CONFESSIONS OF FAITH

CONFESSIONS OF FAITH, are statements of doctrine very similar to Creeds, but usually longer and polemical, as well as didactic; they are in the main, though not exclusively, associated with Protestantism; the 16th century produced many, including the Sixty-seven Articles of the Swiss reformers, drawn up by Zwingli in 1523; 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 Gallican Confession, 1559; and the Belgic Confession of 1561. In Britain the Scots Confession, drawn up by John Knox in 1560; the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England in 1562; 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.