USA > Virginia > City of Staunton > City of Staunton > The First Presbyterian Church, Staunton, Virginia > Part 12
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Mary, the harlot of Staunton, Jesus bids me say to you, He loves you; go and sin no more. Your heart may sing,
"O Light of light, O God of God, for me, Across the prison-house of long disgrace, Fetter and chain have fallen and left me free, Since I have seen His face."
III. But little time is left for our third point of view. After all, the truest criterion for the testing of love is what it does, what it gives, what it suffers. In a crowd gathered around an unfortunate man and expressing their sympathy, one said, "I sympathize with him five dollars worth; how much do you ?" A mother's love is measured by the sacrifices she willingly makes. So the love of God is known by what it gives, by what it suffers. The theme is boundless, and we must limit ourselves to the lowest and the highest, leaving it to our grateful imaginations to
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supply what lies between. The least of what God does, by means of which He shows His love, is seen in the com- mon, the universal experience of us all. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the house that shelters us; "every good and perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights." "He opens His hands to satisfy the desire of every living thing," and "gives us richly all things to enjoy.".
"Ten thousand, thousand precious gifts Our daily thanks employ; Nor is the least a cheerful heart That tastes those gifts with joy."
But these multiplied blessings, great as they are, yet are as nothing when compared with God's "unspeakable gifts." Men may give millions, as some men are now doing, but there is a proof of love that outweighs the worlds. The highest test of a woman's love is when she gives herself to the man of her choice; and so it is with man; and so it is with God. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." "God commendeth His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Yes, Christ laid down His life, Christ died for us. Here is the sunshine of God's love in its meridian glory, upon which no human eye can look to take in all, or more than an infinitesimal part of its meaning. Christ died for us, "the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God." We are apt to think of this death as physical, rendered excruciating by the agonies of crucifixion. Such indeed it was, but this is only the shadow, only the background, only the setting, only the antechamber of the temple of our Lord's sacrifice for us. As Isaiah saw and said, His soul was made an offering for sin, He poured out His soul unto death, the travails of His soul He should see. As He said, His soul. was exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. The cup which He prayed might, if possible, pass from Him, but which
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He willingly drank to its dregs, was the cup of God's wrath and curse due to you and me, the sinners for whom He died, for whom His soul died, as He exclaimed, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"
"Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were a present far too small; Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all."
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CHAPTER XIV
TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE WEST- MINSTER ASSEMBLY
O N APRIL 29, 1647, the great Westminster Assembly, in session at Westminster Abbey, completed the most important part of their valuable work.
On April 29, 1897, the Presbyterians of Staunton and Augusta County met to celebrate the 250th anniversary. Elaborate preparations had been made by the two local churches. History and Biography, Doctrine and Influence, had been assigned to able men for treatment. And as session after session was held the hearers found that the planning had not been in vain.
On Thursday evening, April 29, 1897, a large audience gathered in the First Presbyterian Church. Rev. Dr. A. M. Fraser presided. Rev. H. A. White, of Washington and Lee University, was the speaker of the occasion. His theme was, "The Political and Ecclesiastical Conditions which Led to the Calling of the Westminster Assembly." With great power he gathered up the threads unravelled from the tangled skein of history from 1543 to 1643, show- ing clearly how the irresistible trend of events demanded the calling of the Assembly and made its work a necessity.
"The Intellectual and Moral Character and Qualifica- tions of the Westminster Assembly as Compared with any Other Great Church Council" was the subject of the address prepared by Rev. T. C. Johnson, D. D., but who was unable to be present owing to indisposition. The paper was read by Dr. J. M. Wells, of the Second Presbyterian Church, of Staunton, Virginia. This was followed by an address by Rev. Thornton Whaling,
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D. D., of Lexington; by Mr. Joseph A. Waddell, of Staunton, on the "Shorter Catechism," and he by Rev. Dr. Finley, on the "Doctrines of Calvinism in Notable Revivals of Religion." The evening was spent in a reception tendered by the ladies of the First and Second churches in the lecture rooms of the First Church.
