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Presbytery of New York. 
 
 * 
 
 THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN THE 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 
 
 AGAINST 
 
 THE REV. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D. D. 
 
 Argument of 
 
 ■ 
 
 JOHN J. Me CO OR, 
 
 A Member of the Prosecuting Committee. 
 
Presbytery of New York. 
 
 THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN THE 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 
 
 AGAINST 
 
 THE REV. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D. D. 
 
 Argument of 
 
 JOHN J. Me CO OH, 
 
 A Member of the Prosecuting Committee. 
 
J OHN C. RANKIN CO., PRINTERS, 
 34 CORTLANDT ST., NEW YORK. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 T) EFORE bringing charges of heresy against a minister 
 of the Presbyterian Church, it is necessary to deter¬ 
 mine, first of all, whether his doctrines diverge from those 
 of the Standards within legitimate limits, and do not 
 affect the system of doctrine in which belief is required ; 
 or whether the error of his doctrines is vital and 
 essential.* While it is true that many ministers do not 
 subscribe to the ipsissima verba of the Confession, 
 readers of ordinary intelligence can have no difficulty 
 in determining whether their divergence from the doc¬ 
 trine of the Standards is vital or not. A trial for heresy 
 is not inTts essence a trial of a man, but a trial of a doc- 
 
 4 * 
 
 trine or of doctrines. It becomes the trial of a man only 
 when he, with full knowledge of the divergence of his 
 views from the Standards of the Church, still remains in 
 the ministry, and thus violates his ordination vows. The 
 prosecution in the case now before the Presbytery 
 has sought to make this distinction as plain as possible 
 in the charges which have been presented. It has cred¬ 
 ited the accused with good faith, virtually admitting that 
 he supposes the doctrines which he has uttered, to be in 
 harmony with the Standards of the Church. It would 
 have been possible to have included in the charges, one 
 dealing with the violation of ordination vows. For it 
 is”] at least doubtful whether Professor Briggs has 
 sought the peace or the purity of the Church, either in 
 the presentation of his doctrines or in the manner in 
 which he has published and defended them. The Com¬ 
 mittee has, however, preferred to pass by, without 
 judicial notice, his repeated attacks upon the traditional 
 doctrines of the Church, upon its standards of doctrine, 
 upon its dogmatic theology, as well as the needlessly 
 arrogant and offensive tone of many of his utterances. 
 It has preferred to confine the attention of the Presby¬ 
 tery to the simple issue, whether the doctrines of the 
 
 * Book of Discipline, Sec. 41. 
 
4 
 
 Inaugural Address can be held to be in harmony with 
 the doctrines of the Presbyterian Church. 
 
 It is not necessary to dwell upon the fact that a min¬ 
 ister cannot be tried for consequences which may be de¬ 
 duced from his doctrines. If the doctrines per se are 
 not heretical, the fact that heretical conclusions can be 
 drawn from them does not make the doctrines them¬ 
 selves heretical. If heretical conclusions can be logic¬ 
 ally drawn from the teaching of a church, it is the 
 church which is responsible and not the minister who 
 utters these doctrines. So that, however dangerous 
 the results of a certain teaching may be supposed to be, 
 it is the teaching itself and not its dangers which must 
 
 be judged. 
 
 Although this is true, it cannot be denied that 
 where an heretical doctrine is uttered, its importance is 
 to be estimated not only by the fact that it is a diver¬ 
 gence from the standards, but also by the results which 
 follow the teaching of heresy. If, for example, a minis¬ 
 ter should teach the doctrine of Materialism, the Pres¬ 
 bytery has a perfect right to consider, not merely the 
 explicit divergence from the standards of such a philo¬ 
 sophical theory, but also the ethical and theological re¬ 
 sults which follow from materialistic principles. In the 
 case before us, the accused can claim with perfect jus¬ 
 tice that the charges should be confined to his explicit 
 utterances, and should not relate to consequences dedu- 
 cible from those utterances.* But, on the other hand, 
 the prosecution can claim, with equal justice, that having 
 proved the charges from the explicit utterances of 
 Professor Briggs, it has a perfect right to show the 
 errors to be vital and essential, by indicating their ten¬ 
 dencies and the results to which they lead, by discover¬ 
 ing and setting forth the principle which the utter¬ 
 ances reveal. For in no other way than this can 
 the vital and essential character of the divergence be 
 exhibited. It is my purpose, therefore, first to consider 
 the charges and specifications seriatim , and afterwards 
 
 * Craighead Case, General Assembly’s Minutes, 1824, pp* 122—124 , 
 Moore’s Digest, p. 224. 
 
5 
 
 to demonstrate, with as much clearness and fairness as 
 possible, the false principle which underlies the teaching 
 of Professor Briggs, and the results which are involved 
 in case it be true that these charges are well founded. 
 
 Before dealing with the charges in their order, it may 
 be well for me to notice one or two preliminary ques¬ 
 tions which suggest themselves. 
 
 I. It may be objected that the charges, it presented 
 at all, should have been founded not simply on the In¬ 
 augural Address, but on all the numerous publications 
 of the author, in which his views on many subjects, have 
 been set forth more fully than in the address. I wish 
 to call your attention at this point, very particularly to 
 a question which has been raised by those portions of 
 documentary evidence which have been read in your 
 hearing by Prof. Briggs. And I refer especially to the 
 many extracts from his own writings which do not con¬ 
 tain the errors with which he is charged in the indictment. 
 Many of them were written and published before the 
 Inaugural Address was delivered. x\nd it will be seen 
 by reference to the specifications that most of the pas¬ 
 sages read in evidence by Prof. Briggs are not passages 
 in his writings upon which the charges of error are 
 based. They prove, at the most, that he has often 
 taught doctrines which contain no error. But they do 
 not prove that he has retracted any or all of the doc¬ 
 trines set forth in the Inaugural Address. I do not say 
 that he can be charged with errors in all the different 
 writings which he has published. The Committee of 
 Prosecution has charged him with errors which have 
 been chiefly set forth in the Inaugural Address. The 
 accused is not on trial for any of the orthodox utter¬ 
 ances which are doubtless to be found in his works. 
 He is on trial for certain erroneous teaching, contained 
 in the Inaugural Address, and works referred to therein. 
 If the orthodox passages which have been read in your 
 hearing were the only writings of Prof. Briggs, he 
 would not have been charged with the offences found 
 
 Preliminary 
 
 Suggestions. 
 
6 
 
 in the charges and specifications. He is not on trial for 
 any orthodox utterances. He is on trial for certain 
 explicit, definite statements in the Inaugural Address, 
 which have never been retracted. It is not enough for 
 him to prove that he has in many places taught ortho¬ 
 dox doctrine, and he is called upon to defend, not 
 the orthodox utterances of his various writings, but the 
 alleged erroneous utterances of certain writings, which 
 he has declined to retract. 
 
 i. It is possible for a man to write ten books, nine of 
 which contain no heretical utterance, but the tenth of 
 which is heretical. The orthodox utterances of the 
 former works do not retract the heretical utterances of 
 the last publication. A retraction of heretical doctrines 
 can be made only after the heretical utterances have been 
 made. If (and I state it only as a supposition) the former 
 publications of Professor Briggs had been perfectly or¬ 
 thodox, we should be disposed to say that in the Inau¬ 
 gural he wrote inconsistently. And in effect that is what 
 was said after his inaugural address. He was accused by 
 critics of making contradictory statements. In this case, 
 it was perfectly possible for him to come to the Presby¬ 
 tery and to say: “The Inaugural Address does not ex¬ 
 press my real views on the subject of Biblical Theology, 
 
 I prefer to stand by the statements of my earlier works 
 to the exclusion of the inaugural. My earlier publications 
 were orthodox, my inaugural address does not represent 
 my position.” (I am still only assuming that the earlier 
 publications contain nothing heretical or erroneous.) 
 
 But what has Professor Briggs done ? He has repub¬ 
 lished his Inaugural Address in a second edition, with¬ 
 out retraction or amendment, in the face of a fire of 
 hostile criticism. The third edition of the Inaugural, 
 copies of which have been presented to the members of 
 this court, was published subsequent to his response to 
 the original charges and specifications, and shows that 
 response to have been in no sense a retraction. For in 
 the preface to this third edition, Professor Briggs writes: 
 
 “ I have seen nothing in the hostile criticism to lead 
 me to make any changes whatever, either in the matter 
 
7 
 
 or the form of the address * * * *. This third edition 
 contains the charges made against me before the Pres¬ 
 bytery of New York, October 5th, and my answer 
 thereto.” 
 
 If that means anything, it means that he has de¬ 
 parted from the alleged orthodoxy of his earlier po¬ 
 sition, and is ready to stand by the doctrines of the 
 address, without retraction. Of two contradictory 
 propositions, one must be false. If, therefore, it be held 
 that his Inaugural Address does not agree with the 
 doctrines of his earlier publications, and if the former 
 publications are orthodox, then the Inaugural Address 
 contradicts what is orthodox. 
 
 2. The importance of the Inaugural Address as an 
 expression of Professor Briggs’s opinions has been al¬ 
 luded to. The objection was made by some one, when 
 these proceedings were first instituted, that there was a 
 certain unfairness in trying a man for heresy on a 
 document, particularly on an address, especially on a 
 document so short as the Inaugural Address. Now, 
 it is perfectly plain that the length or the special 
 treatment of a theological utterance is not necessarily 
 related to heresy. A man might be convicted of 
 heresy on the deliberate utterance of the single word 
 “ No,” in response to a question as to his belief in 
 certain essential doctrines. It is, of course, conceivable 
 that a minister in a single sermon, or in an isolated 
 article, might, either through carelessness or through 
 an unfortunate literary style, say many things which 
 might not be in harmony with the standards. It 
 would be unfair to make detached utterances of this 
 kind the basis of a judicial investigation. But the 
 inaugural address is not an utterance of this kind. It is 
 the deliverance of a professor about to assume the 
 duties of a new department. It would be easy to 
 show its perfect harmony with many passages in other 
 works by Professor Briggs. But what makes it signifi¬ 
 cant, in addition to the circumstances under which it 
 was delivered, is that it deals with themes of such pri¬ 
 mary importance. It is not a mere outline of his plan 
 
8 
 
 of lectures. It is a deliberate and aggressive utterance 
 with respect to fundamental principles of our Faith. It 
 deals with the doctrine of divine authority, with the 
 doctrine of God, with the doctrine of Scripture, with 
 the doctrine of Redemption, with the doctrine of man 
 and of sin, with the doctrine of prophecy, and lastly 
 with the doctrine of the future state. That the utter¬ 
 ances of the Inaugural can be supported by quotations 
 from Professor Briggs’s other writings is claimed by 
 himself.* But others may perhaps be pardoned if 
 they decline to infer that the statements of the Inau¬ 
 gural are to be accepted because they may be found in 
 “ Whither ” or in “ Biblical Study.” If the utterances 
 contained in the Inaugural are in harmony with 
 Professor Briggs’s other works, then no injustice can 
 be done by founding the charges on the utterances 
 of the Inaugural. If, on the other hand, there is a 
 divergence of the views set forth in the Inaugural and 
 those of the earlier publications, then the later utter¬ 
 ance, published and republished, may be assumed to be 
 the more faithful expression of the author’s views. 
 
