
 He says: “ The Bible is thoroughly human, though without 
 error, in contents and form, in the mode of its rise, its compila¬ 
 tion, its preservation, and transmission; yet at the same time 
 thoroughly divine, both in its thoughts and words, in its origin, 
 vitality, energy, and effect.”t And this shows as plainly as 
 anything can, that the view which Dr. Briggs advocates as to 
 the errancy of Scripture marks a clear departure from the an¬ 
 cestral faith. 
 
 It is a serious situation, especially since, in the place of the 
 Scriptural doctrine, tolerance is sought for an unscriptural one 
 which destroys the infallibility of the Bible, as a rule of faith 
 and practice. 
 
 Dr. Briggs earnestly insists on an errant Scripture. But all 
 the errors which he says biblical scholars find in the Bible 
 have been known for generations. He has not given a single new 
 
 * Migne PatrologiaeCursus Completus, Vol. xxxiii., Sancti A. Augustine 
 Opera II., p. 275, Epistola 82. 
 
 f History of the Christian Church, First, Edition, Vol. i., p. 93. 
 
79 
 
 one. Those which he has given have again and again been 
 shown by the great divines and biblical scholars of the Church 
 to be no errors, but only discrepancies which can readily be 
 accounted for. It is intimated that unless left to their freedom 
 in this matter, the critics will, in self-defence, be obliged to 
 publish a catalogue of the errors which they find in the Word 
 of God. By all means, let the so-called errors be tabulated 
 and published. Great good is certain to result from it. For 
 one thing, it will relieve uncertainty, which is always painful. 
 
 And then, also, the publication of the so-called errors is sure 
 tc call to the front devout scholars who will readily show 
 them to be no errors at all, and explain them successfully in 
 harmony with the received doctrine. 
 
 Infidels have long desired to find errors and difficulties in 
 the Word of God, such as would destroy its claim to divine in¬ 
 spiration and authority, and to its infallible truthfulness, and 
 if they were to be found, we may be sure they would have been 
 published long ago. 
 
 The doctrine remains unshaken. There is not only no 
 reason for abandoning it, but every reason for clinging to it 
 more firmly, since by new discoveries made in Bible lands, one 
 difficulty after another disappears, until only a remnant re¬ 
 mains. The hardest tests have been applied to the Bible, often 
 most recklessly, endeavoring in every possible way to invali¬ 
 date its inspiration and truthfulness, but that inspiration and 
 truthfulness are unimpeached. There are textual difficulties, 
 but they do not prove that there were errors in the original 
 Scriptures. Difficulties “ are vanishing factors in the progres¬ 
 sive series of argument; they leave but a minimum of doubt 
 against a maximum of proof.” Years ago Coleridge conceded 
 
 that the errors in detail maybe reduced to some half score 
 of apparent discrepancies,—‘ a petty breach, or a rat-hole in 
 the walls of the temple.'” And it would probably never have 
 occurred to any one but the higher critics, that breaches and 
 rat-holes were a part of the original temple. 
 
 The claim made by Dr. Briggs, therefore, that the doctrine 
 of the full inspiration of the written Word of God, and its en¬ 
 tire truthfulness, is a modern notion and not the doctrine of 
 the Bible and the Church, is wholly without foundation. It is 
 the doctrine which the living Church of Christ has held through 
 all the Christian centuries. It is particularly the doctrine of 
 the Scripture itself, as set forth in the Standards of our Church, 
 
So 
 
 from which Professor Briggs has so widely departed. He has 
 set up in its place another doctrine, according to which, we 
 cannot say, in a real sense, that the written Bible is inspired, 
 since the entire text of it is only of human origin, and its con¬ 
 tents are pervaded by numerous errors. He does not receive 
 as true what is written in the Scripture, because it is the 
 Word of God in the sense that the God of truth is the author 
 of it ; but he receives some things in them as true for the 
 reason that some standard in himself approves them as true. 
 It may be “ the reason trained and strained,” rising to the 
 height of its energies, and so putting us in possession of the 
 truth and power of the Bible. 
 
 But, whatever it be, Dr. Briggs’s theory is contrary to the 
 true doctrine of inspiration, and not only destroys the infalli¬ 
 bility of the Bible as the rule of faith and practice, but sub¬ 
 ordinates it as well to a subjective standard by which it is to 
 be determined, first of all, how much of Scripture we will 
 receive as the truth of God, and it ought therefore to be con¬ 
 demned by this Presbytery. 
 
 GENUINENESS AND AUTHENTICITY. 
 
 The fourth and fifth charges refer to the genuineness and 
 authenticity of the Pentateuch and the book of Isaiah. Dr. 
 Briggs admits the facts given in the specifications on which 
 the prosecution relies to sustain the charges, but he denies that 
 the charges are sustained by them. He affirms, on the con¬ 
 trary, that his views on these questions are contrary neither to 
 the Scripture nor to the Standards, and especially not to tne 
 integrity, credibility and self-evidencing character of the floly 
 Scripture. It is for the court to decide whether or not these 
 claims of Dr. Briggs are correct in the light of Scripture and the 
 Standards. 
 
 Let me say at the outset that the fact that the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, the books of Esther, Kings, Chronicles and others, 
 may have no known authors has no bearing on the question. 
 The Bible claims no particular author for any of these books. 
 The fact that all the Psalms were not written by David also 
 has no relevancy here, for the Bible assigns some of the Psalms 
 to other authors. What we claim is that, when the Bible does 
 assign an author to a particular book, its decision must be 
 regarded as final 
 
 i. We will give our attention first to the Pentateuch . Dr. 
 
8i 
 
 Briggs declares that, as an assured result of scientific investi¬ 
 gation, Moses is not the author of the Pentateuch. For upward 
 of 3,000 years God’s people have believed that, so far as human 
 agency is concerned, the Pentateuch is the work of Moses. 
 An ancient belief like this, which is universal, accredited by 
 the highest testimony, and transmitted through reliable chan¬ 
 nels, cannot be thrown aside without the clearest evidence of 
 its untrustworthiness. It is not denied that Moses may have 
 had many ancient documents and worked them into his own 
 writings, especially in the composition of Genesis; nor that he 
 may have employed amanuenses; nor that editorial glosses of 
 later editions may have crept into the text, notably the account 
 of Moses’ death; but it is asserted that the Pentateuch, sub¬ 
 stantially as it now exists, with its different legislative codes 
 and its veritable contemporaneous history, is to be ascribed to 
 Moses as its author. 
 
 An edition of the writings of Chaucer, put into modern Eng¬ 
 lish and interspersed with editorial glosses, would be, in every 
 proper sense, assigned to the authorship of Chaucer. In pre¬ 
 cisely the same way is Moses believed to be the author of the 
 Pentateuch. This belief cannot be set aside by putting upon 
 it the stigma of being based on mere tradition. It is true that 
 tradition is not always reliable. But let it be remembered that 
 the mosttrustworthy historical events are not capable of mathe¬ 
 matical demonstration. They rest on probable evidence. And 
 a tradition concerning events of the distant past, if it be re¬ 
 ceived from trustworthy sources of information, be uniform, 
 uninterrupted and universal, and have the unbroken support 
 of national writers of the highest credibility and of the purest 
 moral aims, commends itself to our belief on the most reliable 
 historical evidence. This is true of the Mosaic authorship of 
 the Pentateuch. And this tradition is still more worthy of our 
 acceptance, since, as we shall see, it has the unqualified in¬ 
 dorsement of the Holy Scriptures. 
 
 We have placed before you in the indictment a series of 
 texts which give us some of the direct testimony of Scripture 
 itself on this question. These show that the Pentateuch claims 
 
82 
 
 for itself a Mosaic authorship; that it was written before the 
 death of Moses and then placed in the hands of Joshua; that 
 in the period of the Kings, it was regarded as having the high¬ 
 est divine authority; and that in the time of Ezra and Nehe- 
 miah it was an ancient book, greatly venerated. Daniel bears 
 testimony to the estimate placed on it in his day. 
 
 This is the direct testimony which the Old Testament bears 
 to the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. The indirect tes¬ 
 timony to the same effect is very much stronger. 
 
 It is impossible properly to understand the other books of 
 the Old Testament except on the supposition of the existence 
 of the history, laws and truths of the Pentateuch during the 
 period which they respectively cover. The Pentateuch per¬ 
 vades every phase of the life of Israel through all those times. 
 The Book of Ruth is confessedly ancient, but the civil, social 
 and religious life revealed in it cannot be satisfactorily ex¬ 
 plained, except on the supposition that the laws of the Penta¬ 
 teuch were in practical operation at that time. 
 
 Consider now that the historical character of the Pentateuch 
 is vitally bound up with its Mosaic authorship. The two stand 
 or fall together. If the Pentateuch claims for itself a Mosaic 
 authorship, and that claim should be proven to be false, it 
 would lose its historical character and pass into the region of 
 invention and legend. And it will not be denied that, on the 
 face of it, the Pentateuch lays claim to such an authorship, it 
 being conceded that Genesis has a common author with the 
 other four books. 
 
 Critics like Kuenen admit that the Pentateuch claims to 
 have Moses for its author. * 
 
 Bleek positively affirms that: “On this point there can be no 
 doubt that the laws as we find them in these books all claim to 
 be Mosaic in origin.” t 
 
 And I repeat, if this claim be not correct, then the Penta¬ 
 teuch gives us no true history. What appears to be history is 
 
 * The Hexateuch, pp. 18-24. 
 
 + Introduction to the Old Testament, Vol. 1, p. 203. 
 
83 
 
 merely fiction, the literary form, the histrionic dress, to set off 
 with effect the codes contained in it. The laws must either 
 have been given by Moses in the desert, as it is stated, or they 
 were merely put into his mouth by a clever writer. 
 
 Let us now observe that Christ and his Apostles treat the 
 Pentateuch as credible history. Thus our Lord accepts as 
 genuine history the account of the creation; of Noah and the 
 Flood; of Sodom and Gomorrah; of the calling of Moses; of 
 the brazen serpent; of the giving of manna from heaven, 
 and of the giving by Moses of several of the Pentateuchal 
 
 laws. * * * § 
 
 In the same way the Apostles treated as actual historical 
 occurrences, and enforced doctrines and duties from them, 
 the account of the creation of man and woman; of Noah and 
 the Flood; of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; the 
 story of Balaam , the lives of the Patriarchs; the account of 
 the Exodus; and in passages like the seventh and thirteenth 
 chapters of Acts, and the entire Epistle to the Hebrews, the 
 Pentateuch is assumed to be true in all its parts, like the his¬ 
 toric facts on which Christianity is founded.t 
 
 In regard to considerable portions of the Pentateuch, it is 
 positively affirmed that Moses wrote them.J Written books 
 and laws are also mentioned, of’which, by fair implication, Mo¬ 
 ses was the author. § It is also worthy of notice that at the 
 command of Jehovah, Moses wrote religious history before the 
 law was given on Sinai.[| 
 
 But it is not claimed that these positive statements are suf- 
 
 * Matt. xix. 4, 5; xxiv. 37 - 39 ; Luke xvii. 28, 29, 32; Mark xii. 26; John iii. 
 14; vi. 32; Matt. viii. 4; Mark vii. 10; John vii. 22, 23. See also Matt. xv. 4, 5 
 and xix. 7, 8. 
 
 f 1 Tim. ii. 13,14 ; 1 Cor. xi. 8, 9 ; 1 Pet. iii. 20; 2 Pet. ii. 6, 7; ii. 15, 16; 
 Rom. iv. 1-3, 11; ix. 7-13; Gal. iii. 6-8; iv. 22-31; 1 Pet. iii. 6; 1 Cor. x. 1-10; 
 Acts xiii. 17, 18; 2 Cor. iii. 7-13. 
 
 % Exodus xvii. 4; xxiv. 4; xxxiv. 28; Num. xxxiii. 2; Deut. xxxi. 9, 24. 
 
 § Exodus xxiv. 7; Deut. xxxi. 26; xxviii. 58, 61; xxix. 20, 26; xxx. 10. 
 
 I Exodus xvii. 4. 
 
8 4 
 
 ficient to prove the Mosaic authorship of the entire Penta¬ 
 teuch. However, since it is unusual for an author to intersperse 
 his writings with repeated claims of their authorship, some 
 scholars have considered them sufficient to establish that point. 
 
 But we desire here only to call attention to the fact that in 
 the book itself considerable sections are assigned directly to 
 the pen of Moses; and to the further fact that Moses is the 
 only man mentioned whom the Lord used to write those truths 
 which He desired to transmit in permanent form to his Church 
 and the world. These two facts, taken in connection with the 
 testimony of a tradition which is unbroken and universal, raise 
 a strong presumption in favor of the Mosaic authorship sub¬ 
 stantially of the entire document. And as strongly confirma¬ 
 tory of that position, in an indirect way, it should be men¬ 
 tioned, in passing, that the writer of this composition, especially 
 of Genesis and Exodus, is acknowledged to have been a 
 learned Hebrew, who had an intimate acquaintance with Ara¬ 
 bian and Egyptian affairs. There is no man known who meets 
 that condition more exactly than Moses. 
 
 But there is another line of evidence in favor of the direct 
 claim of the Pentateuch itself for its Mosaic authorship which 
 is simply overwhelming. To this your attention is now directed. 
 In the so-called middle books, from the third chapter of Exo¬ 
 dus to the end of Numbers, we have a vast body of laws, regu¬ 
 lations and directions in the form of revelations from Jehovah 
 to His servant Moses. These revelations were so numerous, 
 extended to such a minuteness and variety of detail, and were 
 so largely designed for the intermediate practice of the people 
 that, for their proper understanding and promulgation among 
 them, there was an absolute necessity of reducing them im¬ 
 mediately to writing. And furthermore, the sections which 
 indicate Moses by name as the human source of the contents 
 of these middle books, come so close together, there being 
 often two or more of them in the same chapter, that it amounts 
 to special pleading to deny the Mosaic source of the interven¬ 
 ing portions. Leviticus alone has sixty references to its Mosaic 
 authorship. 
 
85 
 
 The first verse of Deuteronomy gives the title to the whole 
 book, and to affirm that it does not all along claim on the face 
 of it to be the production of Moses, results in a mere war of 
 words. Moses is referred to in Deuteronomy more than twenty- 
 five times as the author of it, and yet Dr. Briggs calls it a 
 pseudonym.* 
 
 It is expressly stated that the Lord said to Moses : “ But as 
 for thee, stand thou here by me, and I will speak unto thee all 
 the commandments, and the statutes, and the judgments, which 
 thoti shalt teach them, that they may do them in the land which 
 I give them to possess it." Then it is written that “ Moses 
 wrote all the zvords of the Lordf as well as “ their goings out 
 according to the commandment of the Lord.” It would in¬ 
 deed have been impossible for Moses to have taught these 
 ordinances to the people, and to put them in permanent form 
 for their guidance in the promised land, unless he had written 
 them down as the document states he did. And that view is 
 greatly strengthened by the fact that in the other books of the 
 Old Testament the people are directed to observe the laws of 
 Moses, and that their confession of sin almost invariably took 
 the form of owning that they had done contrary to the com¬ 
 mandments, statutes and ordinances which the Lord had given 
 them by the hand of His servant Moses. As soon as the 
 great lawgiver was dead Joshua was directed by God, “ to do 
 according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded 
 thee; turn not from it to the right hand or to the left.” He 
 was charged to “meditate day and night in the book of the 
 law; that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is 
 written therein.” This position receives still further strength 
 from the fact, which should not escape our observation here, 
 that soon after the departure of Moses theophany ceased in a 
 measure, and the ^Israelites became the people of the Book. 
 God required them to guide their conduct, after that, by those 
 truths and regulations which He had made known to Moses, 
 and which Moses had written in a book for their direction. 
 This is furthermore directly confirmed by the statement of 
 Luke in the book of Acts, that Moses received “ the lively 
 
 * Bib. Study, p. 224. 
 
86 
 
 oracles ” from the Lord for the purpose of giving them to the 
 Jewish people. * 
 
 This direct claim of the Pentateuch that Moses was the au¬ 
 thor of it, is strongly fortified by an abundance of indirect evi¬ 
 dence which is found also in the document itself. A large 
 number of the laws and regulations which are contained in the 
 Pentateuch, cannot be understood and would indeed be mean¬ 
 ingless, except from the historical background of the Mosaic 
 age, and of the journey of Israel through the wilderness under 
 the leadership of Moses, when the people dwelt in tents, and 
 when Aaron and Eleazar were priests, t 
 
 If now we combine the direct and indirect evidence which 
 the Pentateuch gives concerning itself, we have in it over¬ 
 whelming testimony in favor of its own claim that the great 
 mass of Pentateuchal writings, the historical narratives as well 
 as the legal codes, is, in its matter, substance and essential 
 form, to be credited to the authorship of Moses. 
 
 In his response to the charges of the prosecuting committee 
 Dr. Briggs states : “Though Moses be not the author of the 
 Pentateuch, yet Mosaic history, Mosaic institutions and Mo¬ 
 saic legislation lie at the base of all the original documents, 
 and the name of Moses pervades the Pentateuch as a sweet 
 fragrance, and binds the whole together with irresistible at¬ 
 traction into an organism of divine law.” X 
 
 But the Pentateuch gives a different account of itself. It 
 claims Moses, not merely as a sweet, pervading fragrance, not 
 merely as the author of a few of the germinal laws of its codes, 
 but as a living personal presence from whom, either as author or 
 medium, the great bulk, at least, of its contents was given. 
 It presents him as the grand personality who inspired and di¬ 
 rected everything. And if Mosaic history, institutions and 
 legislation merely “ lie at the base of all the original docu¬ 
 ments, and the name of Moses pervades the Pentateuch as a 
 
 * Acts vii. 38. 
 
 f Leviticus, chapters i. to vii. Exodus, chapters xxv. to xxxi. Leviticus, 
 x. 1, and following: xi. 13, 18; xiii. 46; xiv. 2, 3, 8 ( 33 ~ 53 ); Leviticus, chapter 
 xvi. Numbers, chapters i., ii., iv., ix., and x. 
 
