Exacting Subscription Opposed By Latitudinarians And Heretics

A subject of this nature will engage our attention on the present occasion: namely, the importance of creeds and confessions for maintaining the unity and purity of the visible church.

This is a subject which, though it properly belongs to the department of Church Government, has always been, for want of time, omitted in the Lectures usually delivered on that division of our studies. And I am induced now to call your attention to it, because, as I said, it properly belongs to the department committed to me; because it is in itself a subject highly interesting and important; because it has been for a number of years past, and still is, the object of much severe animadversion on the part of latitudinarians and heretics; and because, though abundantly justified by reason, scripture, and universal experience, the spontaneous feelings of many, especially under the free government which it is our happiness to enjoy, rise up in arms against what they deem, and are sometimes pleased to call, the excessive “rigor” and even “tyranny” of exacting subscription to articles of faith. Read more»

Samuel MillerThe Utility and Importance of Creeds and Confessions” (July 2, 1824).


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One comment

  1. Of course, it is interesting that with the ongoing “liberalising” of moderate denominations, the “latitudinarians and heretics” are introducing their own exacting requirements of ordained office bearers. Many Presbyterian and Episcopalian churches require officers to subscribe to equality policies in terms of who can be ministers elders and deacons. What matters is not the confession of the church but the law of the church. Law is always needed to establish and interpret the confessional standard. Every denomination illustrates the primacy of law over confession.

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