Historic Documents in American Presbyterian History
THE ACT AND TESTIMONY (1834)
[Excerpted from
A Collection of the Acts, Deliverances
and Testimonies
of the Supreme Judicatory
of the Presbyterian Church from
its origin in America to the Present Time,
by Samuel J. Baird (Philadelphia:
Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1856).]
In 1837 a division occurred in that portion
of the American Presbyterian family known as the Presbyterian Church in
the U.S.A. The parties of this split were divided into what were termed
the Old School and New School factions. Without here going into the history
of this division, suffice it to say that the document presented below
was issued by the Old School wing of the division a few years before the
split. It provides an excellent description of the key matters at issue
in the split, as viewed by its Old School proponents.
A good deal of confusion exists even today as these terms "Old School"
and "New School" continue to be used in some circles to describe
various contemporary factions, when in fact, at least in conservative
circles, there certainly could be found no one who adheres to historic
New School beliefs as outlined here in The
Act and Testimony.
Charles Hodge and several of the other professors
at Princeton Theological Seminary took a more moderate position on the
Old School/New School split, and in particular found some themselves in
disagreement with aspects of the Act and Testimony. We hope to publish
a representative document by Hodge here soon.
4 To view this document in
pdf format, click here.
The following preface, located in an earlier publication of the Act
and Testimony, is helpful in clarifying the authorship of those involved
in drawing up the Act and Testimony:
"The committee appointed to take into consideration the Act and Testimony,
reported several amendments. The Act and Testimony was then adopted. "Rev.
Messrs. Engles, Winchester, H. M'Keen, and Dr. Mitchell were appointed,
a committee to superintend the publication and circulation of the Act
and Testimony.
"Adjourned to meet at eight o'clock this evening. Concluded with prayer.*
D.R. PRESTON, Secretary."
--Minutes of the Conference, in the Baltimore Magazine, 1839, p. 454.
[The names subscribed to the following copy of the Act and Testimony are
those of the original signers. It was ultimately adopted in terms by about
374 Ministers, 1789 Elders, and 14 Licentiates; and either entirely or
substantially, by five Synods, and thirty Presbyteries.]
ยง 103. The Act and Testimony.
"Brethren beloved in the Lord:--In the solemn crisis, to which our Church
has arrived, we are constrained to appeal to you in relation to the alarming
errors which have hitherto been connived at, and now at length have been
countenanced and sustained by the acts of the supreme judicatory of our
Church.
"Constituting, as we all do, a portion of yourselves, and deeply concerned,
as every portion of the system must be, in all that affects the body itself,
we earnestly address ourselves to you, in the full belief, that the dissolution
of our Church, or what is worse, its corruption in all that once distinguished
its peculiar testimony, can, under God, be prevented only by you.
"From the highest judicatory of our Church, we have for several years
in succession sought the redress of our grievances, and have not only
sought in vain, but with an aggravation of the evils of which we have
complained. Whither then can we look for relief but first to Him who is
made Head over all things, to the Church which is his body, and then to
you, as constituting a part of that body, and as instruments in his hand
to deliver the Church from the oppression which she sorely feels?
"We love the Presbyterian Church, and look back with sacred joy to her
instrumentality in promoting every good and every noble cause among men;
to her unwavering love of human rights; to her glorious efforts for the
advancement of human happiness; to her clear testimonies for the truth
of God, and her great and blessed efforts to enlarge and establish the
kingdom of Christ our Lord. We delight to dwell on the things which our
God has wrought by our beloved Church; and by his grace enabling us, we
are resolved that our children shall not have occasion to weep over an
unfaithfulness which permitted us to stand idly by, and behold the ruin
of this glorious structure.
"Brethren,' says the Apostle, 'I beseech you by the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions
among you, but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and
in the same judgment.' In the presence of that Redeemer by whom Paul adjures
us, we avow our fixed adherence to those standards of doctrine and order
in their obvious and intended sense, which we have heretofore subscribed
under circumstances the most impressive. In the same spirit we do therefore
solemnly acquit ourselves in the sight of God, of all responsibility arising
from the existence of those divisions and disorders in our Church, which
spring from a disregard of assumed obligations, a departure from doctrines
deliberately professed, and a subversion of forms publicly and repeatedly
approved. By the same high authority, and under the same weighty sanctions,
we do avow our fixed purpose to strive for the restoration of purity,
peace, and scriptural order to our Church; and to endeavour to exclude
from her communion those who disturb her peace, corrupt her testimony,
and subvert her established forms. And to the end that the octrinal errors
of which we complain may be fully known, and the practical evils under
which the body suffers be clearly set forth, and our purposes in regard
to both be distinctly understood, we adopt this Act and Testimony.