 II. It is quite irrelevant to object that Professor Briggs 
 has set forth nothing in his Inaugural Address which 
 has not been before the Church for months and even 
 years. It has been asked why he was not tried for the 
 publication of any of his earlier works. Assuming that 
 the utterances of the Inaugural are in harmony with his 
 earlier publications, the answer is, that teaching of the 
 kind contained in the Inaugural Address and contained 
 in Professor Briggs’s earlier publications, has already, in 
 former years, attracted the attention of the Church, as 
 may be learned by reference to the deliverances of the 
 General Assemblies of 1882,1883 and i888,f on the subject 
 of theological teaching in the Presbyterian seminaries. 
 The only complaint which may be made is from the side 
 of Professor Briggs’s opponents, who may justly claim 
 
 * See Inaugural Address, passim. 
 
 f General Assembly Minutes, 1882, p. 92. 
 
 “ “ “ 1883, p. 631, 632. 
 
 “ “ “ 1888, p. 89, 90. 
 
9 
 
 that such teaching has been treated with too great tol¬ 
 eration and moderation in the times that are past. 
 
 III. It is further to be noticed that the language of 
 the address itself furnishes prima facie a ground for 
 supposing that the author is adverse to the doctrines of 
 the Presbyterian Church. This church stands com¬ 
 mitted by its constitution, not only to the supreme au¬ 
 thority of Holy Scripture, but also to an interpretation 
 of Holy Scripture. This interpretation is found in the 
 Standards. In view of this, many of Prof. Briggs’s 
 
 declarations are significant. 
 
 “ The Reformers,” he says, “ brought the Bible from 
 its obscurity for a season, but their successors, the 
 scholastics and ecclesiastics of Protestantism, pursued 
 the old error and enveloped the Bible with creeds and 
 ecclesiastical decisions, and dogmatic systems, and sub¬ 
 stituted for the authority of God the authority of a Prot¬ 
 estant rule of faith 
 
 Again he says: “We have undermined the breast¬ 
 works of traditionalism; let us blow them to atoms. 
 We have forced our way through the obstructions ; let 
 us remove them from the face of the earth, t 
 
 « Here in the citadel of the Bible two hosts confront 
 the most sacred things of our religion the one, the 
 defenders of traditionalism, trembling for the aik of 
 God; the other, the critics (of whom Prof. Briggs is one), 
 a victorious army, determined to capture all its sacred 
 treasures and to enjoy all its heavenly glories. £ 
 
 “ Another fault of Protestant theology is in its limitation 
 of the process of redemption to this world. Ӥ 
 
 “ Vastly better to be born to die, than to be born to 
 live in this uncertain world. What parent would not 
 prefer to lay all his children in an early grave, assured 
 of their salvation, rather than expose them to the dread 
 ful risks of life and the possibility of eternal damnation ? 
 
 * Inaugural Address, p. 29. 
 fid., p. 41. 
 
 %Id., p. 41. 
 
 § Id., page 53. 
 
 1 The italics are mine.—J. J. McC. 
 
10 
 
 According to the current beliefs, those Chinese mothers 
 who put their children to death make more Christians 
 than all the missionaries.”* * * § 
 
 “It is my opinion that if the grace of God should so 
 impel a man that he could be transformed into the 
 image of the holy Jesus, and, like Jesus, rebuke sin in 
 high places, and trouble the people with his unapproach¬ 
 able holiness, he would earn the reward of Jesus even 
 in this generation— at the hands of Christian theologians 
 and ecclesiastics. The cry would resound through the 
 streets of New York, ‘ Crucify him! Crucify him !’ ” f 
 
 “ The Reason also has its rights, its place and impor¬ 
 tance in the economy of Redemption. I rejoice at the age 
 of Rationalism, with all its wonderful achievements in 
 philosophy. 
 
 The objection of Prof. Briggs is not merely to cer¬ 
 tain phases of theology within his own communion, but 
 to the essential, distinctive doctrines of the Presbyterian 
 Church. His language is not that of a man pleading 
 for the furtherance and promotion of his church and its 
 creed, but that of an iconoclast. He addresses a Pres¬ 
 byterian audience in this way, and no one need be sur¬ 
 prised at his final appeal: 
 
 “ Criticism is at work with fire and knife. Let us cut 
 down everything that is dead and harmful, every kind 
 of dead orthodoxy, every species of effete ecclesias- 
 ticism, all merely formal morality, all those dry -and 
 brittle fences that constitute denominationalism, and are 
 the barriers of Church Unity. Ӥ 
 
 I admit that such language as I have quoted is am 
 biguous, so long as it stands apart from the context. 
 We may not learn from these passages of the address 
 what hurtful doctrines these are, against which the 
 Professor earnestly declaims. But when we turn to 
 the charges before us, and notice the proof given to 
 
 * Inaugural Address, 2d Edition, p. 105. 
 
 -fid., page 59. 
 
 | Inaugural Address, p. 65. 
 
 § “ “ P- 67. 
 
 1 The italics are mine.—J. J. McC. 
 
II 
 
 support them, we shall find the desired information, 
 will be shown that the reforms suggested in the Inau¬ 
 gural Address itself, are inconsistent with the Standards 
 to which Prof. Briggs has subscribed. Tl l e 
 works of traditionalism, the citadel of the Bible the 
 so-called dead orthodoxy, that to which fire and km e 
 are to be applied-all these are simply certain doctrines 
 of the Holy Scripture, as interpreted in the Standards 
 
 of the Presbyterian Church. 
 
 To adopt for a moment the expressive imagery of the 
 Professor, it is the solemn duty of this court to deter¬ 
 mine whether our citadel shall be surrendered to those 
 who have declared their opposition to the faith which 
 we are pledged to defend. 
 
 Charges I. and II. refer to the doctrine of Prof. Briggs, 
 that there are three great fountains of divine author- 
 ity—The Bible, the Church and the Reason* This is 
 in opposition to the teaching of our Standards which 
 declare the Holy Scriptures to be the only rule of faith 
 and life, of faith and obedience, or, as it is expressed in 
 the ordination vow, the only infallible rule of faith and 
 practice. The Confession of Faith teaches, and the 
 ordination vow taken by every minister of our Church 
 assumes, the infallibility of the Scriptures.f It is 
 impossible to separate a divine authority from the 
 infallible rule. 
 
 Professor Briggs himself says in his Inaugura 
 Address: “ Divine authority is the only authority to 
 which man can yield implicit obedience, on which he 
 can rest in loving certainty and build with joyous con¬ 
 fidence.” % 
 
 The only distinction that can be made between an 
 infallible rule and a divine authority is that the former 
 expression is stronger than the latter. But it may be 
 safely affirmed, in so far as religious matters are con- 
 
 Charges I. 
 and II. 
 
 * Inaugural Address, p. 24. . 
 
 Confession of Faith, Chap. I., Secs, i., ii.. vm 
 2, 3. Shorter Catechism, 2. Ordination Vow, 
 Chap, xv., Art. xii. 
 
 | Inaugural Address, p. 24. 
 
 ., x. Larger Catechism, 
 Form of Government, 
 
12 
 
 cerned, that wherever the authority is divine, the rule 
 is infallible, and that wherever the rule is infallible the 
 authority is divine. If a fallible rule exists, it cannot be 
 a rule which is supported by divine authority. And if 
 the Bible is the only infallible rule, it must be the only 
 infallible, that is to say divine, authority. These are the 
 first principles of revealed religion. 
 
 As Professor Briggs does not deny that the Bible is 
 a source of divine authority, but does affirm that the 
 Reason and the Church are also sources of divine 
 authority, it is only necessary at this point that it should 
 be considered whether it is, indeed, true that divine 
 authority is to be found in the Reason and in the Church. 
 It is really no part of our duty to show and to prove 
 that the Bible is the only source of divine authority; 
 for to deny that the Bible is the only infallible rule of 
 faith and practice is contrary to Presbyterian doctrine. 
 To assume that it is necessary to prove that the Bible 
 is the only infallible rule of faith and practice is to 
 assume that we are no longer Presbyterians, for our 
 Church asserts that it is the only infallible rule of faith 
 and practice. 
 
 Professor Briggs’s position in this respect places him 
 ipso facto in a non-Presbyterian position, for unless the 
 Bible is the only infallible rule of faith and practice, the 
 only fountain of divine authority, one may set up doc¬ 
 trines on a rational or ecclesiastical foundation and call 
 them Presbyterian. The mere fact that the doctrine 
 of a three-fold source of authority is held by Professor 
 Briggs, the mere fact that an apology for the doctrine 
 of the Presbyterian Church is called for at this point, 
 establishes the truth of the first two charges. But, 
 in order that the issue may be perfectly clear, we may 
 dwell for a few moments upon this specification. 
 
 It is no part of the function of this Committee, nor 
 is it necessary for Professor Briggs, to explain and 
 treat thoroughly that important philosophical and 
 apologetical question as to the relation of Reason and 
 Revelation, nor to set forth how far the Church’s au¬ 
 thority is founded on divine truth. The Confession of 
 
13 
 
 Faith gives no option. Whatever the Reason may 
 accomplish, whatever the Church may teach, if we 
 are Presbyterians we have no right to claim that the 
 Reason and the Church are sources of divine authority. 
 That is a matter which is settled by all men when they 
 become Presbyters of our Church. 
 
 Charge I. is as follows: 
 
 “ The Presbyterian Church in the United States of 
 America charges the Rev. Charles A. Briggs, D.D., 
 being a Minister of the said Church and a member of 
 the Presbytery of New York, with teaching that the 
 Reason is a fountain of divine authority which may 
 and does savingly enlighten men, even such men 
 as reject the Scriptures as the authoritative proclama¬ 
 tion of the will of God and reject also the way of 
 salvation through the mediation and sacrifice of the 
 Son of God as revealed therein; which is contrary 
 to the essential doctrine of the Holy Scripture and 
 of the Standards of the said Church, that the Holy 
 Scripture is most necessary, and the rule of faith and 
 practice.” 
 
 It may be freely admitted that there is great latitude 
 under the Confession as to the place of Reason as 
 an authority in matters of religion. Before con¬ 
 demning Professor Briggs’s doctrine, it is necessary to 
 consider the perfect legitimacy and orthodoxy of certain 
 positions taken by him. For example, there will be 
 no dispute with him on the part of many Christians 
 that the Holy Ghost influences the mind directly, 
 although there are those who hold that the Holy Ghost 
 acts always through the Word, employing means to the 
 great end, the salvation and sanctification of the soul. 
 
 Authority of 
 the Reason. 
 
 Nor will it be disputed by those who believe in the 
 inspiration of the Scriptures, that God moved directly 
 the mind of those who committed the Word to writing. 
 It is also true that the conscience may be the vehicle of 
 divine truth. But if this be the same with holding that 
 the Reason is a source of divine authority, then it is 
 quite legitimate to conclude that the Reason is the only 
 
14 
 
 divine authority. For the Word is apprehended by the 
 Reason, just as the direct teaching of the Spirit is appre¬ 
 hended by the Reason, and our source of divine author¬ 
 ity is thus confined on Professor Briggs’s own principles 
 to the Reason alone. But the human conscience is 
 perverted, and cannot therefore be called a divine 
 authority. If, by the assertion that the Reason is a 
 source of divine authority, Professor Briggs means to 
 say that God speaks directly to the Reason, then there is 
 nothing heretical in the doctrine. In the appendix to his 
 Inaugural* he has set forth with perfect clearness a 
 doctrine of the Reason which is in conformity with 
 the doctrine of the Standards. But he has gone much 
 farther than that. It is absolutely impossible to inter¬ 
 pret his words in any but the one way, and that is, that 
 the Church, the Bible and the Reason are co-ordinate as 
 authorities. Unless they are co-ordinate, they cannot 
 be divine. If there should be anything in the data of 
 one of these authorities contradictory to the data of any 
 other of the three, there would be a conflict of divine 
 authority, which is impossible. When the question is 
 raised, Should a certain statement of the Bible or of 
 the Church be accepted? we should have to reject such 
 portions of the teaching of the Bible and of the Church as 
 seem to us either above or contradictory to Reason, or 
 else we must hold that the Church and the Reason are 
 not sources of divine authority. If we reject any portion 
 of the teaching of the Bible because it seems repugnant 
 to Reason, we impeach the truthfulness of God, and the 
 authorities are not co-ordinate, but the Reason is 
 supreme. 
 
