Censures and Synods

What changes. These are the only two chapters of Westminster which Savoy and London delete entire: XXX, on church censures, and XXXI, on synods and councils. It is not an oversight, nor an abridgement. What those chapters affirmed is denied, article by article, in the platform of Savoy and in London's chapter on the church.
Westminster said that it belongs to synods "ministerially, to determine controversies of faith", "to set down rules" and "to receive complaints", and that their decrees, if consonant to the Word, are to be received "with reverence and submission". Savoy replies that a synod can only give advice, and that there are no stated synods, nor synods subordinate to one another. London says the same and avoids even the word: it no longer speaks of "a synod or council", but of churches which "by their messengers, meet".
As for the censures, they do not disappear: they pass to the congregation. The platform of Savoy declares that the power of censures is seated in each particular church and reaches only its own members, and that Christ has given no synod power to excommunicate.

Why. Savoy explains it in its preface, and the explanation has two parts. The first is a precedent: the English Parliament had already left out those two chapters when it approved the Confession in 1648, and that text of Parliament is the one Savoy follows. The second is a principle: it is not fitting to put into a confession of faith matters of discipline and government which are "under dispute by men Orthodox and sound in Faith", because nothing kindles dissensions among brethren more than turning their differences into an article of faith. For that reason they set what concerns the order of the church apart, in the platform.
The reasons of Parliament and those of the Independents were not, however, the same. Parliament did not want a church with courts of its own which did not depend on it; the Independents did not want courts above the congregation.

What this shows. That the two most disputed chapters of the Confession were disputed from the first day and from both sides. Parliament rejected them because they gave too much to the church over against the State; the Independents, because they gave too much to the assembled church over against the congregation. Savoy's argument, that what is disputed among the orthodox ought not to be an article of faith, is a serious one; but it proves too much, for its own platform decides those same disputes, only in the contrary sense and in another document. The Assembly had grounded them on Acts 15:2,4,6 and Acts 15:27-31: at Jerusalem, an assembly of apostles and elders determined a controversy and sent its "decrees" to the churches, which received them. Savoy reads the same passage and sees counsel given; Westminster sees a court.
There is also an irony here which it is well to note. In the section on the revisions it was seen that the American Presbyterians kept the chapter on synods and took away from the magistrate. Savoy had done the contrary: it kept the magistrate, though limited, and took away the synods. Neither of the two kept the whole Confession.
What lies behind the deletion is not a question of procedure, but an idea of the church. The last article deals with it.