Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, Inc.: The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is pleased to bring you the following message from the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology. Since its start in 1974, this conference has attracted audiences to its biblical, expository approach to Christian doctrine. The Alliance is a listener-supported ministry. Our purpose is to promote a biblical understanding and worldview.

Guest (Male): Well, in our third session, I want to think about creeds and councils, and we could add confessions and catechisms of the Reformation. Reformers became Protestants in 1530 when a group of Lutherans submitted a confession to the Emperor Charles V at his imperial council meeting in the German city of Augsburg. The North German Reformation started by Martin Luther was represented at Augsburg by his younger colleague Philip Melanchthon, and for good reason. The confession, drawn from different elements and strands of writing in the years just before 1530, had been assembled and edited by Melanchthon with some editorial input from some Lutheran scholars and princes.

This statement of faith contained three main parts: an address to the emperor, articles of faith that covered key doctrines, and then a cluster of complaints—a bunch of additional articles refuting the errors that the Roman Church still defended. The preface and the rest of the confession was designed to show in part that this developing Reformation should not be considered a threat by the emperor. He and his court should welcome it, not resist it.

Multiple opportunities are taken in this first part of the preface and in the first big part of the confession to affirm the importance of civil magistrates, to state that these people are loyal to Germany, they're opposed to Muslim armies, and so on. The articles themselves start off as concise, tightly written paragraphs, but then on occasion, they morph into almost sermonettes when topics like free will and good works are discussed. Wherever possible, continuity with the past is emphasized, and some matters of disagreement that the confession could have flagged, that Luther wanted them to insert, they chose not to. They're silently passed over, like purgatory or the conviction that the pope is the antichrist.

Throughout the first 21 articles, the general topic list of the Apostles' Creed is followed, and key statements on the doctrine of God contain no surprises for those familiar with the long history of the creeds of the church. Throughout, Luther's main emphases are maintained and, typical of the Reformation period, not only are various errors described and rejected, but the groups of opponents are called out by name just so no one's unclear about who's right and who's wrong. The final section, Articles 22 to 28, deal chiefly with the practices and disciplines of Lutheran churches, but they also contain a catalog of the abuses in the traditional church—abuses like forbidding priestly marriage, the problems that monks cause, the Mass, rules about meats and foods, and so on.

Well, the emperor had stated a day in which he would personally receive this confession, approved by many of his princes. But these Lutheran princes and Lutheran cities that had adopted this confession as their own stated that they wanted it read in public. The emperor knew they would not back down, so he chose a very small public space—a chapel where not many people could fit and hear it. So, the Lutherans chose a great speaker, one who had a loud voice. In fact, the emperor was not quite expecting this; a couple of them just walked out into the middle of the room and began reading.

They began reading so loudly that not only those inside but those who had gathered outside of this little chapel could hear. He read the confession, and we're told it took about two hours for him to read it clearly and distinctly and powerfully. It was a protest. It was arguing that Lutherans should be accepted by the emperor and by representatives of the Vatican. The Reformers on that day became Protestants. The document I've just described is going to sound somewhat familiar to anyone in this room who's encountered a Reformation-era confession.

But in 1530, this was a new kind of category of Christian document. I mean, the early church, as I've already said, had creeds—these short statements or declarations that summarized key beliefs about the triune God, the Bible's teaching about the person of Christ, and the accomplishment of our redemption. There had been synods and councils from the early church right through the whole medieval period that issued decrees and canons: rules about government, rules about worship. But this 1530 document was something different.

The Augsburg Confession addressed matters of worship and discipline, to be sure—matters of worship and government—but it was principally focused on doctrine, stating what they believed and stating that they believed an awful lot of things. Never before had so many people agreed on so much doctrine. There was so much doctrine here that the various paragraphs and sections needed their own chapter headings. Never before had so many people agreed on so much doctrine with so much clarity.

I say never before, but a group of Anabaptists meeting in Schleitheim in 1527 had created a document of a little more than 2,000 words which they called a confession. But that confession really discussed mostly matters of worship and government only. It dealt with very little doctrine. Typical of what it states is what it said about baptism: "Baptism shall be given to all those who have learned repentance and amendment of life, and who believe truly that their sins are taken away by Christ, and to all those who walk in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and wish to be buried with Him in death so that they may be resurrected with Him, and to all those who with this significance request it of us and demand it for themselves. This excludes all infant baptism, the highest and chief abomination of Rome."

