Where the creeds are short, concise, and meant to be a shot of what is believed and professed, the confessions are be a complete look at that the Christian entity believes in detail - what the believe, and how they put those believes into practice. For that reason they are long and involved, but they are also very worth reading. They bring with them a level of understanding that will mean a great deal in the growth of the individual Christian particularly as they become more involved in the workings of the church. Knowing what others found necessary helps a person to know what they will find necessary and why. You’ll get a brief history of the confession, then a link where you can find the confession in its entirety.

Click Image - Augsburg Confession

Click Image for The Belgic Confession

Click on Image - A or R Church of England

Click Image for the Canons of Dort

Click Image - Westminster Confession

Click Image - London Baptist Confession

The Confessions

The Augsburg Confession

Written just beforehand by Philip Melanchton, friend and right hand of Martin Luther, The Augsburg Confession is the statement of faith of the Lutheran Church presented at the Diet of Augsburg in June 1530. Through 28 articles, 21 of Lutheran tenets, and 7 rejecting various Roman Catholic teachings, it attempts of solidify the differences between the Lutherans and the Catholic Church.

Thirteen years before Martin Luther had nailed up his 95 Theses, and 4 years later was branded an outlaw at the Diet of Worms (have a hard time getting used to that name). In those intervening years, protected by certain noblemen and taking advantage of the printing press, Luther had made headway get people on his side, so by the presentation of the Augsburg Confession, the Catholic church had reluctantly acknowledged Luther’s protests. The presentation of the Confession essentially established the Lutheran church.

The Belgic Confession of Faith

The Belgic Confession is one of the best known and most loved of the Reformed confessions. Philip Schaff, the venerable historian of the church and her confessions, observes that it is “upon the whole, the best symbolical statement of the Calvinistic system of doctrine, with the exception of the Westminster Confession.” This Confession is known most commonly as the “Belgic” confession because it emerged from the French-speaking Reformed churches in the southern “Lowlands” or “Nether-lands” (now Belgium). It has served historically as one of the three confessional symbols of the Dutch Reformed churches. Affection for this confession among these churches stems as much from the poignant circumstances suffered by its original author and subscribers as from its rich statement of the Reformed faith.

The Articles of Religion - Church of England

The Articles of the Church of England are a version of the final text approved both by the English church and by Parliament. They began life as the Forty-two Articles, written by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in 1552. With subtractions and additions under the guiding hand of Archbishop Matthew Parker and others, these became the Thirty-nine Articles in 1562. Further changes to the wording of the Thirty-nine Articles were effected by Queen Elizabeth in 1563, but then the Articles were revised again by Bishop John Jewel, the two houses of the English clergy, and the two houses of Parliament in 1571.

They amount to a series of relatively long sentences, with a few notably long paragraphs as exceptions to the rule. Although there is no formal division, the first eighteen deal with the doctrine of God and the way of salvation, the second eighteen discuss the church and the sacraments, and a final trio of articles treats the civil magistrate, personal property, and oaths.

Canons of Dort

The Canons of Dort were aimed at Arminianism, some of which is quite prevalent in the church today. So this document will serve two purposes, to show you a good statement of what Calvinism really is and why, and how Arminianism differs from it. The writers of the Canon were from a large geographic area, primarily the Netherlands, but also from German and seven other countries with reformed churches, as well. Even the French reformed churches were invited but the Catholic churches refused to allow them to come. Their empty chairs were prominently displayed.

The Canons of Dort were the third and final contribution to what would become known as the Three Forms of Unity—the doctrinal standards of Dutch and German churches in the Reformed tradition. As an argument against the Remonstrants, most of whom were followers or friends of Jacobus Arminius. The Canons make five points under four headings, each designed (as the conclusion explains) to refute “five articles in dispute in the Netherlands, as well as the rejection of the errors by which the Dutch churches have for some time been disturbed.” The famous “five points of Calvinism” are a simplification of these Canons.

Westminster Confession

The Westminster Confession of Faith was written in 1646 by a gathering of pastor-theologians. They met in Westminster Abbey during England’s bloodiest civil war, and it is from the name of the abbey (or from the English Parliament, meeting in the city of Westminster) that the confession derives its name. From the perspective of most Reformed Christians, England’s Reformation had been left incomplete by Queen Elizabeth. Given that war had broken out in part for religious reasons, the English Parliament chose to call an assembly of theologians to advise it concerning the reform of the English church, especially in its worship and government. The so-called Westminster Assembly, meeting from 1643 to 1653, ended up changing the church’s theological texts, too. Helped by Scottish theologians from the autumn of 1643, the texts written by the assembly ended up being endorsed more heartily and used more faithfully by that northern church and its missionaries than they ever were in England.

The Westminster Confession of Faith became the dominant confession of Reformed Christianity. Terms and phrases found in the Confession almost immediately became the preferred parlance of English-speaking Reformed churches, and when Congregationalists, Baptists, and Methodists wished to create confessional or catechetical texts of their own, they often resorted to revising and reissuing works produced by the Westminster Assembly.

London Baptist Confession

The classic Baptist summary of faith is the London Baptist Confession. The text of the confession, written in 1677 and formally adopted in 1689, was adapted from the 1658 Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order (a now little-used text), which was in turn a revision of the 1646 Westminster Confession of Faith. The London Baptist Confession remains a lodestone to many Baptists, its appeal being found chiefly in its usefulness as a teaching tool or even as a basis for association. It is sometimes called the Second London Baptist Confession to differentiate it from an earlier Baptist confession written in 1644.