Confession Sentence Examples

The confession consisted of forty articles.

Startled by the confession, Jessi rested her elbows on the table and leaned forward.

The Confession, written towards the end of his life, gives a general account of his career.

His so-called deathbed confession is not genuine.

In the Greek Church confession has become obligatory and habitual.

The Religious Peace of Augsburg (1555) recognized no Protestants save adherents of the Confession; this was modified in 1648.

Strict personal poverty was enforced, and all were encouraged to approach confession and communion frequently.

A culprit is easily discovered either by an appeal to a local diviner or in torturing some one into confession.

One hundred members, many of them foreign divines, composed this great assembly, who after 154 sittings gave their seal to the doctrines of the Netherlands Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism.

The final perplexity, concealed by various forms of expression, comes forward at the close of the Treatise as absolutely unsolved, and leads Hume, as will be pointed out, to a truly remarkable confession of the weakness of his own system.

The only combination which, even in appearance, could be explained satisfactorily by its means was the formation of a complex idea out of simpler parts, but the idea of a relation among facts is not accurately described as a complex idea; and, as such relations have na basis in impressions, Hume is finally driven to a confession of the absolute impossibility of explaining them.

Such confession, however, is only reached after a vigorous effort had been made to render some account of knowledge by the experimental method.

The first "godly band" is dated December 1557; but more important is the covenant of 1581, drawn up by John Craig in consequence of the strenuous efforts which the Roman Catholics were making to regain their hold upon Scotland, and called the King's Confession or National Covenant.

Based upon the Confession of Faith of 1560, this document denounced the pope and the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church in no measured terms. It was adopted by the General Assembly, signed by King James VI.

The palace of the bishops, where the memorable Confession of Faith was presented to Charles V., is now used for government offices.

Of its conventions the most memorable are those which gave birth to the Augsburg confession (1530) and to the Augsburg alliance (1686).

As an ecclesiastic he was not so successful; he helped to compile his church's Confession of Faith in 1823, and laid great stress on a clause which limited the scope of the atonement to the elect.

He was the author of a Catechism (Kiev, 1645) and other minor works, but is principally celebrated for the Orthodox Confession, drawn up at his instance by the Abbot Kosslowski of Kiev, approved at a provincial synod in 1640, and accepted by the patriarchs of Constantinople, Jerusalem, Alexandria and Antioch in 1642-1643, and by the synod of Jerusalem in 1672.

In June he opene4 the diet at Augsburg, and here the Lutherans submitted a summary of their doctrines, afterwards called the Augsburg Confession.

Four Zwinglian cities, Strassburg, Constance, Lindau and Memmingen, replied with a confession of their own and the Romanists also drew up an answer.

All the states and cities which subscribed to the confession of Augsburg were admitted to it, and thus a large number of Protestants, including the duchies of Wurttemberg and Pomerania and the cities of Augsburg and Frankfort, secured a needful protection against the decrees of the Reichskammergeric/it, which the league again repudiated.

In consultation with both Romanist and Lutheran divines a confession of faith called the Interim was drawn up; this was in the nature of a compromise and was issued as an edict in May 1548, but owing to the opposition of the Romanist princes it was not made binding upon them, only upon the Lutherans.

This required an ecclesiastical prince, if he accepted the teaching of the confession.

Its theme is the duty of Christian repentance, with a view to obedience to Christ's precepts as the true confession and homage which He requires.

The functions of the confessor are dealt with in the article Confession.

The maintenance of the indivisibility of the realm and of the Christian faith according to the Augsburg Confession, and the observance of the Kongelov itself, are now the sole obligations binding upon the king.

The Sunnites, who accept the orthodox tradition (Sunna) as well as the Koran as a source of theologico-juristic doctrines, predominate in Arabia, the Turkish Empire, the north of Africa, Turkestan, Afghanistan and the Mahommedan parts of India and the east of Asia; the Shi`ites have their main seat in Persia, where their confession is the state religion, but are also scattered over the whole sphere of Islam, especially in India and the regions bordering on Persia, except among the nomad Tatars, who are all nominally Sunnite.

At the Diet of Augsburg (1530) Melanchthon was the leading representative of the reformation, and it was he who prepared for that diet the seventeen articles of the Evangelical faith, which are known as the "Augsburg Confession."

He held conferences with Roman divines appointed to adjust differences, and afterwards wrote an Apology for the Augsburg Confession.

In the Augsburg Confession (1530), which was largely due to him, freedom is claimed for the will in non-religious matters, and in the Loci of 1533 he calls the denial of freedom Stoicism, and holds that in justification there is a certain causality, though not worthiness, in the recipient, subordinate to the Divine causality.

Carlyle's confession of the radical difference of religious opinion had not alienated his friend, who was settling in London, and used his opportunities for promoting Carlyle's interest.

He was, as Froude says, impressed by the story of Johnson's " penance " at Uttoxeter, and desired to make a posthumous confession of his shortcomings in his relations to his wife.

The Convention began business in August, crowded by persons not used to be present, and accepted a Knoxian " Confession of Faith."

The author's confession that, being " thretty 3eris nurist in Fraunce, and in the noble study of Paris in Latin toung," he " knew nocht the gret eloquens of Chauceir," and again that he had written another work in Latin, " the tounge that I knaw better," is valuable testimony to the difficulties in the way of a struggling Scots prose.

The rules for the restraint of the senses, for confession and penance, are subordinated to the central idea of the supreme importance of purity of heart and the love of Christ.

In the summer he was preparing a paper on the Westminster Confession, and preaching in the abbey a course of Saturday Lectures on the Beatitudes.

During their travels the beard was allowed to grow, and they prepared for departure by confession and communion.

If on one or two points, as, for instance, the invocation of saints, some germs of subsequent Roman teaching may be discovered, there is a want of anything like the doctrine of indulgences or of compulsory private confession.

