Confessions of the Church of Scotland : their evolution in history /

Front matter

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Preface

The first two lectures of this series do not require any prefatory statement as to their scope and contents. They form a piece of historic narrative which the author trusts will be found accurate, impartial, and complete so far as it goes.

As regards the remaining four lectures a word of explanation may be given. They are restricted in two respects. First. The schools of thought, streams of tendency, and religious movements which they chronicle are almost exclusively of Scottish origin and growth. The working under this restriction has been with the writer not so much a matter of choice as of necessity, for it would have been beyond his power to include within the space at disposal a treat¬ ment of such English, Continental, and American thought and speculation as have undoubtedly affected Scottish theology in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Second. Only in the case of men who are no longer in the ranks of the Church militant is the attempt made in the following pages to appreciate their work and to estimate the value of their contri¬ butions to our subject. No doubt, when dealing with quite recent movements for a reconstruction of the Church’s Confession or for a modification of the

VI

PEEFACE terms of adherence to the existing Symbol, it was impossible to avoid mention of theologians and ecclesiastics who are happily still with us. But in the case of all such, for obvious reasons, the present lecturer has confined himself to a mention of their names and a statement of their opinions.

One more explanation, of a personal nature. There is no other book that covers precisely the same field, so when preparing for delivery the author was draw¬ ing a somewhat lonely furrow. Then, owing to certain exigencies of time and circumstance, he has not been able to avail himself of such help of friends as was rendered him when carrying other works through the press. Under such conditions of prepara¬ tion and publication perfect accuracy, though strenu¬ ously aimed at, can hardly have been attained.

With all its defects it is hoped that this final con¬ tribution of the writer to the literature of the Ecclesia Scotticana, in every stone of which he takes pleasure and the dust whereof he favours, may be found to possess not only some present-day interest, but also some abiding value.

C. G. M‘Ceie.

CONTENTS page

LECTURE I.

Symbols in the Church of Scotland prior to 1647 . 1

LECTURE II.

LECTURE III.

Westminster Teaching in the Light of Federalism,

Mysticism, and Universalism . . . .64

LECTURE IY.

Westminster Teaching affected by Movements Evan¬ gelical, Scientific, and Critical . . . .120

LECTURE V.

Readjustments of Scottish Confessions as Exhibitions of the Existing Faith, and as Bonds of Agreement and Adherence ...... 208

LECTURE VI.

Reconstructions of the Confessional Theology of Scot¬ land subsequent to 1647 ..... 258

VII

THE CONFESSIONS OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND.

LECTURE I.

SYMBOLS IN THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND PRIOR TO 1647.

The documents which are to occupy our attention in this and the following lecture form the symbols 1 of the Reformed Church of Scotland. Symbolism is that branch of theology which stands between the Biblical on the one hand and the Dogmatic or Systematic on the other, and it treats of the Creeds, Rules of Truth, and Confessions of Faith which have, from time to time, been drawn up and accepted by Christian Churches. Quite receutly a distinction has been drawn between symbols called Creeds and those to which the name of Confessions is applied. A Creed, it is said, is a symbol delivered once for all by a Church claiming to be infallible ; a Confession is a statement of a system of doctrine held at the time when it is drawn up, but which always contains a

1 2 v^oKov, signum, indicium , a mark, watchword, test, not only a dis¬ tinction between Christians and non-Christians, but also a tessera militum , a bond or deed of agreement. The Church use of the term is first found in the West (Cyprian. Ep. 69 ad Magnum) ; it was not in use in the East until after the beginning of the sixth century. SchafFs Creeds of Christendom , vol. i. p. i. n. 3. Harnack’s The Apostles’ Creed. Eng. Trans., p. 10.

