Seminary
1874-1891, and of Biblical theology there from 1891 to 1904, when he became
professor of theological encyclopaedia and symbolics. From 1880 to 1890 he
was an editor of the _Presbyterian Review_. In 1892 he was tried for heresy
by the presbytery of New York and acquitted. The charges were based upon
his inaugural address of the preceding year. In brief they were as follows:
that he had taught that reason and the Church are each a "fountain of
divine authority which apart from Holy Scripture may and does savingly
enlighten men"; that "errors may have existed in the original text of the
Holy Scripture"; that "many of the Old Testament predictions have been
reversed by history" and that "the great body of Messianic prediction has
not and cannot be fulfilled"; that "Moses is not the author of the
Pentateuch," and that "Isaiah is not the author of half of the book which
bears his name"; that "the processes of redemption extend to the world to
come"--he had considered it a fault of Protestant theology that it limits
redemption to this world--and that "sanctification is not complete at
death." The general assembly, to which the case was appealed, suspended Dr
Briggs [v.04 p.0566] in 1893, being influenced, it would seem, in part, by
the manner and tone of his expressions--by what his own colleagues in the
Union Theological Seminary called the "dogmatic and irritating" nature of
his inaugural address. He was ordained a priest of the Protestant Episcopal
Church in 1899. His scholarship procured for him the honorary degree of
D.D. from Edinburgh (1884) and from Glasgow (1901), and that of Litt.D.
from Oxford (1901). With S.R. Driver and Francis Brown he prepared a
revised _Hebrew and English Lexicon_ (1891-1905), and with Driver edited
the "International Commentary Series." His publications include _Biblical
Study: Its Principles, Methods and History_ (1883); _Hebrew Poems of the
Creation_ (1884); _American Presbyterianism: Its Origin and Early History_
(1885); _Messianic Prophecy_ (1886); _Whither? A Theological Question for
the Times_ (1889); _The Authority of the Holy Scripture_ (1891); _The
Bible, the Church and the Reason_ (1892); _The Higher Criticism of the
Hexateuch_ (1893); _The Messiah of the Gospels_ (1804), _The Messiah of the
Apostles_ (1894); _New Light on the Life of Jesus_ (1904); _The Ethical
Teaching of Jesus_ (1904); _A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the
Book of Psalms_ (2 vols., 1906-1907), in whi