In 1830 he was rector of the university; and in his speech at the tricentenary of the Augsburg Confession in that year he charged the Catholic Church with regarding the virtues of the pagan world as brilliant vices, and giving the crown of perfection to poverty, continence and obedience.

The poem had accompanied him from early manhood to the end and was the repository for the fullest "confession" of his life; it is the poetic epitome of his experience.

In the earliest church life, when Christians fell into sin, they were required to make public confession before the congregation, to declare their sorrow, and to vow to perform certain acts which were regarded as evidence of the sincerity of their repentance.

When the custom of public confession before the congregation had changed to private confession to the clergy, it became the confessor's duty to impose these satisfactions.

Under the older conception the order had been Sorrow (Contritio), Confession, Satisfaction (or due manifestation of sorrow in ways prescribed) and Absolution.

Under the newer theory the order was Sorrow, Confession, Absolution, Satisfaction, and both satisfaction and sorrow took new meanings.

Hence for the indifferent Christian, Attrition, Confession and Indulgence became the three heads in the scheme of the church of the later middle ages for his salvation.

Three separate confessions were presented to the emperor - one from Zwingli, one by the theologians of the four cities of Strassbourg, Constance, Lindau and Memmingen (Confessio Tetrapolitana), and the Augsburg Confession, the future symbol of the Lutheran church.

The first, known also as the Second Confession of Basel, was drawn up at that city in 1536 by Bullinger and Leo Jud of Zurich, Megander of Bern,Oswald Myconius and Grynaeus of Basel, Bucer and Capito of Strassburg, with other representatives from Schaffhausen, St Gall, Muhlhausen and Biel.

The Second Helvetic Confession was written by Bullinger in 1562 and revised in 1564 as a private exercise.

It gained a favourable hold on the Swiss churches, who had found the First Confession too short and too Lutheran.

It was adopted by the Reformed Church not only throughout Switzerland but in Scotland (1566), Hungary (1567), France (1571), Poland (1578), and next to the Heidelberg Catechism is the most generally recognized Confession of the Reformed Church.

He had to deal with the St George's-in-the-East riots in 1859, and the troubles at St Alban's, Holborn, in their earlier stages (1867); he took part as assessor in the Privy Council judgment in the Ridsdale case (1877); he was more closely concerned than any other bishop with the agitation against confession in 1858, and again in 1877.

But Gregory, according to his own confession, had no practical skill; he could find no optician capable of realizing his ideas, and after some fruitless attempts was obliged to abandon all hope of bringing his telescope into practical use.

In 1526 John, elector of Saxony, Philip, landgrave of Hesse, and other Protestant princes formed a league against the Roman Catholics, and the Torgau articles, drawn up here by Luther and his friends in 1530, were the basis of the confession of Augsburg.

The Austrian chronicler Thomas Ebendorffer of Haselbach, who lived two generations later, first states that it was reported that King Wenceslaus had ordered that the confessor of his queen - an office that John of Pomuk never held - should be thrown into the Vltava because he would not reveal the secret of confession.

No jury was empanelled and no witnesses were called; she was condemned, simply on her confession, to be burnt.

Having signed the confession of Augsburg, he was alone among the electors in objecting to the election of Ferdinand, afterwards the emperor Ferdinand I., as king of the Romans.

The same scruple against flesh-eating is conveyed in the beautiful confession, in the Cretans of Euripides, of one who had been initiated in the mysteries of Orpheus and became a "Bacchos."

When parliament, on the 2 th of August 1 60 passed the P 4 g 5 P acts abolishing the papal jurisdiction and the mass in Scotland, it was able, as Knox had been preparing for this crisis, to sanction a new confession of faith for the Reformed church.

The Confession of Faith contains no approval of any system of church government, and when she adopted it in 1647 the kirk gave up her old confession in which the principles at least of true church order are laid down.

The engagement made with Charles, then a prisoner in the Isle of Wight in 1647, which promised him support on condition of his sanctioning the Solemn League and Covenant and pledging himself to set up after three years a church according to the Confession of Faith, was protested against by the assembly; and from this came the famous " Act of Classes " by which the Covenanters disqualified for public office and even for military service all who had been parties to the engagement.

Effect was given to this; and in April 1690 the act was passed on which the establishment of the Church of Scotland rests, the Westminster Confession being recognized, the laws in favour of Episcopacy repealed, though the Rescissory Act remained on the statute book, and the assembly appointed to meet.

The king and his representatives at the assembly pressed hard for their reception, and in 1693 the " Act for settling the quiet and peace of the Church " was passed, which provided for their admission on taking the oaths of allegiance and assurance, subscribing the Confession of Faith and acknowledging Presbyterian government.

The difficulties which threatened to arise about the union were skilfully avoided; the Act of Security provided that the Confession of Faith and the Presbyterian government should " continue without any alteration to the people of this land in all succeeding ages," and the first oath taken by Queen Anne at her accession was to preserve it.

A committee appointed in 1899 to inquire into the powers of the church in the matter reported that the power of the church was merely administrative - it was in her power as cases arose to prosecute or to refrain from prosecuting, but that she had no power to modify the confession in any way.

The next day he sent in a general confession to the Lords, 8 trusting that this would be considered satisfactory.

The Lords, however, decided that it was not sufficient as a ground for their censure, and demanded a detailed and particular confession.

On the 30th of April his " confession and humble submission " 9 was handed in.

So far, then, as the mere taking of bribes is concerned, he would permit no defence, and his own confession and judgment on his action contain as severe a condemnation as has ever been passed upon him.

Of the former, the principal specimens are the Meditationes Sacrae and the Confession of Faith.

In many cases the metrical structure 2 is true that in the Confession attributed to him and printed among his Greek works in the first volume of the Roman edition he speaks (p. 129) of his parents as having become martyrs for the Christian faith.

