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The Westminster Confession of Faith A
Brief Historical Survey of
“And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be
in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and
shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by
the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest
up.” Deuteronomy 6:6–7 Introduction As far as I am able to judge, the
Christian world, since the days of the Apostles, had never a synod of more
excellent divines… than this Synod and the Synod of Dort were (Richard
Baxter). Events Leading Up to the Convening of the Westminster
Assembly
1547 to 1553—King Edward VI took over from his father Henry VIII and Protestantism in England flourished and made very rapid progress. His death at only 16 years old was a tragedy for the nation 1553 to 1558—Mary Tudor, a firm Roman Catholic and half sister of Edward VI, became Queen and severely persecuted Protestants. Reformers like Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley were burnt at the stake for their faith, together over 300 men and women. Many fled to Europe, including John Foxe, who later wrote Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. 1558 to 1603—Under Queen Elizabeth I, a return was made to Protestantism. However, Elizabeth was not a true Protestant. In fact, she was suspected of having some sympathy for and leanings towards Rome. It was during her reign that a certain group of Protestants, who believed that the Reformation of the Church was not yet complete, pressed for further change. They soon became known as the Puritans. 1603 to 1625—When Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603, James I (of the KJV), became king. The Puritans presented him with a petition supposedly signed by a thousand clergymen (hence the name the Millenary Petition), in which they asked for the removal of Romish practices that still remained in the Church. King James wasn’t too pleased with the petition and called a Conference in 1604 at Hampton Court, in which Anglican Bishops debated with Puritan Clergy on disputed matters in the presence of the King. The petition was rejected and the Conference soon broke up. This further alienated the Puritans from the King. However, one good thing came out of this Hampton Court Conference, namely the Authorised Version. King James disliked the Geneva Bible (which the Puritans used) mainly because it contained Calvinistic marginal notes and he wanted a new version to replace it. Interestingly in the preface to the Authorised Version, you’ll read what the bishops of those days thought of the Puritans. They called the Puritans, “self-conceited brethren who run their own ways and give liking unto nothing but what is framed by themselves and hammered on their anvil.” Nevertheless, the Puritan party made steady progress in England. 1625 to 1649—King James I was followed
by his son Charles I. Charles married a Roman Catholic princess of France, and
greatly incurred the displeasure of Parliament, which was strongly Protestant
and becoming increasingly Puritan in its sympathies. Charles quarrelled with the
Parliament continually and in 1629, the king decided to rule without the
Parliament, and this he did for the next 11 years. During this period, Charles
was advised on religious matters by William Laud, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Laud hated the Puritans and persecuted them. Those who refused to conform to his
ideas about worship were punished. However, Laud was not content to rule the
English Church, he determined to impose his religious principles on the Scottish
Church, which was at this time already thoroughly Reformed and Presbyterian.