A 1 reference to the Word of God as the only supreme standard, and provision for the future admitting of subsequent revision and alteration.1 The distinction may be ingenious, but it lacks historical confirmation. There was no claim to infallibility in the Rules of Faith and baptismal Creeds drawn up by the Ante- Nicene Fathers of the second and third centuries, and there is none in the (Ecumenical Creeds which super¬ seded the earlier symbols. On the other hand the symbol of the Vatican Council in the nineteenth century which claimed infallibility for the Roman Pontiff takes the form of a Confession rather than of a Creed. It sets forth what the holy Catholic Apostolic Roman Church believes and confesses, what the same holy Mother Church holds and teaches, what she has ever held and does hold.2 Such difference as exists be¬ tween Creeds and Confessions is one, not so much of substance as of form. In the early Church the in¬ struction of catechumens was carried out by means of summaries of apostolic doctrine forming the rules of faith, and as these summaries were used for the purpose of public profession at baptism they naturally took the form of a Credo.3 When, at a later although still early period, the Church felt called upon to draw up more detailed and elaborate symbols to serve the

1 Reports on the Schemes of the Church of Scotland, 1901, pp. 1066, 1076-79.

2 Decreta Dogmatica Concilii Vaticani Be Fide Catholica et De Ecclesia Christi, a.d. 1870. Schaff’s Creeds , vol. ii. pp. 234-71.

3 The Creed of the Apostolical Constitutions ( circa a.d. 350) begins with Iharevu Kal ^airri^ofiai. SchafFs Creeds , vol. ii. p. 39, purpose of doctrinal standards, protests against errors and heresies, and bonds of union among her office¬ bearers and members, then the symbols took a con¬ fessional rather than a credal form. How soon and easily the Creed form passed into the Confessional may be seen by a reference to that ancient symbol commonly, although erroneously called ‘ The Creed of Saint Athanasius,’ more safely designated by Church historians, from its opening word, ‘ Symbolum Quicunque .’ With its threefold anathema this triumphant paean of the orthodox faith sets forth, in highly technical language, the Catholic Faith regarding the Trinity and the Person of Christ. ‘Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith. Which Faith, except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the Catholic Faith is this.’

The date of composition in the case of the Athanasian Creed or Confession is involved in ob¬ scurity. This is true also of the other two symbols which along with it constitute the general creeds of ancient Christianity and which receive formal or tacit acknowledgment from the Greek, the Latin, and the Protestant Churches. Of the three the earliest and the simplest is the Symbolum Apostolicum , or Apostles’ Creed.1

1 From 1647, when Usher published his treatise De Romance Ecclesim symholo Apostolico vetere, etc., much research has been bestowed upon this document. Among English works the outstanding are those of Harvey, Foulke, Lumby and Hort. Swainson’s The Nicene and Apostles’

I. The Apostles’ Creed.

No one now thinks of claiming for this primitive rule of faith and truth inspired authority or apostolic authorship. In its earliest, most rudimentary form simply a baptismal confession of Trinitarian faith, the symbol was gradually enlarged by the insertion of articles from other summaries of apostolic tradition until it reached its present, received dimensions some¬ time in the close of the fifth or the beginning of the sixth century, and came into general use some hundred years thereafter.

This ancient oecumenical symbol was known and used in Scotland as far back as the days of Columba, of Drostan, and of Fergus ; it served liturgical if not catechetical purposes in the Celtic Church. For proof of this we can point to what is known to archseologists as The Booh of Deer , so called from its connection with the Columbian monastery of Deer in the Buchan district of Aberdeenshire.1 Among other things the manuscript contains a transcript of the Gospel of St

Greed (1875), and Mortimer’s The Greeds : An historical and doctrinal Exposition of the Apostles', Nicene and Athanasian Greeds (1902) are standard works. A table showing the gradual formation of the Symbolum Apostolicum is given by Schaff, vol. ii. pp. 52-55. The latest brochure on the Creed is that of Adolf Harnack. Edited by T. B. Saunders, 1905.

1 The Book of Deer, edited by Dr John Stuart, Spalding Club, 1869. Facsimiles of the Miniatures and Ornaments of Anglo-Saxon and Irish Manuscripts. By Prof. Westwood, 1868. Dr. Stuart sees nothing im¬ probable in concluding that The Book of Deer ‘may have been written by a native scribe of Alba in the ninth century.’ Some experts in caligraphy regard the manuscript as of Irish or Pictish origin, and suggest that the Irish missionaries by whom the monastery was founded carried the book with them across the Channel.

John, portions of the Synoptic Gospels, the fragment of an office for the Visitation of the Sick, and the Apostles’ Creed. Experts in caligraphy are of opinion that the writing of the Gospels and of the Creed in the Book of Deer is that of the ninth century. To what uses the Creed symbol in their possession was put by the inmates of the monastery on the banks of the Ugie we can only surmise ; but it is safe to conjecture that it had a place in their worship of confession and adoration, and in their instruction of the surrounding pagans whom they sought to Christianize.