It's that kind of a document that really is mostly addressing worship and government. I said never before 1530, but the Anabaptists were, in fact, adapting something done even earlier in 1523 when Huldrych Zwingli, the Reformer of Zurich, had created 67 articles for disputation with Catholic opponents. But these articles, not called a confession, but feeling kind of confessional, did not follow a clearly organized format. Indeed, in little less than 2,000 words, he just listed all kinds of things that Reformers in Zurich were teaching.

Everyone who says that the Gospel is nothing without the sanction of the church errs and blasphemes God. Number two, the summary of the Gospel is that our Lord Jesus Christ, the true Son of God, has made known to us the will of His Heavenly Father and has redeemed us from death and reconciled us with God by His guiltlessness. Number three, therefore Christ is the only way to salvation of all who were, are now, or shall be. Number four, whoever seeks or points to another door errs; indeed, he is the murderer of the soul and a thief. Number five, and so on.

These short 1520 statements offered by the Schleitheim Anabaptists and the Zurich Reformers offer something different than what the Lutherans offered in 1530. The Schleitheim Anabaptists addressed so few topics, and the Reformers of Zurich addressed so many topics so briefly that neither comes even close to the magisterial statement offered at Augsburg. Compared to these other anti-Roman statements, the Augsburg Confession is really charting new territory.

I also said never before had so many people agreed about so much doctrine. Some of you might be saying, "Wait a minute. By 1530, we have vast numbers of traditional Catholics loyal to Rome who have centuries' worth of text—pamphlets, documents, and so on in the form of canons and decrees." And the church agreed on all of that; all those people agreed on all of that. Well, I guess my response to that is that's the theory, but the contents of those canons and decrees were really unknown to almost everybody in the church.

Only the specialists were able to manage them all, the canon lawyers. And by the way, these canons and decrees did not speak clearly about the kinds of matters, certainly not the range of matters, discussed in the Augsburg Confession. The Augsburg Confession, on the other hand, was written in German and Latin. It was accessible to everybody. It was designed not just for the specialists but for as many people as possible in the Lutheran part of the Protestant Reformation—theologians, princes, pastors, and people alike.

Decades later, through what appeared to be an accident of genetics and weird inheritance law, a fun-loving prince named Frederick suddenly found himself promoted to be the Elector Palatine, Prince Frederick III. As one historian put it, young Frederick was sobered, fairly literally, by his new responsibilities and power. Earnest study of the Scriptures soon after this promotion gave this prince Reformed leanings in doctrine. That is, if you think of the Protestant Reformation as having a Lutheran part (northern Germany, Scandinavia), it also had a Reformed part (southern Germany, Switzerland, France, Hungary, Poland, Transylvania, England, Scotland, Bermuda, and on and on).

Everything that's Protestant was Lutheran or Reformed—we can argue later about the Anabaptists and whether they're actually Protestant or a kind of variety of late medieval reform movement. Well, Frederick, studying the Scriptures, came to Reformed leanings. But awkwardly, he was the prince of a collection of territories along the river Rhine and in East Germany. He was the prince of territories that were primarily Lutheran. And that was not just awkward to stand astride these territories that were Lutheran when he's Reformed; a 1548 ruling in Augsburg, as it happened, had permitted only two religions in Germany: Catholic or Lutheran.

I mean, that was good news for the Lutherans to finally get some approval for their religion, but it wasn't particularly good room for the Reformed; there was no space for them. Well, what was Frederick to do? One way of addressing his problem was to reform a university in his territory, the University of Heidelberg. The prince collected at the University of Heidelberg a remarkable collection of Protestant lawyers, physicians, theologians, and biblical scholars who were sympathetic to Reform—Lutherans who cozied up to the Reformed and got along with them or people who were actually Reformed.

Many would prove to be influential in their own lifetime and, for those who know the long history of the Reformed faith, are not household names but recognizable: Caspar Olevianus, Thomas Erastus, Zanchi, Tremellius, Zacharius Ursinus, and Franciscus Junius. Frederick also determined that a fresh doctrinal statement might help get the Reformed faith on a better footing. And that was not a new idea. The mid-16th century was an especially fruitful time for the production of new Reformed doctrinal statements.