 In addition to this, unless the three authorities are 
 co-ordinate, then the Reason or the Church is the 
 supreme authority, for, as Professor Briggs claims, the 
 Bible is not inerrant, and its errors must therefore be 
 corrected either by the Reason or the Church. 
 
 Unless the three authorities are co-ordinate, they can¬ 
 not be held to be divine authorities, unless they are the 
 authority of three divinities which are not co-ordinate. 
 
 * Inaugural Address, second edition, appendix, p. 89. 
 
15 
 
 In the Christian system, the divine authority can no 
 more be subordinate to another than one divinity can 
 be subordinate to another. 
 
 If we come back once more to the claim that Professor 
 Briggs means by Reason the conscience and the relig¬ 
 ious feeling, it must be answered that the conscience 
 cannot be said to be a divine authority except in a per¬ 
 fect man, for the conscience has been perverted by the 
 Fall. The religious feeling, on the other hand, is not 
 a source of divine authority, but only a feeling about 
 some truth of religion, so that truth must first be re¬ 
 vealed or discovered in order that the religious feeling 
 may be awakened about that which is truly divine. 
 
 If it should be held that the religious feeling gives us 
 direct knowledge or consciousness of divine truth, it 
 must be answered that this view is contrary to the dec¬ 
 laration of the Standards that the Word of God is the 
 only infallible rule of faith and practice. 
 
 If it should be admitted that the Reason, although a 
 divine authority, is not inerrant, it must be answered 
 that in such case it cannot be divine. Professor Briggs 
 has, however, not left us in doubt as to his meaning, 
 because he has illustrated it, in the first place by the 
 example of Martineau,* and in the second place by his 
 reference to the heathen in the appendix to his In¬ 
 augural Address, second edition, f 
 
 i. I shall first notice the illustration of this principle 
 of the authority of the Reason, as it is presented by 
 Professor Briggs in the case of Martineau. And let it 
 be distinctly understood that we are not in this trial to 
 pass judgment on Martineau personally. We are not 
 to engage in the personal and uncharitable discussion of 
 the character and eternal hopes of that eminent writer, 
 but are to ask whether his published doctrines indicate 
 that the Reason alone will give one a saving knowledge 
 of God. Let us assume, 
 
 a . That the Reason does give us a knowledge of God. 
 If this be true, and it is undoubtedly true, does that 
 
 Martineau. 
 
 * Inaugural Address, p. 27. 
 •f- lb., second edition, p. 88. 
 
i6 
 
 make the Reason a source or fountain of divine author¬ 
 ity ? If God leaves traces of His power, of His intelli¬ 
 gence, of His love, of His justice and holiness on the 
 face of Nature or in my fallen mind, can my mind and 
 can Nature be said to be sources of divine authority ? 
 Evidently not. The distinction between human author¬ 
 ity and the divine authority becomes meaningless if the 
 Reason is a source of divine authority. 
 
 b . Let us assume also that we reach a knowledge of 
 God independent of the Bible through the Reason, and 
 that in this limited sense Reason is a source of divine 
 authority. Is that all that Professor Briggs has main¬ 
 tained ? The illustration of Martineau shows us, that by 
 finding God, more is meant than inferences about God 
 drawn by the Reason. It means that God is the object of 
 knowledge such as will save the soul. And it is this 
 doctrine which forms the subject of the first charge. 
 
 Now, if we take the more religious parts of Mar- 
 tineau’s writings, we shall find that they consist of a 
 presentation of ethics which agrees for the most part 
 with the doctrines of revealed religion,* of an able and 
 eloquent presentation of the theistic argument,f and of 
 lectures and sermons founded on texts of Holy Scrip¬ 
 ture.^: So that, assuming that Martineau has attained to 
 a saving knowledge of God in the confessional and 
 scriptural sense, it cannot be claimed that this religious 
 knowledge comes altogether and solely from the Reason. 
 Can such a thing be affirmed of a man who has lived for 
 more than three-score years in a Christian land, who has 
 stood for that time on the very threshold of a Christian 
 Church which puts the Holy Scriptures in the forefront 
 of its doctrine ? If Martineau held to every article of 
 the creed, it would not justify Professor Briggs’s state¬ 
 ment. But, whatever the personal creed or character 
 of Martineau may be, he is known to-day as a radical 
 opponent of scriptural truth. If Professor Briggs 
 had called him a representative philosopher, or a 
 representative critic, or a representative rationalist of 
 
 * Types of Ethical Theory. Study of Religion, 
 f Seat of Authority in Religion. Ek. I., chap, l, 2. 
 t Hours of Thought on Sacred Things. 
 
17 
 
 our time, one might be disposed to put another inter¬ 
 pretation on his proposition that there are three foun¬ 
 tains of divine authority. But he describes him with 
 Newman and Spurgeon as one of the representative 
 Christians.* In what sense can Martineau be said to 
 have found God through the Reason, so as to be called 
 a representative Christian? He, like other beings of 
 which the Holy Scriptures speak, believes that there is 
 one God, and he does well. But he does not believe, 
 or he states that he does not believe, in the Incar¬ 
 nation^ or in the divinity of Jesus Christ.;); The divine 
 authority of the Reason has led him to reject the doc¬ 
 trine of the Atonement,§ of almost all the most authori¬ 
 tative utterances of our holy religion. [ The divine 
 authority of his reason has contradicted, and contra¬ 
 dicted flatly, the infallibility of the Word of God,T 
 and yet we are told, in the Inaugural Address, that the 
 average opinion of the Christian world would not assign 
 him (Spurgeon) a higher place in the kingdom of God 
 than Martineau or Newman.** 
 
 2. If there were any doubt as to Professor Briggs’s 
 meaning, it would be dispelled by the second illustration 
 which we have chosen from his discussion of this im¬ 
 portant subject. He declares that “ Unless God’s au¬ 
 thority 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 Bible or 
 Church.We shall, doubtless, hear either from Pro¬ 
 fessor Briggs or from his supporters a great deal about 
 “a priori reasoning.” Here is an example of “apriori 
 reasoning” in its worst form. The Confession, and the 
 Holy Scriptures on which the Confession is founded, 
 repeatedly teach and emphasize the fact that Jesus 
 
 * Inaugural Address, p. 28. 
 
 t Seat of Authority in Religion. Bk. IV., chap. 2 ; also p. 650. 
 
 | lb., Bk. IV., chap. 2. 
 
 § lb., p. 486. 
 
 || lb., p. 650. 
 
 IT Book II., chap. 2; also p. 650. 
 
 * * Inaugural Address, p. 28. 
 
 ff Inaugural Address. Second edition, appendix, pp. 88, 89. 
 
i8 
 
 Christ is the only Saviour,* and that faith is the means 
 by which salvation is secured, f Now, it is not heresy 
 to express the hope that the heathen who have never 
 heard of Jesus Christ may be saved, although the Chris¬ 
 tian Church by its missions seems to declare that it is 
 carrying the gospel to a lost world. But it is heretical 
 to contradict the express teaching of the Word of God, 
 and found that contradiction on the salvation of the 
 heathen world.:); Why not carry the reasoning farther 
 and say that because the heathen cannot be lost there¬ 
 fore they must all have a saving knowledge of Jesus 
 Christ, and if they worship idols, they do it on divine 
 authority, because they cannot be lost. There are, doubt¬ 
 less, many arguments in the works of anti-Christian 
 thinkers to prove that a man does not have to believe 
 in Christ to be saved. It is no concern of the Presbytery 
 or of the Presbyterian Church to call such men to 
 account before the courts of the Church. But we do 
 say that when one of our clergy contradicts in this plain 
 manner the very doctrine which is of the essence of 
 Presbyterianism—or, rather, which is of the essence of 
 Christianity—then we have to choose between our doc¬ 
 trines and those of the man who flatly contradicts them. 
 
 It is evident that if the Reason is a divine authority, 
 then whatever the Reason affirms to be true is true. 
 But the Reason in different men affirms different things 
 to be true. The standard by which the truths of the 
 Reason with regard to Religion are to be judged is, 
 according to Presbyterian doctrine, not the Reason or 
 
 the Church, but the Word of God. 
 
 If it should be claimed that the three fountains of 
 divine authority referred to are complementary authori¬ 
 ties, so that the Bible reveals one kind of religious truth, 
 the Church another, and the Reason another, the conclu¬ 
 sion reached is contradictory to the statement that the 
 Scriptures are the only infallible rule of faith and practice. 
 
 * Confession of Faith, chap. VIII., with Proof Texts. Larger Cate¬ 
 chism, 36. Shorter Catechism, 21. 
 
 | Confession of Faith, chap. XIV., with Proof Texts. Larger Cate¬ 
 chism, 72, 153. Shorter Catechism, 86. 
 
 £ Inaugural Address, 2d ed., p. 88. 
 
19 
 
 We are not ready even for a moment, if we are believers 
 in the Christianity of the Bible, to join in the sentiment of 
 Professor Briggs in this respect. He asserts, “ It may 
 be that these modern thinkers have a divine calling to 
 withdraw men from mere priestcraft, ceremonialism, 
 dead orthodoxy and ecclesiasticism, and concentrate 
 their attention on the essentials of the Christian relig¬ 
 ion.”* What men? These men who “depreciate the 
 Bible and the Church as merely external modes of 
 finding God,”f for if we are Presbyterians, we believe 
 that the Bible is the only infallible rule of faith and 
 practice. “ We are warned lest we * * * * depre¬ 
 
 ciate the Reason and the Christian consciousness,”^: but 
 are we not rather warned lest we depreciate the obliga¬ 
 tory and infallible character of the objective revelation of 
 God in His Word, lest we depreciate the atonement of 
 Jesus Christ, who is the end of the law for righteousness 
 to every one that believeth? This doctrine as to the 
 divine authority of the human reason is only a symptom 
 of a general principle which we shall have occasion to 
 notice later on. But it is a symptom which is to be 
 regarded as a fatal symptom, a symptom of departure 
 not merely from the Presbyterian standards, but of de¬ 
 parture from that position which maintains the exclusive 
 and obligatory claims of the Christian religion. 
 
 Charge II is as follows : th^Churc^ 
 
 “ The Presbyterian Church in the United States of 
 America charges the Rev. Charles A. Briggs, D.D., 
 being a Minister of the said Church and a member of the 
 Presbytery of New York, with teaching that the Church 
 is a fountain of divine authority which, apart from the 
 Holy Scripture, may and does savingly enlighten men ; 
 which is contrary to the essential doctrine of the Holy 
 Scripture and of the Standards of the said Church, that 
 the Holy Scripture is most necessary and the rule of 
 faith and practice.” 
 
 * Inaugural Address, p. 27. 
 t Inaugural Address, p. 26. 
 % Inaugural Address, p. 27. 
 