When, by a process of assimilation carried on in the reigns of Malcolm III., his English Queen, and their sons and successors, the old Celtic Church of Scotland became absorbed in the Church of Rome the change did not affect injuriously the position of what was even then a venerable symbol of the faith and of the holy Catholic Church. On the contrary, it was brought into prominence both in the worship of the sanctuary and in the instruction imparted by the clergy. Of the catechetical use to which it was turned clear and interesting illustration is to be found in the Catechism of Archbishop Hamilton written in the Scottish vernacular and printed in 1552.1

1 The Catechisme .... set furth be tbe maist reverend father in God Johne Archbischop of sanct Androus Legatnait and primat of the Kirk of Scotland, in his provincial counsale haldin at Edinburgh the xxvi. day of Januarie, the zeir of our Lord 1551. A black-letter facsimile reprint, with Introduction by Prof. Mitchell of St Andrews, was pub¬ lished at Edinburgh in 1882. In 1884 the Clarendon Press, Oxford, published an edition, edited, with Introduction and Glossary by Dr. T. G. Law, with a Preface by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, D.C.L.

The second part of this handbook of ‘ common and catholic instruction ’ for priests and people undertakes to provide a ‘ plain declaration of the twelve articles of the Creed necessary to be known and believed of all Christian men and women to their eternal salvation/

Before the Catechism was in the hands of the parish priests there were in Scotland those whom holy Mother Church stigmatised as heretics, and whom, whenever the inquisitor of heresy could lay hands upon them, she delivered to the secular arm to be sent to the fire. But the primer had not been in use for more than eight years when the upheaval took place in which the Romish hierarchy was over¬ thrown and the faith of the heretics became the religion of the realm.

The Apostles’ Creed, however, did not disappear among the ruins of the fallen Church, but found a place for itself in the literature and the liturgy of the Reformed Kirk of Scotland.1

uj^The Reformed faith found earliest literary expres¬ sion in * Gude and Godlie Ballates.’ 2 In this collec-

1 The Creed in Scotland : An Exposition of the Apostle s’ Creed. By James Rankin, D.D., 1890.

2 Ane Copendious buik of godlie Psalmes and spirituall Sangis collectit furthe of sindrie partis of the Scripture, withdiueris utheris Ballattis changeit out of prophane Sangis in godlie sangis, for auoyding of sin and liarlatrie. In 1868 Dr David Laing published an edition of ‘ The Gude and Godlie Ballates’ from the edition of 1578, with a Preface. In 1897 The Scottish Text Society issued a reprint of the earlier edition of 1567 with Introduction and Notes by Prof. Mitchell of St Andrews, who had made a special study of the subject, and who made it the subject of a Lecture, The Wedderburns and their Work, or, The Sacred Poetry of the Scottish Reformation in its historical Relation to that of Germany. 1867.

tion of Psalms and Spiritual Songs in the Scottish dialect what are styled * The Twelve Articles of our Faith’ are given in a prose as well as in a metrical form. In the prose version the articles appear * as they were written by the apostles to the Three Persons in Trinity.’ The metrical rendering is also divided into three sections, beginning respectively with the lines, ‘We trow in God allanerlie [alone],’ ‘We trow in Jesus Christ his Sone,’ ‘We trow in God the haly Spreit.’ Portions of these quaint songs were in cir¬ culation in the form of broadsheets as early as 1542, although the earliest edition of the entire collection did not appear for a quarter of a century later.

But by 1547 the venerable symbol of the Creed had found a place in more ecclesiastical publications than the Songs and Ballads of the Wedderburns. For it has a primary position assigned it in ‘ The Form of Prayers and Ministration of the Sacraments, etc., used in the English Congregation at Geneva,’ prepared by Knox, Whittingham, Gilby, Fox and Cole ; 1 and, some nine years later, in what is substantially the same Protestant service book ‘ approved and received by the Church of Scotland.’ 2 In both Orders the contents open with a Confession of Faith, which is simply the

1 The forme of prayers and Ministration of the Sacraments , etc. used in the Englishe Congregation at Geneua : and approued by the famous and godly learned man, John Caluyn. M.D.LVI. Laing’s Knox , vol. iv. pp. 141-214.