On Saturday Rev. F. R. Beattie, D. D., of Louisville Theological Seminary, was introduced to the audience by Hon. H. St. George Tucker in well-chosen words. Dr. Beattie was one of the originators of the movement to celebrate this anniversary, and it was fitting that he should be heard on this occasion. With true Scotch fire and power he treated his subject, "The Influence of the West- minster Symbols on Civil and Religious Liberty." He laid down as an established fact that the four communities where civil liberty had its most perfect growth-Switzer- land, Holland, Great Britain, and America-were Calvin- istic Presbyterian at the time that civil liberty was in its largest measure acquired, and then he gave the reasons why Calvinistic Presbyterianism always produced civil and religious liberty.
On Saturday a poem was read by Rev. Mr. Lapsley, of Bethel, upon "the Covenanters, or the First Generation Raised on the Shorter Catechism," beautifully recounting the suffering and heroism of those Godly people.
"The Catholic Spirit of the Presbyterian Church" was the subject of an address by Maj. T. J. Kirkpatrick, of Lynchburg.
Maj. Jed. Hotchkiss made an entertaining talk on the "Influence of the Westminster Assembly on Education," followed by Dr. Cocke, of Waynesboro, on "Calvanism in Foreign Missions."
The afternoon services on Sunday were a joint meet- ing of the Presbyterian Sunday Schools of Augusta county, over which Rev. J. E. Booker presided.
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Then the Sunday School worker was truly in his element, and probably never looked into the faces of so many children at one time before. The various schools from over the county were grouped in blocks around the speaker's stand, and back of these sat the visitors. Mr. Booker's own church-Hebron-sent the largest out-of- town delegation, the solid appearance of which created much favorable comment. Of course, the feature of the evening was the address to the children by Rev .. Jas. P. Smith, D. D., of the Central Presbyterian, and the dis- tribution by him of thirteen hundred certificates. These certificates were presented through the Sunday School Superintendents to every one in their congregations who had at any time recited perfectly the shorter catechism.
Sunday was the great day of the meeting. The Pres- byterian churches of the County and City were closed, and the great gathering met in Columbian Hall, filling it with over 2,000 souls long before the hour for morning service, the two local churches furnishing the choir. The visiting ministers who took part in the exercises were Thornton Whaling, D. D., R. A. Lapsley, A. H. Hamilton, and H. A. Young. Rev. Dr. G. B. Strickler, of Union Theological Seminary, preached the sermon on "Presbyterian Doc- trines."
At8o'clock p. m. Rev. Dr. Moses D. Hoge, of Richmond, made the closing address, saying that the Presbyterian structure had been builded by the other speakers that pre- ceded him, brick by brick, and now all that remained for him was to place the capstone, which he did most ably with the subject, "The Ethical Results of a Belief in Calvinism as Shown in the Character of Men and Com- munities."
The great meeting ended, a strength to the faith of its own people and a benediction to the community.
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All the addresses made on the occasion of this celebra- tion that could be obtained are given in the following pages :
The address of Rev. Thos. Cary Johnson, D. D., of Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Virginia, was as follows:
THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL CHARACTER AND QUALIFICATIONS "OF THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY AS COMPARED WITH ANY
" OTHER GREAT CHURCH COUNCIL
The Westminster Assembly has been held in relatively low esteem in many quarters of Protestant Christendom. Even Presby- terian people do not prevalently hold the Assembly in that high honor of which it is deserving. Strange to say, while holding the work of this body in extraordinary veneration, they give to the workmen a very subordinate place in their regard.
