Excerpt from The North American Review, Vol. 157

If the General Assembly had the power to determine the faith of the Presbyterian Church by such a decision it would put all liberal Presbyterians in a serious situation, in which they would either be obliged to submit to these decisions or else to retire from the Presbyterian ministry. But a General Assembly has no such power. It cannot determine the faith of the Church either by deliverance of opinion or by judicial condemnation of a minister. The constitution prescribes the way in which the faith of the Church may be determined, namely, by the agreement of two-thirds of the presbyteries to a statement of doctrine sub mitted to them by the General Assembly. Therefore the only effect of the suspension of Professor Briggs, for the reasons as signed, is that his doctrines are declared to be hurtful errors by the majority of the last Assembly. But the minority of that Assembly, who have declared that his doctrines are not hurtful errors, have a legal right to hold those opinions, and to contend for them until they are declared to be hurtful errors by amend ments of the Confession of Faith.

Furthermore, the minority contend that the Assembly at Washington was guilty of usurpation of power and of ecclesiastical domination of the same general character as the act of John Thomson and his eleven associates in 1741, and of the General Assembly of 1837. For the General Assembly violated the con stitution of the Church and all the precedents of Presbyterian practice in these three respects (1 It recognized the right of a public prosecutor to appeal against a verdict of acquittal; It recognized that a committee appointed by the Presbytery of New York was independent of the Presbytery which appointed it It usurped the jurisdiction of the Synod of New York by assuming jurisdiction of a case which was under the jurisdiction of the Synod of New York and not yet determined by that synod. These unconstitutional acts of the Assembly at Washington have not yet been recognized by the Synod of New York, and until the synod has yielded its jurisdiction and oth cially given its consent to these actions of the General Assembly.

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