2 The forme of Prayers and Ministration of the Sacraments, etc. used in the English Chruch at Geneua, approued and receyued by the Chruche of Scotland. M.D.LXYI. Laing’s Knox, vol. vi. pp. 277- 380.

articles of the Creed in an expanded form. In both orderings of service the sermon is followed by a prayer for the whole Estate of Christ’s Church, which con¬ cludes with petitions in the words of the Lord’s Prayer and with confession in those of the Creed. In both the order of baptism requires that the child be brought to the Church accompanied with the father and godfather, and that, at a certain stage of the service, the father (or in his absence the godfather) shall rehearse the articles of his Faith. Both of these Books of Common Order had for appendix a transla¬ tion of Calvin’s Catechism.1 The instruction minis¬ tered in the Reformer’s manual is so arranged as to extend over fifty-five Sundays [£ Sondays ’]. On the second of these the foundation of our faith is stated to be ‘ contained in the Confession of the faith used of all Christians, which is commonly called The Creed of the Apostles ’ ; on the following Sunday the symbol is divided into four principal parts, and on fifteen successive Sundays the mean¬ ing of the articles is unfolded on lines of Protestant teaching.

In the Reformed Book of Polity, better known as The First Booh of Discipline , large and important use is made of Calvin’s catechetical exposition of the Creed. Under the head of Schools it is provided that the youth of each parish receive instruction £in the

1 The Catechisme or Maner to teaclie children the Christian religion . ... by the excellent Doctor and Pastor in Christes Churche, John Calvin. M.D.LVI. Reprinted in Cathechisms of the Scottish Reformation. By Horatius Bonar, D.D. 1866.

Catechism as we have it now translated in the Book of onr Common Order, called the Order of Geneva ’ ; children are not to engage in a handicraft until they have a certain amount of knowledge of the Christian religion as that is contained in the chief articles of our belief; and ministers are required to devote a certain portion of the afternoon every Lord’s Day to catechising children in audience of the people, follow¬ ing the order already £ distinguished in the Catechism printed with the Book of our Common Order, which Catechism is the most perfect that ever yet was used in the Kirk.’ 1

We have seen the important place assigned by Scottish Reformers to the oldest symbol of Christendom in the devotions of the sanctuary, in the administra¬ tion of baptism and in the religious training of the young. It only remains for us to note that the symbol was not excluded from the praise of the congregation. The appendages to the metrical Psalms to be found in old Scottish Psalters were not uniform in their contents. At one time there were few such, at another there were as many as twenty-five, while, in an intervening period, there were none at all.2 If, however, we take two leading editions of the Scottish Psalter — those of 1611 and of 1635, we find in both a metrical version of ‘The XII. Articles of the

1 Laing’s Knox , vol. ii. pp. 210-12. Dunlop’s Collection , vol. ii. pp. 548-50.

2 The Scottish Metrical Psalter of 1635. Edited by Dr N. Livingston, 1864. Dissertation III. ii. pp. 33-34.

The Book of Common Order and the Directory, edited by Drs Sprott and Leishman, 1868, pp. 209-11.

Christian Belief.’ The rendering is substantially the same, the most important variation being in the fourth verse which describes our Lord’s death, burial, descent into hell, and resurrection, and in which eight rather feeble lines of the earlier issue are replaced by these forcible ones in the later rendering : —

‘ Hee thold the last assault of death, Which did life’s torments end :

Thereafter was hee buried, And did' to hell descend.

And in the third day of his death Hee rose to life again,

To the end hee might bee glorified Out of all grief and pain.’

To what extent the Reformed Church of Scotland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries actually made use of the symbolum apostolicum it is difficult, if not impossible, now to tell. From the glimpses we get of it in musty Session records, in the chatty letters of Robert Baillie, the classic charges of Bishop Leighton, and the Itinerary of the English Rector Thomas Morer, we learn that it was used to some extent and in some parts of the country.1 It can also be gathered, however, that, under the