20 
 
 With regard to the statement that the Church is a 
 source of divine authority, it is difficult to gain a 
 clear idea, but what was said with regard to the 
 Reason is in some particulars applicable to the Church. 
 We are told that the Church is both a source * and a 
 seat of divine f authority. Now, it is not contrary to 
 either Scripture or the Confession to regard the Church 
 as being subject to divine influence. But it is contrary 
 both to Scripture and to the Standards of our Church to 
 speak of it as a source of divine authority. The illustra¬ 
 tion given by Professor Briggs is sufficient to show the 
 error of his doctrine. It is said that Newman could 
 not find God through the Bible. Now, if we assume 
 that in so far as the teaching of the Church of Rome is 
 true, it is the teaching of the Word of God, there is 
 nothing contra-confessional in the statement that many 
 pious souls have found God through the Church. Prof. 
 Briggs asks i u But what shall we say of a modern like 
 Newman, who could not reach certainty, striving never 
 so hard, through the Bible or the Reason, but who did 
 find authority in the institutions of the Church ? 
 
 An answer is to be found in Newman’s own writings. 
 
 I quote from his Apologia: 
 
 u I was brought up from a child to take great delight 
 in reading the Bible \ but I had formed no religious 
 convictions till I was fifteen. Of course I had a perfect 
 knowledge of my catechism.” ^ 
 
 Again he says: 
 
 4 ‘ When I was fifteen (in the autumn of 1816) a great 
 change of thought took place in me. I fell under the 
 influences of a definite creed, and received into my 
 intellect impressions of dogma, which, through God’s 
 mercy, have never been effaced or obscured. Above 
 and beyond the conversations and sermons of the 
 excellent man, long dead, the Rev. Walter Mayeis, of 
 Pembroke College, Oxford, who was the human means 
 of this beginning of divine faith in me, was the effect of 
 
 * Inaugural Address, p. 24. 
 f Inaugural Address, p. 26. 
 
 | Apologia pro vita sua, p. I. 
 
21 
 
 the books which he put into my hands, all of the school 
 of Calvin.”* 
 
 In view of these statements, no Presbyterian can 
 affirm that it was through the Church that Newman 
 found divine authority. If so, then so far from the 
 Bible being the only rule of faith, it is an insufficient and 
 inefficient rule of faith. If so, then what Newman found 
 in the Church, he had not found in the Bible ; and what 
 he found in the Church being apart from the Bible, or 
 in addition to the Bible, one must conclude that the 
 Holy Scriptures were not the only rule of faith and 
 practice, which Prof. Briggs has mantained by this 
 illustration; and by his conclusion he has contradicted 
 the Standards of the Presbyterian Church. Let me es¬ 
 pecially direct your attention to what this Word of God 
 is held to be in the doctrine of the Westminster Stand¬ 
 ards. In presenting in evidence the answer to the 
 second question in the Shorter Catechism, Prof. Briggs 
 seemed to me to lay especial emphasis upon the word 
 “ contained ,” as if the terms Word of God and the 
 Scriptures of the Old and New Testament were not co¬ 
 extensive terms. Is it true that the Word of God is 
 contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testa¬ 
 ment, or that the Word of God is the Old and New 
 Testament Scriptures? According to the Catechism, 
 the Word of God is contained in the Scriptures ; and in 
 the light of the Confession of Faith, it may be seen what 
 is meant by this. It is not the greater containing the 
 lesser. The Confession of Faith (chap, i., sec. ii.) says : 
 “Under the name of Holy Scripture, or the Word of 
 God written, are now contained all the books of the 
 Old and New Testament, which are these”: then fol¬ 
 lows the list of books. If the Word of God is contained 
 in these Scriptures, and these Scriptures are contained 
 in the Word of God, how are we to explain the differ¬ 
 ence of statement except upon the ground that the 
 terms are co-extensive ? 
 
 Of course, it is not to be supposed that when a 
 Church teaches what is contrary to Scripture, it is 
 
 * Apologia pro vita sua, p. 4. 
 
22 
 
 teaching what rests on divine authority. Institutional 
 Christianity, in so far as it is founded on divine 
 authority, is founded on theWord of God. It may be held 
 that there is an Ecclesia Docens , but the Church can only 
 teach what it has already learned. The moment we 
 admit that the Church can teach what it has not learned 
 from the Word of God, which is the only infallible rule 
 of faith and practice, we abandon the doctrine of the 
 rule of faith and practice contained in the Confession. 
 
 It is true that in the appendix to the second edition 
 to the Inaugural Address, Professor Briggs explains the 
 doctrine upon which I have been commenting, by show¬ 
 ing that, according to the Confession, the Church has 
 divine authority, in such a sense that God is present in 
 His Church, rendering the sacraments efficacious, and 
 endowing His ministers with authority.* But this is 
 not to say that the Church is a source of divine 
 authority, but only that it is subject to divine influence. 
 The declaration of the Inaugural Address was that the 
 Church is a source of divine authority, in such a sense 
 that Newman, who could not find God through the 
 Bible, was able to find Him through the Church.” f 
 
 There are not three sources of divine authority. 
 There is only one. It is not the doctrine of the Pres¬ 
 byterian Church, it is a contradiction of Presbyterian 
 doctrine, not to say of Christian doctrine, to assert, as 
 Professor Briggs asserts, that it is a matter of tempera¬ 
 ment or environment which way of access to God men 
 may pursue. It is the doctrine of the Holy Scriptures, 
 as well as the doctrine of the Confession, that there is but 
 one way of access to God; that the way to God is not 
 dependent on the subjective conditions of the believer, 
 but on an objective, obligatory, exclusive authority, and 
 that this authority is not three-fold, but one. 
 
 Charge III. is as follows: 
 
 “The Presbyterian Church in the United States of 
 America charges the Rev. Charles A. Briggs, D.D., 
 
 * Inaugural Address, second edition, appendix, p. 87. 
 f Inaugural Address, p. 25. 
 
23 
 
 being a Minister of the said Church and a member of 
 the Presbytery of New York, with teaching that errors 
 may have existed in the original text of the Holy Scrip¬ 
 ture, as it came from its authors, which is contrary to 
 the essential doctrine taught in the Holy Scripture and 
 in the Standards of the said Church, that the Holy 
 Scripture is the Word of God written, immediately 
 inspired, and the rule of faith and practice.” 
 
 But Professor Briggs has not only denied the exclu¬ 
 siveness of the Holy Scriptures as a divine authority, he 
 has denied their infallibility.* By this is not meant that 
 he pronounces all the history, all the doctrine, and all 
 the devotional parts of the Scripture to be untrue or 
 founded on untruth. On the contrary, while he is unwill¬ 
 ing to accept the Bible as altogether accurate in its 
 history, he is ready to admit its infallibility as a rule of 
 faith and practice, as that which should guide our 
 religious thinking, our devotions and our lives. 
 
 If this be admitted, and we presume that this is what 
 Professor Briggs means, it then becomes a fair question, 
 What shall be said of discrepancies and errors which, 
 as he says, “ Historical Criticism ” finds in the Holy 
 Scriptures ? f 
 
 On looking at the doctrine of a three-fold divine au¬ 
 thority, one has no difficulty in seeing that Professor 
 Briggs’s inferences as to the truthfulness of Scripture 
 are largely dependent upon the principle that the Reason 
 is co-ordinate with the Bible, if not superior to it, as an 
 authority in religion. And here I would set forth two 
 propositions as disclaimers, in order that the construc¬ 
 tion of the Professor’s words may be as liberal as pos¬ 
 sible. 
 
 i. In the first place, it is not claimed that any particular Inspiration, 
 theory of the mode of inspiration is taught in the 
 Scriptures, or in the Confession of Faith. The Scrip¬ 
 ture, in various places, does teach that the Scripture 
 is inspired—that is, it claims inspiration for itself J— 
 
 * Inaugural Address, pp. 34, 35. 
 t Inaugural Address, p. 34. 
 
 | 2 Tim. 3, 16. 
 
24 
 
 and the Confession declares it to be the Word of God, 
 and to be immediately inspired by God.* As to the pre¬ 
 cise nature of that inspiration, it is silent. It is said that 
 holy men of old “ spake as they were moved,” but there 
 is nothing heretical in denying the verbal inspiration of 
 the Scriptures. Is there, then, any place where the line 
 can be drawn between a theory which denies the in¬ 
 spiration of Scripture and one which minimizes inspira¬ 
 tion but yet admits the fact of inspiration ? I believe 
 that there is ; and making the most liberal allowance for 
 the diversity of views among theologians as to the 
 mode of inspiration, I believe that it can be shown that 
 when such a line as I have indicated is drawn, it will 
 be found that the theory maintained by Professor 
 Briggs is irreconcilably opposed to the doctrine of in¬ 
 spiration, as it is set forth in the Word of God and in the 
 Standards of the Presbyterian Church. 
 
 It is possible to employ words which have a recog¬ 
 nized meaning, and at the same time so to pervert that 
 meaning as virtually to rob them of their real signifi¬ 
 cance. An Arian or a Sabellian, for example, may talk 
 about the Triune God without recognizing the tri-per¬ 
 sonality of the Godhead, or the Unity of the three Per¬ 
 sons. A Socinian may talk about the divinity of our Lord 
 while denying His eternity and equality with the Father. 
 A man may teach that missionaries should be sent to 
 the heathen in order that the heathen may be saved, and 
 yet deny that the heathen without missionaries will be 
 lost. In the same way, it is possible for a man to speak of 
 the inspiration of the Scriptures, and yet to rob inspira¬ 
 tion of its meaning. Now, whatever Professor Briggs’s 
 theory of inspiration may or may not be, it is not suffi¬ 
 cient to show that it is lamentably defective, or logically 
 absurd, or possibly dangerous in its applications. It 
 may have all these characteristics and yet be perfectly 
 admissible within the liberty of the Standards. We do 
 not try men for being bad logicians. It might be shown 
 
 * Confession of Faith, Chap. I., Sec. 2, and Proof Texts cited. 
 
25 
 
 that Professor Briggs’s theory of inspiration is indefensi¬ 
 ble from either a philosophical or a religious point of 
 view. And it will be shown from Professor Briggs’s 
 own words that it involves consequences of the most 
 serious kind. We are told that the inspiration is 
 not in the language, nor in the style, nor in the sen¬ 
 tences or clauses, but that it is in the concept.* It 
 may be claimed, that such a statement, however unin¬ 
 telligible it may be, is capable of a two-fold interpre¬ 
 tation, and is not necessarily heretical.f 
 
 But suppose it can be shown, not that it is capable of 
 an heretical explanation, but that Professor Briggs uses 
 it to support an heretical assertion, then I assume that it 
 must be taken into consideration in judging of the 
 orthodoxy of his utterances. That is to say, a man may 
 lay down premises from which an heretical conclusion 
 can be drawn—in another place the heretical conclusion 
 may be stated. The premises may not of themselves be 
 heretical, but are capable of an heretical interpretation. 
 The author cannot be judged by such premises alone, 
 but if it can be shown that he himself has been led into 
 heresy from the premises which he has already laid 
 down, then I claim that the premises may be judged as 
 well as the conclusion. 
 
 If, then, it can be shown that Professor Briggs’s doc¬ 
 trine of inspiration admits of heretical deductions being 
 drawn from it, and if it can be shown that he himself 
 makes such deductions from it, I claim that the grounds 
 of the deduction, as well as the deduction, demand the 
 judicial consideration of the Presbytery. If it is heresy 
 to contradict the truthfulness of Scripture, and if a cer¬ 
 tain doctrine is contradictory in its implication of the 
 truthfulness of Scripture, and if Professor Briggs asserts 
 that the Scriptures are untruthful in any respect, then 
 it is fair to assume that his theory of the untruthfulness 
 
 * Inaugural Address, p. 31. 
 
 t Craighead Case, General Assembly Minutes, 1824, p. 122; Moore’s 
 Digest, p. 224. 
 
