Note 10 — Footnotes

Dr. Philip Schaff, than whom there is no abler or more renowned biblical scholar in the New World, has in a recent paper in the New York Herald defended Dr. Briggs. That journal aptly says: In his paper, he defines in the most trenchant language, the apparent inconsistency of the New York Presbytery in practically avowing, eighteen months ago, the same principle for which Dr. Briggs, it declares, must now stand trial. He declares that the American Presbyterian Church has herself materially changed the Westminster Confession of a hundred years ago, and that this spirit of revision pervades the whole Christian world. Finally, he asserts that, as the theory of verbal inspiration of the Scriptures is not in the Westminster Confession of Faith, it cannot be demanded from any Presbyterian minister or professor, and warns churchmen that any attempt by the General Assembly to enforce an extra Scriptural and extra Confessional theory upon the Church will create a split worse than that of 1837. The Herald observes that:—