1 In 1615 the Kirk-Session of Lasswade ordained that in the case of ignorant parents seeking baptism for their children a month must elapse during which they are ‘ to learn the Lord’s Prayer, Belief , and Ten Commandments.’ Edgar’s Old Church Life in Scotland , Second Series, p. 222. In his Charge of 1662 Bishop Leighton propounded ‘ that the Lord’s Prayer he restored to more frequent use ; likewise the Doxology and the Creed.’ In the Charge of 1666 ‘ it was enacted that the reciting of the Ten Commandments and the Belief according to the acts of former Synods, is on no Lord’s day to be omitted.’ West’s Leighton : Sermons , pp. 436-39. The Author’s Public Worship of Presby¬ terian Scotland , pp. 230-31.

influence of a growing prejudice against what were styled 4 set forms/ fostered if not created by the English Independents and Sectaries, the employment of the Creed, as also of the Lord’s Prayer and the Doxology gradually fell into desuetude. And so, when the Church of Scotland laid aside the Scottish Confession of 1560 and adopted that of Westminster, and when she substituted ‘ The Directory ’ for the ‘ Book of Common Order,’ and the Catechisms, Larger and Shorter, for those of Calvin and Ursinus, no place was found for the Apostles’ Creed in any of these new documents. There is some reason to believe that the Scottish Commissioners at West¬ minster would have retained the old symbol, but that in the interests of peace and unity they yielded to the views of English Puritans in the matter.1 When the Catechisms were passing through the committees of the Assembly a proposal was made to add the Creed to the Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer, but was resisted by several of the English divines. A com¬ promise was effected by these three documents being inserted at the end of the Shorter Catechism, and a brief statement, originally intended to be a prefatory note, being appended to them. The second paragraph of the statement relates to the Creed, and is in these terms : ‘ And albeit the substance of the doctrine comprised in that abridgment, commonly called The

1 Baillie’s Letters and Journals, 'passim. Meek’s edition of Gillespie’s Works, Notes of Proceedings , p. 108. Sprott and Leishman’s Appendix to Directory, pp. 326-27. The Author’s Pub. Worship of Presb. Scot., pp. 209-10.

Apostles Creed , be fully set forth in each of the Catechisms, so as there is no need of inserting the Creed itself ; yet it is here annexed, not as though it were composed by the Apostles, or ought to be esteemed canonical scripture, as the Ten Command¬ ments, and the Lord’s Prayer, (much less a prayer, as ignorant people have been apt to make both it and the Decalogue,) but because it is a brief sum of the Christian faith, agreeable to the word of God, and anciently received in the Churches of Christ.’ The further precaution was taken by those responsible for the appearance of the Creed among Westminster manifestoes of inserting in the margin of the article ‘ he descended into hell ’ this explanatory reading : ‘ i.e. Continued in the state of the dead, and under the power of death till the third day.’ With such a position of subordination and obscurity assigned to it, it is not surprising that the pre-Reformation symbol passed out of sight and out of use in the Church of Scotland. Happily for all interests concerned this state of matters has been considerably modified since the close of last century. At the Council of the Presbyterian Alliance in 1880 the Creed was stated by the Committee of the Established Church on Creeds and Formulas of Subscription to have ‘ ecclesiastical recognition ’ in their Church. Since then The Church Service Society, which has rendered noble service in removing the reproach of bareness and unattractive¬ ness from Scottish Presbyterian Worship, has given a place of honour to the Creed in its Euchologion, or

Book of Common Order.1 And still later, in 1898, when there was published The Church Hymnary , authorized for use in public worship by three of the Presbyterian Churches of Scotland and by the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, it was found that the last but one of the 649 compositions which form this collection of praise material, coming after The Ten Commandments, The Beatitudes, and the Lord’s Prayer, is the Apostles’ Creed.

As a baptismal confession this old-world symbol may have ceased to serve any practical purpose ; because of its brevity, vagueness, and silence regarding the doctrines of grace it may not be of present-day use as a display of what the Church holds and requires her office-bearers to believe. But surely every consideration of what is rich in the memories of the past, hallowed through universal assent and usage, beautiful and stately in structure and phrasing pleads for its continued and enlarged use in the public wor¬ ship of Presbyterian Scotland. To the first oecumenical Creed of Christendom may fitly be applied the lines of a nineteenth-century poet descriptive of the second —

‘ The faith of the Trinity lies Shrined forever and ever, in those grand old words and wise ;

A gem in a beautiful setting .