On the contrary, the cardinal of Lorraine, by his question whether the Calvinists were prepared to sign the Confession of Augsburg, attempted to sow dissension between them and the Lutheran Protestants of Germany, on whose continued support they calculated.

No opportunity for the adoption of any common confession was given.

Reference has already been made to the reason why a common Anabaptist confession was never made public. Probably, however, the earliest confession of faith of any Baptist community is that given by Zwingli in the second part of his Elenchus contra Catabaptistas, published in 1527.

This is the first known expression of absolute liberty of conscience in any confession of faith.

Eventually agreement was reached, and in 1644 a Confession of Faith was published in the names of the Particular Baptist churches of London, now grown to seven, "commonly (though falsely) called Anabaptist."

As a means of preserving harmony the Philadelphia Confession of Faith, a Calvinistic document, with provision against too rigid a construction, was adopted and a step was thus taken toward harmonizing with the "Regular" Baptists of the Philadelphia type.

In 1529 the la,ndgrave signed the "protest" which was presented to the diet at Spires, being thus one of the original "Protestants;" in 1530 he was among the subscribers to the confession of Augsburg; and the formation of the league of Schmalkalden in the same year was largely due to his energy.

At the first meeting of the Estates, in August 1560, the Protestants were invited to present a confession of their faith.

The Scots confession, though of course drawn up independently, is in substantial accord with the others then springing up in the countries of the Reformation, but is Calvinist rather than Lutheran.

Already "in our towns and places reformed," as the Confession puts it, there were local or "particular kirks," and these grew and spread and were provincially united, till, in the last month of this memorable year, the first General Assembly of their representatives met, and became the "universal kirk," or "the whole church convened."

It had before it the plan for church government and maintenance, drafted in August at the same time with the Confession, under the name of The Book of Discipline, and by the same framers.

He was one of the commission of six who drew up the "Confession of Faith" and the "First Book of Discipline," and during the struggle with Queen Mary was often employed on important engagements.

The councillors must be of Swedish birth and adherents of the Lutheran confession.

Finally, at the Riksdag of Vesteras, in 1544, though no definite confession of faith was formulated, a final breach was made with the traditions of the old religion.

Nevertheless, immediately after King John's death, a synod summoned to Upsala by Duke Charles rejected the new liturgy and drew up an anti-Catholic confession of faith (March 5, 1593).

Holy Scripture and the three primitive creeds were declared to be the true foundations of Christian faith, and the Augsburg Confession was adopted.

This led him to a culte du moi, of which the strangest result was an autobiography of crude invective, A Fool's Confession (1893), the printing of which in Swedish was forbidden.

The policy of non-interference proclaimed in 1854 had proved impracticable, and the annexation of Basutoland was an open confession of the fact.

With the Cambridge Platform of 1646, drafted by his father, the Confession of 1680, for which Increase Mather was largely responsible, was printed as a book of doctrine and government for the churches of Massachusetts.

He has made frank confession of his nescience, and in certain passages his critical judgment and sober sense and circumspection are quite striking.

Then it was that he began to direct his attention to a study of the Bible, which led him to a conviction, never afterwards shaken, not only of the divine character of evangelical religion, but also of the unapproachable adequacy of its expression in the Augsburg Confession.

This effort culminated in the Westminster Assembly of divines which met in 1643, at which six commissioners from the Church of Scotland were present, and joined in the task of drawing up a Common Confession, Catechism and Directory for the three kingdoms. The commissioners reported to the General Assembly of 1644 that this Common Directory "is so begun.

They further g Y renewed the demand, which they had already expressed at the diet of 1567, that the estates should have the right of appointing the members of the consistory - the ecclesiastical body which ruled the Utraquist church; for since the death of John of Rokycan that church had had no archbishop. After long deliberations and the king's final refusal to recognize the confession of Augsburg, the majority of the diet, consisting of members of the Bohemian brotherhood and advanced Utra quists, drew up a profession of faith that became known as the Confessio Bohemica.

It was in most points identical with the Augsburg confession, but differed from it with regard to the doctrine of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper.

Besides his Histoire de Saint Louis and his Credo or "Confession of Faith" written much earlier, a considerable number, relatively speaking, of letters and business documents concerning the fief of Joinville and so forth are extant.

It has preserved the older idea that a creed is an adoring confession of the church engaged in worship; and, when occasion called for more, the belief of the church was expressed more by way of public testimony than in symbolical books.

Melanchthon himself sent a Greek translation of the Augsburg Confession to Joasaph, patriarch of Constantinople, and some years afterwards Jacob Andreae and Martin Crusius began a correspondence with Jeremiah, patriarch of Constantinople, in which they asked an official expression of his opinions about.

The church anathematized his doctrines, and in its later testimonies repudiated his confession on the one hand and Jesuit ideas on the other.

The most important of these testimonies are (i) the Orthodox confession or catechism of Peter Mogilas, confirmed by the Eastern patriarchs and by the synod of Jerusalem (1643), and (2) the decree of the synod of Jerusalem or the confession of Dositheus (1672).

The new birth when lost may be restored through repentance, which is not merely (I) sincere sorrow, but also (2) confession of each individual sin to the priest, and (3) the discharge of penances imposed by the priest for the removal of the temporal punishment which may have been imposed by God and the Church.

Many of them were Austrian and Hungarian Uniats, who, after emigrating, have shown a tendency to separate from Rome and return to the Eastern Confession.

Despite the effect of a false rumour of retraction and a forged confession, his adversaries in despair summoned him to four public conferences (1st, 18th, 23rd and 27th of September), and although still suffering, and allowed neither time nor books for preparation, he bore himself so easily and readily that he won the admiration of most of the audience.

A considerable portion of the controversy centres round the question of the authenticity of Thomas Winter's confession, the MS. of which is at Hatfield, supported by Professor Gardiner, but denied by Father Gerard principally on account of the document having been signed "Winter" instead of "Wintour," the latter apparently being the conspirator's usual style of signature.