 \ Response to Charges, p. 21. 
 
37 
 
 sweet fragrance ” only, then its own story must be taken at a 
 vast discount; its genuineness discarded, and thus its credi¬ 
 bility will be effectually destroyed, since any document proven 
 to make false claims and shown not to be genuine, is univer¬ 
 sally held to be untrustworthy. 
 
 If Moses is not the author of the Pentateuch then the writer 
 of it perpetrated a fraud, and a fraud so cunningly devised that 
 it has deceived completely the people of God and in fact the 
 whole world, for thousands of years, and deceived also Christ 
 and his Apostles, unless they connived at it. 
 
 And further, if the things related in the Pentateuch as his¬ 
 toric facts, and treated so by Christ and His Apostles, are 
 really not such, then the teachings of a considerable portion 
 of the Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and almost the whole of He¬ 
 brews, particularly the eleventh chapter, with its long list of 
 the noble heroes of the faith, rest on legends, and that fact 
 cannot fail to invalidate the general trustworthiness, not only 
 of the Pentateuch, but of the entire Scriptures, as a rule, in 
 faith and life. It is sure to shake the faith of man in the truth¬ 
 fulness of the whole Bible. 
 
 Take into consideration, now, the further fact that Christ and 
 the Apostles unqualifiedly gave their testimony in favor of the 
 Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch.* Both Josephus and Philo 
 make it clear that when any of the terms, “theLaw ,” “the Law 
 of Moses,” “the Book of Moses ,” and “Moses writings ,” were 
 used by the Jews of that time, the entire Pentateuch was 
 meant.f 
 
 * Matt. 8: 4; 19: 7, 8; 22: 24 (with Mark 12: 19 and Luke 20: 28); Matt. 23: 
 2; Mark 7: 10; 10: 3,4; 12: 26; Luke 2: 22; 16: 29, 31; 20: 37; 24: 44; John 
 1: 17. 45 ; 5 - 45 . 46; 6: 32; 7: 22, 23; Acts 3: 22; 6: 14; 7: 37; 13: 39; 15: 1, 5 * 
 21; 26: 22; 28: 23; Rom. 10: 5, 19; 1 Cor. 9: 9; 2 Cor. 3: 15; Heb. 7: 14; 9: 19; 
 10: 28. 
 
 \ Josephus states: “ All our constitution depends on Moses our legislator.” 
 
 “ For we have not an innumerable multitude of books, disagreeing from and 
 contradicting one another (as the Greeks have), but only 22 books, which con¬ 
 tain the records of all past times, which are justly claimed to be divine, and of 
 them five belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the tradition of the ori¬ 
 gin of mankind until his death.”—Whiston’s Josephus, pp. 30, 861. 
 
 Philo said: “We find, then, that in the sacred oracles delivered by the 
 prophet Moses, there are three kinds of characters; for a portion of them re¬ 
 lates to the creation of the world, a portion is historical, and a third portion is 
 legislative.” On the next page he makes it plain that in that description he 
 includes the entire Pentateuch.—Philo’s Work, Bohn’s Edition. Vol. 3, p. 456, 
 
88 
 
 Dr. Bleek states that in the time of Christ it was the uni¬ 
 versal belief that Moses was the author of the entire Penta¬ 
 teuch. * * * § When, therefore, Christ and the Apostles referred to 
 the law and writings of Moses, they knew that they were 
 understood to endorse the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. 
 This, as teachers and lovers of the truth, as honest men, they 
 could not have done if they knew that Moses did not produce 
 those writings. They looked on Moses not only as a great 
 historic person, but supposed him to be a law-giver, and an 
 author, who left writings behind him, in which he wrote about 
 Christ; and these laws and writings of Moses, in their view, 
 make up the Pentateuch. In ascribing to Moses the Patriar¬ 
 chal institution of circumcision, f the account of the burning 
 bush, X and laws like that of divorce,§ Christ credits Moses 
 with being the author of the Pre-Mosaic, the historical and the 
 legislative portions of the Pentateuch. To say that they simply 
 employed conventional modes of expression, is to evade the 
 natural and legitimate import of their statements. 
 
 The entire fabric and make-up of the Scripturedhen rest on 
 the historical character and Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch. 
 All the writers of the Scripture testified either directly or in¬ 
 directly that Moses was the author of it. Manifestly they fully 
 believed it, and many parts of the Bible are meaningless if that 
 is not the case. Above all, the Mosaic authorship of the Pen¬ 
 tateuch is indorsed by the Lord Jesus Christ himself, the 
 world’s one true Prophet, the Faithful and True witness. This 
 also is the doctrine of our Confession of Faith. In Section 2d 
 of the 19th Chapter, it is distinctly affirmed that God delivered 
 the moral law on Mount Sinai; and in the 3d Section, that He 
 gave the ceremonial law to the people of Israel, as a Church 
 under age, which evidently refers to their life in the desert. 
 
 Against this united stand of the authors of the Holy Scrip- 
 
 * Bleek’s Introduction to the Old Testament, Vol. I., 
 
 f John 7, 22. 
 
 X Mark 12, 26. 
 
 § Mark 10, 5. 
 
 p. 192. 
 
8 9 
 
 ture, Dr. Briggs affirms that the higher criticism, by means 
 of scientific investigation, has reached the “certain result”* * * § 
 that the Pentateuch is not of Mosaic origin. It belongs to that 
 “great mass of the Old Testament” which “ was written by 
 authors whose names or connection with their writings are 
 lost in oblivion.” + Dr. Briggs declares the Pentateuch to be 
 an “ anonymous ” book, whose authenticity and genuineness 
 are maintained by blind traditionalists. J This is one of the 
 obstructions which keep men from the Bible, and which must 
 be destroyed. It is one of the things in reference to which he 
 states, of himself and his fellow critics: “We have undermined 
 the breastworks of traditionalism; let us blow them to atoms. 
 We have forced our way through the obstructions; let us re¬ 
 move them from the face of the earth;” § and so the “ victorious 
 army of the critics ” is determined to force its opinions on the 
 Church. These be swelling words, and bold, but none too 
 bold, if true. Let us see if any known facts bear out this 
 vaunting assertion. 
 
 Dr. Briggs identifies himself with the higher criticism, and 
 accepts the results attained by it, in regard to the matter 
 in hand, as established facts. He does not go the whole 
 length of the advanced radical party of critics, but claims to 
 hold a conservative position. He does not believe as thor¬ 
 oughly in this criticism as the authors of it do, but accepts the 
 principles of it as sound, and holds essentially that its conclu¬ 
 sions in respect to the Pentateuch are true. 
 
 What, then, is the position of this criticism in regard to the 
 origin and composition of the Pentateuch ? Briefly stated it is 
 this: The Pentateuch is the product of a number of indepen¬ 
 dent authors. It contains three conflicting and irreconcilable 
 codes, the earliest of which did not originate until after the 
 times of Moses — some say, not until hundreds of year", 
 afterward. Dr. Driver, whose last book Dr. Briggs has in- 
 
 * Inaugural Address, p. 23. 
 
 f Inaugural Address, p. 23. 
 
 % Biblical Study, pp. 222, 223. 
 
 § Inaugural Address, p. 41. 
 
9 o 
 
 troduced to the American public under his own imprimatur 
 without dissent, and whose views on this subject he therefore 
 fathers, states that the oldest Pentateuchal document, J E, 
 sometimes called the prophetic document, was produced not 
 earlier than 400 years after the times of Moses, perhaps not 
 earlier than 700 years after; that Deuteronomy was written 
 750 years after Moses; and that the Priest-Code, comprising 
 more than two-thirds of the contents of the Pentateuch, was 
 written about 1,000 years subsequent to Mosaic times. This 
 is substantially the view of Dr. Briggs, as shown by the docu¬ 
 ments put in your hands by him. Right here it is worthy of 
 notice that the laws of this Priest-Code were by Christ and the 
 writers of the New Testament ascribed to Moses.* These writ¬ 
 ings, so say the critics, were put together by learned scribes, 
 who acted as redactors, and made emendations and additions 
 of their own. They did their work but passably well, and 
 hence the narrative portion of the document is full of anach¬ 
 ronisms and contradictions. Most of the references to Moses 
 in the wilderness, if not all, and the utterances of Jehovah, 
 are mere literary accommodations to give a becoming form 
 to the composition. And to get at the real facts and truth of 
 the book we must consult the verdict of the higher criticism. 
 
 Most of the higher critics would banish the divine element 
 altogether. Indeed the theory of the higher criticism largely 
 owes its origin to the assumption that the existence of the 
 supernatural in the Holy Scripture, especially in the earlier 
 records of it, destroys its historical credibility. The rest of 
 the higher critics minimize the supernatural element. But 
 Dr. Briggs retains it, and he would have us believe that 
 the Pentateuch, made up as we have described, is yet 
 an inspired book. I can conceive how, with Dr. Briggs’s 
 view of inspiration, it possibly might still be that. But a 
 work so produced could not possibly be considered as in¬ 
 spired, according to the biblical view of inspiration, since it 
 would make the Spirit of God the author of what is false, no 
 matter what the motives of the writers of the Pentateuch may 
 
 * Matt. viii. 4; Heb. ix. 19. 
 
9 1 
 
 have been. If hundreds of years after the age of Moses they 
 wrote their own ideas into this document, and then palmed 
 them off as having been given by Moses himself, the whole 
 thing is a fraud; and we cannot, consistently with the perfect 
 rectitude and truthfulness of God, credit His Spirit with such 
 work. Nor does it in the least relieve the matter to call it a 
 “pious fraud!' The question is, could an inspired writer de¬ 
 liberately deceive ? And therefore there is a general demand 
 among the higher critics for a reconstruction of the doctrine 
 of inspiration. The higher criticism cannot well use its meth¬ 
 ods on a divine text. It insists on treating the Bible like any 
 other human production. 
 
 These results of the higher criticism have been reached by 
 means of a very subtle, minute, and profound investigation of 
 the language and literature of the Pentateuch, a process of ex¬ 
 perts, so deep and searching, they inform us, that not only are 
 men of an ordinarily liberal education unable to comprehend 
 it; but, what is still more curiously wonderful, that they them¬ 
 selves, with their immense learning, are not able to make it 
 plain to the best scholars outside of their own number. 
 
 It is claimed that we ought to have confidence enough in the 
 higher critics to accept their conclusions as true, since they are 
 experts in these matters. The only difficulty about this is, 
 that the critics do not agree, and we know that experts are 
 the worst pathologists in the world, and are suspected of kill¬ 
 ing more patients than the ordinary practitioners. 
 
 Dr Briggs assures us, indeed, that one can accept the results 
 of this criticism and still be a good Presbyterian, loyal to both 
 Scripture and Confession. And it will be agreed to by all that, 
 while it may seem impossible for one holding such views to 
 continue longer to be a Presbyterian, to say nothing more, yet 
 this question must ultimately be decided on what is the real 
 honest truth in the matter. And if it can be shown that these 
 destructive results are true then they must and will be accept¬ 
 ed, and Presbyterians will not be behind their fellow-Christians 
 of other communions in accepting them, 
 
 If what has been regarded as the most trustworthy history 
 of antiquity, distinguished from all contemporaneous literature 
 
9 2 
 
 by its matchless purity, elevation and majesty, can be shown 
 to be false, and if it can be made clear that the grand heroes 
 whose examples have given inspiration to the men and women 
 of many centuries are only the fanciful creations of a fertile 
 oriental brain, much and deeply as we may mourn the loss, we 
 must adjust our thoughts and faith to that state of things. 
 
 When entering on this study, one is astonished at learning 
 that the critics have discovered only facts and difficulties which 
 lia\ e been known for at least a hundred years. Nothing new 
 confronts them. Eichhorn, whom they are so fond of quoting, 
 had in his possession all the facts which they have, and yet he, 
 in spite of those facts, most ably defended the Mosaic author¬ 
 ship of the Pentateuch. * 
 
 But the critics have changed their position in relation to the 
 old facts, and have concluded to use new methods and investi¬ 
 gate the Biblical compositions on the basis of a new hypothesis. 
 Phis hypothesis rests on a series of conjectures, evolved from 
 the instincts of the critics, and directed, shaped and applied as 
 their fancies may dictate. They take the simple and connected 
 narrative of the Pentateuch, and, according to their conjectural 
 rules in regard to expression and style, cut it up into small 
 fragments, ti anspose and rearrange them until the composition 
 is so mixed up that it has more the appearance of a crazy quilt 
 than of anything else. Having arbitrarily assumed that cer¬ 
 tain words and forms of expression belong exclusively to cer¬ 
 tain writers, they divide the Pentateuch on the basis of that 
 assumption. When, therefore, the partition has been made, 
 they find, naturally enough, that it corresponds exactly with 
 the conjectural theory. 
 
 bo certain are they of the correctness of this hypothesis that 
 it, having assigned a certain fragment to one author, they hap¬ 
 pen to discover some word or peculiarity in it, which they have 
 befoie decided to be the exclusive property of another author, 
 the verse, or section, containing it, is likely to be declared an in¬ 
 terpolation, and must therefore be transferred to its proper place. 
 
 * Einleitung in das Alte Testament, §§ 3-11. 
 
93 
 
 This illustrates the method by which these destructive con¬ 
 clusions concerning the Pentateuch are reached. 
 
 But these conclusions thus reached are in the highest degree 
 improbable. 
 
 It is impossible to determine anything with certainty about 
 the style and peculiarities of an author from single words 
 and short sentences. No author in any age of the world has 
 either had a monopoly of certain words and expressions, as 
 against all others, or been confined to their use. It is an un¬ 
 warrantable assumption that a Hebrew writer in ancient times 
 could express his thoughts in only one form. The theory rea¬ 
 sons throughout on a low and misleading plane, and, by means 
 of uncertain guesses, makes (divisions and difficulties where 
 really none exist. To show that I am not overstating the mat¬ 
 ter let me cite the application of these critical processes to the 
 14th Chapter of Genesis: 
 
 We are told .... that this chapter is derived from a 
 different source fiom those which precede and tollow, because 
 it does not contain the least hint of the wickedness of the men 
 of Sodom ’ and because, conversely, the author of Chapters 18 
 and 19 knows nothing whatever of the conquest of the five cit¬ 
 ies, nor of the rescue of their inhabitants by Abraham. It is 
 also distinguished from the other chapters by marked linguistic 
 peculiarities, and forms a part of the general history of nations, 
 unlike other narratives about Abraham.” 
 
 But here the doctors differ. Dillman thinks that, “ since, in 
 other respects than those alluded to, it agrees with other por¬ 
 tions of Genesis in language, and also contains references to 
 other sections as well as explanatory glosses, it must be re¬ 
 garded as a very old story, which has been incorporated by one 
 of the three narrators, J, E, or P. Elohim in v. 18 would point 
 to E or P, and since this section does not agree with P’s or¬ 
 dinary mode of describing such things, nor with the language 
 peculiar to P, therefore it is to be assigned to E. Yahwe, in 
 v. 22, is probably an interpolation. The redactor, however, 
 added to the original form of the story such explanatory re¬ 
 marks as are found in vv. 2, 3, 7, &c., and worked into it vv. 
 
94 
 
 17-20, which can only have been written by a member of the 
 Kingdom of Judah, whereas E belonged to the northern King¬ 
 dom. Kuenen, on the other hand, calls this a fragment of a 
 post-exilic version of Abraham’s life worked by the redactor, 
 and asserts categorically that it does not belong to J E, from 
 which it differs in point of form, besides being excluded by 
 Chapter 18. Neither can it be taken from P, although con¬ 
 taining some of P’s characteristic words, for it falls outside 
 the scope of that work and is written in a wholly different 
 style.” * 
 
 This, we are soberly told, is scientific scholarship, the results 
 of which must not be disputed. But such a method of criticism 
 suggests the query rather, whether the results of it are not 
 worthy more of ridicule than respect. 
 
 But again, wholly unmindful of the different conditions, and 
 the different intent in and for which they were enacted, the 
 critics create positive contradictions between the different 
 codes of the Pentateuch, when, in view of all the circumstances, 
 a unity can readily be traced through them all, and sufficient 
 reasons given for their differences and for their origin at the 
 times indicated in the document. If we concede the existence 
 of three different codes of laws in the Pentateuch, their differ¬ 
 ences can be more readily adjusted on the basis of the tradi¬ 
 tional view than on that of the higher criticism. If we allow 
 our minds to be carried along by the simple narrative, it will 
 readily occur to us that the first stratum of laws, given three 
 months after the Exodus, contains the “ rough sketch ” of the 
 legislation of the coming theocratic government; that the 
 second stratum of laws were given by Jehovah to the Hebrews 
 as the permanent code of theocratic rule in the wilderness, and 
 that the third stratum was a popular presentation of this theo¬ 
 cratic law, given forty years later, just before entrance into 
 Canaan, and specifically adapted to the agricultural life on 
 which they were about to enter. This perfectly natural view 
 of the matter gives unity and consistency to the whole docu- 
 
 * Pentateuchal Criticism, pp. 320, 321. 
 
