been
collected beforehand, only four days seem to have been allowed to the
committee to put them into final shape.

[Sidenote: Character of the Confession.]

We must not look either on the one hand for an exhaustive and logical
elaboration of the several doctrines of the system and nicely balanced
statement of complementary truths, or on the other for a careful
avoidance of incidental expressions which seem dogmatically to determine
points not fully or directly handled in the places where we should have
expected them to be so. Yet, if we make such due allowance, look at it
from the proper point of view, and peruse the work not only in the now
obsolete Scotch, but also in the neat Latin version which often
accompanies it, and is said to have been the work of Archbishop
Adamson,[109] we shall not hesitate to own that it holds a
distinguished place among the Confessions of that age, and is a credit
to our reformer and his associates. Coinciding not infrequently in
expression and agreeing generally in its definitions of doctrine with
the other Reformed or Calvinistic Confessions (an agreement which its
framers explicitly testified by inserting among the subordinate
standards of their church, first Calvin's Catechism, and a few years
after the Later Helvetic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism), the
Scottish Confession of 1560 had characteristics of its own,--a framework
rather historical than dogmatic, and a liberal and manly, yet reverent
and cautious spirit. It probably contributed to mould the early Scottish
theology into a form somewhat less minute and rigid than the Swiss, yet
considerably less vague and indefinite than the earlier English.

The first topic deserving of notice, from the place it holds both in the
preface and in the body of this treatise, is the distinct and hearty
acknowledgment of the supreme authority of the written Word of God, or
"the buiks of the Auld and New Testamentis," which books are briefly but
sufficiently defined as those "quhilk of the ancient have been reputed
canonicall."[110] In these they affirm "that all thingis necessary to
be beleeved for the salvation of mankinde is sufficiently expressed,"
and to these they desire in all things to conform, protesting that, if
any man should note any article or sentence in their Confession contrary
to the Scriptures, and should "of his gentleness" admonish them of the
same, they "do promise unto him satisfactioun fra the mouth of God, that