Kuyper wrote this article for The Presbyterian and Reformed Review at the invitation of its editor, B.B. Warfield (1851–1921). He chose to speak about a contemporary controversy brewing over a Reformed church in the classis of Brunswick, New Jersey that had proposed revising the Westminster Confession (1648). The article puts forward a Calvinist perspective on confessional revision (cf. the preface to 1891.10).

In order to make clear the “specific tendency” of Calvinism, Kuyper frames his article by posing and answering four questions about the preconditions for responsible revision of confessional standards. The fourth of these questions asks, “To what conditions is the revision of these symbols, in the case of a progressive development of Calvinism, to be bound?” Referring to 1879.11 in his answer to this question, Kuyper identifies four preconditions that any proposed revision must satisfy—preconditions that, in his opinion, provide sufficient reason to provisionally suspend discussions about making any such revisions. First, any revision must not be a reaction against the principles of Calvinism, but a richer unfolding of those principles. Second, this unfolding must have made such universal progress in the churches that the revision does not mean that the one half obtrudes its opinion on the other half. Third, Calvinist theology must have made sufficient progress to serve the churches in formulating such development. Fourth and finally, in foreign churches of Reformed confession similar convictions must have led to similar results.

The article was translated by Professor Geerhardus Vos (1862–1949), born in Heerenveen, the Netherlands and professor of systematic and exegetical theology (1888–1893) at the Theological School at Grand Rapids, subsequently professor of Biblical theology (1893–1932) at Princeton Theological Seminary. Vos also contributed to the translation of 1898.15.

In De Heraut, no. 714, August 30, 1891, Kuyper gave an evaluation of the report of the commission that had conceived the changes and expansions to the Westminster Confession. In both of the next two issues of De Heraut, he further explored the details of the matter.