This want of appreciation of the Assembly may be partially ex- plained by a consideration of the following facts : Most of the Church histories of the world have been written by German Scholars. That "Germany is the school-mistress of the world " is the proud boast of the scholars of that land. "And this school-mistress was for a long time ignorant of English Church History. German historians, until the middle of our century, paid little attention to the history of the church in Great Britain. It was perfectly natural for the great theologian and philologist, Dr. Winer, of Leipsic, to barely mention the Westminster Confession in his Symbolics,' prior to 1825 .* It was perfectly natural that H. A. Niemyer, who issued his "Collection of Reformed Confessions " so late as 1840, should omit the Westminster Standards, in his first edition. Germans knew little of the struggles and achievements of Christianity in England. They taught us fully about the church of Constantine's day; fully about the Council of Chalcedon and the Council of Trent. They taught us next to nothing about the great Assembly into whose labors we have entered.
Again our minds have been prejudiced against the body that constructed our Standards, by the works of hostile or contemptious English historians." We may not have known' this, but there is no room for reasonable doubt that it is true.
Clarendon, like his masters, the Stuarts, hated Presbyterianism. He regarded it as a religion of plebeian origin. He thought it was unfit for gentlemen. He naturally underrated the Assembly. He
*Compare Schaff's Creeds, Vol. I p. 728.
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says in his "History of the Rebellion," Vol. I p. 827: " Of about one hundred and twenty of which that Assembly was to consist * * a very few reverend and worthy persons were inserted, yet of the whole number they were not above twenty who were not declared and avowed enemies of the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England; some were infamous in their lives and conversations, and most of them were of very mean parts in learning, if not of scanda- lous ignorance; and of no other reputation but of malice to the Church of England; so that that convention hath not since produced anything, that might not then reasonably have been expected of it." These charges were utterly false; but they have percolated through liter- ature; and they may have lowered your own conceptions of the body thus caricatured and slandered.
Even John Milton must needs asperse this Assembly, as "A cer- tain number of divines neither chosen by any rule or custom ecclesias- tical, nor eminent for either piety or knowledge above others left out; only as each member of parliament in his private fancy thought fit, so elected one by one." Men are influenced by these aspersions, forget- ting that Milton's antagonism, in considerable part, was born of the Assembly's opposition to his lax views on divorce into which he had been provoked by his unhappy marriage.
Hume treats the Westminster Assembly as a fit subject for detraction and contempt. Lingard, in his widely read history of Eng- land, betrays not only the hostility to be expected in a Roman Catho- lic against such an assembly but little power to appreciate the intel- lectual and moral character of the body of which he says: "In the month of June, 1643, one hundred and twenty individuals selected by the Lords and Commons under the denomination of pious, godly and judicious divines were summoned to meet at Westminster."* Knight who is sometimes ranked next to Mr. John Richard Green among popular English historians, ignores the Westminster Assembly. Hardly more can be said of Mr. Green himself in his matchless "Short History of the English People." Craik and McFarlane, in their great pictorial history, present in no adequate way the real importance of the great Assembly. But why go further in this review? Scores of books, widely read which should treat of the Assembly whose anni- versary we now celebrate, mistreat it or ignore its very existence. It could hardly be otherwise than that the Westminister Assembly should be generally held in too small esteem.
Again, through carelessness men have imputed some of the intole- rant and bigoted enactments of the Long Parliament to the Assembly.
*Lingard's History of England, Vol. I p. 129.
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They have confused the two bodies, one with the other; and accord- ingly have laid to the charge of the Assembly much of which it was altogether blameless.
Finally, when men are told that this body of divines borrowed largely from theologians and creed-makers before them; when they learn that the Assembly made a free use of the Irish Articles, various Continental Symbols and the old Ecumenical creeds, they often jump to the conclusion that there was no originality in the body, and no ex- traordinary greatness. And when they look over the Assembly for some great denominating personality in it, like Agustine's or Luther's, or Calvin's, and find no man so lifted above his fellows; some on that account hold the body in light esteem.
But let us stop this speculation as to why the Westminster Assem- bly of Divines has not received its due mead of honor. We do not hesitate to affirm that it was intellectually and morally one of the noblest ecclesiastical bodies known in history.