From 1523 to 1693, James Dennison, a late historian, counts 127 Reformed confessions and major catechisms, not counting the Lutheran ones. He's missing a lot, I can say; there's a lot more than that, actually. But that's a substantial number, and it counts to sort of one major confession or catechism every 18 months. But that's not actually how they were spread out in the time of their writing. In the 20-year period between 1549 and 1569—in that 20-year period—almost 50 confessions were written by the Reformed community alone, with the remarkable harmony between them.

Indeed, to prove the point, a book was published called *The Harmony of Reformed Confessions*, which showed how similar they were. But for this reason, the production of all these confessions, the second half of the 16th century, the later part of the 1500s and beyond, is termed the era of confessionalization for the obvious reason that the Reformed people were saying again and again, "This is what we believe; this is how we summarize the Bible's teaching."

Well, one of these important confessions written during this time, sort of really at the midpoint of this especially intense period, was written by an individual and it's called the Belgic Confession. It's called the Belgic Confession because it was produced in Belgica, the Low Countries. The Low Countries are high in latitude on your globe or map but low in elevation, near, sometimes below, the waterline of the North Sea. It's an area now divided between the Netherlands and Belgium. The Belgic Confession was written in French, quickly translated into Dutch and German, and then Theodore Beza, Calvin's successor in Geneva, translated it into Latin.

The first English translation was not made until 1618, and it was made for the use of Dutch settlers in America. The Belgic Confession was written by Guido de Brès. Guido was a Dutch preacher who wrote this confession with the hope that their Spanish oppressors would read it and see that the Reformed faith should not be persecuted. In this confession, Guido de Brès tries to persuade the Spanish King Philip II, whose forces occupied the Low Countries, that the Reformed actually have the more biblical faith. De Brès himself would be martyred five years after writing this confession. He would die by hanging after having been examined by the Spanish Inquisition.

The confession that he wrote contains 37 beautiful articles. They begin with the doctrine of God and the knowledge of God—how we know God—giving considerable attention to the authority and the sufficiency of Scriptures and to the biblical canon as a whole. Only with those foundations established do Articles 8 to 11 offer a lengthy statement in defense of the triune God and the deity of Christ and the Holy Spirit. Chapters on creation and providence in general are then followed by a discussion of man's creation, man's fall, and man's sin.

A robust chapter on election sets the stage for five further chapters on the redemption purchased by Christ, leading into chapters about justification by faith and the necessity of sanctification. One heading about the abolishment of the ceremonial law is paired with another heading about how Christ Himself is all-sufficient as our intercessor. These old ways of approaching God are no longer needed when we understand who Christ is. It's in this part of the confession that readers find a standout chapter, one of the longest and sweetest, in which believers are led into a dialogue where each doubt that a Christian might face about Christ's willingness to save us, His ability to save us, is powerfully answered by quotations of Scripture.

The importance of the church, the ordering of the church, the sacraments of the church take up another nine chapters, and it's all Reformed in its flavor. Instruction about church government talks about rule by pastors and elders with deacons assisting, and the treatment of the Lord's Supper emphasizes that Christ is present with us by His Holy Spirit but that we only benefit from the Supper when we receive it by faith. The Belgic Confession is a beautiful statement of the Reformed faith, an example of one of those 50 confessions written between 1549 and 1569.

But in Heidelberg, back on the ranch if you will, back where we were a few moments before this little diversion, Frederick didn't get a doctrinal statement in the form of a confession. He famously got a confession in the form of a catechism. The Palatine Catechism, which came to be better known as the Heidelberg Catechism, was principally written by Zacharius Ursinus. Ursinus was a new recruit at the University of Heidelberg, a 29-year-old professor of theology, and he was quickly a leading figure during the university's golden age as a center for training ministers for Reformed churches—Protestant churches.

His catechism, completed in 1563, was easily his most famous work. His second most famous work is a book he wrote about his own catechism, an explication of it. It was quickly translated into various languages and became a favorite amongst the Reformed, rivaling Calvin's catechism. When the Synod of Dort, a meeting from 1618 to 1619, approved of the catechism along with the Belgic Confession of Faith, Reformed churches in the north of Europe had three standards that would unify them.

The preface to the catechism, Questions 1 and 2, frames the whole text, the whole discussion of the Christian faith, in terms of Gospel comfort in the face of sin and suffering. And in words that have thrilled generations of believers, the catechism offers a vocabulary to express our confidence in Christ: "I am not my own but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. I'm not my own but belong body and soul, in life and death, to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ." A conversation follows, all of it in a question-and-answer form, organized under the headings of our guilt and God's grace and our gratitude.