26 
 
 of Scripture is connected with his theory of inspira¬ 
 tion. 
 
 What is the natural inference from the proposition 
 that the inspiration of the Bible is the inspiration of the 
 concept, not of the words; that there is nothing divine 
 in the sentences? The only way in which a truth can 
 be stated is in a proposition expressed or implied. And 
 all propositions are sentences. A concept may suggest 
 a truth, but it cannot express it. The consequence is 
 that if it is only the concept which is inspired, the truth 
 is not inspired. 
 
 In addition to this, if the concept alone is inspired, then 
 the authors of Scripture had inspiration, but there is none 
 left for us, unless indeed the inspired concept was ex¬ 
 pressed in language. If it was, then there is something 
 divine in the words and the sentences. But suppose it 
 to be said, and it doubtless will be said, Professor 
 Briggs is not a logician and he may not have meant to 
 say what you attribute to him. Very well. What did 
 he mean ? If the concept of a narrative, using Profes¬ 
 sor Briggs’s philosophical phraseology, is inspired and 
 the writer commits that concept to language, then the 
 narrative is true, or else it is not inspired. When the 
 writer commits a concept of doctrine to language the 
 doctrine is divine or it is not inspired. If that were 
 Professor Briggs’s view of inspiration, some of us might 
 find fault with it, but that would be our affair, not the 
 affair of any church judicatory. That is why I say that 
 his doctrine of the inspired concept, although it may be 
 unintelligible, may possibly not be called heretical. But 
 if the words of Scripture are not inerrant, then the con¬ 
 cept of the words of Scripture, cannot be said to be in¬ 
 spired. An inspiration that misleads is worse than no 
 inspiration at all, for then without a misleading inspira¬ 
 tion, a man might either remain silent or make a suc¬ 
 cessful guess at the truth. I will not insist upon it as 
 an essential part of this charge, but I do suggest it, 
 that Professor Briggs’s doctrine of inspiration is clearly 
 a part of his doctrine as to the truthfulness of the Holy 
 Scriptures. 
 
2 / 
 
 2. In considering the doctrine of Inerrancy, which Inerrancy, 
 is denied by Professor Briggs and which he regards as 
 one of the barriers which keep men from the Holy 
 Scriptures, it is necessary to repudiate the proposition 
 that one proved error destroys the authority of the 
 Scriptures. Certainly it destroys the entire infallibility 
 of the Bible. If a man break a mirror at one corner, 
 the mirror is broken. He may be able to see his face 
 in another part, but the mirror is no longer unbroken. 
 
 The columns of the Parthenon may be white, but if there 
 is a speck on them they cannot be said to be without 
 spot. And so if there be a proved error in the Scrip¬ 
 tures, the Scriptures, not being inerrant, are not infallible, 
 although they do not lose their authority, any more than 
 the entire mirror becomes opaque because it happens 
 to be cracked in the corner, or the pillar of the Par¬ 
 thenon becomes black by the spot being on it. When 
 I say that a document is infallible, I mean that it is with¬ 
 out error, so that if I claim that I have found an error, 
 unless I can give up the error, I must in so far give up the 
 infallibility of the document. That is very different from 
 saying that the whole of the document is untrue. In¬ 
 asmuch as it has been shown that Prof. Briggs has not 
 retracted or disavowed any of the teaching contained 
 in the Inaugural Address, I shall now read a passage 
 which cannot be construed as being consistent with the 
 essential doctrine of the infallibility of Holy Scripture. 
 
 It is in contradiction to the doctrine of the infallibility 
 of that part of Holy Scripture which is known as pre¬ 
 dictive prophecy. Prof. Briggs has said: “Kuenen 
 has shown that if we insist upon the fulfillment of the 
 details of the predictive prophecy of the Old Testament, 
 many of the predictions have been reversed by history; 
 and the great body of the Messianic prediction has not 
 only never been fulfilled, but cannot now be fulfilled, 
 for the reason that its own time has passed forever.”* 
 
 * Inaugural Address, p. 38. 
 
28 
 
 It is to the statement of Prof. Briggs, not to the cita¬ 
 tion of Kuenen, to which I now call attention, especially 
 as this is illustrated in detail by reference to the prophet 
 Jonah. It will be seen that the passage just quoted 
 is quite inconsistent with belief in the truthfulness of 
 Scripture. An infallible rule of faith and practice cannot 
 readily be conceived of as containing false prophecy. 
 It is the doctrine of the Scriptures that all Messianic 
 prophecy will be fulfilled. I am aware that the inter¬ 
 pretation of the fulfillment of prophecy is very difficult, 
 and there is a danger of being too ready to find minute 
 predictions fulfilled in events which can only be extrav¬ 
 agantly assumed to be included in the inspired mind 
 of the prophet. If Professor Briggs had simply said, 
 “ There are many predictions made by the prophets 
 which we cannot understand, which refer to events of 
 which we are ignorant,” I take it, that he would be in 
 harmony with the Scriptures, and would be supported 
 by Christian scholars. But there are two points es¬ 
 pecially in Professor Briggs’s theory which are in di¬ 
 rect conflict with the assertions of all Scripture, and in 
 particular are in direct contradiction to the words of 
 Christ. 
 
 Here once more we are forced into the apparently 
 illogical position of using Scripture as an argument 
 against one who denies the inerrancy of Scripture. 
 But as it is the principle of our Church, that the 
 Holy Scriptures are infallible, the argument must 
 appeal to all those who have not lost their confidence 
 in the Word of God. 
 
 Let me first call your attention to what Professor 
 Briggs says with respect to Messianic prophecy. His 
 position is not that of the extreme rationalists who 
 look upon prophecy as simply teaching after the event. 
 He still holds to predictive prophecy, but he says, of 
 Messianic prophecy, that a large part of it not only 
 has not been fulfilled, but that from the nature of the 
 case it can never be fulfilled. 
 
2 9 
 
 Two suppositions are here open to us in interpreting 
 the author’s meaning. 
 
 1. We may suppose that the prophecies are inspired 
 prophecies. 
 
 2. We may suppose that the prophecies are unin¬ 
 spired prophecies. 
 
 We have a right to conclude from Professor Briggs’s 
 reference to Jonah,* that his doctrine is that even 
 an inspired prophecy may fail of fulfillment, because 
 God may recall His decree. Now, this idea that 
 a prophet may be inspired to make a false prophecy 
 is repugnant to the scriptural idea of God, who is 
 represented as a God who cannot lie; but, as Professor 
 Briggs expresses it, it is possible that “ God may recall 
 His decree.” A reference to Scripture is sufficient 
 to show how utterly contradictory to the Bible such a 
 doctrine of God’s inspiration, of God’s nature and Word 
 is. But, in order to bring scriptural proof in support 
 of the assertion, Professor Briggs refers to the case of 
 Jonah. 
 
 I shall not be so presumptuous as to attempt to in¬ 
 struct the theologians of this Presbytery in regard to 
 the meaning of the familiar narrative of the Book of 
 Jonah, but shall content myself with quoting from a 
 work of a friend of Professor Briggs in which the matter 
 is discussed upon what I take to be sound exegetical 
 principles. Dr. Morris writes: “To quote the min¬ 
 atory declaration of God against Nineveh, taken in con¬ 
 nection with the subsequent repentance of the people 
 and the consequent change in the divine dealing with 
 them, as an instance of unfulfilled prediction, certainly 
 involves a grave misapprehension of the nature and 
 function of prophecy. To draw from this and similar 
 instances in the Old Testament, where conditional judg¬ 
 ments are threatened but afterwards withheld, the in¬ 
 ference that many divine predictions have been reversed 
 
 * Inaugural Address, p. 38. 
 
30 
 
 by history, is a still more serious mistake.”* But is it 
 not something more than a mistake, is it not to impeach 
 the divine truthfulness ? 
 
 Especially is this the case when we turn to the 
 words of Jesus Christ with respect to the prophecies 
 concerning Himself. We have not walked with Him 
 on that road to Emmaus and so are constantly making 
 mistakes, seeing fulfillment of prophecies at wrong 
 times and under wrong circumstances, or failing to see 
 fulfillment when the event is in history. 
 
 But whether it be scholastic or whether it be criti¬ 
 cal—to deny the fulfillment of the divine prediction is 
 to deny that the prophecy is true, for it must be 
 either true or false. To deny the fulfillment of proph¬ 
 ecy is to deny that God is faithful to His promises or 
 His declarations of judgment. It is to deny that God 
 is a God of Truth, f 
 
 Well, then, suppose we admit that the inspiration ex¬ 
 tends to, and the inerrancy covers, only that part of the 
 teaching which has to do with faith, and practice, with 
 “the teaching that guides our devotions, our thinking, 
 and our conduct.”;}: Suppose that, following Professor 
 Briggs’s suggestion, we distinguish one part of the 
 Bible from another part. Suppose we say the narra¬ 
 tive is a chronicle more or less errant, more or less fabu¬ 
 lous, but we still have those great ideas which lie at 
 the foundation of our holy religion: God has given us 
 a Word which is to be our guide with respect to con¬ 
 duct and life only, but He has left men free to make 
 erroneous statements about history, and we must put the 
 Word into the crucible of the Reason, and admit only 
 that to be true which is in conformity to the Reason. 
 In that case it must be asked whether the Bible can be 
 a rule of faith and practice, an infallible rule of faith and 
 
 * A Calm Review, etc., Prof. E. D. Morris, p. 32. 
 
 ■f- Confession of Faith, Chap. 1., Sec. II., and Proof Texts cited. 
 Larger Catechism, Q. 7, and Proof Texts cited. Shorter Catechism,Q. 4, 
 and Proof Texts cited. 
 
 | Inaugural Address, p. 36. 
 
3i 
 
 practice, if its infallibility does not extend to its state¬ 
 ments of fact as well as to its presentation of doctrine. 
 Can the narrative be divorced from the doctrine so 
 that we may say of the one that it is fallible, and of the 
 other that it is infallible, that it is inerrant ? I submit 
 that the separation is impossible. Both narrative and 
 faith are knit together. We have not followed 
 cunningly devised fables, but holy men of old spake 
 as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. The 
 ground of your objection to the historical narrative 
 will be a rational principle, a principle of the human 
 reason. Where then do you draw the line between 
 what is in accordance with human reason and what is 
 not? Is rational philosophy founded on principles so 
 infallible that it will accept the Resurrection of Jesus 
 Christ, and reject the miracle of Jonah, upon which 
 Jesus Christ set the seal of His authority, and which He 
 used as an illustration of His triumph over death? Shall 
 we accept St. Paul's doctrine of the second Adam, and 
 regard the first Adam as a myth? Or will you, perhaps, 
 go farther and say that the author who set forth a doc¬ 
 trine which is binding on your conscience will tell you 
 an untruth when he relates events ? It would not be ex¬ 
 pedient to tell a man in whom the processes of thought 
 were weak that if he rejected the facts he must also reject 
 the doctrines, but a man who was accustomed to reason 
 would see that if he rejected the facts the doctrines 
 were in peril. Now, it is possible for a man to take the 
 position of rejecting the facts, but if the facts are insep¬ 
 arable from the doctrines, then we must say to such 
 a man, you may be entitled to your doctrine, but your 
 doctrine is not that of the Presbyterian Church. 
 