We concede that in that Assembly there was no dominating per- sonality like that of Luther, or Calvin or Agustine. But we rejoice to think that if one of those great men had been a member of that Assembly he would have appeared less superior there. There was too much talent in the body for any one man to assume such domi- nancy. The Father of the German Reformation had not appeared so large in the company of such fellows. On the other hand, more than one member of the Assembly might under suitable circumstances have played the role of a great reformer. There is a deal of truth as well as beauty in those words so often quoted from Gray's Elegy :
"Some mute, inglorious Milton here may lie, Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood!'
In spite of all their gifts, their places in history have contributed to the reputation of Augustine, Luther and Calvin. There were men in this Assembly of extraordinary power, intellectual and moral.
We concede also that the Westminster divines borrowed largely from existing creeds and systems; and we admire them greatly for doing so. The greatest theologians since the dawn of the Reforma- tion have done the same. The teaching of John Calvin has an ecumenical element. His doctrines concerning the Trinity and his Christology are those of the old ecumenical councils. His teaching has also an Augustinian element. His doctrines of Anthropology and Grace and Predestination are substantially Augustinian. Calvin's teaching, again, has an Anselmic element. His doctrine of the atonement is that of Anselm, as modified by Thomas Aquinas. And so by further analysis we might show that in his immortal Institutes Calvin put very
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little that had not been taught by some other servant of God standing between him and the Apostolic Age. Calvin's great merit was in rejecting error, discerning truth, and throwing the Bible truth of which the Church had become thoroughly conscious into the completest system ever framed by the intellect of man. Now it is precisely this kind of work in which the Westminster Assembly excelled. It framed the most logical and complete, as well as the most Biblical set of Stan- dards ever framed by any body in Christendom. And both the Assembly and Calvin showed their wisdom in accepting the correct results of the labors of their predecessors. One aim in creed-making is clear and comprehensive statement of Scripture teaching. It was the part of a genius, like John Calvin, to accept the statement on the Trinity which the Church under the blessing of God had been able to make after a struggle of three hundred years; and to accept the Christology which the Church evolved from the Scriptures after a still more pro- tracted struggle. It was still more becoming in a creed-making body like the Westminster, to adopt the very phraseology of old creeds so far as they were correct and sufficiently comprehensive. For every word in those old creeds had been chosen for a purpose. Every word stood as a barrier against some particular error. Every word was the result of conflict; and every word was a monument of victory. When the Westminster Assembly would answer the question 21 in the Shorter Catechism: "Who is the Redeemer of God's elect ?" It did well to answer as the Council of Chalcedon had done in 451 A. D .: "The only Redeemer of God's elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who being the eternal Son of God, became man, and so was, and continueth to be, God and man, in two distinct natures and one person forever." It could see that the answer was an admirable statement of the Bible teaching, and it knew that every word in the Chalcedon statement was a tried word.
The body which in such circumstances would abandon a tried phraseology would be very foolish. It is a mark of great worth in this Assembly that it preserved that which was of real worth in the earlier work of the Church; that its aim was not the reputation for originality; but the systematic and correct statement of the truth of God concerning all matters of doctrine, government and worship in His church.
But it should be remarked further in this connection : Not only is the splendidly coherent system of truth in these standards proof of the great ability of the body for the very purpose for which it was called; but there is not wanting evidence of real originality. The Covenant Theology which finds expression in the Assembly's work seems to have been English, not Dutch in its origin. As the Reformation in
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several Continental countries was spontaneous in each, so Covenant Theology sprang up about the same time in the Netherlands and in England. That in England seems to have been indigenous in its origin. The Westminster Assembly moulded this theology in its own way and in a masterly manner. Again, in the sphere of polity the Assembly did work of original interpretation.
