Charles A. Briggs

In 1892 Briggs was tried for heresy by the presbytery of New York, including James McCook, 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 both a fountain of divine authority, which, apart from Holy Scripture, does savingly enlightens men
• that errors may have existed in the original text of the Holy Scripture
• that 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 the second half of the book that 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).

After much posturing, maneuvering and publicity-seeking by Briggs, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, to which the case was appealed, defrocked and excommunicated Briggs from the Presbyterian Church in 1893 in Washington, DC.^[3][5]Some^[6] have argued that General Assembly's finding of heresy was influenced, in part, by Briggs' belligerent manner and militant tone of expressions and by what his own colleagues in the Union Theological Seminary called the dogmatic and irritating nature of his inaugural address.^[6]

After his condemnation by the Presbyterians, he turned towards Episcopalianism^[7] and was ordained as a priest of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1899.