and OTHER LOCAL CIRCUMSTANCES OF AMERICA," [Note 1] &c.

Our _Presbyterian_ brethren also changed their Confession of Faith, and
adapted it to their belief. Hear the testimony of _Dr. Hodge_, in his
Constitutional History of the Presbyterian Church in the United
States: [Note 2] the Synod then "took into consideration the twentieth
chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith, the third paragraph of
the twenty-third chapter, and the first paragraph of the thirty-first
chapter; and having made some alterations, agreed that the said
paragraphs, as now altered, be printed for consideration, together with
a draught of a plan of government and discipline." They were
subsequently adopted.

In like manner did our _Methodist Episcopal_ brethren deal with the
Thirty-nine Articles of the Episcopal Church, which they had avowed
from the days of Wesley. They not only rejected the recognition of the
king as the head of the church, but also entirely omitted Article
XVII., which is supposed by many to inculcate Calvinism, together with
several others; and materially altered Articles I., II., VI., IX.,
XXVI., and XXXIV. If, then, it be competent for these several Synods,
or Conferences, to change the Westminster Confession and Thirty-nine
Articles, which were prepared far more deliberately, and with much less
restraint, and had become equally venerable by age, without any one
pretending to deny their authority, or to pronounce the measure
"presumptuous," why may not the Synod of Wittenberg, and other similar
bodies, correct the Augsburg Confession, by the omission of several
tenets, believed not only by her members, but by the great body of
American Lutherans, to be unscriptural? Now the Definite Platform was
prepared at the request of the leading members of those Western Synods,
according to a plan previously agreed on among them and others, for the