 In the face of the claim that there are errors in 
 the Bible, which cannot be explained away,* and 
 discrepancies which we cannot account for, assuming 
 that the errors exist now, we find ourselves in the pres¬ 
 ence of an alternative, either all that the Bible says of 
 its own veracity, all that Jesus Christ, the prophets, and 
 the apostles say of the Bible’s veracity, the fact that 
 
 * Inaugural Address, p. 35. 
 
32 
 
 it is called the Holy Scripture—the Word of God—all 
 these great reasons for believing in the truthfulness of 
 the Bible must be set aside in deference to the results 
 of historical criticism, or else there must be some way 
 of explaining this discrepancy between the Bible as we 
 have it now, and the Bible of which these sacred author¬ 
 ities speak. 
 
 One way to get rid of the difficulty is to accuse the 
 advocates of inerrancy of arguing in a circle because 
 they quote Scripture in support of Scripture. That is 
 all very well, but can a Presbyterian do that without 
 contradicting the doctrine that the Bible is the 
 only infallible rule of faith and practice ? Another 
 way is to say that we have not yet light enough 
 to decide in the face of these witnesses among the 
 prophets and apostles, that the Word of God can teach 
 error. Another way is to claim that as these inspired 
 authorities could not err, the original manuscript was 
 inerrant. Now, that may be laughed at as an a priori 
 argument. It is singular that those who are so stringent 
 in their efforts to exalt the human reason should so often 
 decry Logic, and that those who tell us that Logic 
 should be kept in its proper place should introduce an 
 appeal to a logical principle in order to break the force 
 of the statements of the Word of God. What is meant 
 by an a priori argument? There are two ways in which 
 that term is used. One use is as a synonym for that 
 which is necessary and fundamental. In this sense, a 
 priori truth is truth which cannot be thought to be 
 untrue. The other meaning is, that a priori truth is that 
 which is known in advance of direct experience. 
 
 In the latter sense, perhaps, this is an a priori argu¬ 
 ment. That is, it is asserted in advance of any human 
 criticism that if Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son of God, 
 and His inspired apostles have affirmed the truthful¬ 
 ness of the Scriptures, the Scriptures are true. But 
 of what use is such an argument to those who, like 
 Professor Briggs, deny the inerrancy of the Scripture ? 
 How can it be known that what the Scriptures them¬ 
 selves say of themselves is true? If men will not take 
 
33 
 
 ci brief to assail the entire truthfulness of Scripture * it 
 is not necessary in a court of this Church to take a brief 
 to convert them to Presbyterian doctrine; for the Word 
 ° God is the only infallible rule of faith and practice. 
 
 But it is this barrier of inerrancy,we are told, that keeps 
 many away from the Bible. + That is to say, a funda¬ 
 mental article of the Presbyterian faith, the doctrine of 
 authority, is what keeps so many men away from the 
 
 lble. This is a restless age, an age when men are 
 demanding an authority upon which they may rest 
 securely and confidingly. It has been the boast of 
 Christianity, and especially the boast of the Presbyterian 
 Church, that it has stood in the midst of conflicting 
 systems, and has held out this steady lamp, this certain 
 
 ight, to a troubled world, this unshaken faith in the 
 Word of Almighty God. 
 
 Charges IV and V are as follows : 
 
 Charge IV. 
 
 “The Presbyterian Church in the United States of Authenticity 
 America charges the Rev. Charles A. Briggs DD °£ the 
 being a Minister of the said Church and a member of Scriptures - 
 the Presbytery of New York, with teaching that Moses 
 is not the author of the Pentateuch, which is contrary 
 to direct statements of Holy Scripture and to the 
 essential doctrines of the Standards of the said Church 
 that the Holy Scripture evidences itself to be the Word 
 
 °[ ^ b y the consent of all the parts, and that the 
 infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the 
 Scripture itself.” 
 
 Charge V. 
 
 “The Presbyterian Church in the United States of 
 America charges the Rev. Charles A. Briggs, D.D. 
 being a Minister of the said Church and a member of 
 the Presbytery of New York, with teaching that Isaiah 
 is not the author of half of the book that bears his name, 
 
 Inaugural Address, second ed., appendix, p. 95, 
 
 f Inaugural Address, p. 34. 
 
34 
 
 which is contrary to direct statements of Holy Scrip¬ 
 ture and to the essential doctrines of the Standards o 
 the said Church that the Holy Scripture evidences 
 itself to be the Word of God by the consent of all the 
 parts, and that the infallible rule of interpretation 
 
 of Scripture is the Scripture itself. . 
 
 The charges which I shall next notice are those which 
 deal with Professor Briggs’s. doctrine .of authen¬ 
 ticity. I do not see that in this trial we are 
 called upon to prove that the Bible and. the Con¬ 
 fession of Faith are in the right in this respect. 
 Whatever arguments may be employed to controvert 
 the scriptural view of this subject, it will be admitted 
 by large numbers of scholars that the conclusions 
 reached by radical criticism are not so certain nor so 
 unanimous as to warrant the Church in contradicting 
 the doctrine of the Scripture with reference to the 
 genuineness of some books of the Old Testament, and 
 of adopting as certain, the hypotheses of authorship 
 and redaction which the ingenuity of eminent scholars 
 has devised. It is, of course, no essential part of our 
 creed to have right views as to the authorship of the 
 Book of Job, for example, provided that it is admitted 
 that it is an inspired book. The evil of adopting all the 
 conclusions which have been advanced by the critics of 
 the Bible is two-fold. It involves doctrine which is 
 anti-Christian, and it involves doctrine which is anti- 
 Presbyterian. 
 
 Of course, the claim will be made at once that I am in 
 no position to judge of the validity of the conclusions of 
 modern criticism. It will be urged that this is the work 
 of experts and specialists. We have been told by 
 writers repeatedly during the past y ear that it is only 
 the unlearned, the willfully ignorant, the men who are 
 blinded by traditionalism, that create the opposition to 
 these radical views as to authenticity. Indeed, if I am 
 not mistaken, the opinion has been publicly expressed 
 by a minister of our Church, that the majority of the 
 Presbyterian clergy are incompetent to say whether the 
 doctrines advanced by the radical critics are well- 
 
35 
 
 founded or not. I am not ready to admit this state¬ 
 ment in so far as the Presbyterian clergy are concerned, 
 but in my own case I admit it freely. 
 
 I do not undertake to commit the folly of claiming 
 any special learning regarding the literature of the 
 Bible, but one might wish that many of those who find 
 fault with the ignorance of their brethren on these sub¬ 
 jects were themselves a little more learned in logic, in 
 Presbyterian law, and in the plain and simple statements 
 of Holy Scripture. Is it not clear that a man to whom an 
 appeal to the authority of Scripture or to the Confes¬ 
 sional doctrine is made in vain, is no longer a Presbyte¬ 
 rian ? and that if he objects to theological questions being 
 settled on that ground, his objection is ipso facto heresy ? 
 
 A polemical argument presented by one party in the 
 Church to another party in the Church assumes that the 
 Bible and the Standards of the Church are the final au¬ 
 thority. There is another kind of argument, which 
 may be called apologetical, which is addressed to those 
 who do not hold to the same Standards with ourselves. 
 
 Is it not plain, that unless an appeal to the Standards of 
 the Church is final, the opposing party is, by the very 
 terms of the controversy, no longer Presbyterian ? And 
 so, if a clergyman comes to me and tells me that the 
 Scriptural and the Confessional doctrine as to the 
 genuineness of the Bible is wrong, without being a 
 specialist in oriental studies, I am compelled to say to 
 him that he is teaching what is heretical. 
 
 Now, from a legal point of view, the Presbyterian The standards 
 Church is an organization, the Standards of which are its ° urCon stitu- 
 Constitution.* Let us take a somewhat analogous case. 
 
 Suppose that a society were to be formed to follow the 
 teachings of Plato. Suppose that the society by an 
 adopting act were to declare that they would be guided 
 absolutely by the writings of Plato, and that as a condi¬ 
 tion of belonging to that society, a man must subscribe 
 to the society’s interpretation of Plato. The question, 
 in the first instance, would be to determine what the 
 writings of Plato were. Suppose th at it should be 
 
 * Minutes General Assembly, 1788, p. 546. Moore’s Digest, p. 51. 
 
3 6 
 
 adopted as a part of the Constitution of this society, 
 that the ancient canon of the Platonic writings 
 should be taken to be obligatory. One can conceive 
 of a Platonic critic of the nineteenth century saying to 
 the members of the society: “ Do you not know that 
 Plato did not write all the books which you attribute 
 to him ? ” One critic might hold that the Laws were 
 spurious, another might wish to throw out the Parmeni¬ 
 des , but, whatever the force of their arguments, a man 
 who should abandon the position of the society with 
 regard to the Platonic canon would no longer have any 
 reason for subscribing to its constitution. Well, but 
 one may answer, the object of the Presbyterian Church 
 is not to vindicate a certain view of Hebrew literature. 
 Granted that it is generally believed that Moses did 
 write the Pentateuch, and that David did write most of 
 the Psalms, such positions are no part of the essence of 
 the Presbyterian faith. 
 
 It is just here that the New Testament is the arbiter. 
 It is just here that the Confession of Faith is obliga¬ 
 tory. If we believe that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, 
 for example, and radical criticism urges that we are 
 wrong, we do not oppose their contention simply be¬ 
 cause we regard their position as due to a mere literary 
 error, to a mistake in reasoning. We oppose it on the 
 authority of Jesus Christ. We are called upon to pro¬ 
 nounce our decision concerning a plausible hypothesis, 
 on the one hand, and the Word of Christ on the other. 
 You cannot, according to the Standards of the Presby¬ 
 terian Church, choose from among the sayings of the 
 Bible what you will or will not believe. For it is the 
 only “ infallible rule of faith.” You cannot choose from 
 among the sayings of our Lord what you will believe 
 and what you will reject, for He is the Way and the 
 Truth and the Life. It is not an article of our creed 
 that the Son of God, in His humiliation upon earth, was 
 omniscient. But it is an article of our faith that He was 
 infallible. But it will be said that this is an a priori 
 argument. Well, did not our Lord use an a priori argu- 
 
37 
 
 ment in enforcing the claims of His own doctrine ? He, 
 indeed, put the premises and conclusion in a different 
 order from the one which I have just followed. He did 
 not sa}, If ye believe my words, ye shall believe the 
 writings of Moses, but He did say, “ If ye believe not 
 his writings, how shall ye believe my words?”* 
 
 It will thus be seen that the doctrines of Professor 
 with respect to Holy Scripture are irreconcil¬ 
 able with the teaching of Scripture and of the Confes¬ 
 sion of Faith. 
 
 Even admitting (which I do not admit fora moment), 
 that the doctrine of the divine authority of the Reason 
 is not per se heretical, and that Professor Briggs’s real 
 meaning is very different from that which his words 
 convey; even admitting that his doctrine of Inspiration 
 is not per se heretical, and that his meaning has been en¬ 
 tirely mistaken, even admitting that his statements with 
 respect to inerrancy and prophecy are not explicitly 
 heretical; even admitting that judged by any one of 
 these doctrines, it may not be necessary to regard his 
 opinion and position as seriously heretical (none of 
 which admissions I am prepared to make), I contend 
 that all these divergences from the Confessional and 
 Scriptural doctrine are so related that one is not en¬ 
 titled to look upon them as accidental, but as logically 
 connected, and as forming a systematic error which 
 strikes at the first principles of the Scriptures as the 
 only infallible rule of faith and practice. 
 
 Charge VI is as follows: 
 
 Charge VI. 
 