Sir Robert Welles, the leader of this rebellion, made a confession implicating Warwick, who fled with Clarence to France.

He here breaks with Augustine and the Westminster Confession by arguing, consistently with his theory of the Will, that Adam had no more freedom of will than we have, but had a special endowment, a supernatural gift of grace, which by rebellion against God was lost, and that this gift was withdrawn from his descendants, not because of any fictitious imputation of guilt, but because of their real participation in his guilt by actual identity with him in his transgression.

A few days later, according to Garnet, the Jesuit, Oswald Tesemond, known as Greenway, informed him of the whole plot " by way of confession," when, as he declares, he expressed horror at the design and urged Green way to do his utmost to prevent its execution.

Subsequently, after his trial, Garnet said he " could not certainly affirm " that Greenway intended to relate the matter to him in confession.

Father Martin del Rio, a Jesuit, writing in 1600, discusses the exact case of the revelation of a plot in confession.

Almost all the learned doctors, he says, declare that the confessor may reveal it, but he adds, " the contrary opinion is the safer and better doctrine, and more consistent with religion and with the reverence due to the holy rite of confession."

According to Bellarmine, Garnet's zealous friend and defender, "If the person confessing be concealed, it is lawful for a priest to break the seal of confession in order to avert a great calamity "; but he justifies Garnet's silence by insisting that it was not lawful to disclose a treasonable secret to a heretical king.

In this connexion it is worth pointing out that Garnet had not thought it his duty to disclose the treasonable intrigue with the king of Spain in 1602, though there was no pretence in this case that he was restricted by the seal of confession, and his inactivity now tells greatly in his disfavour; for, allowing even that he was bound by confessional secrecy from taking action on Greenway's information, he had still Catesby's earlier revelations to act upon.

It was not till the 4th of December, however, that Garnet and Greenway were, by the confession of Bates, implicated in the plot; and on the same day Garnet removed from Coughton to Hindlip Hall, near Worcester, a house furnished with cleverlycontrived hiding-places for the use of the proscribed priests.

The archbishop of Corinth girded him with a sword which had lain upon the Holy Sepulchre, and the metropolitan of Kiev absolved him from all his sins, without the usual preliminary of confession, before he rode forth to battle.

Stone had been a Presbyterian minister prominent in the Kentucky revival of 1801, but had been turned against sectarianism and ecclesiastical authority because the synod had condemned Richard McNemar, one of his colleagues in the revival, for preaching (as Stone himself had done) counter to the Westminster Confession, on faith and the work of the Holy Spirit in conversion.

But if any one of the confessors who is not ordained snatches to himself any such dignity upon account of his confession, let the same person be deprived and rejected; for he is not in such an office, since he has denied the constitution of Christ, and is worse than an infidel."

According to his own confession he was far from industrious, and stood very low in his class.

His confession made at the end of his life was an account of his early years which is to some extent supported by other testimony.

In the Gospels confession is scarcely mentioned.

On the other, the confession of sins was ordered in James v.

But while he insists on repentance and mortification, he says nothing about public confession or discipline.

Baptism was the first plank thrown out to save the drowning man, "confession" the second, and there was no third chance.

Public but general confession of sins and intercession for penitent sinners have from early times formed a normal part of public worship in the Christian church.

The process of public confession or penance (exomologesis, Greek for public confession) was as follows (see Tertullian, De paenitentia IX., and other writers).

In this account nothing is said of confession; but it would appear that in early days the sins were made known to the congregation, and in notorious cases they would take the initiative and expel the offender.

It was also common for a penitent to take advice as to the necessity in his case of undergoing exomologesis, and this, of course, involved confession.

In fact far more importance was attached to the discipline than to confession.

In the same century at Rome and at Constantinople we hear of "penitentiaries," that is priests appointed to act for the bishop in hearing the confession of sins, and deciding whether public discipline was necessary and, if it was, on its duration; in other words they prepared the penitents for solemn reconciliation by the bishop. A scandal at Constantinople in 391 led to the suppression in that city not only of the office of penitentiary, but practically of public exomologesis also, and that seemingly in Eastern Christendom generally, so that the individual was left to assess his own penance, and to present himself for communion at his own discretion.

This inevitably led on to the reiteration of confession after repeated lapses, and Chrysostom (bishop of Constantinople, 398-407) was attacked for allowing such a departure from ancient rule.

Thus in the chapterhouse of a monastery there constantly took place acts of discipline that depended on the theory that the sin of the individual is the concern of the society; open confession was made, open penance exacted.

Meanwhile the constant repetition of confession and reconciliation, together with the fact that the most tender consciences would be the most anxious for the assurance of forgiveness, led to the practice being considered a normal part of the Christian life.

Absolution was reckoned one of the sacraments, one of the seven when that mystic number was generally adopted; but there was no agreement as to what constituted the essential parts of the sacrament, whether the confession, the laying on of hands, the penance, or the words of dismissal.

At last in 1215 the council of the Lateran decreed that every one of either sex must make confession at least once a year before his parish priest, or some other priest with the consent of the parish priest.

The Council of Trent in 1551 repudiated the worst corruptions and repelled as slanders certain charges which were made against the medieval system; but it retained the obligation of annual confession, and laid it down that the form of the sacrament consisted in the priest's words of absolution.

No one is allowed to receive holy communion, if guilty of "mortal" sin, without resorting to confession; only if a priest has to celebrate mass, and there is no other priest to hear his confession, may he receive "unabsolved" after mortal sin.

It is common to go to confession, even though there are only venial sins to be confessed; and in order to excite contrition people are sometimes advised to confess over again some mortal sin from which they have been previously absolved.

Among the Lutherans auricular confession survived the Reformation, but the general confession and absolution before communion were soon allowed by authority to serve as a substitute; in Wurttemberg as early as the 16th century, in Saxony after 1657, and in Brandenburg by decree of the elector in 1698.