95 
 
 tnent. Nor is it so difficult to snow that the form of the 
 narrative is a credible one. 
 
 It lies as a strong presumption against the higher criticism 
 that it creates divisions where harmony really exists. Any 
 fair theory is bound to adopt an interpretation of a document 
 which is in harmony with the facts and claims of the document 
 itself, if that interpretation can be shown to be at all reasona¬ 
 ble. That the Pentateuch can be reasonbly interpreted in 
 harmony with its own claims, is evident from the fact that this 
 has been the belief of God’s people for 3,000 years, and has 
 commended itself to a large number of ripe scholars, during all 
 that time. It is open to the higher critics to find, by all fair 
 means, a better solution of difficulties if possible, but they have 
 so multiplied and exaggerated the difficulties as to discredit 
 the methods they employ. 
 
 It ought to occur to the higher critics that truth is simple, 
 clear as light, and easily made intelligible to ordinary people ; 
 and that, if they are burdened with a great truth, it is incum¬ 
 bent on them to exhibit this truth to the Church and the 
 world, in all its simplicity; and especially, since this is a ques¬ 
 tion of faith, to make it plain by Scripture proof. As Presby¬ 
 terians we believe in settling everything by an appeal to the 
 Word of God, the “ infallible truth ” and “ divine authority ” 
 of which are evidenced by “ the consent of all the parts .” Our 
 Confession states : “ The infallible rule of interpretation of 
 Scripture is Scripture itself; and, therefore, when there is a 
 question about the true and full sense of any Scripture (which 
 is not manifold, but one) it may be searched and known by 
 other places that speak more clearly.” * 
 
 On the face of it, the Scriptures testify strongly against the 
 results of this criticism; but if we are in error about that, the 
 critics ought to point out the places in Scripture which make 
 their view more clear. Again, it weighs strongly against the 
 probable truthfulness of these critical results that the Penta¬ 
 teuch contains, not only a revelation from God to his people, 
 
 * Confession of Faith, Chap. i. Sec. 9. 
 
9 6 
 
 but is the record by which that revelation is communicated and 
 certified to them. Hence it is that this portion of Scripture is 
 spoken of in the Bible as the testimony of Jehovah, the right¬ 
 eousness of which is everlasting, which is the heritage of his 
 people, and so very sure that it may be implicitly trusted.'* 
 This certainly cannot be affirmed of a record so faulty that 
 even the learned critics are not able to determine the exact 
 residuum of truth in it. Such testimony cannot be very sure, 
 and it is scarcely conceivable that the infinitely good and 
 truthful God would have embodied it in so deceptive a form, 
 especially since it was so necessary to have it plainly under¬ 
 stood. 
 
 But further the theory of the higher criticism is not con¬ 
 sistent with itself. If Moses lived in a rough and cruel age, 
 as the critics affirm; if he was not a conspicuous and grand 
 figure in the history of Israel, but simply the semi-barbarous 
 chieftain of a horde of uncivilized people, and if but few if any 
 laws came really from his hands, then there could have been 
 neither reason nor motive for his compatriots of a later age to 
 seek the authority of his name for the enforcement of laws and 
 customs. If Moses did not make the grand position and gain 
 the commanding influence for himself by the conspicuous part 
 which he played at the beginning of the Jewish nation, as 
 recorded in the Pentateuch, it could be no commendation of a 
 statute to have his name appended to it. 
 
 Moreover, the narrative of the Pentateuch proceeds in a way 
 so simple, straightforward, and apparently so truthful, and 
 with such accuracy of minute detail in the delineation of history, 
 biography, incidents, experiences, customs, that really no one 
 but a contemporary, personally familiar with the life and cir¬ 
 cumstances of the people, could have written it. Let any one 
 sit down and read consecutively the last four books of.the Pen¬ 
 tateuch with an unbiased mind, and he will come to the almost 
 irresistible conclusion that the events and laws contained 
 therein were written down from time to time on the spot as they 
 
 * Psalm 19: 7; 78: 5; 119: 3 I, III, 144. 
 
97 
 
 occurred and were delivered. Had the scribe, who is supposed to 
 have drawn up the Pentateuch in the timesof Josiah, Ezra, or 
 some other distant post-Mosaic period, been even mare learned 
 than our higher critics, he could not have been so exactly true 
 to Israelitish and Egyptian life. If he really did that, his lit¬ 
 erary aptitude was marvelous beyond all experience. 
 
 Herodotus was no mean historian for his day, and is at pres¬ 
 ent coming into favor again with the critics. He lived about 
 the time of Ezra, but it is well known that his account of 
 Egyptian life contains many inaccuracies. He was too far re¬ 
 moved in time to picture the details of life correctly. 
 
 The Pentateuch is the product of a contemporary, and since 
 the personality of Moses prevades the whole, and the docu¬ 
 ment bears the stamp of his character, it points unerringly to 
 him as the veritable author. He was the one man of the time 
 so trained, and so placed by divine Providence, as to be best 
 fitted to perform such a literary task. He had the best educa¬ 
 tion which the most enlightened nation then afforded. He 
 lived at a time when there was a high degree of literary cul¬ 
 ture both in Egypt and Syria, and when a set of beautifully 
 formed Semitic letters, suitable for such a literary work, had 
 been invented. Such a combination of favorable circumstances 
 did not exist in those post-Mosaic periods to which the critics 
 would assign the origin of the Pentateuch. And yet in the 
 face of all this, the critics deny that the Pentateuch was pro¬ 
 duced in the one age when every condition favored its produc¬ 
 tion, and that it originated from the one man who was in 
 every way most qualified to be its author. These facts of his¬ 
 tory justly throw grave doubts on the correctness of the con¬ 
 clusions of the critics. 
 
 When the writer of a document relates facts which are found 
 to be in perfect harmony with the contemporaneous life, cus¬ 
 toms and incidents of the people concerning whom he writes, 
 showing that he had an accurate acquaintance with those 
 matters of which he treats, his writings become invested with 
 the highest degree of historical credibility. And when the 
 statements which he makes concerning the people of whom he 
 
- n 
 
 9 ° 
 
 writes, are further corroborated by the history and traditions 
 of other peoples, especially if of hostile peoples, then that 
 credibility rises to a degree of probability which is not very 
 different from certainty. 
 
 A high deg ree of credibility must be accorded to the writ¬ 
 ings of the Pentateuch from its minutely truthful representa- * 
 tions of the contemporaneous life of the Hebrew people ; and 
 when, now, the ever-accumulating facts brought to light by 
 modern researches in Syria, along the Euphrates Valley, and 
 especially in Egypt, corroborate the correctness of the things 
 narrated in the Pentateuch, it becomes invested with a degree 
 of probability which gives assurance of truthfulness. The 
 Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch is thus seen to be sup¬ 
 ported by the best canons of historical criticism. No wonder 
 the higher critics are as silent as the grave about recent dis¬ 
 coveries in Asia and Egypt. These discoveries completely 
 overturn their conjectures. The spades used on those ancient 
 fields constantly bring to light new facts which confirm the 
 exact truthfulness of Old Testament history. 
 
 An instructive instance of this is furnished by some recently 
 discovered facts to which Professor Sayce, of Oxford, has called 
 attention. The higher critics have uniformly declared that the 
 Melchisedek of Genesis is a myth. But, now, writings of this 
 very Melchisedek have been dug up on the shores of the Nile, 
 in which he speaks of the city of Jerusalem of which he was 
 the prince/' And thus the 14th chapter of Genesis is shown to 
 be not legend, as the critics affirm, but veritable history. 
 
 Yet, in the face of all this testimony, and in spite of all prob¬ 
 abilities to the contrary, the critics, with whom Dr. Briggs 
 takes his stand, deny the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. 
 The voice of history must be silenced, the testimony of the 
 Scriptures, of Christ and the Apostles must be discredited, that 
 the conjectures which the critics have evolved from their own 
 consciousness may be regarded as inerrant. 
 
 But Dr. Briggs tells us that the conclusions of the higher 
 
 * Public Opinion, December, 1891. 
 
99 
 
 criticism are approved by consensus of the scholars who are 
 experts in this matter. 
 
 he has given us the names of 147 biblical scholars as wit¬ 
 nesses in favor of his views. It is difficult to see how the 
 opinions of these scholars can be allowed to influence our 
 judgment in the matter before us in any way. It is no new 
 thing for biblical scholars in European universities to take 
 erroneous views of Holy Scripture. The only new thing about 
 it is that these names should be cited as authority in a court 
 of the Presbyterian Church. In that list of 147 names there 
 are some evangelicals, but we must take the term evangelical 
 in a very broad sense respecting most of them. Some names, 
 like F. H. Kruger, C. H. H. Wright, and P. Ray Palmer, clearly 
 ought not to be in that list, for they do not hold the divisive 
 critical theory. Certainly thirty-four of these scholars do not 
 believe in the supernatural in the Bible at all, and they are 
 the great leaders of the school of higher criticism. For in¬ 
 stance, Kuenen says that they ‘‘form a conception of Israel’s 
 religious development totally different from that which, as 
 any one may see, is set forth in the Old Testament, and sketch 
 primitive Christianity in lines which even the acutest reader 
 cannot recognize in the New.”* Again he states: “ So long 
 as we derive a separate part of Israel’s religious life directly 
 from God, and allow the supernatural or immediate revelation 
 to intervene in even one single point, so long also our view of 
 the whole continues to be incorrect, and we see ourselves 
 necessitated to do violence to the well-authenticated contents 
 of the historical documents. It is the supposition of a natural 
 development alone which accounts for all the phenomena.” t 
 The presence of the supernatural in the Bible, in the form 
 of miracles and predictive prophecy, is to these scholars prima 
 facie evidence of the untrustworthiness of the narratives in 
 which they occur. They do not hesitate to say that, when 
 Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, in whom the Old Testament 
 writings and prophecies are fulfilled, He made a mistake. A 
 sound exegesis, say these critics, of which Jesus was ignorant. 
 
 * Modern Review, 1880, p. 463. 
 f Prophets and Prophecy, p. 585. 
 
IOO 
 
 shows that there are no such prophecies in the Old Testament. 
 G. C. Workman declares that there is no specific prophecy of 
 Christ in the Old Testament. Five of the 147 names are Uni¬ 
 tarians, 17 are Jews, and nearly all the others do not hold to 
 the inspiration of the Scripture as taught in our Standards, 
 while a number of them do not believe in any inspiration at all 
 Dr. Driver defines inspiration to be nothing more than “ spirit¬ 
 ual insight.” 
 
 Even such a moderate man as Dillmann does not believe in 
 the historic truth of Genesis. In the 5th Edition of his Com¬ 
 mentary on Genesis, p. 215, he says, on the history of Abraham, 
 that “ it is now well understood that these narratives concerning 
 the Patriarchs do not belong to the realm of exact history, but 
 to that of legend.” On the same page, and the following, he 
 quotes Popper as saying that, “ The stories of the Patriarchs 
 are derived from Nature Myths;” Noeldeke and Stade: “The 
 Patriarchs were never in Canaan;” and Hitzig: “ that these nar¬ 
 ratives are altogether fabulous.” 
 
 He explains the destruction of Korah, Dathan and Abiram, 
 as narrated in Numbers 16, by saying that Moses threw them 
 alive into a hole which he had made in his tent, and destroyed 
 about 200 of the rebellious by fire. 
 
 If these scholars, then, are any authority on the interpreta¬ 
 tion of Scripture, we must go very much further than Dr. 
 Briggs would have us go; for if their opinions are of any 
 weight, we shall really have no Bible left. They are wise 
 above all that is written, and the witticism of Sydney Smith 
 aptly fits them all: “ Their forte is science , and their foible omni¬ 
 science .” All the leaders of this criticism in Europe acknowl¬ 
 edge fully that their criticism is the diametrical opposite of 
 the unanimous teaching of the New Testament. If a Protes¬ 
 tant professor in Continental Europe who teaches this theory 
 should assert that his teaching about the Pentateuch is agree¬ 
 able to the teaching of the New Testament, he would be 
 laughed out of his chair. In regard to all these critical 
 scholars, we may well heed the warning of Paul: “ O Timo¬ 
 thy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding pro¬ 
 fane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so- 
 
IOI 
 
 •called: which some, professing, have erred concerning the 
 faith.”* 
 
 The questions involved here cannot be decided by the con¬ 
 clusions reached by these biblical scholars whom Dr. Briggs has 
 cited as witnesses, but must be determined by the Presbyterian 
 view of the Scripture as set forth in our standards. 
 
 It would be amply sufficient to offset this list of names sim¬ 
 ply by the authority of Christ and the writers of the New Tes¬ 
 tament. But then it is well to remember that there are many 
 eminent biblical scholars who utterly reject this critical the¬ 
 ory as unsafe and unsound, and not warranted by facts. 
 
 The list given here is only partial, and might be greatly in¬ 
 creased.! 
 
 * i Tim. vi. 20, 21. 
 f Prof. A. H. Sayce, Oxford. 
 
 Principal Geo. C. M. Douglass, Glasgow. 
 
 Principal Alfred Cave, Hackney College. 
 
 Prof. James Robertson ( The Early Religion of Israel, 1S92). 
 
 Prof. C. H. H. Wright (Introd. to the O. T., 1890). 
 
 Prof. John Kennedy (A Popular Argument for the Unity of Israel , 1891). 
 Prof. John Forbes ( The Servant of the Lord in Israel, xl.-lxvi., 1890). 
 
 Rector F. Watson ( The Law and the Prophets—Hulsean Lecture for 1882). 
 Prof. Stanley Leathes ( The Law in the Prophets, 1891). 
 
 Very Rev. R. Payne-Smith ( The Mosaic Authorship and Credibility of the Pen¬ 
 tateuch, 1869). 
 
 James Sime, F. R. S. E. ( The Kingdom op all Israel, 1S83). 
 
 Prof. Robert Watts (The Newer Criticism, etc., 1882). 
 
 Principal Rainy (The Bible and Criticism, 1878). 
 
 Bishop A. C. Hervey (The Books of Chronicles in Relation to the Penta- 
 < tench, etc., 1892). 
 
 Bishop C. J. Ellicott (Christus Comprobator, 1892). f> 
 
 Rev. Henry Hayman, D. D. (“Prophetic testimony to the Pentateuch. 
 
 Bib. Sac., 1892). 
 
 Pastor Fr. Roos (Die geschichlichkeit des Pentateuchs, 1883). 
 
 Adolf Zahn (Das Denteronomium, 1890). 
 
 Eduard Bohl (Zum Gesetz und zum Zeugniss, 1883). 
 
 Pastor G. Schumann (Die WellJuiusenche Pentateuchtheorie, 1892). 
 Bredenkamp (Gesetz und Propheten, 1881). 
 
 R. S. Poole (“Date of the Pentateuch—Theory and Facts, "Coni. Review, 1887). 
 Conder (“ Ancient Men and Modern Critics,” Cont. Review, 1887). 
 Edersheim (Prophecy and History in Relation to the Messiah, Warburton Lec- 
 
 itures, 1880-84). 
 
 Waller (“ Is Genesis a Compilation?” Theological Monthly, 1891). 
 
 Pastor Naumann (Das Ente Buch der Bibel, 1890). 
 
 Prof. William H. Green (Moses and the Pentateuch Vindicated). 
 
 Prof. E. Cone Bissell (The Pentateuch). 
 
 Vos (Mosaic Origin of the Pentateuch Codes, 1886). 
 
 Stebbins (A Study of the Pentateuch, 1881). 
 
 S. C. Bartlett ( Sources of History w the Pentateuch , Stone Lecture, 1882). 
 Rabbi I. M. Wire (Pronaos to Holy Writ, 1891). 
 
 Prof. C. M. Mead (Romans Dissected, 1891). 
 
 Lias (“ Wellhausen on the Pentateuch,” in the Theological Review , 1890). 
 
102 
 
 In addition to these there are worthy of mention such 
 American scholars as Drs. W. J. Beecher, John S. Davis, C. 
 M. Hemphill, C. M. Mead, W. W. Moore, W. H. Jeffers, W. 
 M. McPheters, Stephen Yerkes, T. N. Chambers, Howard 
 Osgood, Ira M. Price and John Dewitt, all of whom are as 
 sound in the faith as they are eminent in scholarship. 
 
 It is a well-known fact that some of the ablest German 
 scholars are treating the higher criticism with unsparing ridi¬ 
 cule, and speak of its conclusions as absurd, ridiculous and im¬ 
 possible. The pastors of Germany, in view of the deadening 
 influence this criticism has on the spiritual life of the people, 
 are almost solidly arrayed against it, and do no longer read 
 the books of these professors. 
 
 Indeed, it is an open secret, that, in Germany, the higher 
 criticism, so far as the Old Testament is concerned, is now a 
 dead issue. It is entirely unproductive. The rationalistic 
 critics there are now centering their destructive methods on 
 the New Testament. 
 
