Scripture, Decree and Salvation: The Retouchings

What changes. In the first nineteen chapters neither of the two confessions deletes or contradicts anything of Westminster, with one exception which will be seen. What they do is retouch, and almost always in order to add. The most significant retouchings are these.

Scripture (chapter I). London prefixes to the chapter a sentence which is neither in Westminster nor in Savoy: "The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience". Savoy, for its part, retouches the last paragraph. Westminster said that the supreme judge of every controversy is "the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture"; Savoy says that it is "the holy Scripture delivered by the Spirit", and adds that into it "our faith is finally resolved". London copies it.

Justification (chapter XI). Savoy specifies what Westminster had left in general terms. Where the latter speaks of imputing "the obedience and satisfaction of Christ", Savoy says: "Christ's active obedience to the whole law, and passive obedience in his death for their whole and sole righteousness". London keeps it. It is the doctrine of Westminster, stated in more detail.

Repentance (chapter XV). Savoy writes it anew, and London copies it. It is not the doctrine that changes, but the approach: it begins with the elect who are converted at riper years and with the provision which the covenant of grace makes for the believer who falls, where Westminster began by defining repentance.

Faith and assurance (chapters XIV and XVIII). Savoy adds that saving faith, even in its least degree, is of another nature than the faith of temporary believers; and it founds assurance, before anything else, "on the blood and righteousness of Christ, revealed in the gospel". London follows the former and brings the latter back nearer to the text of Westminster.

The decree (chapter III): the exception. Savoy keeps the chapter as it stands. London touches it at the most delicate point. It no longer says that the others are "fore-ordained to everlasting death", but that they are "left" in their sin; and it deletes the whole of paragraph VII, the one which affirms that God was pleased to pass by the rest of mankind. It also removes from paragraph V the words which exclude foreseen faith or works as the cause of election, although it keeps that there is in the creature no condition or cause whatever moving God thereunto.

What this shows. Savoy slackens nothing in the doctrine of grace; on the contrary, it sharpens it: active obedience imputed, saving faith different in kind, assurance founded on the blood of Christ. He who looks in 1658 for a lowered Calvinism will not find it. London inherits all that. But in the decree it takes a step which Savoy did not take: it confesses election in so many words and leaves reprobation in its mildest form, that of a mere leaving. It does not deny what Westminster affirms; it ceases to say it. The Assembly had cited for that paragraph Romans 9:17,18, Romans 9:21,22 and Matthew 11:25,26, and had worded it with care: the cause of condemnation is sin, but the passing by is the will of God. It is hard not to see in the deletion the same scruple which, two centuries later, was to lead the American Presbyterians to their Declaratory Statement of 1903.