This was a bad “mistake” on Laud’s part because Scotland soon revolted and
people flocked to sign the National Covenant in 1638, which upheld the Reformed
Faith and Presbyterianism in Scotland. Two wars, known as the bishops wars,
followed shortly. The King couldn’t defeat the stronger Scottish force, which
occupied northern England. They demanded money as part of the settlement. The
King had no choice but to recall Parliament, which he had been ruling without
for the past 11 years. Note that the Parliament had control over taxation and
the king needed money! The Long Parliament instead arrested the Archbishop Laud,
charged the King with tyranny, passed an act preventing its own dissolution and
declared that the will of the Parliament must prevail. The inevitable
happened—Civil War broke out in 1642. In November 1642, Parliament ordained that
the office of archbishop and bishop and the whole framework of prelate
government should be abolished. Some Facts about the Westminster
Assembly
People: 121 English
Puritan Ministers (2 for each English County, 1 for each Welsh
county, 2 each for the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, 4 for London and 1
for each of the Channel Islands), The Assembly’s Work
The Assembly’s first task was to revise the 39 Articles of the Church of England. However their scope of work soon changed after only a few months when Parliament sought the help of Scotland in its war against King Charles. This led to the signing of the Solemn League and Covenant on 25 September 1643, which was essentially a political and ecclesiastical agreement between parliament and Scotland to bring Scottish armies into alliance with parliamentary forces and to commit the English Puritans to reform the Church of England. In the Solemn League and Covenant, contracting parties bound themselves to “the preservation of the Reformed Religion in the Church of Scotland,” and the reformation of religion in the kingdoms of England and Ireland, in doctrine, worship, discipline, and government according to the Word of God and the example of the best reformed Churches….” And so the Scottish commissioners entered the Assembly just as it was giving up its effort to revise the 39 Articles. The Confession of Faith was completed on November 26, 1646, with the scripture proofs added and sent to Parliament on April 26, 1647. The Larger Catechism was completed on October 15, 1647, the Shorter Catechism on November 25, 1647, and both presented in final form on April 14, 1648. The Scots had returned home before the end of 1647 and the Assembly continued to function mainly for examination of candidates for the ministry. Besides the confession and catechisms, the Assembly also produced the Directory for Public Worship, the Form of Presbyterial Church Government. I particularly like a statement about the Assembly, which Prof. Hanko wrote in book Portraits of Faithful Saints. Writing about the Scottish Divine Samuel Rutherford, he said, “For four years the assembly met in the Jerusalem Room of Westminster Abbey in London. Here in London, Rutherford remained throughout the entire time, separated from his family. It is some measure of the devotion to the cause of Christ which these men possessed that, during the four years’ separation from his family, he did not return home when the two children he had with his second wife died; he returned to a home without children and to a wife who had grieved alone.” Members of the Assembly
Readers of Puritan works would no doubt be familiar with some of the Westminster Divines, e.g., Samuel Rutherford, Thomas Goodwin, Jeremiah Burroughes, William Bridge, Obadiah Segwick, Joseph Caryl, Edmund Calamy. Each member of the Assembly had to take a promise and vow, which went: I A.B. do seriously promise and vow in the presence of Almighty God, That in this Assembly, whereof I am a member, I will maintain nothing in point of doctrine, but what I believe to be most agreeable to the Word of God; nor in point of discipline, but what may make most for God’s glory, and the peace and good of this Church. All the Westminster Divines were essentially Calvinistic in doctrine, and they were all desirous of furthering the work of the reformation in England. Nevertheless, there were some significant differences amongst the divines. The main differences which emerged in the assemblies debates were: 1) the form of Church government (four opinions were represented in the Assembly: Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Independents and Erastians) and 2) the relationship between the Church and the State, particularly in the matter of Church discipline. Besides these two, there were other “secondary” differences, for example, the millennium (interestingly, all three millennial views were represented), the logical order of God’s decrees, the assurance of salvation, and the imputation of Christ’s active and passive obedience to the believer in justification. In such controversies the divines sought to be clear and faithful to scriptural language yet to allow for shades of differences within the Calvinistic framework. Another important thing to note about the Westminster Divines (and indeed of many Christians living in those days) is that they were men of prayer. During the time when the Assembly was meeting, Parliament held regular Fast Days on the last Wednesday of every month. Here’s an example of how Puritan Fast Days were conducted: It was upon these occasions his
(John Howe’s) common way to begin about nine in the morning with prayer for
about a quarter of an hour in which he begged a blessing on the work of the day:
and afterward read and expounded a chapter or psalm in which he spent