Private confession and absolution were, however, still permitted; though as may be seen from Goethe's experience, related in his Dichtung and Wahrheit, it tended to become a mere form, a process encouraged by the fact that the fees payable for absolution formed part of the pastor's regular stipend.

Among the Calvinistic bodies in the British Isles and abroad kirk-discipline has been a stern reality; but in none of them is there private confession or priestly absolution.

The method of confession adopted in the public services of the Church of England, with which the Book of Common Prayer is primarily concerned, may be described as one of general confession to God in the face of the church, to be in secret used by each member of the congregation for the confession of his own particular sins, and to be followed by public absolution.

But three other methods of confession for private use are mentioned in the exhortations in the communion service, which constitute the principal directory for private devotions among the authoritative documents of the English Church.

First, all men are urged to practise secret confession to God alone, and in it the sins are to be acknowledged in detail.

Similarly, the sick man is to be moved to make a special confession of his sins if he feels his conscience troubled with any weighty matter.

It is probable that auricular confession never altogether died out in the Church of England, but it is obvious that evidence on the subject must always be hard to find.

The bishops declined so to act, but drew up a report on the subject of confession.

On the other hand, there are those who speak as if auricular confession were a necessary element in every Christian life, and hold that post-baptismal sin of a grave sort can receive forgiveness in no other way.

In English law, on the other hand, the confession of an incriminated person can be received in evidence against him only if it has been free and voluntary.

Any threat or inducement held out to a person to make a confession renders the confession inadmissible, even if afterwards made to another person, it having been held that the second confession is likely to be induced by the promise held out by the person to whom the first confession was made.

Any inducement to a person to make a confession must refer to some temporal benefit to be gained from it.

In divorce law, the confession of a wife charged with adultery may be treated with circumspection and caution, for fear of collusion between the parties to a suit.

Where, however, such a confession is clear and distinct, the court will usually receive it as evidence against the wife, but not against a co-respondent.

In a case where a wife's confession was obtained by falsely stating to her that the suspected co-respondent had confessed, such confession was held admissible.

Bahrdt's confession of faith, a step which was interpreted by the extreme rationalists as a revocation of his own rationalistic position.

For others, the Trinity is the accepted way of making that confession.

To find the distinctive technicalities of Lutheranism we have to leave Melanchthon's system (and his great Reformation creed, the Augsburg Confession) for the Formula of Concord and the lesser men of that later period.

This is not fully formulated even in the Lutheran Formula of Concord, nor yet in the Calvinistic canons of Dort and Confession of Westminster, though these and other Protestant creeds have various instalments of the finished doctrine.

Challenged by Arminianism in Holland, the Calvinistic theology replied in the Confession of Dort; at which Synod English delegates were present.

Unity may be safeguarded in the confession of Christ, and theology indeed prove " Christocentric."

The effort is made here (I) to mention writers of great originality and distinction, (2) writers of special importance to some one Christian confession, (3) without needless repetition of what has already been said, (4) dogmatic treatises being preferred but not to the exclusion of everything else.

If so, parliament was told that temporal possessions ruin the church and drive out the Christian graces of faith, hope and charity; that the priesthood of the church in communion with Rome was not the priesthood Christ gave to his apostles; that the monk's vow of celibacy had for its consequence unnatural lust, and should not be imposed; that transubstantiation was a feigned miracle, and led people to idolatry; that prayers made over wine, bread, water, oil, salt, wax, incense, altars of stone, church walls, vestments, mitres, crosses, staves, were magical and should not be allowed; that kings should possess the jus episcopale, and bring good government into the church; that no special prayers should be made for the dead; that auricular confession made to the clergy, and declared to be necessary for salvation, was the root of clerical arrogance and the cause of indulgences and other abuses in pardoning sin; that all wars were against the principles of the New Testament, and were but murdering and plundering the poor to win glory for kings; that the vows of chastity laid upon nuns led to child murder; that many of the trades practised in the commonwealth, such as those of goldsmiths and armourers, were unnecessary and led to luxury and waste.

Thomas Bagley was accused of declaring that if in the sacrament a priest made bread into God, he made a God that can be eaten by rats and mice; that the pharisees of the day, the monks, and the nuns, and the friars and all other privileged persons recognized by the church were limbs of Satan; and that auricular confession to the priest was the will not of God but of the devil.

His confession that he had known only twenty happy days in his long reign is perhaps a moral tale, to be classed with the "omnia fui, et nil expedit" of Septimius Severus.

This opportunity of making a political confession of faith appears not only to have fortified him in his own convictions, but to have inspired him with the idea of imposing them on the public through the medium of his art.

The best known Summae casuum conscientiae, compiled for the conduct of auricular confession, belong to the 14th and i 5th centuries.

This the citizens were summoned, in parties of ten each, to profess and swear to as the confession of their faith - a process which, though not in accordance with modern notions of the best way of establishing men in the faith, was gone through, Calvin tells us, "with much satisfaction."

Caroli brought a counter-charge against the Geneva divines of Sabellianism and Arianism, because they would not enforce the Athanasian creed, and had not used the words "Trinity" and "Person" in the confession they had drawn up. It was a struggle between the thoroughgoing humanistic reformer who drew his creed solely from the "word of God" and the merely semi-Protestant reformer who looked on the old creed as a priceless heritage.

Baptism is the sign of initiation whereby men are admitted into the society of the church and, being grafted into Christ, are reckoned among the sons of God; it serves both for the confirmation of faith and as a confession before men.

In 1615 he took part in an attempt of the Irish clergy to impose a Calvinistic confession, embodying the Lambeth Articles of 1 595, upon the Irish Church, and was delated to King James in consequence.