Most like the song that the angels are singing around the throne, With their “ Holy ! holy ! holy ! ” to the great Three in One.’ 2

1 ‘ Then shall be sung a Psalm or Hymn, after which may be said by the Minister and people standing the Apostles’ Creed.’ A Book of Common Order, issued by the Church Service Society.

2 ‘A Legend of the Council of Nice.’ By C. F. Alexander. Con¬ temporary Review, February 1867, pp. 176-79.

II. The Old Scottish Confession of 1560.

From the earliest Belief of the Church Catholic we pass to the first national Confession of the Keformed Church of Scotland. What the circumstances were in which it was composed, by whom it was prepared, and how it was dealt with by the State — these and such like details in the external history of the symbol do not call for lengthened description at our hands.1 Enough for us to know that it was ‘ believed and professed ’ by the Protestants within the realm ; ‘voted and ratified’ by Parliament in 1560 as a Doctrine grounded upon the infallible Word of God ; and in 1567 recognised by the Estates as ‘the Con¬ fession of the Faith of the only true and holy Kirk of Jesus Christ within this realm.’ The brief state¬ ment prefixed to the treatise is a remarkable piece of writing. It throbs with the new religious life of the times in which it was drawn up. It leaps from the heart of those who declare they have long thirsted to notify to the world the sum of that doctrine which they profess and for which they have endured infamy and danger, but to which they firmly purpose to abide to the end. The ‘brief and plain Confession’ which follows is addressed to ‘dear Brethren,’ but it is specially intended to be helpful to weak and

1 Information on these points is to be found in the histories of the period, beginning with Knox’s History of the Reformation in Scotland. Of special value are Prof. A. F. Mitchell’s The Scottish Reformation (chap, vi.) and Mr A. Taylor Innes’s Law of Creeds in Scotland (chap. i.). The Confession is given in Laing’s Knox , vol. ii., Dunlop’s Collection, vol. ii., and SchafPs Creeds, vol. iii.

infirm brethren to whom the compilers desire to communicate the bottom of their hearts, lest they be troubled or carried away by the diversities of rumours which Satan spreads against the writers in order to defeat this, their most godly enterprise. But the paragraph of greatest value in the preface is that in which the six Reformers who prepared the symbol protest ‘ that if any man will note in this our Con¬ fession any article or sentence repugnant to God’s holy word, that it would please him of his gentle¬ ness, and for Christian charity’s sake to admonish us of the same in writing ; and We, of our honour and fidelity do promise unto him satisfaction from the mouth of God (that is, from his holy Scriptures,) or else reformation of that which he shall prove to be amiss.’ That statement has justly and fairly been taken to contain a disclaimer of any assumption of infallibility on the part of the writers and of any claim of finality for what they had written. There might be errors or defects in these articles of the faith ; if that could be proved from the supreme standard of Scripture in any one particular, then it was within the competency of the compilers to amend their Confession and they would willingly exercise their right to reconstruct it. Let it be noted here and never afterwards forgotten that thus in the fore¬ front of what was the first Confession of the Scottish Protestant Church reconstruction was explicitly pro¬ vided for.

The symbol of 1560 consists of twenty-five Articles,

Chapters, or Heads. The arrangement of the topics treated is not the Trinitarian one of the Apostles’ Creed, neither is it that either of Biblical or Systematic Theology. It is partly historical and partly doctrinal. For in the twelve opening sections the order of Re¬ velation is observed, these treating successively of God ; the Creation ; Original Sin ; the Revelation of the Promise ; the Continuance, Increase and Preserva¬ tion of the Kirk ; the Incarnation of Christ Jesus ; the God-Man ; Election ; Christ’s Death, Burial, Re¬ surrection and Ascension ; the Holy Ghost. The remaining thirteen Chapters have their contents arranged in a doctrinal sequence, and treat of Good Works ; The Law ; The Kirk ; The Immortality of the Soul ; The Notes of the true Kirk ; The Scriptures ; General Councils ; The Sacraments ; The Civil Magistrate ; The Remission of Sins ; Resurrection of the Flesh, and Life Everlasting. As the ordering of the matter in the Scottish symbol is not scientific so the treatment of the several topics is devoid of exhaustive and logical elaboration. The manifesto, it has been truly said, ‘ reads rather like a declaration of the martyrs than a compend of divinity.’1 The Confession of 1560 is an original production, racy of