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 Martin Luther and Philip 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 in 1577;
- The Irish Articles in 1615;
- The Westminster Confession of Faith in 1647 was the work of the Westminster Assembly of Divines and has commended itself to the Presbyterian Churches of all English-speaking peoples, and also in other languages. It is the most widely recognised Protestant statement of doctrine.
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.