St Patrick himself in his Confession makes mention of monks in Ireland in connexion with his mission, but the few glimpses we get of the monastic life of the decades immediately following his death prove that the earliest type of coenobium differed considerably from that known at a later period.

In this reign too was passed the statute of Kilkenny (q.v.), a confession by the crown that obedient subjects were the minority.

Soon afterwards he left the convent, assumed the habit of a secular priest, and began to preach against confession and the worship of images.

At the same time the pastors of the reformed religion, met in synod at Paris, were setting down their confession of faith founded upon the Scriptures, and their ecclesiastical discipline founded upon the independence of the churches.

The practice of confession in the Church of England practically dates from his two sermons on The Entire Absolution of the Penitent, in 1846, in which the revival of high sacramental doctrine is complemented by the advocacy of a revival of the penitential system which medieval theologians had appended to it.

In 1570 he presented a confession of faith to Charles IX.

Alexander in his book on demonic possession maintains that "the confession of Jesus as the Messiah or Son of God is the classical criterion of genuine demonic possession" (p. 150), and argues that as "the Incarnation indicated the establishment of the kingdom of heaven upon earth," there took place "a counter movement among the powers of darkness," of which "genuine demonic possession was one of the manifestations" (p. 249).

Colet, though never dreaming of a formal breach with the Roman Church, was a keen reformer, who disapproved of auricular confession, and of the celibacy of the clergy.

There was also a desire to lay the Confession before the council summoned at Mantua by Pope Paul III.

After hiding for several weeks Nat was captured on the 30th of October and was tried and hanged, having made, meanwhile, a full confession.

A confession of sin used by the Palestinian Remnant.

This confession was according to i.

The confession is restricted to the use of the remnant at home (see next paragraph).

In this confession there is a national acknowledgment of sin and a recognition of the Exile as a righteous judgment.

The confession is of the Exiles and not of the remnant in Palestine, as Marshall has pointed out.

Your confession is a tad different variation; is it your wife or mommy?

After they dragged Jen off to confession, the Calvias would stick around and rent the church for the wedding—if Randy was still alive.

We find it in avoiding every occasion of sin; in fleeing from temptation; and in quickly returning to God through sacramental confession.

A confession of faith, drawn up by Archbishop Usher at the convocation of 1615, implicitly admitted the validity of Presbyterian ordination, and denied the distinction between bishop and presbyter.

In 1823 a Confession of Faith was adopted.

In 1902 the General Assembly adopted a Brief Statement of the Reformed Faith, not as a legal standard but as an interpretation of the confession; it repudiated the doctrine of infant damnation, insisted on the consistency of predestination with God's universal love, and incorporated new chapters on the Holy Spirit, the love of God, and missions.

In the second case it will be supported by pleading, involving on the one hand self-abasement; with confession of sins and promises of repentance and reform, or on the other hand self-justification, in the shape of the t xpression of faith and recitation of past services, together with reminders of previous favour shown.

In later post-exilian times this great day of atonement became to an increasing degree a day of humiliation for sin and penitent sorrow, accompanied by confession; and the sins confessed were not only of a purely ceremonial character, whether voluntary or inadvertent, but also sins against righteousness and the duties which we owe to God and man.

Hagen affects to construe this as a confession of guilt, and slays him as if in righteous wrath.

In an old confession of faith, the convert is pledged to abjure the theft and robbery of cattle and the ravaging of villages inhabited by worshippers of Mazda (Yasna, 12, 2).

During their forty days of confinement and torture each one had been told that the others had recanted, and the false report of Savonarola's confession had been shown to the two monks.

Being all condemned to the rack in order to extort confession, they appealed to the parlement; but this body, being as weak as the subordinate magistrates, sentenced the father to the torture, ordinary and extraordinary, to be broken alive upon the wheel, and then to be burnt to ashes; which decree was carried into execution on the 9th of March 1762.

After they had passed away and before the Christian Scriptures were canonically sifted and collected there was a gap which for us is only slenderly filled by such productions as the so-called 2nd Epistle of Clement, really a rambling homily on repentance and confession (see Clementine Literature), and by what we can imagine was the practice of men like Ignatius and, on the other hand, the Apologists.

The abuses which it was maintained had been corrected by Lutheranism were discussed in articles (1) on Communion in both kinds, (2) on the marriage of clergy, (3) on the Mass, &c. (see Augsburg, Confession Of).

Such strict Calvinism was the strength also of the Westminster Confession (see below), but was soon weakened in Germany.

Some of them were taken from the confession of Augsburg, but the sections on Baptism, the Eucharist and penance, show that the English theologians desired to lay more emphasis on the character of sacraments as channels of grace.

It also asks that " if anyone shall note in this our confession any articles or sentence repugnant of God's Holy Word, that it would please him of his gentleness and for Christian charity's sake, to admonish of the same in writing," promising that if the teaching cannot be proved, to reform it.

Now, a prince or legislative assembly that accepted the doctrine of Luther, that the temporal power had been " ordained by God for the chastisement of the wicked and the protection of the good " and must be permitted to exercise its functions " unhampered throughout the whole Christian body, without respect to persons, whether it strikes popes, bishops, priests, monks, nuns, or whoever else " - such a government could proceed to ratify such modifications of the Christian faith as appealed to it in a particular religious confession; it could order its subject to conform to the innovations, and could expel, persecute or tolerate dissenters, as seemed good to it.

During the later years of his life he attacked the doctrine of transubstantiation, and all the most popular institutions of the Church - indulgences, pilgrimages, invocation of the saints, relics, celibacy of the clergy, auricular confession, &c. His opinions were spread abroad by the hundreds of sermons and popular pamphlets written in English for the people (see Wycliffe).

His favourite author was beyond all doubt Plutarch, and his own explicit confession makes it undeniable that Plutarch's translator, Jacques Amyot, was his master in point of vocabulary and (so far as he took any lessons in it) of style.