On the left side of Europe, it's hard to know what to call Britain, what we call the United Kingdom today. Hard to know what to do with England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Sometimes historians just call them the Atlantic Isles. I mean, they don't want to be called part of Europe, so, especially after Brexit. But on the other side of Europe, the Scots in 1560, during this productive age of confessionalization, had come up with their own confession. The newly Reformed Scotland in 1560 had a document created by six men, all of them named John.

The leading one, John Knox, wrote a confession that captured many of the great Reformation insights in its 25, sometimes curiously ordered, chapters. Each one about a paragraph long. But some of the paragraphs are very long. The document, if you're familiar with the Westminster Confession of Faith, is about three-fifths of the length of that classic statement. Well, sprinkled with Scots words, with specific reference to pre-Reformation problems in the church, this Scots Confession was very much a kind of work of time and place, and it lacked the doctrinal clarity that would be the riper fruit of the later post-Reformation period.

It appears that original sin is understood as Adam's first transgression, which is not how we should understand original sin. The accomplishment of our redemption by Christ is described beautifully; what Christ has done is fully explained. But the application of that redemption—how what Christ has done gets to us, benefits us—is much less clear. The doctrine of justification, for example, is mentioned only once and in passing. Well, it was not until 1571 that the church to the south, the Church of England, reformed in stages and over decades, was finally able to whittle down the 42 articles approved under King Edward VI to 39 articles that Queen Elizabeth I was willing to approve.

These were Reformed articles; they expressed a creedal Christianity, they included mainstream Reformed insights, they excluded mainstream Roman errors. But they were less obviously Reformed in their expressions of worship and church government. And they also were not as clear as could be, it turned out, when it came to the application of redemption—how what Christ does benefits us. In 1595, the leading bishops of the church, following a couple of disputes at the University of Cambridge, approved of nine more articles—nine further articles for the Church of England.

These articles interpreted the 39 articles in a Calvinistic or Reformed sense, and they added statements about election and perseverance and assurance and effectual calling designed to exclude this new error emerging from the Netherlands, an error that would soon be called Arminianism. The articles state that God from eternity has predestined some men to life and reprobated some to death. The moving or efficient cause of predestination to life is not the foreseeing of faith or perseverance or of good works or of anything in the person predestined but only the will and the good pleasure of God.

But there would never be 48 articles of the Church of England because the queen who had accepted 39 articles would not accept nine more. She didn't like it that the bishops had met in the archbishop's palace, Lambeth Palace, without her, without her approval for them to meet. And she thought that clarifying these points of doctrine could actually increase controversy in the church. The Church of Ireland for a time was refusing to accept the authority of the Church of England and was creating its own articles. And in 1615, Archbishop James Ussher folded the nine articles called the Lambeth Articles into the Irish Articles that the Irish Church approved.

The need to do that was now becoming much more urgent. On both sides of the English Channel and the North Sea, in Europe and in England and Scotland—English, Scottish (not many Scottish, mostly English), French, and especially Dutch theologians were in turmoil over the teachings of Jacob Arminius. And after his death, they were in turmoil because of his followers. But by the early 1600s, a popular debate about the way in which we benefit from Christ's salvation reached the place where controversy is always most comfortable: in a messy stew of truth and error, where the actual views of protagonists are no longer clear, where people are debating alleged summaries of what someone teaches rather than actual quotations, and on and on.

Some of these summaries were being passed around in the Netherlands, and in 1609, Arminius complained that these paraphrases or articles summarizing his beliefs did not summarize them very well, and he responded with his own statements clarifying his beliefs. And then he died. And in 1610, his followers offered a protest called a Remonstrance. And the Remonstrance summarized five errors of the Reformed church as Arminius and his friends saw them that needed to be fixed: errors in the Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic Confession and so on.

As it happened, that was a kind of clever move to say there's really five areas where we disagree. There were about 20 areas of great importance where the Arminians disagreed with everybody else. But in focusing the discussion on five points, it made them seem a little safer than they really were. The Reformed who read these five statements recognized that really only four of them were actually problematic. And so, when the civil government, again recognizing the stew that the church was in, called a synod, and that synod meeting in Dordrecht, or Dort, issued four canons.

