Confession of Faith

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A Confession of Faith is a statement of doctrine very similar to a creed, but usually longer and polemical, as well as didactic.

Confessions of Faith are in the main, though not exclusively, associated with Protestantism. The 16th and 17th centuries produced many, including:

• the Sixty-seven Articles of the Swiss reformers, drawn up by Zwingli in 1523;
• the Schleitheim Confession of the Anabaptist Swiss Brethren drawn up in 1527 - (this confession was neither Catholic nor Protestant);
• the Augsburg Confession of 1530, the work of Luther and Melanchthon, which marked the breach with Rome;
• the Tetrapolitan Confession of the German Reformed Church, 1530;
• the Smalcald Articles of Martin Luther, 1537
• the Gallican Confession, 1559;
• the Scots Confession, drawn up by John Knox in 1560;
• the Belgic Confession[1] drawn up by Guido de Brès[2] in 1561;
• the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England in 1562;
• the Formula of Concord and its Epitome,, 1577;
• the Irish Articles in 1615;
• and the Westminster Confession of Faith in 1647.

This last, the work of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, has by its force of language, logical statement, comprehensiveness, and dependence on Scripture, commended itself to the Presbyterian Churches of all English-speaking peoples, and is the most widely recognised Protestant statement of doctrine; it has as yet been modified only by the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, which adopted a Declaratory Statement regarding certain of its doctrines in 1879, and by the Free Church of Scotland, which adopted a similar statement in 1890. In Wales, Christian doctrines were expressed in the Confession of Faith of the Calvinistic Methodists (Presbyterians) of Wales, 1823.

[edit] See also

• the Savoy Declaration[3] of 1658 which was a modification of the Westminster Confession to suit Congregationalist polity;
• the Baptist Confession of 1689 which had much in common with the Westminster Confession, but differed from it on a number of distinctions held important by the English Calvinistic Baptists;
• the Confession of Faith of the Calvinistic Methodists (Presbyterians) of Wales[4] of 1823.

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1907 edition of The Nuttall Encyclopædia.