three-quarters of an hour. Then he prayed for about an hour, preached for
another hour and prayed for about half an hour. After this he retired and took
some little refreshment for about a quarter of an hour more (the people singing
all the while) and then came again into the pulpit and prayed for another hour
and gave them another sermon of about an hour’s length, and so concluded the
service of the day at about four of the clock in the evening with about half an
hour or more in prayer. The seven hours of such a service included about three and a quarter
hours of prayer and two and three quarters hours of preaching. The Parliamentary
Fast Days likewise tended to have even more prayer than preaching, sometimes
with two one-hour sermons and two prayers of two hours length
each! Proof Text of the Westminster Standards
The scriptural proofs for the Confession have an interesting story behind it. During the Assembly’s proceedings, the Assembly settled upon various articles of the Confession through the process of discussion and debate. One of the rules in these proceedings was that speakers should make their statements good from Scripture. No doubt, many many quotations from the Scriptures were brought out in their meetings. Nevertheless, the Assembly voted to adopt the precise wording of the Confession without incorporating the numerous biblical references raised during the discussion of each article. When the document was completed in December 1646, it was simply the text of the Confession alone that was presented to Parliament. The House of Commons was not satisfied and they gave orders to the Assembly requiring them to add scriptural proofs to it. This action was probably a stall tactic, because the House of Commons were Erastians and they opposed the Confession’s teaching on Church government and the relationship between the Church and the state. But while the motives of the Parliament were suspect, their action greatly enhanced the usefulness of the Confession. Robert Baillie, one of the six Scottish commissioners, wrote, “This innovation of our opposites (the Erastians) may well cost the Assembly some time… but it will be for the advantage and strength of the work.” In replying the Parliament, the Assembly agreed to add the scriptural
texts, but also gave a brief explanation why they had not done so in the first
place. Firstly, the 39 Articles of the Church of England (the revision of
those articles had been the Assembly’s first task) did not have proof texts.
Secondly, the confession was already a rather large document and to add the
Scriptures would make it a very large volume. Thirdly and in their words, “There
was seldom any debate about the truth or falsehood of any article or clause, but
rather the manner of expression or the fitness to have it put into the
Confession. Whereupon when there were any texts debated in the Assembly, they
were never put to vote.” A careful study of the proof texts would no doubt help in understanding and discovering how the Divines developed a particular doctrine from various passages of Scripture and how one verse is linked to others under the same doctrine. The entire Standards contain over 4,900 references, revealing the breadth of biblical knowledge which each member of the Assembly had. References are made to every book of the Bible except the two short books of Obadiah and Philemon. Interestingly, the most frequently cited passage is Matthew 28:18–20—the Great Commission. Conclusion
With the rise of the Independents to political power under Oliver Cromwell, the Church of England never did become Presbyterian. The hope of a uniform religion of all three Kingdoms based on Presbyterianism evaporated. There is a certain irony about the influence of the Westminster Assembly. Six commissioners from Scotland travelled to London for four years to help a group of Englishmen produce a Confession, two catechisms, a Directory for Public Worship and a form of government which became standards for the Church of Scotland, but which had only a very momentary influence on England itself! Nevertheless, the Westminster standards and especially the Shorter Catechism have had much influence on English Speaking Christians throughout the world. John Leith comments, The Westminster Confession was adopted with a few modifications as the Savoy Declaration of the English Congregational churches. It was adopted by the Congregational Synod of Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1648, and with the Savoy modification, by the Synod of Boston in 1680, and by the Congregational churches of Connecticut at the Synod of Saybrook in 1708. It was adopted with modification by the London Baptists in 1677 and in America as the Baptist Confession of 1742 (Philadelphia)…. Certainly the number of children who received their religious instruction from the Shorter Catechism must be estimated in the millions! I’ll end with a paragraph by William Barker in his book Puritan Profiles: In the providence of God an amazing and fascinating group of men, supported no doubt by some amazing and fascinating women of whom we get only glimpses, were brought together to produce materials that have been of great usefulness to the Church of Jesus Christ, documents that are far better known than the individuals who produced them. It is my hope than an acquaintance with the individuals will stimulate an even greater knowledge of the documents they produced and of the Scriptures and the great Author to which they point. In giving thanks for them, may we glorify and enjoy their God and ours. Linus Chua References
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