We may concede that the Assembly believed in the propriety of a State establishment; and in oppressive measures on the part of the State to secure uniformity. But there was no considerable church in that age which did not believe and practice the same when it had the power. The Independent bodies in England about this time are some- times said to have been ahead of the church at large in this partic- ular; but unfortunately for that representation, as soon as those very Independents reached a controlling civil position and thus had an opportunity to illustrate in a practical way their views of religious liberty, they lost their desire to do so. While suffering for their own faith they naturally betook themselves "to the ramparts of sound principles"; but when in the providence of God they passed from an oppressed and suffering condition to a dominant position, they left their sound principles behind.
Full toleration and religious liberty were to come decades later. The Westminster Assembly was simply like the whole rest of Christendom in this particular, an individual here and there excepted.
Once more, we admit that the Westminster Assembly of Divines was called by the Parliament; that it was not called in any formal way by the Church, but by the State. It was necessarily so. There was no organized Church in England at the time to call such a council. The Convocation could not call it. There was no Convocation. The hierarchical form of Church government had been abolished months before the calling of the Assembly. There was no form of Church government common to the English churches at this time. There was a Church but no general organization. The government claimed the right to exercise its accustomed headship over the Church; and the people expected it. If any council was to be held, it was natural and, in the circumstances, necessary that the government should call the body.
We deplore the fact that the Assembly did thus depend for its very existence on an Erastian act; but neither this fact nor the fact that it wanted somewhat of a true and full conception of religious liberty as the inalienable right of man can obscure the splendor of the intellectual and moral character of the body.
In treating thus far of objections alleged against the Assembly, we have incidentally brought out certain proofs of its moral and
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intellectual greatness. If the tree is known by its fruits, if a body can be known by its works, if this body may be judged by the Stand- ards it produced, the Westminster Assembly was a notable body intellectually and morally. Let us now address ourselves directly to other evidences of its greatness. We observe:
FIRST. The kingdom of England has had, perhaps, in no other period of its long history such resources out of which to draw an Assembly mentally and morally great as at the time of the West- minster Assembly.
Puritanism of the noblest type had long been doing its work of making great men. Men may speak in dispraise of Puritanism, after the Puritans had become a political party. There were then many in the party who were not of it. They had caught the phraseology of the Puritans. They had put on the external garb of the Puritans; but they were not Puritans. Genuine Puritanism was a noble movement. It was of the very essence of Puritanism that man should regard him- self as the subject of the Sovereign Jehovah of Hosts. As the Puritans saw matters, God had put men into the earth, had given to every man his work, and expected every man to do his duty. These two great ideas of the sovereignity of God and the responsibility of man, whose spread, history shows to be productive of the largest manhood, the Puritans had been teaching, and preaching, and living in England for about a century. They had lived their Puritanism too, in the midst of trying circumstances. They had grown in allegiance to their great principles amidst the merciless persecution of Laud. Thus stuff of the best quality had been prepared out of which an assembly of unusual character might be called. And if literary remains prove anything, they prove that the Puritan scholarship of the age of the Assembly lends a glory to the whole history of the English church. This very age was the age of Baxter, and of Owen, and of Howe, and a host of other great names. It was an age too of brilliant preachers. In fact, in the history of the London pulpit, the age of the Assembly is one of the great ages. The time was one of great enterprises. The common mind was aroused. Great minds were employing themselves in divers ways. The result was great statesmen like Pym, and Hampden, and Cromwell; great lawyers like Selden; great writers like Milton; and above all, because religion received universal and intense attention, great theologians. There can be no question, therefore, that it was possible to summon an assembly of extraordinary merit.
SECOND. The Parliament aimed to make a wise choice of men for the great work of the Assembly. The Parliament saw that a great work should be done and it tried to choose fit men to do it.
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In the "Grand Remonstrance," which it prepared in the fall and early winter of 1641, the Parliament declared that it desired that some changes should be made in the government of the church and its wor- ship, "and that there might be a general synod of the most grave, pious, learned, and judicious divines of their Island, assisted by some from foreign parts professing the same religion, to consider all things necessary for the peace, and good government of the church."*
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