"AS REGARDS DOCTRINE.
"l. We do bear our solemn testimony against the right claimed by many
of interpreting the doctrines of our standards in a sense different from
the general sense of the Church for years past, whilst they still continue
in our communion: on the contrary, we aver, that they who adopt our standards,
are bound by candour and the simplest integrity, to hold them in their
obvious, accepted sense.
"2. We testify against the unchristian subterfuge to which some have recourse,
when they avow a general adherence to our standards as a system, while
they deny doctrines essential to the system, or hold doctrines at complete
variance with the system.
"3. We testify against the reprehensible conduct of those in our communion,
who hold, and preach, and publish Arminian and Pelagian heresies, professing
at the same time to embrace our creed, and pretending that these errors
do consist therewith.
"4. We testify against the conduct of those, who, while they profess to
approve and adopt our doctrine and order, do, nevertheless, speak and
publish, in terms, or by necessary implication, that which is derogatory
to both, and which tends to bring both into disrepute
"5. We testify against the following as a part of the errors, which are
held and taught by many persons in our Church:
"ERRORS.
"l. OUR RELATION TO ADAM.--That we have no more to do with the first
sin of Adam than with the sins of any other parent.
"2. NATIVE DEPRAVITY.--That there is no such thing as original sin; that
infants come into the world as perfectly free from corruption of nature
as Adam was when he was created; that by original sin nothing more is
meant than the fact that all the posterity of Adam, though born entirely
free from moral defilement, will always begin to sin when they begin to
exercise moral agency, and that this fact is somehow connected with the
fall of Adam.
"3. IMPUTATION.--That the doctrine of imputed sin and imputed righteousness
is a novelty, and is nonsense.
"4. ABILITY.--That the impenitent sinner is by nature, and independently
of the aid of the Holy Spirit, in full possession of all the powers necessary
to a compliance with the commands of God: and that if he laboured under
any kind of inability, natural or moral, which he could not remove himself,
he would be excusable for not complying with God's will.
"5. REGENERATION.--That man's regeneration is his own act; that it consists
merely in the change of our governing purpose, which change we must ourselves
produce.
"6. DIVINE INFLUENCE.--That God cannot exert such an influence on the
minds of men as shall make it certain that they will choose and act in
a particular manner without destroying their moral agency; and that, in
a moral system, God could not prevent the existence of sin, or the present
amount of sin, however much he might desire it.
"7. ATONEMENT.--That Christ's sufferings were not truly and properly vicarious.
"Which doctrines and statements are dangerous and heretical, contrary
to the gospel of God, and inconsistent with our Confession of Faith. We
are painfully alive also to the conviction that unless a speedy remedy
be applied to the abuses which have called forth this Act and Testimony,
our Theological Seminaries will soon be converted into nurseries to foster
the noxious errors which are already so widely prevalent, and our Church
funds will be perverted from the design for which they were originally
contributed.
"AS REGARDS DISCIPLINE.
"The necessary consequence of the propagation of these and similar errors
amongst us has been the agitation and division of our Churches, and ecclesiastical
bodies; the separation of our Ministers, Elders, and people into distinct
parties; and the great increase of causes of mutual alienation.
"Our people are no longer as one body of Christians; many of our Church
Sessions are agitated by the tumultuous spirit of party; our Presbyteries
are convulsed by collisions growing out of the heresies detailed above,
and our Synods and our Assembly are made theatres for the open display
of humiliating scenes of human passion and weakness. Mutual confidence
is weakened; respect for the supreme judicatory of our Church is impaired;
our hope that the dignified and impartial course of justice would flow
steadily onward, has expired; and a large portion of the religious press
is made subservient to error. The ordinary course of discipline, arrested
by compromises, in which the truth is always loser, and perverted, by
organized combinations, to personal, selfish, and party ends, ceases altogether,
and leaves every one to do what seems good in his own eyes. The discipline
of the Church rendered more needful than ever before, by the existence
of numberless cases, in which Christian love to erring brethren, as well
as a just regard to the interests of Zion, imperiously call for its prompt,
firm, and temperate exercise, is absolutely prevented by the operation
of the very causes which demand its employment. At the last meeting of
the General Assembly, a respectful memorial presented in behalf of eleven
Presbyteries, and many Sessions, and individual members of our Church,
was treated without one indication of kindness, or manifestation of any
disposition to concede a single request that wits made. It was sternly
frowned upon, and the memorialists were left to mourn under their grievances,
with no hope of alleviation from those who ought to have at least shown
tenderness and sympathy, as the nursing fathers of the Church, even when
that which was asked was refused to the petitioners. At the same time,
they, who have first corrupted our doctrines, and then deprived us of
the ordinary means of correcting the evils they have produced, seek to
give permanent security to their errors and to themselves, by raising
an outcry in the churches, against all who love the truth well enough
to contend for it.
