Much has been written over the past several years regarding the Adopting Act of 1729 and the idea of “scrupling.” A recent article by Frederick Heuser included a brief overview of the Adopting Act while pondering the various controversies and splits within our history as American Presbyterians.

Dr. Jeffrey C. Francis, Sharp Chaplain of the University of Tulsa and member of the board of directors of the Foundation for Reformed Theology, has published in The Presbyterian Outlook (June 25, 2012), pp. 21-22, an important review of “The Adopting Act of 1729” and of the “Act Preliminary to the Adopting Act,” which two are often confused.

By this Preliminary Act, the Presbyterian Church allowed persons seeking to be ordained to “scruple” certain portions of the Westminster Confession of Faith. But as Dr. Francis shows, those portions were then severely limited by the Adopting Act itself to only two paragraphs having to do with the civil magistrate!

Much mischief has been done of late by willful confusion of the mere Preliminary Act with the real Adopting Act itself and then by the subsequent suppression of the Adopting Act’s clear specification of the only paragraphs to which “scruples” could be applied.

Let us hope that Dr. Francis’s review can help correct that error so that the confessed faith of the church can and will be upheld by all who are ordained and by all who seek to be ordained.Much has been written over the past several years regarding the Adopting Act of 1729 and the idea of “scrupling.” A recent article by Frederick Heuser included a brief overview of the Adopting Act while pondering the various controversies and splits within our history as American Presbyterians.

Regarding the Act, Heuser suggests, “a compromise was reached in 1729 that provided a standard and yet allowed a means by which to deal with disagreements while preserving the unity of the church.” While this reflects a general contemporary understanding, historically it is not a completely accurate description of what occurred on September 19, 1729, when the Adopting Act was approved by Synod of Philadelphia and the subsequent action of the Synod in 1736. Ultimately, the so-called compromise resulted in an unintentional “loophole” unhelpful to the unity of the church.

Yes, the Adopting Act of 1729 was pursued as an intended compromise between the subscriptionists and the non-subscriptionists. The Synod of Philadelphia voted to subscribe to the entire Westminster Confession, except portions of chapters XX (Of Christian Liberty, and Liberty of Conscience), and XXIII (Of the Civil Magistrate). According to Baird:

All the Ministers of this Synod now present . . . after proposing all the scruples that any of them had to make against any articles and expressions in the Confession of Faith and Larger and Shorter Catechisms of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, have unanimously agreed in the solution of those scruples, and in declaring the said Confession and Catechisms to be the confession of their faith, excepting only some clauses in the twentieth and twenty-third chapters, concerning which clauses the Synod do unanimously declare, that they do not receive those articles in any such sense as to suppose the civil magistrate hath a controlling power over Synods with respect to the exercise of their ministerial authority; or power to persecute any for their religion, or in any sense contrary to the Protestant succession to the throne of Great Britain.

Baird then specifically identifies the passages in Chapters 20 and 23 which were deemed nonessential:

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