 There is a very large number of scholars in the departments 
 of ethnology, comparative religion, archaeology and explora¬ 
 tion in Bible lands, men of broad minds and extensive learn¬ 
 ing, who repudiate the destructive results of the higher criti¬ 
 cism, and declare that the ascertained facts in their various 
 fields of labor bear favorable testimony to the credibility of 
 Old Testament history, and especially that of the Pentateuch.* 
 
 In truth, the theory of the higher criticism is wholly inade¬ 
 quate to arrive at just and fair conclusions in reference to the 
 Holy Scriptures. It is unscientific in that it ignores some of 
 the most important facts involved, especially the personal pres¬ 
 ence of Almighty God with the Hebrews, as their Guide, Law¬ 
 giver, Counselor and Friend, the one stupendous fact, which 
 stands out conspicuously above all other facts, and exerted an 
 influence so potent, not only on the people of Israel, but on the 
 entire world, that it has not yet spent its force. An abundance 
 of credible evidence proves this personal presence, so that to 
 
 * Pentateuchal Criticisms, pp. 368-398. 
 
io3 
 
 set it aside in the investigation of the documents which were 
 produced under the influence and inspiration of that Gracious 
 Presence is unpardonable. But the higher criticism asserts 
 dogmatically that the Bible must be investigated like any hu¬ 
 man production. In a modified sense that may be granted. 
 Yet, since we have shown that the Scripture is the product of 
 the double authorship of God and man, in which, however, the 
 Divine is everywhere predominant and supreme, the entire ig¬ 
 noring of the divine element in the study of the Book is some¬ 
 thing worse than a blunder. Dr. Howard Osgood has well 
 said: “ If the higher criticism, as now defined by a living writer, 
 means criticism only of the human side of the Bible, its in¬ 
 competency and incompletehess are self-confessed, unless the 
 Bible is only a human book. It would decide fundamental 
 points, and, in the hands of its chief disciples, claims to decide 
 fundamental points, by considering only the human side oi 
 the Bible.”* Once admit the Divine element and the Divine 
 Presence to their proper place in the theory of investigation, 
 and difficulties will either disappear or be vastly minimized, 
 and the Pentateuch will be seen to be a harmonious unit, con¬ 
 sistent with itself and with the entire Scripture. 
 
 2. By the same divisive method the higher critics have, in 
 their judgment, reached the certain conclusion that the book of 
 Isaiah is made up of a heterogeneous medley of the productions 
 of various authors, most of which have, by some clever scribe, 
 been arbitrarily assigned to our prophet. 
 
 Eichhorn carried the separatist theory so far that he divided 
 the prophecy into eighty-five distinct oracles, which he attrib¬ 
 uted to many different authors and times. Ewald, whose an¬ 
 alysis Dr. Cheyne judges not to be excessive, traced the hands 
 of at least seven authors in the book of Isaiah, and called the 
 principal author of the last part the “ Great Unknown .” He 
 denied to Isaiah the last 27 chapters, chapter xiii. to xiv. 13, 
 the first part of chapter xxi., and chapters xxxiv. to xxxix., 
 thus crediting him with less than half of the contents of the 
 
 * Bibliotheca Sacra, 1892, p. 541. 
 
io4 
 
 book which bears his name. Presumably, this is the view of 
 Dr. Briggs, since he affirms that Isaiah is not the author of 
 half of this prophecy. Some of the higher critics, however, 
 assign the historical chapters, 36 to 39, to Isaiah, although 
 the tendency among them is to take more, rather than less, 
 from him. 
 
 The critics reach this conclusion concerning Isaiah princi¬ 
 pally by means of three independent lines of argument, based 
 respectively; first, on differences of style, expression and con¬ 
 struction; second , on differences of subject-matter, especially 
 differences and originality of theological ideas; and third , on 
 what may be called the historical situation, according to which 
 it is assumed that a prophet must ^peak from his own historical 
 environment to his contemporaries, and that, strictly speaking, 
 he cannot predict historical events of the distant future, nor 
 found a promise on events which are to occur at some future 
 time. 
 
 It should be stated here that this criticism is a purely nega¬ 
 tive one, based entirely on considerations which are subjective 
 to the critics, on their mere impressions, wholly unsupported, 
 as we shall see, by historical evidence of any kind. Yet the 
 critics accuse all those who differ from them, in this view of 
 Isaiah, of narrowness, of theological prejudice, and of a want 
 of conscience. Dr. Cheyne charges the orthodox with per¬ 
 verseness of heart in resisting the conclusions of this criticism, 
 and yet states it as a fact to be regretted, that “ we are left 
 wholly to conjecture in determining Isaiah’s literary work.” * 
 But may not the orthodox be excused for refusing to abandon 
 a view of Scripture, which has been sacredly held by many 
 1 generations of God’s people, for a mere conjecture; and 
 further, express their regret that those who have obtained 
 commanding positions in the Church as teachers, should not 
 only receive, but insist on teaching, conjectures in place of the 
 truth ? 
 
 Nothing need be said here in regard to the first two lines of 
 
 * Article Isaiah , Encyclopedia Britannica. 
 
argument, which have reference to style and theological ideas 
 respectively. It is admitted by the critics that the entire book 
 is pervaded by the characteristics, the thoughts, the aim and 
 spirit of Isaiah. They say that the disputed parts were 
 written by his disciples who were imbued with his spirit, and 
 having his writings before them, tried to imitate his style, and 
 used his words, his forms of expression and modes of thought. 
 After such an admission, it cannot be so very difficult to con¬ 
 cede that, so far as style and contents are concerned, Isaiah 
 himself wrote it. 
 
 The one argument, which is absolutely conclusive with the 
 higher critics, rests on the pre-supposition that the prophet 
 has his vision limited by the contemporaneous circumstances 
 of his own times; that he cannot transport himself to occupy 
 a future point of view, and from it narrate events which 
 have no immediate connection with his own historical situa¬ 
 tion. 
 
 Accordingly, Isaiah could not have written, for instance, 
 the last twenty-seven chapters of his book, since the writers 
 of them, seemingly, occupied a position one hundred and 
 seventy years in advance of our prophet at Babylon, when 
 Israel was in captivity, and relates events which grew out of 
 those historical environments. 
 
 Says one of these critics: “ If, in any other book , you saw the 
 name of Cyrus, you would say at once that the book was not 
 written before the time of Cyrus. Then you must, in consist¬ 
 ency , say so here.”* And this reveals precisely what the critics 
 mean when they insist that in our investigations of the Bible, 
 we must treat it exactly as we would any other book. We must 
 exclude the divine element from the process and handle it 
 merely as the production of fallible men. “A prophetic book 
 must, in consistency , be treated as if it were not prophetic ” ; 
 and it must not be conceded that a holy prophet of God can 
 obtain knowledge of future events in any other way than through 
 natural channels. 
 
 * Introduction to the Bible Commentary on Isaiah, p. n. 
 
lob 
 
 Knobel says in reference to the possibility of the 53d chap¬ 
 ter of Isaiah being a prophecy of Christ: “ How could it, since 
 the writer lived five hundred years before Christ ? ”* 
 
 Dr. Delitzsch has well observed: “Modern criticism finds 
 itself hampered between two prejudices : there is no real 
 prophecy; there is no real miracle. This criticism calls itself 
 free, but upon closer examination it is found in a dilemma. In 
 this dilemma it has two magic words with which it fortifies it- 
 self against every impression of historical evidence. As it trans¬ 
 forms the histories of miracles into traditions and myths so it 
 either transforms the prophecies into predictions after the event, 
 or brings the predicted events into such close connection with 
 the prophet, that to foresee them did not require inspiration 
 but only combination.”+ 
 
 The more evangelical wing of the critics would still credit 
 the prophet with a certain kind of inspiration, which is, after 
 all, no real inspiration, but only a quickening of the prophet’s 
 mind or consciousness, which enabled him clearlv to see the 
 drift of things, and so point to a combination of events as about 
 to happen. In this he was likely to be correct, since it was 
 only the logical outcome of what was occurring about him; but, 
 
 , being human, he might also be mistaken. 
 
 Dr. Driver in his last book, which Dr. Briggs has edited in 
 this country under his own name, affirms, without qualification, 
 that “ pre-exilic prophecies are uniformly accommodated to the 
 occasion out of which they arise.” “ To base a promise upon 
 a condition of things not yet existent , and without any point of 
 contact with the circumstances or situation of those to whom 
 it is addressed, is alien to the genius of prophecy.’'J 
 
 The possibility, therefore, of predicting future events, which 
 are not immediately connected with the prophet’s own histor¬ 
 ical situation, must be rigidly excluded on the a priori assump¬ 
 tion that it is unscientific and contrary to sound principles of 
 
 • r Introduction to Isaiah, Bible Commentary, p. 10. 
 t Introduction to Dr. Delitzsch’s Commentary on Isaiah. 
 X Introduction to Literature of the O. T., pp. 200, 210. 
 
psychology. On this ground it is denied that Isaiah is the au¬ 
 thor of more than half the book which bears his name. 
 
 I cannot do more here than call attention to the far-reach¬ 
 ing consequences of this dictum of the higher critics on the 
 trustworthiness of the Bible as the Word of God. The Chris¬ 
 tian religion rests largely on the historic facts of prophecy. 
 The birth, the death and resurrection of Christ were subjects 
 of predictive prophecy, and this theory will inevitably involve 
 in doubt these great truths of our faith. But the hypothesis is 
 unfounded and cannot be admitted. The inter-relations which 
 we find between the different parts of the Old Testament, but 
 more especially between the two Testaments, are beyond the 
 power of any good man to construct from the drift of his own 
 environment, however much his mind may have been quickened 
 by the Divine Spirit. They were distinctly revealed to the 
 prophet by the Lord. 
 
 Reference has already been made to this matter under the 
 charge on prophecy. We would here only call attention to 
 the fact that the book of Isaiah itself furnishes an instance 
 of predictive prophecy which overthrows the hypothesis. In 
 chapters eight and ten, which are both conceded to be Isaiah’s, 
 it is definitely predicted that Assyria, after devastating Samaria, 
 would bring Judah also to the brink of a similar peril, but would 
 then be hurled back and be itself overthrown. 
 
 This prophecy could not have grown out of the historical 
 situation of the times. It was given during the early years of 
 Ahab’s reign, when Assyria was not only a friendly power, but 
 was Judah’s ally. Thirty years after it had its exact fulfilment 
 in the Assyrian invasion, and King Hezekiah was strengthened 
 by it courageously to hold out to the last against the attack and 
 demand of the Assyrian monarch. The a priori assumption of 
 the critics utterly breaks to pieces on a substantial fact like that. 
 
 Both the authenticity and genuineness of the entire book of 
 Isaiah have been demonstrated by authors whose scholarship 
 will not be disputed by even the highest of the higher critics." 
 
 ^Alexander on Isaiah. The Servant of the Lord, by Rev. Joseph Forbes, 
 D.D. An Introduction to the Old Testament, Rev. Ch. H. Wright, D.D. 
 Rev.' George Rawlinson, in Pulpit Commentary. Dr. W. Kay, Introduction 
 to Bible Commentary. 
 
The book itself gives evidence of its essential unity on the 
 basis of the thoughts and forms of expression found in the Pen¬ 
 tateuch. The second part, rising far above the first in concep¬ 
 tion, is the necessary complement of it, and the four historical 
 chapters, thirty-six to thirty-nine, form the chain which firmly 
 unites the two. 
 
 Since the captivity had been foretold,-a prophecy predicting 
 the restoration was also needed to comfort God’s people in the 
 trials of discipline, to wean them from idolatry to a spiritual 
 service of God, to give them true views of the divine omni¬ 
 science and omnipotence, and in due time to be the means of 
 inducing Cyrus to issue the edict of the return. And the fact 
 that it influenced Cyrus to order the return of the Jews argues * 
 strongly in favor of the Isaianic character of the prophet. 
 
 As the writer of the disputed parts moves in the circle of 
 Palestinian thoughts, customs and images, and amidst the 
 hills, valleys, towns, and by the seaside of Palestine, and 
 gives a description of the condition of the Jewish people which 
 ■could never have been true of them during any time of the 
 exile, he could not have been a prophet of the exile. The 
 Jews also were accustomed to use great care in preserving the 
 names of their prophets and public men. The names of proph¬ 
 ets who wrote only a chapter or two have been carefully trans¬ 
 mitted to us. In view of this fact it is certainly inconceivable 
 that the noblest body of prophecy in Scripture, dealing in the 
 grandest truths, and inspiring the sublimest hopes, was written 
 by a prophet, or a number of prophets, whose names were 
 allowed to drop into utter oblivion by these very Jews to whom 
 it proved to be such an unfailing source of help and comfort. 
 
 The external historical evidences strongly support the gen¬ 
 uineness and authenticity of the prophecy. For about 2,500 
 years, Isaiah has been held to be the author of the entire book 
 which bears his name, with a single dissenting voice in the 
 12th Century. The Septuagint, at about 300 B. C., assigned 
 the whole book to him. That points back to the decision of 
 the great Synagogue, and makes it morally certain that those 
 astute Jewish scholars, Ezra and Nehemiah, whose judgment 
 
109 
 
 in this matter must certainly be regarded as in the highest de¬ 
 gree trustworthy, held the same view. 
 
 No Jew before Christ, or for many centuries after him, ever 
 expressed a doubt in respect to the authorship of Isaiah. 
 Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Nahum, and Zephaniah quote from the dis¬ 
 puted chapters, and to affirm, as some of the higher critics do 
 that Isaiah quoted from them, only makes manifest the des¬ 
 perate straits in which they find themselves to maintain their 
 conjectures. 
 
 Christ and the Apostles evidently coincided with the opinion, 
 then current, that the entire book was the product of Isaiah, 
 and this should have great weight with all Christian people. 
 
 Enough has now been said to show that the conclusions 
 reached by the higher criticism on the authorship of Isaiah are 
 not trustworthy, being contradicted by the contents of the 
 book itself, and by the entire body of historical evidence. 
 Isaiah is one of those holy prophets mentioned in Hebrews 
 who had been sawn asunder by men, who, owing to an erro¬ 
 neous a priori assumption, are unable to understand his great 
 prophecy. 
 
 It only remains now to call special attention to the testi¬ 
 mony of Christ and the writers of the New Testament on both 
 points of this question, and put on it the emphasis which it de¬ 
 serves. The issue is presented and must be met. 
 
 The higher critics quite generally object to this appeal to 
 Christ and the Apostles on the ground that their opinion can¬ 
 not be allowed to have any weight on the question ot a scien¬ 
 tific criticism of the Holy Scriptures. But since they spake 
 with final authority by the Spirit on all questions of faith, this 
 cannot be regarded as sound reasoning. 
 
 Kuenen says: “ The exegesis of the writers of the New Tes¬ 
 tament cannot stand before the tribunal of science. We must 
 either cast aside as worthless our dearly bought scientific 
 method, or must forever cease to acknowledge the authority 
 of the New Testament in the domain of the exegesis of the 
 Old. Without hesitation, we chose the latter alternative.”"' 
 
 * Prophets and Prophecy in Israel, p. 4S7, 
 
I IO 
 
 Again he says: “ It is the common conviction of all the 
 writers of the New Testament, that the Old Testament is in¬ 
 spired of God, and is thus invested with divine authority. The 
 remark, made as it were in passing, in a passage of the fourth 
 Gospel, that ‘ the Scripture cannot be broken,’ is assented to by 
 all the writers without distinction. In accordance with this they 
 ascribe divine foreknowledge to the Israelitish prophets. And 
 far indeed from limiting this foreknowledge to generalities, and 
 thus depriving it of all its importance, they refer us repeatedly 
 to the agreement between specific prophetical utterances and 
 single historical facts, and have no hesitation in declaring their 
 conviction, both that the prophet spoke of these specific facts, 
 and that they, under God’s direction, occurred in order that the 
 word of the prophet might be fulfilled.” It is unnecessary to 
 support these statements by quoting passages; such passages 
 are, as every one knows, very numerous. 
 
 here, then, is, at the very beginning, a first objection which 
 the New Testament places in our way. Its judgment concern¬ 
 ing the origin and nature of the prophetical expectations, and 
 concerning their relation to the historical reality, may be re¬ 
 garded as diameti'ically opposed to ours. * 
 
 Herman L. Strack, one of the more moderate disciples of the 
 higher criticism, states: “ As regards passages from the New 
 Testament, we must protest against their use for the twofold 
 reason, that if they prove the Mosaic authorship, all other 
 proofs are superfluous, and are a derogation from the authority 
 of our Lord, and that the use of such proofs removes the whole 
 question from the historical and critical domain.”f 
 
 We admit it as true that, if the testimony of a half a dozen 
 first-class witnesses be admitted, all'the fine work of expert 
 detectives will be entirely superfluous. Dr. Sanday, one of the 
 latest converts to the higher critical school, and one of the 
 
 * Kuenen, Prophets and Prophecy in Israel, pp. 448, ff. 
 f Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia: Pentateuch. 
 
Ill 
 
 most evangelical in spirit, expresses his regret that an appeal 
 has been made to Christ at this stage of the controversy. He 
 thinks it ought to have been delayed until the critics could 
 have finished their investigations. Yet he admits that, since 
 the authority of Christ is at stake, the appeal to Him is in or¬ 
 der, and must be candidly met.* We should say so. Is there 
 any evidence in regard to any point of our faith which is more 
 reliable than positive statements of the Bible itself? Do mod¬ 
 ern critics have a more correct understanding of the Scriptures 
 than Christ and the Apostles ? May not Christians always 
 make this final appeal to Christ in respect to any theological 
 and biblical question on which He has spoken ? 
 
