CONTENTS. I Arts. 1-5 Universally recognized fundamental truths of the Christian religion ; 2 Arts. 6-8 Standards of faith ; 3 Arts. 9-18 Sin and Grace ; 4 Arts. 19-36 Church and Sacraments; 5 Arts. 37-9 Civil order.
Owing to the completeness of the Thirty-Nine Articles the need for their expansion has not been pressing. In the puritan con flicts attempts were made to expand the Thirty-Nine Articles by stricter articles on Predestination (1595 and 1603-04) ; they fell through. In the confusion of the great English revolution the Thirty-Nine Articles were for the time put aside even in the Church of England in favour of the Westminster Confession. The Restoration restored them unchanged. Owing to the extension of the English Church overseas, especially in the i9th century, the Thirty-Nine Articles have become the confession of a world wide community. Next to the C. Augustana, the Thirty-Nine Arti cles have the greatest number of adherents of all the Evangelical confessions of the i6th century. And this all the more as the Methodist communities have retained a considerable part of the Thirty-Nine Articles, at least in a redaction of Wesley's (omitting the article on the ancient creeds, that on Predestination, and others besides).
5. The Remaining English-speaking Churches.—The Scottish Reformation, which is independent of the English, pro duced two confessions of its own. (a) The first Scottish confes sion of 156o, composed by John Knox, confirmed in the same year by the Scottish Parliament (not by Queen Mary) and the General Assembly of the Scottish Church, the foundation of the new Reformation order of the Scottish Church, embracing 25 extensive articles; and (b) the so-called second Scottish confes sion, the Covenant of 1581, a brief ceremonial confession, to which King and people bound themselves by oath. Both are strongly Calvinist in character. But neither of these has become the permanent confession of the Scottish Church; instead it has been the Westminster Confession which was completed by the Westminster Assembly of the first English revolution of 1645-6 under strong Scottish influence, and presented to the English Parliament on April 29, 1647, and passed by it in March 1648. It became the confession of the Scottish Church, in the form in which it still exists, by act of the Scottish General Assembly on August 27, 1647 ; in 1690 it was finally confirmed for Scotland by Parliament. The two Catechisms which belong with the West minster Confession were adopted by the Scottish General As sembly in 1648.
The Westminster Confession has an importance extending far beyond Scotland. The English and American Presbyterians re ceived it as their confession, and it has become fundamental for the Congregationalist communities also, at all events with the modifications and the Platform which were agreed to by the Savoy Synod in Thereby the Westminster Confession was originally the Confession of the most influential of the American communities. To-day that is so no longer. For, first, the remain ing American communities for which the Westminster Confession, even so far as they are Calvinist, possesses no official importance, have greater importance to-day than in North America's colonial period; and, secondly, Presbyterians and Congregationalists have to-day separated themselves from the old unchanged Westminster Confession. For the Presbyterians decisive for the most part are the decisions of 1903, which moderated the doctrine of Pre destination and appended two new articles (34 Holy Ghost, 35 Missions). The Congregationalists have since 1883 procured a brief new confession. So one can speak of a constant influence, but only in a limited sense of an enduring validity, of the West minster Confession in North America. This course of events is explained by the nature of the Westminster Confession. In itself a master-piece of theological precision and clarity and so far of great weight, it is yet, owing to its length, more closely inter woven with the theological work of the century of orthodoxy than any other modern confession, and it does not shrink from the deliberate accentuation of its conceptions, even to the wound ing of natural feeling, if clarity makes this desirable.
Of the confessions of the other English and American com munities nothing can here be said, owing to their bewildering variety.
6. The Present Position.—With the beginning of the Enlight enment, or of Deism, confessional formulation or transformation came everywhere to a standstill. As, however, theology did not stand still, but underwent great change as a result of scientific study and contact with the spiritual movements of the modern period, the question of the relation of the theology of a Church to the confession of that Church became acute; that, indeed, did not happen everywhere at the same time (North America was first seriously disturbed by it during the last generation or so), but no Church is any longer quite unaffected by it.
The 18th century produced three temporary solutions favour able to the Church. I. Moderated Teaching. This pre-supposes the distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental articles, but fixes the limits between them more boldly and freely than was possible in the I7th century. It further, that theology must retain certain of the fundamentals of the old con fessions, especially the revelation of God in Christ. II. The dis tinction between public and private teaching. The official of the Church must conform to the confession of the Church in his offi cial capacity, but as student and writer he is free to express his own convictions. This presupposes the "theory of accommoda tion," which regards the confessional form of doctrine as a pic torial expression of real truths suited to the naive ideas of the people, and allows the use of this expression for the purposes of practical instruction, or even regards it as a duty. III. The em phasis of the right and duty of private judgment concerning the content of Scripture. All the Evangelical confessions emphasize that they intend to reproduce Scriptural truth and possess no authority of their own; the Christian must convince himself that the confession is Scriptural. This has been understood to mean that the confessions only claim to be binding so far as private judgment endorses them as Scriptural, and that they are certainly not so completely. The ecclesiastical admissibility of this theory is subject to the limitation that private judgment shall at least be in the position to perceive an agreement between Scripture and confession on the points vital for religion.
There were crises in the i8th century also; the severest was the Deistic crisis in England. Nevertheless with the help of one or more of these solutions peace in the Church was then painfully preserved. Theology sought the way of agreement. In the 19th century the solutions described were certainly further used in practice, especially the third. But the contrasting positions in the ology and Church became so acute, owing to the revival of the religious life and the clearer definition of ecclesiastical groups, that confessional disputes led to serious crises. In this conflict there is everywhere the desire for a final and clear decision, but this desire does not always follow the same line. Four different endeavours can be distinguished. (1) The abolition of the confes sion is demanded. This endeavour has been successful, e.g., in the Churches of Switzerland. (2) The revision and simplification of the confession is demanded. This was attempted in 1846 in the Church of the old Prussian union, but it did not succeed. The American Churches have in part adopted this course, as already mentioned. (3) The confession shall be left unaltered, but re garded as binding only according to its "idea and spirit," not according to its letter. The attempt is consequently made to express the spirit of Evangelical Christendom in the simplest and most inwardly convincing way possible, so that, for all the differ ences, fellowship of faith with the fathers of the confession may be apparent. This is the course that German theology, in many of its best representatives, has taken again and again. (4) The unaltered confession shall retain its unaltered and strict validity, i.e., there shall be an unconditional renewal of the old Lutheran or "Reformed" orthodoxy. No Church is without a section which desires this.
The position therefore is not cleared up; so much only would seem to be clear, that most of the European Evangelical Churches retain their confessions in some form. Curiously enough events have shown that in the valuation of confessions much keener interest is shown in the ancient creeds than in those to which the Reformation gave rise, and this too in good Reformation circles. It is from this standpoint that the peculiar development of the confessional problem in England is most readily understood. In the English Church, since Newman's Tract XC. of 1841, a move ment has won its way which, strongly attached to the Church, and holding closely to the ancient creeds, accepts also the Thirty Nine Articles, but so interprets their sense that they allow a de parture from the Reformation doctrine and a return to the ancient catholic position.
The movement for the reunion of the Christian Churches added in the t 9th century a new motive for confessional formulation, and it has become powerful in the 2oth. This movement commonly seeks to establish a new form, side by side with the creeds of. the early Church, which expresses the common convictions of all Churches seeking brotherly feeling with one another: The confes sion of the evangelical alliance of 1846 was already a first at tempt. The latest step in this direction is the message of the Churches to the world which was, not indeed accepted, but re ceived at the Lausanne Conference in 1927.
(E. MR.)