Battle of the Bibles - Present Truth

Chapter Twenty
The Mercersburg Movement
(And Its Influence On American Revision)
The contagion of the Oxford Movement soon found victims in North America. Its
contaminating theories found ready acceptance among German "Reformationists" in
Pennsylvania who were responsible for what came to be known as Mercersburg
Theology. What Newman and the Oxford Movement were to Britain, so Dr Philip Schaff
and the Mercersburg Movement came to be in America.
Like Newman, Schaff was really an ardent Romanist. Both were traitors to
Protestantism. In 1844 Dr Schaff arrived in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, from the
University of Berlin, where as a professing Protestant he had shown remarkable aptitude
in accepting the Mystical Presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper. Dr Appel described
him as
"A gift from the fatherland to the daughter Church on this side of the ocean
/America]" (Appel, "Life of John W Nevin", pp 200, 201).
In describing Schaff's penchant for Romanising, one Protestant Reviewer wrote:
"Through the misty drapery of Dr Schaff's philosophy, every essential feature of
the papal system stands forth with a prominence so sharply defined, as to leave doubt
impossible, and charity in despair" ("New Brunswick Review", p 23).
The same magazine expressed the anxious concern that Protestantism in
America was experiencing a repeat of what happened in England:
"It is quite time that the churches of our country should awake to the extent and
tendencies of this movement in the midst of American Protestantism. After a series of
advances and retractations, strongly resembling the tactics of the Tractarian party in
England, we have at length a bold avowal of the primacy of Peter' the fundamental and
test doctrine of the Papacy, followed by a concession of every vital point of Christianity -
Church, Ministry, Worship, Sacraments, and the right of Private Judgment - to
Romanism, and that too, while the name and the forms of Protestantism are (as far as
possible) studiously retained" (ibid p 62).
From the foregoing brief glimpse of Dr Schaff's philosophy, it is not hard to
believe that, had his conscience been guided by the Christian ethic of honesty, he would
have renounced all pretence of being a Protestant. On the contrary, he was seen by the
enemies of Bible-believing Protestants as the ideal counterpart of such people as
Westcott, Hort and Ellicott who had foisted the fraud of Revision on the English-speaking
world.
Bishop Ellicott revealed the English involvement in the American Revision by
requesting Dr Schaff to take the initiative in leading out in the formation of the American
Revision Committee and then its work. This he was quite happy to do. His predilection
for a version that would please Roman Catholics is illustrated in his "Church History"
where he translated Matthew 16:18 in a way which would favour the apostle Peter as
being the first pope. The New Brunswick Review commented on his audacity in this way:
"Dr Schaff has laid his hand on the text itself. With unparalleled audacity he has
translated Matthew 16:18, 'thou art a rock,' and 'on this rock,' etc., as if 'Peter' and the
'rock' were expressed in the original by the same word. Bellarmine has not ventured to
do this nor any other Romanist within our knowledge" (ibid May 1854 p 57). 17
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