 Since Christ is responsible for the whole New Testa¬ 
 ment, we will confine our consideration largely to His views 
 on the question. Attention has already been called to the fact 
 that Christ referred to the laws, the book and the productions 
 of Moses in which he wrote of Him. He uses the name of 
 Moses some eighteen times; and most of those references are 
 personal and not merely to a book by that name. He and 
 the writers of the New Testament also quote from all parts of 
 the book of Isaiah, and assign those from the disputed sec¬ 
 tions to that prophet, equally with those from the confessedly 
 Isaianic parts.t And these citations also, again, were not from 
 a book so much as from the personal prophet. Jesus said, 
 in respect to a portion of Isaiah which some of the critics 
 deny to him, “These things said Isaiah, when he saw His 
 glory, and spake of Him.” X 
 
 ** Oracles of God, Chapter 8. 
 
 t Compare Matt. 3: 3, Luke 3: 4, John 1: 23, with Isa. 40: 3; Matt. 4: 14, 
 with Isa. 9: 1; Matt. 8: 17, with Isa. 53: 4; Matt. 12: 17-21, with Isa. 42: 1-4; 
 Matt. 13: 14, 15, John 12: 39, Acts 28: 25, 27, with Isa. 6: 9, 10; Matt. 15: 7, 8, 
 Mark 7: 6, 7, with Isa. 29: 13; Luke 4: 17, 18, with Isa. 61: 1-3; John 12: 38, 
 Rom. 10: 16, with Isa. 53: 1; Acts 8: 2S-33, with Isa. 1: 1, and 53: 7, 8; Rom. 
 9: 27, with Isa. 10: 20-23; Rom. 10: 20, with Isa. 65: 1; Rom. 15: 12, with Isa. 
 11: 1, 10. 
 
 X John 12: 41. 
 
It has occurred to the critics that it is incumbent upon them 
 to show why, apparently at least, they know more about the 
 Word of God than did Christ. They assign two reasons: 
 
 First , that He accommodated His way of speaking to the 
 current belief of the times. He knew that Moses was not the 
 author of the Pentateuch, and that Isaiah wrote less than half 
 the book which bears his name; when He called them the au¬ 
 thors of those compositions respectively, He merely repeated 
 the false opinions which had currency among the people. 
 
 On this point Dr. Briggs says: “ The question is, shall we 
 interpret the words of Jesus by the opinions of His contempor¬ 
 aries ? This we deny. Jesus was not obliged to correct all 
 the errors of His contemporaries.”* 
 
 But this is scarcely credible. It is contrary to the character 
 of Christ. It was his habit to correct error wherever he met it, 
 no matter what odium it might bring on Him. Thus He cor¬ 
 rected the erroneous views of the Jews on the law of the Sab¬ 
 bath t and on the question of marriage and divorce. X 
 
 Dr. Manly has well said that at the time of Christ the Jews 
 held the Old Testament to be “ the Word of God, not only 
 their God, but the God of all the earth, the only living and 
 true God. This universal belief of the Jewish people in these 
 writings could not be overlooked by one who came, like our 
 Saviour, as a teacher, and the great teacher sent from God. 
 It was necessary for Him either to contradict that belief if not 
 true, or to sanction it if true. Upon such a question He could 
 not be neutral. The Gospel, the final embodiment of divine 
 truth, to be presented to the world by Jesus, the only begot¬ 
 ten Son of God himself, could not be planted in the midst of 
 unrebuked error; least of all could it be built upon error as 
 its basis. And that the New Testament Gospel is built upon 
 the Old, and assumes it throughout as its basis, its forerunner, 
 
 * The Bible, the Church, and the Reason, p. 130. 
 f Mark ii. 27, 28. 
 
 \ Matt. xix. 3-6; Mark x. 6, 7. 
 
its original and foundation, is unquestioned and unquestion¬ 
 able.” * 
 
 And then also, upon the supposition mentioned, there would 
 have been no need for Christ to make the same assumption in 
 the presence of Satan. He resisted each one of the tempta¬ 
 tions by a quotation from the Pentateuch, giving them as God's 
 words. Satan at least was not troubled with bibliolatry. And 
 since he was quite active as far back as in the time of Moses, and 
 must have known of the alleged fraud, he might have retorted 
 on Christ that those texts were not the Word of Jehovah, but 
 were merely put in His mouth for histrionic purposes. But 
 Satan felt those words to be the very words of the Spirit of 
 truth. Christ is also to be credited with foreknowledge, and 
 He must have foreseen that by means of such false opinions, 
 his Church, some time or other, would be greatly disturbed, 
 and could not, therefore, have allowed such a falsehood to pass 
 unchallenged. He had all the courage needed for the vindi¬ 
 cation of the truth. 
 
 The right view of this matter is, that Christ accepted the 
 opinions of the Jews of His day in reference to the Pentateuch 
 for the reason that He knew them to be true, and that He in¬ 
 tended to endorse them and thus settle for His disciples the 
 authorship of the Pentateuch finally and forever. And in view 
 of the destructive conclusions reached by the higher critics, it 
 is high time that the Church should insist on recognizing the 
 supreme authority of the teaching of Christ in this matter. 
 
 Nor does this interfere with the most thorough investiga¬ 
 tion of the Old Testament. It still remains for the Christian 
 scholar by the most searching criticism to determine the rela¬ 
 tion of the Pentateuchal codes to one another; the extent to 
 which editorial supervision and glosses appear; how far the 
 biblical writers availed themselves of previously existing doc¬ 
 uments, and whether it is possible for us to trace them by any 
 fair tests; the basis on which a true biblical chronology should 
 
 * The Bible Doctrine of Inspiration, by Dr. Basil Manly, p. 115. 
 
be constructed, and many other similar questions pertaining 
 to the condition and arrangement of the biblical books. 
 
 Secondly , that, owing to the limitations under which He was 
 placed by the Incarnation, he was actually ignorant of the facts 
 in the case. Dr. Driver leans to the theory of accommodation, 
 but asks the question whether Christ is to be credited with „ 
 knowledge of this kind. 45- Prof. W. R. Harper says: “If there 
 is an analysis, and Moses did not write the Pentateuch, the 
 New Testament authorities, among others Jesus Himself, who 
 seem to say that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, or, at any rate, 
 to imply this, either must have been ignorant of the facts in 
 the case, or, knowing them, must have (i) consciously taught 
 falsely, or (2) accommodated themselves to the literary suppo¬ 
 sitions of their day. Each of these possibilities is attended 
 with difficulties.”f Dr. Sanday shrinks in horror from the idea 
 that Christ could have accommodated Himself to current opin¬ 
 ions when He knew them to be false, and prefers to think that, 
 owing to the limitations put on Him by His humanity, He 
 did not know. J This is manifestly, also, the view of Dr. 
 Briggs; for he states : “Those who understand the doctrine of 
 the humiliation of Christ find no more difficulty in supposing 
 that Jesus did not know the author of the Pentateuch than 
 that He did not know the day of His own advent.” § He 
 made a mistake when He credited Moses with being the author 
 of the Pentateuch, and Isaiah of the entire book which bears 
 his name. He never had the advantage of being trained in 
 the intricacies of a conjectural biblical criticism. He did not 
 know the Scriptures. The critical research of this nineteenth 
 century only has made known the literary nature and texture 
 of the Scriptures, and Christ as a man could not know them in 
 His day. And it is intimated that unless we accede to that 
 position we deny the full reality of our Lord’s humanity. 
 
 But that does not follow. Christ was perfectly sinless. He 
 
 * Preface to Introduction to Old Testament Literature, pp. 14, 15. 
 
 f Hebraica, Oct., 1888, p. 70. 
 
 X The Oracles of God, Chapter 8. 
 
 § The Bible, the Church and the Reason, p. 129. 
 
received at His baptism the Holy Spirit in all His fullness, and 
 in Him both the human and Divine natures co-existed ; and it 
 is impossible for us to say how much He, as man, might know 
 under those conditions. As the God-man He did exercise 
 superhuman powers, as when He walked on the sea, miracu¬ 
 lously increased a few loaves of bread and two small fishes, knew 
 of tile piece of money which was in the mouth of a fish and sent 
 Peter for it, and had a perfect knowledge of what was in man 
 beiOie any thoughts were uttered. Since these things were 
 tine oi Him, it cannot amount to a denial of Plis real humanity 
 "u hen we ciedit Him with a full knowledge of all questions per¬ 
 taining to the Sciiptures. The Gospels give us good reasons 
 for believing that the human soul of Christ had such a present 
 illumination that His knowledge was universal. 
 
 but did not He state that He was ignorant of the time when 
 a certain day should come, which was known to none but the 
 bather ? And if his knowledge was limited in that particular, 
 why may we not also suppose that He was likewise ignorant 
 of matters pertaining to the Old Testament history? But it 
 should be observed that conscious ignorance of a certain event 
 is an entirely different thing from being in evi'ov on other 
 matters. And then the contrary inference, rather, is to be 
 made from his admission of ignorance on that one point, if 
 that is really what He meant to say. bfe had made the im¬ 
 pression on His disciples that He possessed all knowledge. He 
 claimed no less than that. And it was reasonable for them 
 to think that He knew the exact time of that portentous day 
 of which He had been speaking to them. But He did not wish 
 to leave a false impression on their minds. He was the Teach- 
 ci Ox truth, and, therefore, when a false inference was made 
 from His remarks, He was compelled to say that they must not 
 mistake His meaning, as the time of that day’s coming was un¬ 
 known to Him. 
 
 But in His repeated references to the writings of Moses and 
 Isaiah He made no such disclaimer, in respect to the limita¬ 
 tion of His knowledge, but left the impression that He had an 
 accurate acquaintance with those writings. 
 
116 
 
 He made it very clear, not only that He had a most minute 
 and particular knowledge of all the events embedded in the 
 Old Testament, and was perfectly familiar with the very spnit 
 which actuated such men as Abraham, Noah, Moses, Davi , 
 and Isaiah—He was Himself the subject of the Old Testa¬ 
 ment theophanies; commissioned the prophets to teach His 
 truth in preparation for His coming and the confirmation of 
 the Gospel. They all taught and wrote by His spirit, ana it 
 was a part of His mission to this world to fulfil every jot and 
 tittle of all that was written in both the law and the prophets. 
 It is impossible to believe that He did not know the time and 
 the manner of producing the Old Testament books, all o 
 which are so vitally connected with His mission. 
 
 This involves not only the ignorance, but the moral nature 
 of Christ as well. And as Oxford professors have been re¬ 
 ferred to in this case, I will also quote on this point from a late 
 high Oxford authority: 
 
 “But it is not on this account alone that our Lords Human 
 ignorance of the day of judgment, if admitted, cannot be made 
 the premise of an argument intended to destroy His authority, 
 when He sanctions the Mosaic authorship and historical trust¬ 
 worthiness of the Pentateuch. That argument involves a con¬ 
 fusion between limitation of knowledge and liability to enor , 
 whereas, plainly enough, a limitation of knowledge is one 
 thing, and fallibility is another. St. Paul says that 1 we know 
 in part,’ and that 4 we see through a glass darkly.’ Yet 
 St. Paul is so certain of the truth of what he teaches, as to ex¬ 
 claim, ‘If we, or an angel from heaven preach any other Gos¬ 
 pel to you than that which we have preached unto you, let 
 him be accursed.’ St. Paul clearly believed in his own infalli¬ 
 bility as a teacher of religious truth; and the Church of Christ 
 has ever since regarded his Epistles as part of an infallible lit¬ 
 erature. But it is equally clear that St. Paul believed his 
 knowledge of religious truth to be limited. Infallibility does 
 not imply omniscience, any more than limited knowledge im¬ 
 plies error. Infallibility may be conferred on a human teach¬ 
 er with very limited knowledge by a special endowment pre- 
 
serving him from error. When we say that a teacher is infalli¬ 
 ble, we do not mean that his knowledge is encyclopaedic, but 
 merely that, when he does teach, he is incapable of propound¬ 
 ing as truth that which, in point of fact, is not true. 
 
 “ Now the argument in question assumes that Christ our 
 Lord, when teaching religious truth, was not merely fallible, 
 but actually in serious error. If indeed our Lord had believed 
 Himself to be ignorant of the authorship or true character of 
 the book of Deuteronomy, we may presume that He would 
 not have fallen below the natural level of ordinary heathen 
 honesty, by speaking with authority upon a subject with which 
 He was consciously unacquainted. It is admitted that He 
 spoke as believing Himself to be teaching truth. But was He, 
 in point of fact, not teaching truth ? Was that which He be¬ 
 lieved to be knowledge nothing better than a servile echo of 
 contemporary ignorance ? Was His knowledge really limited 
 on a subject-matter, where He was Himself unsuspicious of 
 the existence of a limitation ? Was He then not merely de¬ 
 ficient in information, but fallible; not merely fallible, but 
 actually in error? and has it been reserved for the criticism of 
 the nineteenth century to set Him right ? It must be ac¬ 
 knowledged that our Lord’s statement respecting the day of 
 judgment will not avail to sustain a deduction which supposes, 
 not an admitted limitation of knowledge, but an unsuspected 
 self-deception of a character and extent which, in the case 
 of a purely human teacher, would be altogether destructive of 
 any serious claim to teach substantial truth. 
 
 “ Nor is this all. The denial of our Lord’s infallibility in the 
 form in which it has come before us of late years, involves an 
 unfavorable judgment, not merely of His intellectual claims, 
 but of the penetration and delicacy of His moral sense. This 
 is the more observable because it is fatal to a distinction which 
 has been projected between our Lord’s authority as a teacher 
 of spiritual or moral truth, and His authority when dealing 
 with those questions which enter into the province of historical 
 criticism. If in the latter sphere He is said to have been liable 
 and subject to error, in the former, we are sometimes told, His 
 
118 
 
 instinct was invariably unerring. But is this the case if our 
 Lord was really deceived in His estimate of the book of Deu¬ 
 teronomy, and if, further, the account of the origin and com¬ 
 position of that book which is put forward by His censors be 
 accepted as satisfactory ? Our Lord quotes Deuteronomy as 
 a work of the highest authority on the subject of man’s rela¬ 
 tions and duties to God. Yet we are assured that in point of 
 fact this book was nothing better than a pious forgery of the 
 age of Jeremiah, if indeed it was not a work of that prophet, 
 in which he employed the name and authority of Moses as a 
 restraint upon the increasing polytheism of the later years of 
 King Josiah. That hypothesis has been discussed elsewhere, 
 and by others, on its own critical merit*. Here it may suffice 
 to observe, that if it could have been seriously entertained, it 
 would involve our Lord in something more than intellectual 
 fallibility. If Deuteronomy is indeed a forgery, Jesus Christ 
 was not merely ignorant of a fact of literary history. His 
 moral perceptions were at fault. They were not sufficiently 
 fine to miss the consistency, the ring of truth, in a document 
 which professed to have come from the great Lawgiver with a 
 Divine authority; while, according to modern writers, it was 
 only the ‘ pious’ fiction of a later age, and its falsehood had 
 only not been admitted by its author, lest its effect should be 
 counteracted. * * * * 
 
 ‘ f Before us is no mere question as to whether Christ’s knowl¬ 
 edge was or was not limited; the question is, whether as a 
 matter of fact He taught or implied the truth of that which is 
 not true, and which a finer moral sense than His might have 
 seen to be false. The question is plainly whether He was a 
 trustworthy teacher of religious no less than of historical truth. 
 The attempted distinction between a critical judgment of his¬ 
 torical or philological facts, and a moral judgment of strictly 
 spiritual or moral truths is inapplicable to a case in which the 
 moral judgment is no less involved than the intellectual; and 
 we have really to choose between the infallibility, moral no 
 less than intellectual, of Jesus Christ our Lord on the one 
 hand, and the conjectural speculations of critics, of whatever 
 degree of critical eminence, on the other. 
 
“ Indeed, as bearing upon this vaunted distinction between 
 spiritual truth, in which our Lord is still, it seems, to be an 
 authority, and historical truth, in which His authority is to be 
 set aside, we have words of His own which prove how truly 
 He made the acceptance of the lower portions of His teaching 
 a preliminary to belief in the higher. ‘ If I have told you 
 earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I 
 tell you of heavenly things ? ’ How indeed ? If, when He sets 
 the seal of His authority upon the writings of Moses as a whole, 
 and upon the most miraculous incidents which they relate in 
 detail, He is really only the uneducated Jew who ignorantly 
 repeats and reflects the prejudice of a barbarous age, how shall 
 we be sure that when He reveals the Character of God, or the 
 precepts of the new life, or the reality and nature of the end¬ 
 less world, He is really trustworthy—trustworthy as an Author- 
 ity to whom we are prepared to cling in life and in death ? 
 You say that here your conscience ratifies His teaching,—that 
 the ‘ enthusiasm of humanity ’ which is in you sets its seal upon 
 this higher teaching of the Redeemer of men. Is, then, your 
 conscience in very truth the ultimate and only teacher ? Have 
 you anticipated and might you dispense with the teaching of 
 Christ ? And what if your conscience, as is surely not impos¬ 
 sible, has itself been warped or misled ? What if, in surveying 
 even the moral matter of His teaching, you still assume to ex¬ 
 ercise a 4 verifying faculty,’ and object to this precept as an 
 ascetic, and to that command as exacting, and to yonder most 
 merciful revelation of an endless woe as 4 Tartarology. Alas, 
 brethren, experience proves it, the descent into the Avernus 
 
 of unbelief is only too easy. * “ * 
 
 “The man who sincerely believes that Jesus Christ is God, 
 will not doubt that His every word standeth sure, and that 
 whatever has been sealed and sanctioned by His supreme 
 authority is independent of, and unassailable by, the fallible 
 judgment of His creatures concerning it.” * 
 
 * Liddon : The Divinity of Our Lord, Lecture VIII., passim. 
 
