Note 115 — Chapter VI · THE OLD SCOTTISH CONFESSION OF 1560.

Dunlop's Confessions, ii. 24, 25; Laing's Knox, ii. 98. It has been questioned if this description of faith is one which Calvin and his stricter followers would have used. But nothing is more common, even in the earliest edition of his Institutes, than to find him describing faith as the apprehension of Christ with His gifts, or graces, as well as with His righteousness: "Apprehendimus ac obtinemus et ... Christi dona amplectimur, quod ipsum est habere veram, ut decet fidem." "Haec omnia nobis a Deo offeruntur ac dantur in Christo Domino nostro nempe remissio peccatorum gratuita, ... dona et gratiae Spiritus Sancti si certâ fide ea amplectimur." In one of these chapters [of the Scottish Confession] relating to the incarnation of Christ Jesus, He is spoken of not only, as in most of the Protestant Confessions, as the promised Messiah, the just seed of David, the Immanuel, or God in our nature—God and man in one person—but also as the Angel of the great counsel of God [Dunlop's Confessions, ii. 31; Laing's Knox, ii. 99]. This expression is no doubt a translation of the μεγαλης βουλης αγγελος of the Septuagint, and is the more remarkable, not only as showing familiarity on the part of some of the framers of the Confession with a somewhat unusual rendering of one of the most explicit Messianic prophecies of Isaiah, but also as showing that they had perceived the true significance of an expression which last century gave rise to no little discussion and misconception. So far as I can remember, this remarkable expression does not appear in any other of the Protestant Confessions of that age.