[128] Considerable ingenuity has been expended in the attempt to show that the words "who is the end and accomplishment of the law" are to be understood in some other than their most obvious and commonly received meaning. Without questioning the competency of such ingenious rather than ingenuous exposition, were a case raised before the judicial committee of a modern privy council to have the expounder tried and condemned as a heretic, I venture to think that when the matter to be determined is rather what, in point of fact, did Knox and his associates hold and teach, the following brief quotation from the "godly and perfect" treatise of Balnaves on Justification must go pretty near to settle it: "Christ is the end of the law (unto righteousnes) to all that beleeve—that is, Christ is the consummation and fulfilling of the lawe, and that justice whiche the lawe requireth; and all they which beleeve in Him are just by imputation through faith, and for His sake are repute and accepted as just" (Laing's Knox, iii. 492). If more than this has been taught in recent times, I should be greatly inclined with Principal Lee to trace it to Jonathan Edwards, or perhaps even to the great Independent, Dr Owen, rather than to the Westminster divines, or the earlier Scottish.
[129] Stähelin's Johannes Calvin, ii. 88.
[130] Dunlop's Confessions, ii. 66-68; Laing's Knox, ii. 110.
[131] Lee's Lectures on the History of the Church of Scotland, i. 124, 125.
[132] Laing's Knox, ii. 113. [In the Confession, as printed in the Acts of the Parliaments of 1560 and 1567 ratifying it, the word chief is retained (Acts of Parliament, ii. 532; iii. 20). The Confession of 1616 bears that: "We believe that there be only two sacraments appointed by Christ under the New Testament, Baptisme and the Lord's Supper" ('Booke of the Universall Kirk,' iii. 1137). Concerning the sacraments the First Book of Discipline says: "They be two, to wit, Baptism and the Holy Supper of the Lord Jesus" (Dunlop's Confessions, ii. 520; Laing's Knox, ii. 186).]
[133] Hujus generis duo praecipua in vetere ecclesiâ fuerunt circumcisio et agnus paschalis. Nos illorum loco duo etiam habemus baptismum et caenam domini.
[134] "The Confession of Faith made by Mr Knox, and ratified in Parliament by King James VI., together with the Westminster Confession (both agreed on by the General Assembly of Presbyters), are owned next to the Word of God, by both parties, as the Standard of the doctrine of our Church" (Case of Suffering Church of Scotland).
[135] It is printed at length in Calderwood's History, vii. 233-242; and also in the 'Booke of the Universall Kirk,' iii. 1132-1139; and is supposed to have been mainly the work of Howie, Melville's successor at St Andrews.
[136] [In speaking of this Confession of 1616, Dr Grub says that it "agrees with the old one in all important points, the chief difference being in its more marked enunciation of the doctrine of Calvin in regard to election and predestination" (Grub's History, ii. 306).]
[137] Printed in Peterkin's Records of the Kirk, pp. 155-160.