Confessions of Faith are generically identical with Creeds (q.v.). If any distinction be made, it is the merely accidental differentiation that creeds are shorter, and that confessions of faith are generally polemical as well as didactic in their character and aim. Such a distinction, it is found, actually obtains in practice, and confessions of faith, as thus distinguished from creeds, are so numerous and varied as to call for separate attention.
Confessions of faith may be defined as authorised summaries of a church's belief, and standards of its faith and doctrine. In all Protestant churches, however, they are regarded as subordinate standards, ranking under the Scriptures, which are recognised as the only supreme 'rule of faith and life.' Their object is to present the cardinal truths of revelation in a connected and logical form, especially if these be controverted; while at the same time they afford a basis of association and a bond of unity for Christians. As they are the result of the conflicts of a church with error, confessions of faith vary in their doctrinal comprehensiveness, are more or less gradual in their growth, and are significant and important features in its history.
Prior to the era of the Reformation in Europe, the public formularies of the Christian church were generally termed creeds. It was the rise of Protestantism that evoked confessions of faith as we now understand the name. Among the first to formulate these were the Swiss at Zurich, where, in 1523, Zwingli wrote his Sixty-seven Articles or Conclusions. To Luther and Philip Melanchthon, however, is due the honour of drawing up the first authoritative evangelical formulary, the Augsburg Confession (q.v.), by the adoption of which the Lutheran princes, with their states, in 1530, finally broke with Rome. It was followed by the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, drawn up by Melanchthon, and recognised as a confession in 1532. Later confessions of that church are the Articles of Smalcald, prepared in 1537, the Saxon Confession, and the Württemberg Confession, both published in 1551. But these were superseded in 1580 on the adoption of the Form of Concord (Formula Concordiæ), which is the most representative symbol of the Lutheran Church.
The German Reformed Church, which sprang up side by side with the Lutheran, and stood midway between it and the Calvinistic bodies, issued in 1530 the Tetrapolitan Confession, so called because sent forth in name of the four cities of Strasburg, Constance, Memmingen, and Lindau. It was written chiefly by Bucer. Among other confessions officially recognised by this church, or local portions of it, were the Confession of Anhalt (1581); the Confession of Nassau (1578); the Consensus of the Ministry of Bremen (1598); the Hessian and Heidelberg Confessions (1607); and the Declaration of Thorn (1645).
In Switzerland, the labours of Zwingli were followed by the publication in 1534 of the First Confession of Basel, prepared by Ecolampadius and Myconius. To it succeeded in 1536 the Second Confession of Basel, better known as the First Helvetic Confession. It was superseded in 1566 by the more comprehensive Second Helvetic Confession, which was written by Bullinger, and obtained official sanction in Scotland, Hungary, France, and Poland. Calvin left his mark on confessional literature in, among others, the Consensus of Zurich (1549); in the Consensus of Geneva (1552), which is a treatise written mainly in defence of the doctrine of predestination; and in the Galliean Confession, which he prepared in conjunction with his pupil, Antoine de la Roche Chandieu (Sadeel). The latest Swiss confession is the Helvetic Consensus Formula, written in 1675, by Heidegger of Zurich. It is thoroughly Calvinistic, and was drawn up in defence of the conclusions of the Synod of Dort.
The Galliean Confession, was adopted by the French Reformed Church in 1559, and after revision was ratified at the Synod of Rochelle in 1571, whence it is sometimes called the Confession of Rochelle.
The Belgie Confession, drawn up principally by Guido de Brès in 1561, has since then been, and still is, the authoritative standard of the Dutch and Belgian Reformed churches. The Arminian controversy occasioned the meeting of the Synod of Dort in 1618, and the issuing of the Canons of Dort in the following year. These canons were adopted as symbolical by the Dutch and French Reformed churches.
But confessions have not been peculiar to the Protestant Church. Influenced by the Reformation, the Greek Church adopted the Orthodox Confession of Mogilas, the metropolitan of Kiev (died 1647), who drew it up in a catechetical form as a protective measure against both Protestant and Roman Catholic churches. Recast by Syriza, the metropolitan of Nicaea, it became in 1672 the confession of the whole Greek Church. At the same time the anti-Calvinistic Confession of Dositheus was promulgated by the Synod of Jerusalem. Similarly, the Roman Catholic Church published the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent in 1564, to which were added in 1854 the decree of Pius IX. on the Immaculate Conception, and in 1870 the Vatican Decrees. See ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.
In Britain the chief confessions are the Scots Confession, consisting of twenty-five articles, drawn up by John Knox in 1560, and adopted by the Church and kingdom of Scotland; the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, adopted in 1562; the Irish Articles, one hundred and four in number, prepared by Archbishop Usher, and adopted by the Irish Church in convocation at Dublin in 1615, but superseded by the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England in 1635 (see ARTICLES); and the Westminster Confession of Faith, emitted in 1647 by the Westminster Assembly of Divines (see WESTMINSTER). This confession has become identified with Presbyterianism among all the English-speaking populations of the globe. Its theology was also adopted with some modifications by the Congregationalists and a section of the Baptists. It was ratified by the English parliament in 1647, but in England its influence waned with the decline of Presbyterianism during the Commonwealth and the reign of Charles II. By Scotland, in furtherance of the uniformity agreed upon in the Solemn League and Covenant, the Westminster Confession was cordially received and adopted in place of that of 1560. It was approved by the General Assembly in 1647, with the modification of but one section regarding the magistrate's power cirea saera, was ratified by parliament in 1649 and again in 1690, and continues to be the common symbol of the Church of Scotland and of the churches which have seceded from her communion, save in the case of the United Presbyterian Church, which in 1879 modified its acceptance of the Confession by a Declaratory Statement regarding certain of its doctrines.
The Westminster Confession consists of thirty-three chapters, is thoroughly Calvinistic in its teaching, and is in many parts stated in terms designed to counteract the principal errors of the time. Beginning with the canon of Scripture, it surveys the entire field of theology, deals also with the relations of the state to the church, the constitution of the church itself, and concludes with the topics of death, the resurrection, and the last judgment. Its precise logic, its clear, dignified and powerful diction, and its constant reference to Scripture in proof of its statements, tended greatly to beget that influence to which it attained.
Confessions of faith are now the subject of a voluminous literature which is fully utilised in the History of the Creeds of Christendom (3 vols. 1876), by Dr Philip Schaff of New York, and his Harmony of the Reformed Confessions (1877). A valuable historical appendix, with special reference to the Presbyterian Church, is given in the Report of the Second General Council of the Presbyterian Alliance (1880). See also under CREEDS.