120 
 
 but \v c should not fail to notice here that it is admitted by 
 all the radical critics, and also by some of the most evangeli- 
 ca t of the school, that they do contradict Christ on an impor¬ 
 tant point of biblical interpretation; and, further, that they 
 have the assuiance of affirming - themselves to be correct and 
 Chiist in error ; and, therefore, ask Christian people to aban¬ 
 don the teachings of Christ in this respect and accept theirs 
 instead. Thus from the position of the errancy of the written 
 Word we are led necessarily to that of the errancy of the In - 
 ecu rate Word. This is the issue before us, and it is time that 
 Christian people fully comprehended the meaning of it. 
 
 The Lord Jesus Christ is made known to us as the one in whom 
 “ dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily,” “in whom 
 are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge ; ” who is 
 “ the Li S ht of the World,” “ the Truth ” itself, by whom “came 
 giace and truth ” ; who tells the truth ; bears “ witness to the 
 truth ” ; saves men “ through the belief of the truth,” and 
 claims all those who believe the truth as His own children ; 
 who * s th e faithful and true Witness,” whose word is yea and 
 amen. Giving to the apostles the fullness of the Spirit of 
 Truth, He commissioned them to build the Church’s life and 
 faith on Him as the Corner-Stone. 
 
 No\v, it all these high claims made by the Scripture in behalf 
 of Christ and his apostles must be taken with an allowance; if 
 they made false or erroneous statements in reference to the 
 genuineness of other parts of Scripture, there is no certainty 
 that they have not made similar false or erroneous statements 
 111 ot ^ er directions, and that the arguments for the enforce¬ 
 ment of faith and conduct which they have based on these 
 statements may not be fallacious. 
 
 We have, then, no more foundation whereon to build our faith 
 and life with joyous confidence, and it is simply preposterous 
 to affirm that the Scripture, thus constructed, can be a credit¬ 
 able witness to its own statements, and a rule of faith and duty. 
 
 If plain and direct statements of Scripture, made by Christ and 
 the apostles themselves, may be regarded as not true, then 
 must confidence in them as infallible teachers be lost, and the 
 
I 
 
 I 21 
 
 Presbyterian position that the Spirit speaking in the Scripture 
 is the Supreme Judge in all questions of religion, in whose sen¬ 
 tence we are to rest, is effectually undermined and must be 
 abandoned. 
 
 How the Scriptures, thus mutilated and without any objec¬ 
 tive authority, can be “ the only infallible rule of faith and 
 practice,” as Dr. Briggs affirms, it is difficult, if not impossible, 
 to comprehend. If such a Bible can be that to him, it can cer- 
 tainly not be an infallible rule to the Church and ministry in 
 general ; and it is safe to say that such a view of the Scrip¬ 
 tures has never been thought possible under our terms of sub¬ 
 scription. 
 
 It may seem an unfair, yes, almost an unrighteous thing, to 
 charge a Christian minister with contradicting vital doctrine, 
 merely because he denies that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, 
 and that Isaiah did not write half the book which bears his 
 name, but when the destructive results which are necessarily 
 involved in those innocent-looking statements, are clearly seen, 
 the matter assumes an altogether different aspect. The very 
 quintessence of the evil lies in this matter. 
 
 The theory of the higher criticism puts the entire Bible un¬ 
 der suspicion and distrust; it cuts up the historical fabric in 
 which the revelations of God have been conveyed to mankind 
 into small fragments, and throws them into unintelligible con- 
 fusion; it makes the prophets of the Old Testament accessory 
 to the palming off of a fabricated history on God’s people; it 
 makes inspiration in any true sense impossible; under the cover 
 of an assumed admiration for the character of Christ, it puts 
 discredit on His testimony and that of the New Testament 
 writers in their estimate of the Old Testament; it destroys 
 laith, and does not restore it; it breaks down man’s confidence 
 in the book of God, and does not build it up again; and it 
 makes it impossible for any one to tell where and what the 
 truth of God in Scripture is. 
 
 Surely there ought to be most potent reasons given before 
 such a theory should find acceptance. But there are absolutely 
 no historical facts which support it. All the facts on which the 
 
theory rests, and by which its results are reached, are found in 
 the text by the analysis of words and phrases, and are largely 
 created by the theory itself. Most of these internal facts would 
 have no existence at all but for this unverified and unverifiable 
 theory. All external historical facts , the whole of an unbroken 
 tradition, all the testimony of a long line of historical writers, 
 most of the discoveries made in researches in Bible lands, as 
 well as all reason and common sense, are against the conclu¬ 
 sions of the higher critics. They assume conjectures to be 
 facts in the first instance, and then make them the founda¬ 
 tion of elaborate arguments, to which they give the high- 
 sounding name, scientific. 
 
 The higher criticism takes all the meaning out of that magnifi¬ 
 cent chapter, which rightly stands at the head of our Confession 
 
 m 
 
 of Faith, and which for its forceful and correct setting forth of 
 the biblical doctrine respecting the Holy Scripture, has been 
 the admiration of the Christian world. For if, in order rightly 
 to understand the Scripture, we must first cut it to pieces, and 
 make of it a patchwork of confused and miscellaneous frag¬ 
 ments, and if we must regard a large part of its history, and 
 many direct statements, not to speak of other matters, as not 
 true in fact, then our confessional statements respecting the 
 Scriptures become simply absurd. It could not be said that 
 the God of truth is the Author of such a Bible; that for the 
 better preserving and propagating the truth, “ He committed ” 
 the same wholly unto writing; that He “ immediately ” inspired 
 it in the Hebrew and Greek languages, so that the canonical 
 books of the Old and New Testaments are the “ Word of God ” 
 written, and thus constitute the Holy Scripture, the one book, 
 which, by “ the consent of all the parts f evidences its “incom¬ 
 parable excellencies,” “entire perfection,” “infallible truth,” 
 and “ divine authority,” which has expressly set down in it the 
 whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for His 
 own glory and man’s salvation, faith and life, and made so clear 
 that the unlearned may understand and believe it; furnishes 
 its own infallible rule for the interpretation of Scripture by 
 comparing one part with another; and is the Supreme Judge, 
 
to which all questions of religion, faith, salvation and life, de¬ 
 crees of councils and doctrines of men and private spirits, arc 
 to be referred for that final decision, and in which we are to 
 rest.* 
 
 So entirely does our Confession regard the written Scripture 
 as the truthful word of God in all its parts, that it affirms that, 
 “ By faith a Christian believeth to be true whatever is revealed 
 in the word for the authority of God, Himself, speaking there¬ 
 in.” f To accept as true, therefore, the conclusions of the 
 higher criticism means revolution of our system of doctrine. 
 It leaves us only a spent Bible. Is it possible that the truth 
 at stake here is not to be considered essential ? It is as essen¬ 
 tial to our system as the foundation is to a temple. 
 
 And it is for this reason that on three occasions the General 
 Assembly has warned the churches to guard against this crit¬ 
 icism, and enjoined the Presbyteries to see to it that candidates 
 for the ministry be not subjected to its influence in our the¬ 
 ological seminaries. Everywhere it has antagonized the evan¬ 
 gelical spirit and exerted a baneful influence on the faith of 
 God’s people, and blasted as with mildew the religious life. It 
 has proved to be the dry-rot in the German Church, reducing 
 religion to a mere name. The only hope of that Church for 
 better things is based on the belief that this criticism is dying, 
 and that the evangelical spirit is reviving. 
 
 And now this higher criticism demands official recognition 
 in the great Presbyterian Church in the United States. It 
 seeks the cover of the old blue banner, which, in its long and 
 glorious history, has ever floated only over God’s inerrant 
 Word, and the right of recognition in the chairs of our schools 
 of sacred learning. And if it should gain these vantage 
 grounds it will go on its work of instilling doubt, of troubling 
 the Church, of undermining the pulpit, and of benumbing the 
 evangelical life and spirit of the Church. It is a dangerous 
 error and ought to be condemned by this court. 
 
 * Confession of Faith, Chapter i., Sections i, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10. 
 f Confession of Faith, Chapter xiv., Section 2. 
 
PROGRESSIVE SANCTIEICATION AFTER DEATH. 
 
 In the sixth charge Dr. Briggs is accused of teaching that 
 the sanctification of believers is not complete at death, but 
 that, as the specification shows, it is continued in what he calls 
 the middle state. He admits the fact indicated in the specifi¬ 
 cation, but denies that this view is contrary either to the 
 Scripture or the Standards. Since, both in the Inaugural Ad¬ 
 dress and in the evidence submitted, he has interwoven this 
 doctrine with his views on race redemption,which is not limited 
 by election, and with those on the process of redemption after 
 death, we will gain a clearer view of the doctrine, if we con¬ 
 sider for a moment his opinions on these two important sub¬ 
 jects. “ The Bible,” he informs us, “ presents man in the midst 
 of an original innocency and an ultimate perfection. Sin is 
 only a temporary conditions . . . “The Bible tells us of a 
 
 race origin, a race sin, a race ideal, a race redeemer, and a race 
 redemption.” * 
 
 “It comprehends the whole nature of man, his whole life 
 and the entire race.” t The Bible knows of no limitations of 
 this redemption by election. 
 
 Dr. Briggs cherishes large expectations in regard to the re¬ 
 deeming work to be done in the world beyond the grave, and 
 “looks with hope and joy for the continuance of the processes 
 of grace and the wonders of redemption in the company of the 
 blessed.” X 
 
 ■* » 
 
 It is for us so to broaden our view of the divine love that, “if 
 life in this world is brief, and life in the middle state is long, 
 we must rise to the conception of the love of God as accom¬ 
 plishing even greater works of redemption in the middle state 
 than in this world.” § * 
 
 He labors with great earnestness, on a priori grounds, so to 
 “ construct the doctrine of the salvation of infants and the 
 heathen in harmony with established doctrines,” as will enable 
 
 * Inaugural Address, p. 50. 
 
 f Inaugural Address, pp. 51, 55. 
 
 X Inaugural Address, pp. 54, 55. 
 
 Mag. of Christian Literature, Dec., 1889, p. 106. 
 
him, in respect to these classes, to affirm that they are justified 
 in the middle state, since they see Christ there for the hist 
 time, and could, therefore, not sooner exercise that faith in 
 Him, by which alone sinners are justified, “ not till then are 
 they justified, for there can be no justification without fan.. l °r 
 them any more than for others. The intermediate state is .o, 
 them a state of blessed possibilities of redemption. 
 
 “He raises the question whether any man is inetiievabi} 
 lost ere he commits this unpardonable sin, and whether tnose 
 who do not commit it in this world ere they die are, by the 
 mere crisis of death, brought into an unpardonable state; and 
 whether, when Jesus said that this sin against the Holy Ghost 
 was unpardonable here and also hereafter, He did not imply 
 that all other sins might be pardoned hereafter as well as 
 
 here.” i* * * § 
 
 “We are opening our minds,” he states, “to see that the Re¬ 
 deemers work upon the cross was the beginning of a larger 
 work in the realm of the dead, and from His heavenly throne 
 whence the exalted Saviour is drawing all men unto Himself. , t 
 
 Dr. Briggs cites, as “ excellent thoughts,” the following 
 statement of Dr. Dorner,in reference to the unbelieving in the 
 
 middle state : 
 
 “But in regard to those who died unbelieving, or not yet 
 believing, to them also is the ground of their souls lain bare; 
 hence also their impurity, their discord and alienation from 
 God is unveiled. ... If, instead of repenting and being 
 converted, instead of growing in self-knowledge and knowl¬ 
 edge of God as holy, and yet gracious in Christ, they prefer to 
 continue in evil, then the form of their sin becomes more 
 spiritual, more demoniacal, in accordance with their state from 
 which this world recedes farther and farther, and thus it ripen?, 
 for judgment.” § He maintains that the “ question we have to 
 determine as Calvinists is whether divine grace is limited m its 
 operation to this world of ours, whether the divine act of re- 
 
 * Mag. of Christian Literature, Dec., 1889, pp. no, in. 
 
 f Mag. of Christian Literature, Dec., 1889, p. 113. 
 
 J Andover Reviews, Vol. 13, p. 59 - 
 
 § Whither? p. 211. 
 
126 
 
 generation may take place in the middle state or not, whether 
 any part of the order of salvation is carried on there, and, if 
 any part, what part. These questions force themselves upon 
 us in connection with our hopes for the salvation of infants and 
 
 heathens.” * * * § 
 
 He staces indeed that “ the Bible does not teach universal 
 salvation, but it does teach the salvation of the world, of the 
 iace of man, and that cannot be accomplished by the selection 
 of a limited number of individuals from the mass.” f 
 
 Yet Dr. Briggs holds, that notwithstanding this redemption 
 of the entire race, some are “ unredeemed,” and that for the 
 reason that they are evidently beyond the reach of redemption 
 by their own act of rejecting it, and of hardening themselves 
 against it, and by aesce?iding into such depths of demoniacal de¬ 
 pravity m the middle state , that they vanish from the sight of 
 the redeemed as altogether and irredeemably evil, and never 
 more disturb the harmonies of the saints.” X 
 
 These dangerous utterances of Dr. Briggs set before us in 
 Clearer light the matter which is the subject of the sixth charge, 
 namely: Progressive Sanctification after death. 
 
 From what has already been said, it is clear that Dr. Briggs 
 does not mean, by progressive sanctification in the middle 
 state, merely a progressive enlargement of the powers of our 
 being, a growing knowledge of God and Christ, and a con¬ 
 tinual advancement toward a fullness of life in all its experi¬ 
 ences. If that were his meaning, the Christian world would 
 agree with him. 
 
 What he teaches is another thing altogether. Dr. Briggs 
 ms that the Christian, when he dies, goes into the middle 
 state precisely the same person that he was here in the flesh, 
 having the same evil habits and temper, and is defiled by sin 
 in the higher nature, so that he is not prepared to meet God 
 
 m judgment, and is unfit, owing to his sinful nature, for the life 
 and fellowship of heaven. § 
 
 * Whither? p. 221. 
 
 f Inaugural Address, p. 55. 
 
 t Inaugural Address, pp. '55, 56. 
 
 § Magazine of Christian Literature, pp. 112-114. 
 
127 
 
 Sanctification has for its object the eradication of sin fiom 
 the soul. When sin has been entirely removed, then the soul 
 is completely holy, just as Jesus was holy even before He was 
 born. A sinless being needs neither redemption nor sanctifica¬ 
 tion. The advancement of a sinless being in holy life is not 
 sanctification. In his Defense Dr. Briggs stated that not till the 
 day of judgment are believers fully and forever fteed fiom sin, 
 and, further on, that they entered the middle state sinless. In 
 whatever way it maybe possible to reconcile these statements, 
 there can be no doubt that both in the Inaugural and in his 
 Defense before this court, Dr. Briggs maintains that sanctifi¬ 
 cation in the middle state is necessary to complete the be¬ 
 liever's redemption. * They are there to repent of and mor¬ 
 tify sin. His interpretation of the Standards involves that. 
 
 Progressive sanctification in the middle state is to subdue 
 sin in, and eliminate it from, the higher nature of man. He 
 affirms that, “ The intermediate state is for all believers with¬ 
 out exception, a state for their sanctification. They are there 
 trained in the school of Christ, and are prepared for the Chris¬ 
 tian perfection which they must attain ere the judgment day.” t 
 
 And it is to be distinctly noticed here, that no objection is 
 raised against Dr. Briggs’s doctrine of sanctification on the 
 ground of its progressive character. We all hold that. Tie 
 objection lies against the progression of it into what he calls 
 
 the middle state. 
 
 Death does not end the conflict in his view. The weary 
 struggle against inbred corruption, in which we come so often 
 to sorrow, shame and remorse here, and of sinning and repent- 
 i„g, must continue through the long period of the middle state. 
 Dr. Briggs does indeed assure us, that “they are deliveied 
 there “ from all temptations such as spring from without, from 
 the world and the devil. They are encircled with influences 
 for good, such as they never enjoyed before.” * And hence 
 “ we may justly hold that the evil that still lingers in the 
 higher moral nature of believers will be suppressed and modi- 
 
 O 
 
 * Inaugural Address, p. 54 - 
 
 | Magazine of Christian Literature, Dec., ibSg, p. H2 
 ^ Inaugural Address, p. 107. 
 
128 
 
 fied with an energy of repentance, humiliation, confession and 
 determination, that will be more powerful than ever before, 
 because it will be stimulated by the presence of Christ and His 
 saints.” * * * § 
 
 But since life is long in the middle state, and brief in this 
 world, the natural inference would seem to be that the process 
 will be slower there than it usually is in this life. Many Chris¬ 
 tians become very Christlike even here. 
 
 Dr. Briggs illustrates his idea of sanctification in the next 
 world, by a reference to Abraham. In this life, he affirms, the 
 old patriarch lived on so low a stage of moral advancement* 
 > that, did he live now, we could not receive him into our families, 
 and might be obliged to send him to prison lest he should de¬ 
 file the community by his example.! 
 
 But he states that “ when he went into the abode of the 
 dead, he held his pre-eminence among the departed. He made 
 up for his defects in this life by advancing in the school of 
 sanctification there open to him.”! 
 
 Where Dr. Briggs gathered all this information he has not 
 told us. It is not the teaching of Scripture. The sterling piety 
 and moral character of Abraham, in his earthly life , are com¬ 
 mended in the Bible by Christ himself, for the imitation of 
 God’s faithful people. 
 