"Against this unusual, unhappy, and ruinous condition we do bear our clear
and decided testimony in the presence of the God of all living; we do
declare our firm belief, that it springs primarily from the fatal heresies
countenanced in our body; and we do avow our deliberate purpose, with
the help of God, to give our best endeavours to correct it.
"AS REGARDS CHURCH ORDER.
"We believe that the form of government of the Presbyterian Church in
the United States, is, in all essential features, in full accordance with
the revealed will of God; and therefore whatever impairs its purity, or
changes its essential character, is repugnant to the will of our Master.
In what light then shall we be considered, if professing to revere this
system, we calmly behold its destruction, or connive at the conduct of
those engaged in tearing up its deep foundations?
"Some of us have long dreaded the spirit of indifference to the peculiarities
of our Church order, which we supposed was gradually spreading amongst
us. And the developments of later years have rendered it most certain,
that as the perversion of our doctrinal formularies, and the engrafting
of new principles and practices upon our Church constitution, have gone
hand in hand, so the original purity of the one cannot be restored without
a strict and faithful adherence to the other. Not only then for its own
sake, do we love the Constitution of our Church, as a model of all free
institutions, and as a clear and noble exhibition of the soundest principles
of civil and religious liberty; not only do we venerate its peculiarities,
because they exhibit the rules by which God intends the affairs of his
Church on earth to be conducted; but we cling to its venerable ramparts,
because they afford a sure defence of those precious, though despised,
doctrines of grace, the pure transmission of which has been entrusted
as a sacred duty to the Church.
"It is therefore with the deepest sorrow that we behold our Church tribunals,
in various instances, imbued with a different spirit, and fleeing on every
emergency to expedients unknown to the Christian simplicity and uprightness
of our forms, and repugnant to all our previous habits. It is with pain
and distrust that we see, sometimes, the helpless inefficiency of mere
advisory bodies contended for and practised, when the occasion called
for the free action of our laws; and sometimes the full and peremptory
exercise of power, almost despotic, practised in cases where no authority
existed to act at all. It is with increasing alarm that we behold a fixed
design to organize new tribunals upon principles repugnant to our system,
and directly subversive of it, for the obvious purpose of establishing
and propagating the heresies already recounted, of shielding from just
process the individuals who held them, and of arresting the wholesome
discipline of the Church. We do therefore testify against all these departures
from the true principles of our Constitution; against the formation of
new Presbyteries and Synods, otherwise than upon the established rules
of our Church; or for other purposes than the edification and enlargement
of the Church of Christ; and we most particularly testify against the
formation of any tribunal, in our Church, upon what some call principles
of elective affinity; against the exercise by the General Assembly of
any power not clearly delegated to it; and the exercise even of its delegated
powers for purposes inconsistent with the design of its creation.
"RECOMMENDATION TO THE CHURCHES.
"Dear Christian Brethren, you who love Jesus Christ in sincerity and
truth, and adhere to the plain doctrines of the cross as taught in the
standards prepared by the Westminster Assembly, and constantly held by
the true Presbyterian Church; to all of you who love your ancient and
pure Constitution, and desire to restore our abused and corrupted Church
to her simplicity, purity, and truth, we, a portion of yourselves, Ministers
and Elders of your churches, and servants of one common Lord, would propose,
most respectfully and kindly, and yet most earnestly,
"l. That we refuse to give countenance to Ministers, Elders, agents, editors,
teachers, or to those who are in any other capacity engaged in religious
instruction and effort, who bid the preceding or similar heresies.