Those four canons were needed because of the five statements—only four of them were problematic. So, five statements in the Remonstrance, four responses from the Reformed. This international conference in the Netherlands, this sort of ecumenical synod, produced really thoughtful statements, defended from Scripture, clear in their teaching. And amongst the many non-Dutch who had attended was a delegation from England and Scotland. And when they came home, they began to suggest to King James that maybe these could be added to the 39 articles and there could be 43 articles in the church, although these would be awful long articles.

James was not interested. He had appointed bishops friendly to Calvinism to go to the Synod of Dort, but political events and life events and a decline into sin on the part of James's part—a further decline into sin—had made him increasingly unhappy with Calvinism. And so he, like Elizabeth before him, said no additions to the 39 articles. Well, what hasn't emerged from my brief discussion of Reformation creeds and synods, confessions and catechisms, is that churches that adopted confessions and catechisms also always adopted something more.

All of them had catechisms that taught piety along with the confessions that taught doctrine. But all of them also had texts for worship and government too. Our forefathers understood that the Reformed faith is not just about Reformed doctrine; that Reformed theology without Reformed piety is incoherent; that Reformed theology without Reformed worship is inarticulate; and Reformed theology without Reformed government is unsustainable. Now, of course, it's true that the Reformed faith has always held a central commitment to the preaching of the Gospel.

To quote the English theologian Anthony Burgess, "It's the main end and scope of the Scriptures only to exalt Christ, and the end of the ministry should be the same with the end of Scripture." To quote another English theologian, Obadiah Sedgwick, "Your labors in preaching," speaking to pastors, "will come to little, perhaps to nothing, if it not be Christ or something in reference to Christ on which you so laboriously insist in preaching." It's true the Reformed faith has always held a central commitment to the preaching of the Gospel and to those key supporting truths that best bolster the preaching of the Gospel.

Nonetheless, the Reformed side of the Protestant Reformation was not only about the recovery of the Gospel but about the recovery of the whole counsel of God. Indeed, the importance of doctrine, worship, piety, and discipline is easiest to commend when the helps that we have to support this fourfold faith instruct the mind, warm the heart, give voice to our praises, and guard our way. So, Reformed doctrine is important, but doctrine without worship has no voice; doctrine without piety has no soul; and doctrine without discipline and government has no real heart for Christ and His church.

And so the Reformed wrote confessions and catechisms; they also wrote directories or books to guide the church in a Bible-shaped worship. And they also wrote what we might call books of church government—or directories for church government—so that the church would be run in the way that Christ had designed it to be governed. The one who is the head of the church is not ambivalent about how His body is cared for, and this, too, is reflected in the great history of the Protestant Reformation.

Well, the failure of the Church of England to adopt either the Lambeth Articles or the Canons of Dort was worrying to some of the more Reformed elements in the English church. So, too, had been a failure to reform worship in the 1560s and '70s, or to reform church government in the 1580s and '90s. These problems and difficulties ebbed and flowed; it depended a little bit on how bad your bishop was or how kind he was. It depended on what the Archbishop of Canterbury would actually do with the rules of the church; would he enforce them rigorously everywhere or not?

How people who were Reformed in the Church of England depended in part on who their patrons were—did you have some local nobleman with good lawyers to defend you? It depended on how close you were to the centers of power and much more. But the tide of Arminianism, ceremonialism, and episcopal despotism continued to rise during the reign of James I in England, then his son Charles. And although it would ebb and flow, it flowed more than it ebbed. And it was these problems that eventually gave rise to a civil war in England.

And that civil war in England was caused, in part, by problems in religion. And when problems in religion became more obvious and more and more members of Parliament wanted these problems to be solved, when kings would call Parliament—James and then Charles—in order to raise money for taxes, Parliament, which was always owed a kind of quid pro quo, would say, "Of course we will raise taxes, but here's our list of things we need done in England." And the things that we need done in England are changes in the church.

And James said no and eventually decided he would run the country without Parliament. And then Charles eventually decided he would run the country without Parliament. Now, running a country without Parliament means you're running a country where you can't get the tax money you need. And so Charles tried to solve that problem by increasing tariffs. Well, increasing tariffs turns out to sometimes make people unhappy. And so now Charles had his original religious problem, now he also had a political problem, and he had an economic problem.