But, however it originated, the phrase undoubtedly contributed to foster popular misconceptions as to the intrinsic value of Indulgences, apart from repentance and confession; though Dr Lea seems to press this point unduly (p. 54 ff.), and should be read in conjunction with Thurston (p. 324 ff.).

Luther published Barnes' confession with a preface of his own as Bekenntnis des Glaubens (1540), which is included in Watch's edition of Luther's Werke xxi.

If he attend not to the justice of his land, Ea, the king of fates, shall distort his lot, &c.'" Further illustrations of ethical teaching may be found in the litany or confession of a penitent cited by Mr Johns in the same paper (p. 303).

In 1618-19 the synod of Dort (see Dort, Synod Of), the thirteen Arminian pastors headed by Simon Episcopius being shut out, established the victory of the Calvinist school, drew up ninety-three canonical rules, and confirmed the authority of the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism.

The title address was an epigrammatic confession of political faith as hopeful as it was wise and keen.

It is true to say that in the " cure of souls " the confessional plays a larger part in the Church than the pulpit (see Confession and Absolution).

After debates extending over many years, the assembly of 1889 fell back on the words of the act of parliament 1693, passed to enable the Episcopalian clergy to join the establishment, in which the candidate declared the Confession of Faith to be the confession of his faith, owned the doctrine therein contained to be the true doctrine and promised faithfully to adhere to it.

His imperfect signature to his confession of this date, consisting only of his Christian name and written in a faint and trembling hand, is probably a ghastly testimony to the severity of the torture ("per grad us ad ima") which James had ordered to be applied if he would not otherwise confess and the "gentler tortures" were unavailing, - a horrible practice unrecognized by the law of England, but usually employed and justified at this time in cases of treason to obtain information.

In spite of a general tendency to relinquish the inquisitorial method, it is still prevalent in certain countries, notably in France, where the efforts of the prosecution, especially during the preliminary investigations, are directed to extracting a confession from the accused.

In conformity with the principle of English law that a person ought not to be made to incriminate himself, it is usual, when a person in custody wishes to make a statement or confession, to caution him that what he says will be used in evidence against him.

Particular facts may have an important bearing on the admissibility or otherwise of a confession - innumerable decisions will be found in Archbold's Criminal Pleading (23rd ed.).

In divorce law, the confession of a wife charged with adultery is always treated with circumspection and caution, for fear of collusion between the parties to a suit.

His confession is said to be riddled with inconsistencies.

People also flocked to him from all sides to make a sacramental confession or to seek his personal guidance.

The confession of Rudolf Hoess, Kommandant at Auschwitz, is literally splattered in blood.

Then you would manage to stammer forth the confession that you were neither a doctor nor a dentist.

Cuamba claimed he made this confession because of " psychological torture ".

A confession which has been the touchstone of orthodoxy for fifteen centuries cannot lightly be ignored or abandoned.

They also feel, for example, that a person is not a Christian until he or she has been completely submerged, and this should occur immediately after the confession of a belief in Christ as the Savior.

You will need to gather proof of infidelity if you really want to know for sure such as an eyewitness, a confession or pictures that someone takes for you (for example, a private investigator).

Satisfied by his confession, she left the gun on the nightstand.

Unfortunately for Damon, the confession was given to the wrong girl.

More important, my confession about trashing my fat clothes will have hopefully been read by millions of people, and I couldn't face all of you naysayers.

She shifted to see his face, surprised by his confession.

After they dragged Jen off to confession, the Calvias would stick around and rent the church for the wedding—if Randy was still alive.

He hadn't been able to face his mate since her confession.

The last part of her world shattered with Wynn's confession.

The organization of the Lutheran Church (Eglise de la confession dAugsburg) is broadly similar.

The custom of collective flagellation was introduced into the monastic houses, the ceremony taking place every Friday after confession.

To Sir William Kingston she protested her entire innocence, and on the scaffold while expressing her submission she made no confession.

In his ninth year (1746), during a " lucid interval of comparative health," he was sent to a school at Kingston-uponThames; but his former infirmities soon returned, and his progress, by his own confession, was slow and unsatisfactory.

Among his numerous works may be mentioned Introduction a la philosophie d'Hegel (1855; 2nd ed., 1865); Probleme de la certitude (1845); Le Hegelianisme et la philosophie 0860; Mélanges philosophiques (1862); Essais de philosophie Hegelienne (1864); Strauss, l'ancienne et la nouvelle foi (1873), an attack upon Strauss's last "confession," written from the standpoint of an orthodox Hegelian; and a comprehensive work in Italian, Il Problema dell' Assoluto (Naples, 1872-82).

The next year (1540) he published a refutation of the attacks upon his doctrine with a more elaborate exposition of it, under the title Grosse Confession.

He arrived at the abbey just about the feast of St Benedict (the 21st of March 1522), and there made a confession of his life to a priest belonging to the monastery.

By a true confession of faith, by every good deed, word and thought, by continually keeping pure his body and his soul, he impairs the power of Satan and strengthens the might of goodness, and establishes a claim for reward upon Ormazd; by a false confession, by every evil deed, word and thought and defilement, he increases the evil and renders service to Satan.

Fravashi properly means "confession of faith," and when personified comes to be regarded as a protecting spirit.

The one is the Confession, which is contained in an imperfect state in the Book of Armagh (c. 807), but complete copies are found in later MSS.

A violet stole is worn by the priest when giving absolution after confession, and when administering Extreme Unction.

After holding their own view for some years the four cities accepted the Confession of Augsburg, and were merged in the general body of Lutherans; but Zwingli's position was incorporated in the Helvetic Confession.

Five further instalments of his Synoptiques were published after this, bringing the work down to the Confession of Peter inclusively.

As public penance finally decayed, and auricular confession took its place, these were superseded by the Summae de Poenitentia, - law-books in the strictest sense.

Once get a sinner to confession, and the whole work was done.