 1 he reason which Dr. Briggs gives for no longer entertaining 
 the accepted doctrine, while helping us to a still clearer under¬ 
 standing of his position, at the same time shows how untenable 
 it is. He calls the doctrine that the soul’s final destiny is de¬ 
 cided at death a “ bugbear which makes death a terror to the 
 best of men.Ӥ 
 
 Why should a believer stand in dread of a judgment at death 
 since, as mantled in the perfect righteousness of Christ, there 
 is no condemnation for him ? He is reconciled, a child beloved 
 of God in Christ, who delivers him from that fear of death 
 through which unbelievers are subject to bondage all their life- 
 
 * Magazine of Christian Literature, Dec., 1889, p. 114. 
 
 f Inaugural Address, p. 56. 
 
 \ Inaugural Address, p. 57. 
 
 § Inaugural Address, p. 54. 
 
129 
 
 time, since of God He is made to the Christian “ wisdom and 
 righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” 
 
 And it is equally difficult to see why a believer should either 
 shrink from or become inactive at the prospect of being im¬ 
 mediately transformed into perfect holiness at death. Christian 
 experience shows that such a prospect rather fills the believer's 
 heart with the deepest joy, and inspires him to hasten his pace 
 that he may the sooner reach that state of entire freedom from 
 sin, singing as he journeys on: 
 
 “ Why should I shrink at pain or woe, 
 
 Or feel at death dismay ? 
 
 I’ve Canaan’s goodly land in view, 
 
 And realms of endless day. 
 
 “ There happier bowers than Eden’s bloom, 
 
 A T or sin nor sorrow know', 
 
 Blest seats! through rude and stormy scenes 
 
 I onward press to you.” 
 
 But says Dr. Briggs : “-It is unpsychological and unethical 
 to suppose that the character of the disembodied spirit will all 
 be changed in the moment of death.” * 
 
 And this is probably the real ground of his objection to the 
 received doctrine. The fact has already been referred to in this 
 case, that Dr. Briggs, unconsciously to himself it may be, is un¬ 
 der the influence of a philosophical principle of naturalism. It 
 runs in a greater or less degree through all his writings, and 
 here he yields to it so thoroughly that anything contrary to it 
 must not even be supposed to be true. According to this psy¬ 
 chological and ethical principle, the transformation of a saint of 
 God in the dying hour to perfect holiness must be held to be a 
 magical illusion. But the divine grace often works great trans¬ 
 formations very suddenly which are not at all magical nor 
 illusory. 
 
 I H or the conversion of the demoniac spoken of in the Gospel 
 of St. Mark, and that of St. Paul, of Augustine, of John Bun- 
 yan, and of “the wickedest man in New York,” involved 
 changes which were as sudden and as great as the transforma¬ 
 tion by which the people of Christ pass, at death, from their 
 sinful condition here to the perfect holiness of the better world. 
 But such an assumed natural principle of psychology and ethics 
 
 * Inaugural Address, pp. 107, 108. 
 
130 
 
 cannot be allowed to set at nought the plain teaching of God’s 
 holy Word. 
 
 The Scriptural argument in support of the doctrine assailed 
 has already been placed before you. Let me state it here 
 again as briefly as may be consistent with clearness. 
 
 Final destiny will be settled by the issues of this life. Every 
 one shall ‘‘receive the things done in the body, according to 
 that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.” * This state¬ 
 ment of the Apostle Paul is abundantly confirmed and illus¬ 
 trated by the presentation which our Lord makes in the 25th 
 of Matthew, of the grounds on which men are finally to be 
 judged ;t and by many other statements of Scripture.£ When 
 therefore the earthly life ends, and the body is laid aside, the 
 record on which final destiny will be decided is forever settled. 
 
 Man began to sin in the body. Christ became incarnate, 
 had a body prepared for Him, in order that He, the second 
 Adam, might undo, in His bodily life, all the evils which have 
 been brought on mankind by the first Adam. These facts 
 raise a strong presumption in favor of the belief that the whole 
 work of Redemption will be complete for the people of Christ, 
 when they quit their bodily existence. 
 
 And this presumption is greatly strengthened by the entire 
 economy of grace under the Gospel. No hope of salvation is 
 held out in the Word of God to those who put off faith and 
 repentance to some future time. There is no intimation in 
 Scripture that the Gospel-offer will be made to men in the life 
 beyond the grave. They must be reconciled to God, through 
 the mediation of Christ in this life, in order to be saved. “ Now 
 is the accepted time; behold now is the day of salvation. § 
 1 “ To-day, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts.” II 
 There will be no escape for those who, in the present dispen¬ 
 sation, neglect so great salvation as is offered in Christ. If 
 
 * 2 Cor. v. 10. t Matt. xxv. 31-46. 
 
 t John iii. 36; v. 29; Luke xiii. 24-28; xvi. 26; Rom. ii. 6—11; 2 Thess. i. 
 7-10. 
 
 §2 Cor. vi. 2. | Heb. iv. 7. * Heb. ii. 3. 
 
 * 
 
The intense zeal of the apostles and early Christians in urg¬ 
 ing the Gospel on people for their salvation leaves no room 
 for doubt that they believed the eternal welfare of man to be 
 dependent on the reception of Christ here and now.* Oppor¬ 
 tunity, in their view, ended with the present life. The Bible 
 makes no mention whatever of an offer of the Gospel, of a pro¬ 
 cess of redemption, in the world beyond the grave. Between 
 Dives and Lazarus, between the wicked and the righteous, 
 there is an impassable gulf fixed immediately after death. + 
 “ The wicked is driven away in his wickedness,” and so, sup¬ 
 plying the ellipsis, has no hope in his death, “ but the righteous 
 hath hope in his death.” % “ When a wicked man dieth, his 
 
 expectation shall perish; and the hope of unjust men per- 
 isheth.” § “ It is appointed unto men once to die, but after 
 
 this the judgment.” || Destiny is then irrevocably fixed, and 
 process of Redemption is stayed. 
 
 When Jesus said to the Jews that, owing to their rejection of 
 Him, they should die in their sins, IT He necessarily implied that 
 His people would not die in their sins. They practically enjoy 
 the full blessing of the great truth that “The Lamb of God 
 taketh away the sin of the world.” ** He has borne their sins 
 away. And the redeeming work of Christ is so absolutely per¬ 
 fect that no further satisfaction for sin need ever be made. On 
 the ground of His sacrifice the Christian is here already com¬ 
 pletely justified, so that he need be in no terror of meeting God 
 at any time in judgment, since it is not himself, but Christ, 
 who answers for him. In his regeneration by the Spirit of God 
 he has had planted in his higher nature the germ of a godly 
 life, which puts that nature in direct opposition to sin, and 
 which, through progressive sanctification in this life, acquires 
 increasing intensity. The old man of corruption is put off. 
 The new man is put on, “ which after God is created in right¬ 
 eousness and true holiness.” IT “ He is a new creature; old 
 
 * Acts xx. 26, 27. f Luke xvi. 26. % Prov. xiv. 32. 
 
 § Prov. xi. 7. 1 Heb. ix. 27. IT John viii. 24. 
 
 ** John i. 29. ff Eph. iv. 22. 24. 
 
things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 
 The soul is vivified and sin is mortified. He now works out his 
 salvation; “ For it is God who works in him both to will «.nd 
 to do his good pleasure.”+ He has indeed been born Oi God , 
 and, although sinning often through weakness, he has so in 
 purpose renounced sin forever, that in truth lie canno*. sin, 
 because he is born of God.”!jl 
 
 When, therefore, dissolution takes place between the .lOa. enu 
 body in death, it involves, after all, not a very startling trans¬ 
 formation for the Spirit to complete the work which He has 
 already well begun and carried forward in the soul, anu trans¬ 
 late the saint then to be like Christ, perfect in holiness. It is 
 not maintained that sin has its seat merely in the physical na¬ 
 ture, and that therefore it is destroyed with the body at death, 
 but that the Spirit of God then completely eliminates sin irom 
 the soul of the Christian, and sets his longing spirit free. 
 
 The great wonder in the work of redeeming man from sin, is 
 his regeneration, his new birth from above ; and whenever one 
 has been thus born again by the Holy Spirit it involves a change 
 no more marvelous for that soul to be at any time theieaiter 
 made perfect in holiness, than was seen in the man among the 
 tombs, whom Christ made right instantly, both mentally and 
 morally, or than occurred in Mary Magdalen, out of whom the 
 Lord cast seven devils by the power of His word. 
 
 Furthermore, the Scripture teaches that sanctification is a 
 work which the Holy Spirit carries on in the disciples of Cnnst 
 through the ministration of God’s word in this life. He does 
 in the first instance beget them “ with the word of truth,”§ as 
 illustrated in the conversion of Lydia.|| Then, “being born 
 again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word 
 of God,which liveth and abideth forever,”1F the Spirit conducts 
 the work of sanctification by means of the purifying power of 
 
 i Peter ii. 2 . 
 
 * 2 Cor. v. 17. 
 f Phil. ii. 13. 
 
 % 1 John iii. 9. 
 
 § James i. 18. 
 
 || Acts xvi. 14. 
 
T 33 
 
 the same word of God. They grow by the use of “ the sincere 
 milk of the word.”* Christ makes this prayer for His people: 
 “ Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth.”t In 
 this way He sanctifies and cleanses His Church “ with the 
 washing of water by the wordP% And still more explicitly we 
 are told that “ All Scripture ... is profitable for doctrine, 
 for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: 
 That the man of God may be perfect , thoroughly furnished unto 
 all good works.Ӥ And since the Scripture gives no intimation 
 that the ministry of the word will continue in the next world, 
 the work of sanctification is limited by it to this world. 
 
 But, again, we learn from Scripture that sanctification is a 
 part of the redemption of Christ, of which His people are made 
 partakers in this earthly life, and which results in them now in 
 increasing holiness and good works. Jesus Christ is, in this 
 life, made of God to His people, “ wisdom and righteousness, 
 and sanctification and redemption.”|| “ Being made free from 
 
 sin, and become servants of God, they have their fruit unto 
 holiness, and the end everlasting life.’’ 1 !! Abiding in Christ, they 
 “bring forth much fruit,” and “are clean through the word which 
 He hath spoken to them.”** “ Christ gave Himself for us, that 
 He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself 
 a peculiar people, zealous of good works.”tt “ We are the work¬ 
 manship of God, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which 
 God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. Jj 
 Hence it is their daily duty now to cleanse themselves “ from all 
 filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear 
 of God.”§§ They are to “ walk worthy of the Lord unto all 
 pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in 
 
 * i Pet. ii. i. 
 f John xvii. 7. 
 
 J Eph. v. 26. 
 
 2 Tim. iii. 16, 17. 
 
 | 1 Cor. i. 30. 
 
 Rom. vi. 22. 
 ** John xv. 3, 5. 
 
 Titus ii. 14. 
 Eph. ii. 10. 
 §§ 2 Cor. vii. 1. 
 
r 34 
 
 the knowledge Oi God.”* * * § And the Saviour makes this appeal 
 to them : “Let your light so shine before men, that they may 
 see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in 
 heaven.”f 
 
 And that the sanctification by which Christians are to be 
 prepared for the coming of the Lord is to take place in the 
 bodily life on earth is still more evident from these words of 
 Paul to the Thessalonians : “Abstain from all appearance of 
 evil. And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I 
 pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved 
 blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” J “And 
 the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward 
 another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you : to 
 the end that He may stablish your hearts unblamable in holi¬ 
 ness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ with all His saints.” § Here the apostle teaches 
 that the sanctification of believers is to reach its completion 
 at any moment in their lifetime when the Lord may suddenly 
 come again. Their hearts are here to be established unblama¬ 
 ble in holiness. And this is in thorough accord with the New 
 Testament conception of the Christian life. According to this, 
 believers are “led by the Spirit”||—“walk in the Spirit” IF— 
 and, crucifying all evil affections, they become possessed of the 
 fruit of the Spirit, which is “Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, 
 gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.” ** And 
 for this reason they “are a chosen generation, a royal priest* 
 hood, a holy nation, a peculiar people; that they should show 
 forth the praises of Him who hath called them out of darkness 
 into His marvelous light.”ff 
 
 * Phil. i. io. 
 
 f Matt. v. 16. 
 
 X i Thess. v. 22, 23. 
 
 § 1 Thess. iii. 12, 13. 
 || Gal. v. 18. 
 
 Gal. v. 16. 
 
 ** Gal. v. 22, 23. 
 ft 1 Pet. 2, 9. 
 
*35 
 
 Here, then, we see that, according to the Scripture, sancti¬ 
 fication is a work which the Holy Spirit carries on in the souls 
 of believers by means of the Word of God in this life, and 
 reaches such blessed results by it as to fit them to meet their 
 Lord at any time. 
 
 Keeping this truth in mind, we will be better able to under¬ 
 stand what the Scripture says of the state of believers in the 
 next world immediately after their death. It makes several 
 statements which, in their combined testimony, conclusively 
 show that the disciples of Christ enter the spirit-world free 
 from sin and from all its effects. 
 
 i. They go immediately to heaven. The unclothing of 
 believers in death is followed immediately by the being 
 clothed upon with their house which is from heaven, that 
 “ building of God, not made with hands, eternal in the heav¬ 
 ens." When passing through that change, they depart for¬ 
 ever from the groaning to which we are subject in this life, 
 owing to sin, trial and frailty, and enter at once upon that 
 blessed state of being wherein mortality is swallowed up of 
 life.* * * § And since sin is largely the cause of human mortality, 
 when the mortal puts on immortality the last vestige of sin 
 must be gone. Believers who have departed this life are in¬ 
 heritors of the promises in yonder world,t and since freedom 
 from sin is one of the promises, they must have inherited it 
 there. 
 
 The A postle further states, that when believers go to be ab¬ 
 sent from the body, it is to be present with the Lord.:]: But 
 Christ is in heaven, where nothing unclean shall enter. § 
 It cannot be, therefore, that His people should go to be pres¬ 
 ent with Him there in a nature which is still defiled by sin. In 
 that holy heaven believers shall belike Him, for they shall see 
 Him as He is.|| The perfecting of that holiness, without which 
 
 * 2 Cor. 5, 1-4. 
 
 f Heb. 6, 12. 
 
 % 2 Cor. 5, 6-8. 
 
 § Rev. 21, 27. 
 
 | 1 John 3, 2. 
 
136 
 
 no man shall see the Lord * takes place at death. Beyond that 
 the pi ocess of redemption does not extend. When the saint 
 departs from the body, and goes to be present with the Lord, 
 he enters on the process of glorification. 
 
 2. Quite in harmony with this , the souls of believers immedi¬ 
 ately after death are represented in Scripture as spotlessly pure . 
 Sin has been entirely suppressed, its defilement has been 
 eliminated, and the work of sanctification has terminated in 
 complete holiness. The great multitude who stand before the 
 throne, and before the Lamb, are “clothed with white robesP + 
 It is conceded that the figurative representations of the Apoc¬ 
 alypse are not to be unduly pressed in proof of doctrinal state¬ 
 ments. But the imagery of the book of Revelation, no less 
 than its positive declarations, gives us the truth of God for 
 our learning; and, while some things are veiled in mystery, 
 there are others whose meaning is too obvious to be misunder¬ 
 stood. And the figurative presentation, which we find in the 
 fifth, sixth and seventh chapters of Revelation, of the condi¬ 
 tion ot the souls of believers in their state between death and 
 the general resurrection, accords precisely with the statements 
 made in the fifth chapter of second Corinthians, which we have 
 just been considering. They are there, in the sanctity of the 
 heavenly home, clothed upon. Having departed from the body, 
 they are there with Christ, whom only the holy shall see. All 
 the members of that great multitude are victors, having palms 
 in their hands, and singing hymns of praise to Almighty God 
 and to the Lamb for His salvation, which has done its com¬ 
 plete work in them. 
 
 It is conceded that the white robes are the symbol of right¬ 
 eousness. But this cannot be the imputed righteousness of 
 Christ which only covers the sins of the believers, while in their 
 case sin has been eradicated, the very thing which sanctifica¬ 
 tion accomplishes. The white robes were once sin-stained, 
 but the wearers of them have washed them, “ and made them 
 
 * Heb. 12, 14. 
 
 f Rev. 7, 9. 
 
!37 
 
 white in the blood of the Lamb.”* * * § Christ’s robe of righteous¬ 
 ness, which mantles the believer in justification, is not in need 
 of being washed and made white. “ The fine linen, clean and 
 ■white ,” in which believers are attired in the world beyond the 
 .grave, “is the righteousness of the saints f attained by means 
 of sanctification here. There they do no longer appear as defiled 
 by sin, or as struggling with it. They give no sign of an “ evil 
 temper,” or of sin still remaining in the higher nature. The 
 last vestige of sin has been washed out in the blood of the 
 Lamb. They are there in that “glorious Church” which has 
 been “ sanctified, cleansed and presented to Christ, not hav¬ 
 ing spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but being holy and 
 without blemish.”f 
 
 This is the “ great gain,” “ the crown of righteousness,” 
 which *Paul declared was ready for him at his exit from this 
 life..! 
 
 3. Again , the souls of believers do at their death immediately 
 ■ enter on a state of unmingled blessedness . We are assured by 
 a voice from heaven, confirmed in a most solemn manner by 
 the testimony of the Holy Spirit, that those who die in the 
 Lord enter at once, after death, on a life of unalloyed bliss and 
 of perfect rest. “ Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord 
 from henceforth : Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from 
 their labors; and their works do follow them.Ӥ There is no 
 mystery about this. The meaning is perfectly clear; and the 
 declaration comes to us with all the authority of an immediate 
 oracle from heaven, and claims our unquestioning faith. And 
 since the blessing of dying in the Lord is promised to every 
 Christian, this statement of the Word of God is descriptive of 
 the condition of all the people of Christ immediately after their 
 death. They are completely blessed, and have entered upon 
 the perfect rest of God. Their toil and conflict have been ac¬ 
 complished. They rest from their labors, not only from those 
 
 * Rev. 7 : 14 
 
 f Eph. 5 : 27. 
 