And he didn't just have problems in England; he had similar problems in Scotland—and he was the king of England and Scotland. And he had similar problems in Ireland—and he happened to be the king of England, Scotland, and Ireland. And as problems developed on all three of these issues in all three of these countries, eventually civil war broke out in all these countries, with armies not only fighting each other in Ireland, Scotland, and England but also crossing borders; and there's Irish people in Scotland, and Scottish people in England, and English people in Ireland, and it was a dreadful, dreadful time of war—three civil wars in a row, in fact.

And it's at the beginning of that first civil war that the Parliament that eventually said we've had enough of the king and took up arms against the king said one of the solutions is not just armies and constitutional reform; we need to call a synod of theologians who are going to propose changes in the church that Charles and his bishops wouldn't listen to, that they would not themselves entertain. And that assembly met in the Westminster, the west big cathedral church just outside of London in a little town called Westminster. And meeting in this abbey from 1643 to 1653, they wrote a variety of important documents.

One of those was they first attempted to try and refine the 39 articles, but eventually some Scottish theologians entered the assembly and they were not particularly interested in sort of warmed-up, sort of microwaved English doctrine. They wanted something freshly cooked. And so the assembly began to create new doctrine. The assembly first dealt with the problem of ministry in the church. How is the church going to be run? Was it going to be run with bishops? Instead, the assembly said no, it's going to be run by ministers and ruling elders. They dealt with the problem of discipline in the church government in the church first. Then they dealt with the problem of worship in the church and wrote a directory for worship.

And then, while working on these texts, they were working on a confession. And in two stages, they created a confession of faith which Parliament titled Articles of Religion, with 33 chapters. And then, while they were writing that document, they also began to write a catechism—one single all-purpose catechism. And they found it difficult to create in one text something that would help everybody: new Christian, old Christian, young Christian. In the end, they decided to write two catechisms—one shorter and the other larger.

And yes, I feel it awkward that it's not shorter and longer, smaller and larger; the adjectival dissonance bothers me, and feel free to be bothered yourself. But they're wonderful documents, and I hope to commend them to you more fully if I get the opportunity. I have the opportunity; it's a matter of whether you come back in the next session when we talk about the theology of the Westminster standards. The Westminster Assembly went on to write about 140 different documents; these are the only ones that are well known. Many of these are in defense of or in explanation of these documents.

Many of them are about disputes about church government between congregationalists and presbyterians. Some of them are about disputes with Parliament. Parliament did not believe, the majority in Parliament, that the church had its own right to have its own government. They did not believe that Christ gave the church its own government; no, the civil government could just design a church, kind of custom-build a church as it wished. And this is something that the majority in the Westminster Assembly did not believe.

In the last five years of the assembly's history, it did not create any new documents; it just examined ministers for ministry. One of the things that the assembly had done was to create a kind of filter or grid through which every minister wanting to move from one church to another had to pass. And that filter, if you will, was the assembly itself. It would examine a man regarding his life and his godliness, his training, his intentions, and it was very useful indeed. And of course, the Westminster Assembly also tried to put itself out of a job.

It recommended the idea of presbyteries: groups of elders from a regional area meeting together and doing that work which is really the work of the church. Parliament said, "Okay, we can have presbyteries, but every minister is still going to be examined by you." And so, lo and behold, if you were an incoming minister in the late 1640s or early 1650s, you would have the joy of being examined twice: once by your presbytery and then again by the Westminster Assembly. You can only imagine how thrilled ministers were at such opportunities.

And the results of those examinations were published in the national newspapers. So if you failed, everybody would know, and if you passed, they would know that too. And indeed, that's how we find out about the end of the Westminster Assembly. The records of the assembly end in 1652, and I wondered is that when it ended, but I went to the newspapers of the time and records or references to the Westminster Assembly continue until April 1653 when a newspaper suddenly refers to the "late Westminster Assembly."

Of course, it's this assembly that has given the documents that have helpfully guided Presbyterian churches in Scotland, some in England, and many in Ireland, and then through Scottish and Irish emigration and through American and Scottish and Canadian (let's acknowledge the Canadians) missionary work, Presbyterianism guided by these helpful texts has spread around the world.

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, Inc.: You've been listening to a message delivered at the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology. This conference is a ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. For more messages from the PCRT, visit ReformedResources.org, a trustworthy source of books, audio, video, and other resources to help you grow your Christian faith. That's ReformedResources.org.