"2. That we make every lawful effort to subject all such persons, especially
if they be Ministers, to the just exercise of discipline by the proper
tribunal.
"3. That we use all proper means to restore the discipline of the Church,
in all its courts, to a sound, just, Christian state.
"4. That we use our endeavours to prevent the introduction of new principles
into our system, and to restore our tribunals to their ancient purity.
"5. That we consider the Presbyterial existence or acts of any Presbytery
or Synod formed upon the principles of elective affinity, as unconstitutional,
and all Ministers and Churches, voluntarily included in such bodies, as
having virtually departed from the standards of our Church.
"6. We recommend that all Ministers, Elders, Church Sessions, Presbyteries,
and Synods, who approve of this Act and Testimony, give their public adherence
thereto, in such manner as they shall prefer, and communicate their names,
and when a Church court, a copy of their adhering act.
"7. That inasmuch, as our only hope of improvement and reformation in
the affairs of our Church depends on the interposition of Him, who is
King in Zion, that we will unceasingly and importunately supplicate a
Throne of Grace, for the return of that purity and peace, the absence
of which we now sorrowfully deplore.
"8. We do earnestly recommend that on the second Thursday of May, 1835,
a Convention be held in the city of Pittsburgh, to be composed of two
delegates, a Minister and Ruling Elder from each Presbytery, or from the
minority of any Presbytery, who may concur in the sentiments of this Act
and Testimony, to deliberate and consult on the present state of our Church,
and to adopt such measures as may be best suited to restore her prostrated
standards.
"And now, brethren, our whole heart is laid open to you, and to the world.
If the majority of our Church are against us, they will, we suppose, in
the end, either see the infatuation of their course, and retrace their
steps, or they will, at last, attempt to cut us off. If the former, we
shall bless the God of Jacob; if the latter, we are ready for the sake
of Christ, and in support of the Testimony now made, not only to be cut
off, but if need be, to die also. If, on the other hand, the body be yet
in the main, sound, as we would fondly hope, we have here, frankly, openly,
and candidly, laid before our erring brethren the course we are, by the
grace of God, irrevocably determined to pursue. It is our steadfast aim
to reform the Church, or to testify against its errors and defections,
until testimony will be no longer heard. And we commit the issue into
the hands of Him who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen."
"Ministers.--James Magraw, Robert J. Breckinridge, James Latta, Ashbel
Green, Samuel D. Blythe, S. H. Crane, J. W. Scott, William Latta, Robert
Steel, Alexander A. Campbell, John Gray, James Scott, Joshua L. Wilson,
Alexander M'Farlane, Jacob Coon, Isaac N. Candee, Robert Love, James W.
M'Kennan, David R. Preston, William Wylie, William M. Engles, Cornelius
H. Mustard,* James C. Watson, William L.
Breckinridge, John A. Symmes, J. V. Brown, David M'Kinney, George Marshall,
Ebenezer H. Snowden, Oscar Harris, William J. Gibson, William Sickles,
Benjamin F. Spillman, George D. McCuenn, George W. Janvier, Samuel G.
Winchester, George Junkin.
"Elders.--Samuel Boyd, Edward Vanhorn, Williamson Dunn, James Algeo, James
Agnew, Henry McKeen, Charles Davis, William Wallace, A. D. Hepburn, Joseph
P. Engles, James M'Farren, A. Symington, A. Bayless, Wm. Agnew, George
Morris, Hugh Campbell, Thomas McKcen, James Wilson, Daniel B. Price, Carver
Hotchkiss, Charles Woodward, W. A. G. Posey, James Carnahan, Moses Reed,
James Steel, George Durfor, John Sharp."
_______________________________________________________________________
* [Mr. Mustard subsequently
revoked his signature.]
"To
sustain the accuracy of the following specifications, we are happy in
being able to quote the authority of Dr. Hodge, who kindly consented to
become the drawer of this most important feature of the Act and Testimony,
on the request of the committee appointed to prepare the document. But
in all the memorials and testimonies on this subject, presented to the
General Assembly at different times and from various parts of the church,
there is a substantial agreement in regard to the nature, as well as extent,
of the alleged heresies, pervading the whole."
[Excerpted from A Collection of the Acts, Deliverances
and Testimonies of the Supreme Judicatory of the Presbyterian Church from
its origin in America to the Present Time, by Samuel J. Baird (Philadelphia:
Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1856).] |