Thursday, September 27, 2007

Essential Reading

From the Banner of Truth Website:

Why should one be interested in and even purchase this old book, however attractive the new edition? The answer is not far to seek. As long as we had no access to Dickson’s commentary we could do without it: we had no alternative. Now that it is once again available I believe the volume to be virtually indispensable in any serious study of the Westminster Confession, the great document which Dickson so carefully and ably expounded.

Dickson was not a Scottish commissioner to the Westminster Assembly; but he was a senior colleague and friend to those remarkable Scotsmen who took such a leading part in the deliberations of that assembly: Alexander Henderson, Samuel Rutherford, George Gillespie, Robert Baillie, and Archibald Johnston. He knew them well, understood their thinking, and was in complete agreement with their theological convictions.

What this means, of course, is that Truth’s Victory over Error provides an extraordinarily significant window through which we can view the Westminster Confession in terms of the intent of those who composed it. In my judgment, no pastor, no serious student, can now claim to have studied that confession without taking account of the wise, gracious, clear-headed, uncompromising integrity and the profound learning of the great divine who provided us with this indispensable analysis of its teaching.

J. R. DeWitt

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