 The Presbyterian Church in the United States of 
 America charges the Rev. Charles A. Briggs, D.D., 
 being a Minister of the said Church and a member of 
 the Presbytery of New York, with teaching that Sanc¬ 
 tification is not complete at death, which is contrary to 
 the essential doctrine of Holy Scripture and of the 
 
 * John v., 47. 
 
38 
 
 Standards of the said Church, that the souls of believers 
 are at their death at once made perfect in holiness. 
 
 The sixth charge relates to the state of the soul 
 after death. 1 shall attempt to show that Professor 
 Briggs’s doctrine on this subject is contra-confessional 
 because it affirms the theory of progressive sanctifica¬ 
 tion after death. 
 
 Professor Briggs affirms that the word “ redemption 
 includes the “ whole process of grace.” It comprehends 
 regeneration, justification, repentance, faith, sancti¬ 
 fication and glorification. Now, the real meaning of 
 the doctrine of progressive sanctification cannot be 
 fully understood without taking into consideration 
 Professor Briggs’s doctrine of redemption, of which 
 sanctification is a part.* 
 
 To do this, we must first notice the statement made 
 by Professor Briggs with respect to the relation of elec¬ 
 tion to redemption. Now, we do not have to discuss 
 the question of the divine decrees at this point. It is not 
 here a question as to whether the Confession and the 
 Scriptures teach Supra-lapsarianism, or the contrary. 
 It is not here a question as to the nature or order of the 
 divine decrees. It is rather on the common ground 
 occupied by Calvinists and Arminians that objection 
 to this view of redemption is brought. It is not whether 
 election is founded on God’s sovereign will, or is con¬ 
 ditional on the character and will of Man. It is not so 
 much a question as to the purpose of God as it is a 
 question as to the salvation of Man. It is the distinct 
 specific question of the relation of redemption to 
 election, and therefore the relation of election to the 
 salvation of the race. 
 
 Nor is the issue whether or not the atonement is 
 limited, whether Christ died for all men or for the 
 elect only. However firm our belief may be as to 
 either the one or the other of these alternatives, a 
 certain latitude of interpretation is permitted, and it is 
 not necessary to regard either of these alternatives as 
 
 * Inaugural Address, pp. 52, 53. Inaugural Address, second edition, 
 
 p. IOO. 
 
39 
 
 heretical. Professor Briggs declares that Presbyterians 
 have too often limited redemption by their doctrine of 
 election ; and that the Bible knows no such limitations.* 
 But if election does not limit redemption, it follows that 
 there may be redeemed men who are not elect. If 
 redemption were used by Professor Briggs in a narrow 
 sense, to describe the objective work effected through 
 the incarnation and death of God the Son, it might be 
 said : This is nothing more than the denial of the doc¬ 
 trine of a limited atonement, which may be false, but is 
 not heretical. That is, it may be interpreted as meaning 
 that redemption is for all men, whosoever believeth will 
 be saved. In that sense it is true that the whole race is 
 redeemed, but only the elect have their sins forgiven, 
 their pardon pronounced. Only the elect are sanctified 
 and glorified. In any case, it would be doubtful 
 whether or not Professor Briggs meant to affirm or 
 deny that all men are saved. 
 
 But, in order that there may be no doubt as to his 
 meaning, he has defined redemption in such a way as to 
 lay himself open to the charge of teaching the salvation 
 of the whole race of men. He affirms that redemption 
 includes “ not only the forgiveness of sins,” but deliver¬ 
 ance from bodily evil. But he goes farther; he says, 
 “ The Redemption of the Bible comprehends the whole 
 process of grace .... The Bible rises above the 
 faults of modern theology, and comprehends in its 
 redemption of man, his justification, sanctification and 
 glorification ; his regeneration, his renovation and his 
 transformation; his faith, repentance and holy love.”f 
 Then those who are not elect may undergo these 
 gracious changes, and have these gracious benefits. 
 Unless such is the case, redemption is limited by 
 election, which Professor Briggs denies. Even if we 
 say with Arminians that God elects men on account of 
 their faith, or on account of their works, or on account 
 of their faith and their works, we cannot affirm that 
 any of the non-elect are redeemed. And if we should 
 
 * Inaugural Address, p. 55. 
 t Inaugural Address, pp. 52, 53. 
 
40 
 
 say that redemption means only the possibility of sal¬ 
 vation held out to the whole race of men, if we accept 
 Professor Briggs’s doctrine, we are obliged to affirm that 
 this possibility becomes a certainty, for the whole race 
 of man is redeemed, and redemption includes regenera¬ 
 tion, justification, sanctification and glorification. From 
 his doctrine of redemption, and from his doctrine 
 of election, he draws the conclusion: “ The Bible does 
 not teach universal salvation, but it does teach the sal¬ 
 vation of the world, of the race of man.” We 
 cannot object to this statement, if it means that a very 
 great multitude is saved, for it is plainly taught in the 
 Bible that the host of the redeemed will be very great. 
 But when we are told that the salvation of the world 
 cannot be accomplished by the selection of a limited 
 number of individuals from the mass, then we affirm 
 that it means nothing, or else it means that salvation is 
 the selection of an unlimited number from the mass. 
 What does that mean, viewed in the light of the state¬ 
 ment that redemption is not limited by election ? 
 
 It will be said : “You cannot charge Professor Briggs 
 with holding the doctrine of universalism, for he dis¬ 
 tinctly says that the Bible does not teach universal 
 salvation.” But, as I understand it, the heresy of uni¬ 
 versalism does not consist essentially in the statement 
 that all men are saved. Universalism is essentially 
 heretical because of its statement of the way in which 
 men are saved. It is the premises upon which univers¬ 
 alism is founded, not the conclusion itself, that is 
 essentially heretical. Professor Briggs’s doctrine is 
 capable of but two interpretations, either of which is 
 heresy. Either he teaches that the non-elect are re¬ 
 deemed, which would be heretical; or he teaches that 
 all men are elect, which is also heretical. 
 
 Now, there is a logical connection between the 
 doctrine of redemption and that of sanctification after 
 death. 
 
 If sanctification is regarded as a part of redemption, 
 and if it be held that a part of the work of redemption 
 
 * Inaugural Address, p. 55. 
 
4i 
 
 goes on after death, there is no difficulty in identifying 
 the process after death with a process of redemption. 
 We are not told by Professor Briggs whether the other 
 processes of redemption are or are not carried on in a 
 future state. But it is reasonable to infer that a man 
 who believes that we are justified by faith, and who 
 believes that a man must be justified before he can be 
 said to be glorified, must show in some way that those 
 who are redeemed, but who have never believed in this 
 world, have believed to their justification. Can a man 
 who has not believed in this life, be justified in this life ? 
 If he can, then the Bible and the Confession of Faith are 
 wrong in teaching the doctrine of justification by faith. 
 If he cannot, then none of those who have failed to 
 believe, in this life, can be justified, unless they are 
 justified in another world. It is logical to suppose that 
 when Professor Briggs speaks of redemption after 
 death, he means that all the processes of grace included 
 in the term redemption may take place in the other 
 world. 
 
 But you will say, Has not Professor Briggs said 
 distinctly in the answers to the questions put to him by 
 his sympathetic colleagues, that he does not believe in a 
 second probation after death ?* Let this be granted. 
 But does he believe that the present is a state of 
 probation ? It may be that the state of first probation 
 is past and that all probation is over. Professor Briggs 
 has taught elsewheref that the race had but one pro¬ 
 bation, and that was the probation of Adam as the head 
 of the race. Of course, then, he does not believe in a 
 second probation. Nor was it necessary for him to 
 deny a belief in the doctrine of Purgatory. No one ever 
 supposed that he did believe in Purgatory. The Roman 
 Catholic doctrine of Purgatory has but little in common 
 with the theory of Professor Briggs, although, if we 
 were choosing between the two doctrines, we might 
 prefer the Roman Catholic doctrine to that taught by 
 
 * Vide Questions submitted to Prof. Briggs by Directors of Union 
 Seminary. 
 
 f Whither, p. 217. 
 
42 
 
 Professor Briggs. Let us, then, dismiss from this dis¬ 
 cussion for the present, the idea that Professor Briggs 
 has uttered universalistic doctrine, or that he has uttered 
 the doctrine of purgatory. He is not a universalist 
 because he affirms that some men will be lost. It might 
 be shown that his principles lead logically to universal- 
 ism, but as he has stated explicitly that the hopelessly 
 irredeemable, sink to the lowest depths in the Middle 
 State, he must have the benefit of the doubt. However 
 obscure Professor Briggs’s statements may seem when 
 he treats of the subject of redemption, it is perfectly 
 clear that he believes, or expresses his belief, in sancti¬ 
 fication as a process being continued after death. He 
 denies immediate sanctification after death, and repudi¬ 
 ates the idea that there is magical transformation in 
 the dying hour. On this point the standards of the 
 Church teach a directly contradictory doctrine, the 
 Shorter Catechism being especially strong,* using 
 first the expression “ at ” their death, and second, 
 the word “ immediately.” As to a progressive trans¬ 
 formation in glory, and possibly in happiness, and 
 a growth of believers after death, there is no dis¬ 
 pute, but the Confession is decisive in its statement 
 with regard to the completion of sanctification not 
 after but at the hour of death. As to Professor Briggs’s 
 “bugbear of a particular judgment after death,” 
 this is said by him, to be a terror to the best of men. 
 But it would appear from Holy Scripture and from the 
 work which Christ has accomplished for us, that fear 
 of a particular judgment immediately after death should 
 have no terrors for him who is clothed with the 
 righteousness of Christ. 
 
 The question to be decided by this court is a very 
 simple one. Professor Briggs’s doctrines have been 
 presented in evidence, they have been judged by com¬ 
 paring them with the Holy Scriptures and with the 
 standards of Presbyterian doctrine. Knowing what the 
 Presbyterian Church teaches and what Professor Briggs 
 teaches, you have simply to decide whether the doc- 
 
 *Q. 37- 
 
43 
 
 trine of the Professor agrees with that of the Church, or 
 whether it does not. If you should decide that the 
 case against him is proven, and I confess that I do not 
 see how you can avoid the conclusion, the next question 
 will be as to the essential and vital character of these 
 departures from the standards of our faith. 
 