 \ 2 Tim. 4 : 8. 
 
 § Rev. 14 : 13. 
 
i 3 8 
 
 pertaining to the hard service of Christ against the opposition 
 and persecution of an evil world, but also from the more se¬ 
 vere and more weary struggle of eliminating sin from their na¬ 
 tures by means of confession, humiliation, mortification and 
 repentance. 
 
 And this also agrees with other statements of Holy Scrip- 
 tuie. 1 he Christian life in this W'orld is represented every¬ 
 where on its pages as a struggle, a conflict, a warfare with 
 both internal and external evils. But the Divine Word as¬ 
 sures us, that the grace of life so works in believers, renewing 
 the inward man day by day, that the conflict shall not only be 
 of biief duration, but be also made the means of working out 
 for them in the near future a transcendently more glorious 
 life* “ For our light affliction, which is but for a moment , work- 
 eth out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of 
 gloi}’> while we look not at the things which are seen, but at 
 the things which are not seen ; for the things which are seen 
 tire tempoial, but the things which are not seen are eternal.’’fi 
 
 If the saint during the long period of the middle state must 
 still be occupied with fighting against indwelling sin, then his 
 affliction could not be described as lasting but for a moment, 
 nor could it be said of him that he had ceased from his labors 
 after that he had died in the Lord, and that he had entered upon 
 the things that are eternal, and the far more exceeding and eter¬ 
 nal weight of glory. 
 
 The Scripture, therefore, flatly contradicts the hurtful error 
 of Dr. Briggs, according to which he affirms, of the saints in 
 their lire alter death: “ That the evil which lingers in the higher 
 moral nature of believers will be suppressed and modified with 
 an energy of repentance, humiliation, confession and determina¬ 
 tion that will be more powerful than ever before.” 
 
 4. Again , the Scripture positively affirms that believers in 
 the life after death have attained to perfection of character . 
 The spirits of the just men, mentioned in Hebrews xii. 23 as 
 
 * 2 Cor. 4 : 12-16. 
 t 2 Cor. 4 : 17-18. 
 
I 39 
 
 inhabiting the middle state, had been already made perfect, or, 
 as the word more strictly means, had reached the full accom¬ 
 plishments of end ( teteleiomenon ), which had been at stake in 
 their earthly course. In their case redemption from sin has 
 been completed through “Jesus the Mediator of the New Cov¬ 
 enant, and the Blood of Sprinkling, which speaketh better 
 things than that of Abel.” They are there in the presence of 
 God, the Judge of all, enjoying His rest free from all error and 
 sin. 
 
 5. It is also expressly stated in the Word of God, that in the 
 case of many the change from partial sanctification to perfect 
 holiness will be i?istantaneons . Those millions of Christians who 
 shall be on the earth at the last day, when the Lord shall come 
 to summon the dead from their graves and call the nations 
 to judgment, many of whom may as yet have made but small 
 progress in grace, shall be changed “in a moment, in the 
 twinkling of an eye,” when the voice of fhe archangel and the 
 trump of God shall sound. And this instant change shall take 
 place in body, soul and spirit from the corruptible to the in¬ 
 corruptible, from the mortal to the immortal. They will then 
 be at once “caught up” together with resurrected saints “in 
 the clouds to meet the Lord in the air,” and to evermore be 
 with the Lord. * 
 
 This shows it not only to be possible, but makes it highly 
 probable, that there will be an immediate change from the 
 present condition of sin to perfect holiness on the part of be¬ 
 lievers, when through death they enter the better world, for 
 they then also go to the presence of the Lord. 
 
 If it will be possible in the one case to change from a sinful 
 nature to perfect holiness in the moment of passing from earth 
 to heaven, it cannot be considered impossible now for the saint 
 to undergo the same change at death for the reason that it is 
 contrary to some principle of psychology and ethics. 
 
 The doctrine of our Standards is based on this Scripture truth 
 and is amply supported by it. It is impossible to use words 
 
 * 1 Cor. xv. 51, 52; 1 Thess. iv. 16, 17. 
 
 4 
 
140 
 
 which could more plainly and explicitly convey the idea that 
 Christ’s people attain to perfect sanctification at death. The 
 Confession states: “The bodies of men, after death, return to 
 dust, and see corruption, but their souls (which can neither die 
 nor sleep), having an immortal subsistence, immediately return 
 to God who gave them. The souls of the righteous, being then 
 made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens, 
 where they behold the face of God in light and glory, waiting 
 for the full redemption of their bodies.”* 
 
 The plea of Dr. Briggs that the words, “ after death f do not 
 refer to the moment immediately after death, but were intended 
 by the framers of the Confession to extend over the long per¬ 
 iod of the middle state, is refuted by the fact, that they qualify 
 both the returning of the body to dust and the recovering of 
 the believer’s soul to the glory of heaven. As the body returns 
 at once to dust “after death,” so a right construction of the 
 language necessitates us to make it mean nothing else than 
 that the holy soul attains, after death, to perfect holiness at 
 once in the highest heaven. This view is confirmed by the 
 further fact that the Confession teaches that departed saints 
 have attained perfect holiness and enjoy communion with God 
 in the highest heaven, while yet their bodies are slumbering in 
 the dust. It is therefore in that period which extends from 
 death to the general resurrection. 
 
 But suppose we grant, for argument’s sake, that the state¬ 
 ments of the Confession and the Larger Catechism are of such 
 latitude as to admit of a harmonious adjustment of the view of 
 Dr. Briggs with them. We do not think this possible, but, if it 
 were, then there is still the strong, clear statement of the 
 Shorter Catechism: “ The souls of believers are at their death 
 made perfect in holiness, and do immediately pass into glory, 
 and their bodies being still united to Christ, do rest in their 
 graves till the Resurrection.”t 
 
 When a company of intelligent men, who are known to use 
 
 * Confession of Faith, Chapter 32, section 1. 
 f Shorter Catechism. A. 37. 
 
 # 
 
language with the most painstaking exactness, make three 
 statements on the same subject, two of which might possibly 
 bear another meaning than that which appears most evident on 
 the face of them, but the third cannot possibly be made to mean 
 anything else than that which is most evident in the other two, 
 then these two must, in all fairness, be interpreted to mean only 
 that which is unmistakably affirmed in the third. 
 
 And that this is what they intended to express is made clear 
 from still another consideration. It is now well known that 
 at the time when the Confession was framed, the use of the 
 word “ being ” in connection with a perfect participle did not 
 indicate an act as-still in progress. “ Being then made per¬ 
 fect ” meant at that time precisely what we now express by 
 the phrase, having been made perfect. In Pepyss Diary, 1667, 
 some twenty years after the drafting of our Confession, there 
 occurs this expression, which illustrates this point : Thence 
 
 Creed and I by water up to Fox Hall, and over against it 
 stopped, thinking to see some cock-fighting ; but it was, just 
 being done , and therefore back again to Spring Garden.” " 
 
 It was not until the latter part of the eighteenth century 
 that the combination of a perfect participle with being was used 
 to express the idea that a certain act was progressing at some 
 past time. + 
 
 Neither in the “Rudiments of English Grammar,” by Dr. 
 Priestly, 1772, nor in an enlarged edition of the same work in 
 1785, was such an expression noticed. As late as the early part 
 of the present century, Archbishop Whately calls it “ uncouth 
 English $ It is, therefore, absolutely certain that, when the 
 Westminster divines stated in the Confession: “ The souls of 
 the righteous being then made perfect in holiness , they did not 
 mean by that a process of sanctification which was to extend 
 over the immense period of the middle state, as Dr. Iuiggs 
 affirms, but that the souls of the righteous had at their death 
 
 * Pepys’s Diary, Mynor Bright’s Edition, p. 357 - 
 f English Adjectives in able, by F. Hall, p. 28. 
 
 % Modern English, by F. Hall, p. 337. 
 
been made perfect in holiness. For they certainly used the 
 purest English of their day. 
 
 It is evident, therefore, that this view of the progressive 
 
 sanctification of believers in the middle state, which Dr. Briggs 
 
 inculcates, contradicts flatly the plain teaching, both of the 
 
 scripture and the Standards of our Church, according to which 
 
 1 ' e pe ° pl f. of God become perfectly holy on their entrance 
 upon the life beyond the grave. 
 
 T hat this doctrine of Professor Briggs affects our faith vitally 
 evi de-nt from several considerations. 
 
 It is urged on the ground of a natural principle of psychology 
 
 , ethlcs ’ rather than on the authority of Holy Scripture 
 and so tends to throw discredit on the Scripture as the only 
 iule of faith and practice. 7 
 
 There is also so thin a wall or partition between this doc¬ 
 trine of progressive sanctification in the middle state and the 
 Roman Catholic doctrine of Purgatory, that the former will 
 very readily slide into the latter. 
 
 , .f, W1 ” also °P en the door to ^ wider divergencies from the 
 .auh Once admit the position that the processes of redemp¬ 
 tion from sin are continued in the life after death, and it will 
 lin P° sslb| e to set bounds to them. I have shown from 
 statements of his own writings, that Dr. Briggs entertains the 
 largest hopes m respect to the possibilities of redemption in 
 ic mi die state. Indeed, his remark about death being a 
 terror to the best of men, if the issues of life are then to be 
 considered final, inevitably suggests the thought of another 
 chance .or those who die impenitent to avail themselves of the 
 benefits of redemption in the next world. 
 
 In commending, as “ excellent thoughts," this statement of 
 
 , r ' D °5 ner ; “ to those who die unbelieving their impiety and 
 alienation from God is unveiled, and if, instead of repenting and 
 
 converted, * * * * they prefer to continue in evil then 
 
 r ?f°n I1 o f . their f 1 ' 1 becomes “ore spiritual, more demonia- 
 a . r. riggs almost commits himself to the position that the 
 entire work of redemption, from beginning to end, may take 
 p ace in the middle state—regeneration, repentance, justifica- 
 
143 
 
 tion, as well as sanctification. For those thoughts could not 
 be “ excellent ” unless they were true, and Dr. Briggs could not 
 speak of them as “excellent ” unless he regarded them to be 
 true. They are dangerous thoughts if false, as we believe. 
 
 For these reasons this court should condemn Dr. Briggs’s 
 doctrine of progressive sanctification after death. 
 
 It has thus been demonstrated that Dr. Briggs contradicts in 
 his teachings both the Holy Scripture and our Standards in re¬ 
 spect to the various points specified under the charges pre¬ 
 ferred against him. 
 
 We have also shown that these utterances of his are on es¬ 
 sential points of the faith, not only as understood by Presby¬ 
 terians, but as held by all evangelical Christians. 
 
 Dr. Briggs opens up a field for the operation of the process¬ 
 es of redemption, and suggests possibilities in respect to them 
 in the future life, which are entirely out of harmony with the 
 evangelical system of doctrine, and which cannot fail to take 
 much of the pith and point out of evangelical preaching. 
 
 In placing the Reason and the Church side by side with Holy 
 Scripture, as fountains of Divine authority which can savingly 
 enlighten men, he completely undermines the confessional 
 doctrine of the sole supremacy of the Scripture as a fountain 
 of Divine authority in matters of salvation. 
 
 He presents a doctrine of the Holy Scripture which com¬ 
 pletely undermines its infallible authority as the only rule of 
 faith and conduct. With an extensive field of circumstantials 
 pervaded by errors of which no one knows the number, and 
 in which it is impossible to draw the dividing line between 
 what is essential and non-essential, and with a text that is 
 merely human, in which the exact residuum of divine truth 
 cannot be determined, we have a Bible on which no one can 
 rest with certainty or build with joyous confidence. Such a 
 doctrine of Scripture, if accepted, would be destructive of our 
 entire system of doctrine. We have built that system on the 
 plain statements of Scripture, or on the necessary inferences 
 
144 
 
 therefrom, but, according to the higher criticism, many state¬ 
 ments of Scripture must be taken with considerable allowance, 
 and may be positively false. We may therefore just as well 
 cease the work of collecting proof texts for our Standards, 
 since they can prove nothing decisively nor finally. 
 
 In fact, if this view of the Scripture were allowed, it would 
 necessitate a complete change in our matters of belief as well 
 as in the manner of presenting them. 
 
 The power which the Bible has exerted, and which it still 
 exerts, is due largely to the fact that men have regarded its 
 words and expressions as those of God Himself. They have 
 heard God speaking to them alike in its history and its poetry, 
 in its admonitions and promises with the voice of divine 
 authority. This has made it the inspiration and life to the 
 men and women of all the centuries, speaking of pardon and 
 peace to the believing and penitent, giving comfort to the sor¬ 
 rowing, awakening dead consciences, and evermore urging 
 men to continue in the upward way to heaven. It is a work 
 which will abide forever. 
 
 But if, now, we cannot trust the words of such God-inspired 
 men as Moses, David, Isaiah, Paul, Peter—yes, and as Christ, 
 the incarnate Word Himself, and must learn from these modern 
 apostles of the higher criticism bow much of the Scripture we 
 can receive as the veritable truth of God, we shall lose that 
 living divine power by means of whi:h the Bible has been so 
 rich a blessing to the world of mankind, and all the more so 
 since these apostles are unable to tell us how much of the con¬ 
 tents of the Bible is God’s truth, and how much not. And the 
 question before this Presbytery to-day, stripped of all side is¬ 
 sues, is whether you will substitute the rationalistic interpre¬ 
 tation of the Bible for the evangelical one, whether or not you 
 will stand firmly by that unqualified evangelical Protestantism 
 which the Presbyterian Church has so honorably maintained 
 throughout its, entire history ? 
 
 Whatever may be the decision reached by the Presbytery in 
 this case, it will be judged by the Church and the world, not 
 so much as an approval or condemnation of an individual, but 
 
as an indication of a determination of the Presbytery to main¬ 
 tain, or of a readiness to change, the present evangelical char¬ 
 acter of the Presbyterian Church. History may repeat itself. 
 It is possible that the Presbyterian Church in the United 
 States of America, after the manner of some of the Reforma¬ 
 tion Churches of Europe, may be started on its way toward a 
 lifeless formalism. 
 
 It is no secret that large portions of the Reformed Churches 
 of Switzerland, France, Germany and Holland, under the in¬ 
 fluence of this rationalistic method of treating the Holy Scrip¬ 
 tures, have become as dead and fruitless as the desert of 
 Sahara. In the Church in Holland, life has become so com¬ 
 pletely extinct that all hopes of a resurrection have been 
 abandoned, and the attempt is now making to start afresh an 
 evangelical Church on a new and independent basis. This is 
 what a rationalistic way of treating the Bible, theology and 
 religion has gradually accomplished over there. It will do 
 the same thing here, if allowed to have its way—it may be 
 sooner than any one here can surmise. And the opportu¬ 
 nity is afforded to this Presbytery to save our Church from so 
 great an evil, in resolutely crushing these errors, and in firmly 
 maintaining the faith committed to us. This does not in the 
 least involve the blocking of the wheels of progress. Presby¬ 
 terians, like other evangelical Christians, hold their faith in¬ 
 telligently. They are able to give a reason for the hope that 
 is in them, and are, moreover, always ready to welcome any 
 new truth properly certified to. 
 
 Nor is there any intolerance in this. It cannot be considered 
 an undue curtailment of any one’s liberty to insist on his fidel¬ 
 ity, so long as he remains in the compact, to sacred agreements, 
 the terms of which were well understood, sincerely offered and 
 voluntarily assumed. 
 
 If Dr. Briggs is burdened with new truth that makes the 
 Church with which he is connected too narrow for him, the 
 whole world is open to him and ready to accord him the fullest 
 tolerance for the promulgation of that truth. No one will re¬ 
 strain his liberty. But, as I have already said, if, in view of all 
 
the light she can obtain, the Presbyterian Church feels in con¬ 
 science bound to continue her unbroken testimony for a truth¬ 
 ful Bible, for its sole supremacy in matters of faith and 
 life and for the doctrine that the redemption of believers 
 is complete at death, it should have the privilege of doing this 
 in the same unrestrained freedom. The Presbyterian Church, 
 in its almost unanimous expression of feeling, is as likely to 
 voice the will of God in this matter as Dr. Briggs. At all 
 events, it is plain that Presbyterians desire to keep their old 
 faith in this respect, in its purity. They do not want to foster 
 these new doctrines of Dr. Briggs; and to force them on an 
 unwilling Church is as unmanly as it is destructive of that very 
 spirit of liberty in the name of which the attempt is made. 
 
 It is possible that a Church may be ultra conservative, but 
 jealous regard for the old faith is a good thing, and is especially 
 to be commended when the minimizing of great truths is so 
 much in fashion. The tendency of our age to believe as litile 
 as possible , is sapping the strength of faith and depriving the 
 Christian life of its vigor. That strength and that life are nur¬ 
 tured by an unshaken faith in the great truths of the infallible 
 Word of God ; and since our people deem it of vital importance 
 to hold the doctrines involved in this case as necessary to their 
 strength and usefulness, they deserve to be encouraged and 
 fortified in that position by this Presbytery. 
 
 In thus standing ‘firmly by these doctrines of our historic 
 faith, while wronging no one, but exercising charity toward 
 all, we shall conserve important truth, bring peace to our 
 troubled Church, command the respect of the thoughtful every¬ 
 where, and commend ourselves to the blessing of the great 
 Head of the Church. 
 

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