 I think you will all agree with me in one thing, 
 whether you are supporters of Professor Briggs or not, 
 and that is, that in these days, when we are assailed by 
 a high ecclesiastical theory on the one hand, and by a 
 rationalistic and agnostic philosophy on the other, it is 
 of especial importance that Presbyterians should be 
 very tenacious and decided with respect to the au¬ 
 thority to which appeal is made in matters of religion. 
 Let it be observed, however, that I am not claiming 
 that the doctrine of Professor Briggs should be con¬ 
 demned because it seems to be radically subversive of 
 the Presbyterian principle of authority. That has been 
 already presented to you. But what I am now claiming 
 is, that assuming that his position with respect to the 
 divine authority of the Church and the Reason is heret¬ 
 ical, the heresy is vital. It i§ vital not merely because 
 it sets up the Reason as a divine authority, which may 
 dispute the claims of the Holy Scripture, but it is vital 
 also because it weakens the authority of the Scriptures 
 in matters of faith by affirming their errancy, by denying 
 their authenticity, and by reducing the doctrine of 
 inspiration to such a minimum that it is of no real value 
 to us in matters of faith and practice. In like manner 
 I think that you will agree with me that Prof. Briggs’s 
 theory of redemption, is vital to the whole scheme of 
 Presbyterian belief. It is opposed not simply to the 
 doctrine of decrees taught in the Confession of Faith. 
 That claim might be made, but there are some who 
 would not regard such a departure from the Standards 
 as heretical. But this theory of redemption is essen¬ 
 tially out of harmony with the cardinal doctrines of 
 evangelical religion, not to say of Protestant religion. 
 It strikes at the roots of that great Protestant principle, 
 “Justification by faith,” and differs from universalism, 
 
44 
 
 Naturalism. 
 
 only because the author has not pursued his doctrine 
 to its logical conclusion. And the doctrine of progress¬ 
 ive sanctification after death, however it may be inter¬ 
 preted, strikes at the foundation of certain great prin¬ 
 ciples upon which all preaching rests, and which under¬ 
 lie the missionary efforts of Christendom. But I am 
 prepared to go farther than this and to notice the prin¬ 
 ciple of which these doctrines are an evidence and a 
 symptom. Those who have read history carefully, will 
 bear me out in the assertion, that it is impossible for a 
 man to present a radical doctrine with respect to the 
 fundamental principles of religion, without that doctrine 
 carrying with it a principle—sometimes a principle of 
 scientific method, sometimes a principle of philosophical 
 method. I do not claim that any rational philosophy of 
 religion is consciously defended when Professor Briggs 
 piesents doctrines such as form the basis of the charges. 
 On the contrary, it is just because he seems so uncon¬ 
 scious of what his principles involve, that I am anxious 
 to call not only your attention, but his attention, to the 
 erroneous principles assumed and implied in the teaching, 
 on which the Presbytery is to be called upon to pass. 
 It is not that Professor Briggs having accepted a system 
 or method of philosophy is carrying it to its logical 
 conclusions. He has doubtless reached his conclusions 
 by an induction of facts collected in his study and from 
 the works of critical writers. But, as I have just said, 
 when fundamental doctrines are advanced or contra¬ 
 dicted, the advance or the contradiction involves a prin¬ 
 ciple of philosophy. 
 
 Now, what philosophy is implied, what philosophy is 
 wrapped up in the theological doctrine which Professor 
 Briggs has tried to read into Holy Scripture and the 
 Standards of the Presbyterian Church ? 
 
 I answer, and I shall prove my answer, that his doc¬ 
 trine is an expression, whether he is conscious of 
 it or not, is an expression of the naturalistic philoso¬ 
 phy. It is still a disputed question, how far the 
 naturalistic method may be employed in the phi¬ 
 losophical sciences. But as a religious method, 
 
45 
 
 its conclusions are radically opposed to supernatural 
 religion. Examples of it are to be found in the thought 
 of modern England, in the explanation of religion from 
 ghost or ancestor worship. Examples of it in Germany 
 are to be found in the naturalistic interpretation of the 
 Hebrew religion by the school of Kuenen. To discuss 
 its tendency specifically, would be to open up the 
 wide field of Apologetics. But in brief, it may be 
 described as an attempt to explain, on natural principles, 
 Christianity of the historic type, or as Professor Briggs 
 would doubtless call it, of the traditional type. 
 
 Now it is quite possible for a man to follow this 
 naturalistic method partially, without following it 
 thoroughly. I do not say that if a man follows it par¬ 
 tially, he is bound to follow it thoroughly, although 
 some men are remorseless in their logic, and stop at no 
 consequences. Certainly Professor Briggs does not 
 follow it thoroughly, for he does not deny many of the 
 miracles of the Bible, and he writes with great elo¬ 
 quence of the Theophanies and the Christophanies. The 
 characteristic of this kind of thought is, however, to 
 emphasize the interference of God in all human history 
 in such a manner as to take away from it, that exclusive 
 character which Christianity claims for itself. 
 
 Let me call attention to some manifestations of this 
 naturalism in the writings of Professor Briggs, in illus¬ 
 tration of my meaning. Foremost among the doctrines 
 taught by him, which are symptoms of naturalism, is 
 the doctrine of the divine authority of the Reason, 
 which is placed so high as to make it a matter of 
 indifference, so far as men are concerned, whether they 
 are faithful to the Word of God or not. He teaches that 
 it is a matter of temperament and environment which 
 way of access to God men may pursue. Then follows 
 the discrediting of the Bible as a divine authority, by 
 pointing out its errors, as well as by advancing a theory 
 of inspiration which permits us to speak of the divine 
 truth of the Bible, only, as we speak of the divine poetry 
 of Milton. Then there is his view of divine prophecy 
 which discredits the predictions of the holy prophets, on 
 
Liberty and 
 Toleration. 
 
 4 6 
 
 the principles of naturalistic thought. It goes farther in 
 Professor Briggs’s work on Messianic Prophecy* 
 (referred to in the Inaugural Address), where he predi¬ 
 cates prophecy, or rather prophetic inspiration, of 
 heathen writers. Naturalism appears once more in the 
 doctrine of Miracles, where it is admitted that any 
 naturalistic interpretation of them would not affect their 
 meaning and value. In the treatment of redemption 
 there is naturalism where the plan of redemption is set 
 forth in accordance, not with the explicit statements of 
 the Bible, but in accordance with a naturalistic view of 
 the unfortunate condition of the heathen, and an un- 
 scriptural and fanciful doctrine of the future state. These 
 doctrines, I say, are manifestations of that naturalistic 
 principle which, in the hands of a more logical writer 
 than Professor Briggs, would be pushed to far more 
 radical conclusions. 
 
 As soon as we begin to give up the supernatural ex¬ 
 planation of religion, we are likely to be led to give up 
 all religion, at least all religion which can speak with 
 authority in correction of wandering human theories, 
 and false sentimental views of God, and of Sin and of 
 Salvation. If, then, you decide that such divergences as 
 these are permissible, you have given liberty to a method 
 which will soon leave you about as much exclusiveness 
 as Christians, in having the oracles of God, as Mahom¬ 
 etans or Brahmins have. 
 
 It is, of course, easy for a man to say : Suppose, how¬ 
 ever, I am convinced of the truth of these doctrines, 
 will the Church muzzle me, silence me, for uttering what 
 I am persuaded is true ? This brings us back to the 
 question of heresy. Look at the principle which such 
 a question involves. I can imagine a man after 
 an exhaustive study of patristic and scholastic litera¬ 
 ture, becoming so convinced that the Roman Church 
 is the true church, that he might preach Romanism 
 from a Presbyterian pulpit. It is not likely, but I make 
 the supposition. The Presbytery would, doubtless, in¬ 
 terfere. And then suppose that he should say : “ You 
 
 * Messianic Prophecy, p. 33. 
 
47 
 
 are silencing me for teaching what I believe to be true. 
 You are not experts on this question. I have devoted 
 my life to the study of Roman Catholic literature, and 
 I am leading you on in the paths of divine Providence.” 
 Possibly you would reply: “You are a remarkable 
 scholar; we admit that no one of us has given as much 
 attention to the literature of the fathers and the school¬ 
 men as you have. But our church, whether mistaken 
 or not, has required of you, at your ordination, to take 
 a vow to sustain its standards of doctrine. We are not 
 silencing you because you know more about this litera¬ 
 ture of the past than we do, but because we believe dif¬ 
 ferently from you. And our belief is not something 
 which can be changed, even at the demand of a 
 great scholar.” I have made the supposition, but there 
 is no one who would remain in the Presbyterian Church 
 long enough to listen to such a reply. He would take 
 his patristic and scholastic literature with him, and go to 
 his spiritual director, who would doubtless tell him that 
 if he had not left the church of his own accord, the 
 Presbyterian Church would have been quite justified in 
 inviting him to leave. A heresy trial is not persecution, 
 for when the charges are proved it is simply proved 
 that the accused has been converted to another form of 
 religion. We are sorry that he is so mistaken, we wish 
 that he had not left the faith in which he once believed, 
 but we have to choose between our own doctrines and 
 his. 
 
 The question meets each one of us, are these doctrines 
 of Professor Briggs contradictory to the Holy Scrip¬ 
 tures and to the Standards of our Church ? In approv¬ 
 ing of his teaching, and you do approve of it, if you vote 
 for an acquittal, you who have this view will go back 
 to your respective congregations with the acknowledg¬ 
 ment that your view of the Word of God is not the 
 view of the prophets and apostles, and of Jesus Christ 
 himself. You are virtually to say to them and to the 
 world, that the Bible is not any longer regarded by you 
 as the only infallible rule of faith and practice, but that 
 the Reason and the Church are also fountains of divine 
 
48 
 
 authority ; that the words of the Bible do not convey 
 the inspired truth ; that it is a matter of temperament 
 and environment which way of access to God men may 
 pursue ; that the whole race of man is redeemed, will 
 be justified, sanctified, glorified, whether they be elected 
 or not, whether they be heathen or Christian. You will 
 tell them that a man who teaches all these doctrines 
 should still remain in that ministry that has been 
 honored by such men as Edwards, and Smith, and the 
 Hodges, and Adams. And you will collect money for 
 missions, although you agree that most men will be 
 saved in the Middle State, even if they die in their sins. 
 
 You will agree with me that the issue is of vital impor¬ 
 tance. Men do not pick out a victim, and then search 
 for errors in his doctrines, so as to have the peculiar 
 pleasure of trying him for heresy. But trials for 
 heresy are forced upon the church, when clergymen, 
 in violation of their vows of ordination, and setting 
 at defiance the Standards of doctrine in their own 
 communion, persist in teaching these errors, and 
 decline to retract them specifically, even though they 
 claim that they are misunderstood. 
 
 Every one will admit that the necessity for trials of 
 this kind is greatly to be deplored. They are a cause 
 of vexation and disturbance to the Church, and tempo¬ 
 rarily divert the minds of men from that great object of 
 our energies and efforts, the transformation of the world 
 to the likeness of Christ. But the responsibility for this 
 painful process rests not upon those who are loyal to 
 Presbyterian doctrine, but upon those who are its assail¬ 
 ants. And unless we maintain the purity of our faith 
 we shall soon have no pure faith to proclaim to the 
 world. It is possible that even those who disapprove of 
 Professor Briggs’s doctrines may hold that the Church 
 should tolerate differences of opinion within reasonable 
 limits, and that we may tolerate what we do not ap¬ 
 prove. I freely admit that intolerance is a bad thing. I 
 should be the last to deny that liberty is a great 
 treasure. But by intolerance I do not understand hold- 
 
49 
 
 ing men to their obligations, and by liberty 1 under¬ 
 stand conformity to law. 
 
 There should be no attempt to obscure the issue 
 which is now before this Judicatory. It is not a con¬ 
 flict between the Old School and the New School. That 
 distinction is no longer recognized in our Church. 
 But the great leaders of what was formerly the New 
 School party were among the staunchest defenders of 
 the authority of the Bible, and it would be a slight 
 upon the memory of men like Edward Robinson, 
 Henry B. Smith and William Adams, to attribute to 
 them opinions which they would have repudiated. Nor 
 is this an issue between the Revision and Anti-Revision 
 party. None of the points raised in this trial has been 
 raised in connection with the revision of our standards, 
 unless, indeed, the proposed words'* relating to the truth¬ 
 fulness of Scripture may be construed as designed to 
 strengthen and support the prosecution in cases like this. 
 Nor is this a question between scholarship and ignorance, 
 unless the Presbyterian standards and the Holy Bible are 
 to be regarded as ignorant teachers. We do not ask that 
 men should be restricted as to their methods of research, 
 and we are ready to deal with any new hypothesis. But 
 what we do demand is, that when men advance con¬ 
 clusions which contradict the doctrines which they have 
 solemnly promised to support, they should be challenged 
 and required either to abide by our doctrines or else 
 submit to the decisions of our courts. 
 
 The Real 
 Issue. 
 
 * Report of Committee on Revision to the Assembly of 1891.