His defence of The Times newspaper, which had accused Sir John Conroy, equerry to the duchess of Kent, of misappropriation of money (1838), is chiefly remarkable for the confession - "I despair of any definition of libel which shall exclude no publications which ought to be suppressed, and include none which ought to be permitted."

But this is equivalent to a confession that Scholasticism had failed in its task, which was to rationalize the doctrines of the church.

His ancestors had been members of the community of the Bohemian Brethren, and had secretly maintained their Protestant belief throughout the period of religious persecution, eventually giving their adherence to the Augsburg confession as approximate to their original faith.

On the 15th of June, Richard, after confession and receiving the Sacrament, rode to Smithfield for a further conference with the rebels.

The activity of his life left him little time for writing, but he was the author of " an anaphora, sundry letters, a creed or confession of faith, preserved in Arabic and a secondary Ethiopic translation, and a homily for the Feast of the Annunciation, also extant only in an Arabic translation" (Wright).

The seventy decrees of the council begin with a confession of faith directed against the Cathari and Waldenses, which is significant if only for the mention of a transubstantiation of the elements in the Lord's Supper.

Allowed to return, he again fell under suspicion of having been concerned in the composition of two violent libels - one in Latin and one in French - called from their first words the Puero Regnante and the J'ai vu, was inveigled by a spy named Beauregard into a real or burlesque confession, and on the 16th of May 1717 was sent to the Bastille.

Nor did an extremely offensive performance of Voltaire's - the solemn partaking of the Eucharist at Colmar after due confession - at all mollify his enemies.

Of a controversial character are the Confessio Catholica, (1633-1637), an extensive work which seeks to prove the evangelical and catholic character of the doctrine of the Augsburg Confession from the writings of approved Roman Catholic authors; and the Loci communes theologici (1610-1622), his principal contribution.

As the evidence was collected by Peter's creatures, it is very doubtful whether Eudoxia was guilty, though she was compelled to make a public confession.

He tolerated every Christian confession.

Sacramental confession is enjoined, but has recently become obsolete; prayers for the departed and invocation of saints form part of the services.

The most important fact in his history is his confession, recorded by Orosius, that he saw the inability of his countrymen to rear a civilized or abiding kingdom, and that consequently his aim should be to build on Roman foundations and blend the two nations into one.

The position is well expressed in the Scotch Confession (1559).

It was put out in 1534 and must be distinguished from the First and Second Helvetic Confessions, its author being Oswald Myconius, who based it on a shorter confession promulgated by Oecolampadius, his predecessor in the church at Basel.

Up to the year 1826 the Confession (sometimes also known as the Confession of Miihlhausen from its adoption by that town) was publicly read from the pulpits of Basel on the Wednesday of Passion week in each year.

He calls it " the beautiful confession " to which Christ Jesus had borne witness before Pontius Pilate, and charges Timothy before God, who quickeneth all things, to keep this commandment.

He uses a word used by Ignatius of the oath taken on confession of the Christian faith.

If, as is probable, it was from the election of Nektarius the baptismal creed of Constantinople, we may even ask whether the pope did not refer to it when he wrote emphatically of the " common and indistinguishable confession " of all the faithful.

The famous theses which Luther nailed to the door of the church at Wittenberg in 1517 cannot be called a confession, but they expressed a protest which could not rest there.

An elaborate Apology for the confession of Augsburg was drawn up by Melanchthon in reply to Roman Catholic criticisms. This, together with the confession, the articles of Lutheran.

Of less influence in the subsequent history of Lutheranism, but of interest as used by Archbishop Parker in the preparation of the Elizabethan articles of 1563, is the confession of Wurttemberg.

These cities were inclined to follow Zwingli in his sacramental teaching which was more fully expressed in the Confession of Basel (1534) and the First Helvetic Confession (1536).

Calvin's views were expressed in the Gallican Confession, containing forty articles, which was drawn up in 1559, and was presented both to Francis II.

On the same lines the Belgian Confession of 1561, written by Guido de Bres in French, and translated into Dutch was widely accepted in the Netherlands and confirmed by the synod of Dort (1619).

The second Helvetic Confession was the work of Bullinger, published at the request of the Elector Palatine Frederick III.

Between this and the Westminster Confession must be noted the first Baptist confession, published in Amsterdam in 1611.

The Westminster Confession (1648), with its two catechisms, is perhaps the ablest of the reformed confessions from the stand point of Calvinism.

It is the only confession which has been imposed by authority of parliament on the whole of the United Kingdom.

When Cromwell before his death in 1658 allowed a conference to prepare a new confession of faith for the whole commonwealth, the Westminster Confession was accepted as a whole with an added statement on church order and discipline.

We must note, however, that the Baptist divines who were excluded from the Westminster Assembly issued a declaration of their principles under the title, " A Confession of Faith of seven Congregations or Churches in London which are commonly but unjustly called Anabaptists, for the Vindication of the Truth and Information of the Ignorant."

In 1833 the Congregational Union published a Declaration or Confession of Faith, Church Order and Discipline.

It was prepared by Dr George Redford or Worcester, and was presented, not as a scholastic or critical confession of faith, but merely such a statement as any intelligent member of the body might offer as containing its leading principles.

The Eastern Church has no general doctrinal tests beyond the Nicene Creed, but from time to time synods have approved exposi (without the words And the Son "), and the Orthodox Confession of the Catholic and Apostolic Eastern Church.

It was affirmed by the council of Jerusalem in 1672, which also affirmed the Confession of Dositheus, patriarch of Jerusalem.

If we could come back to the Bible and use biblical terms only, as Cyril of Jerusalem wished in his early days, we know from experience that the old errors would reappear in the form of new questions, and that we should have to pass through the dreary wilderness of controversy from implicit to explicit dogma, from " I believe that Jesus is the Lord " to the confession that the Only Begotten Son is " of one substance with the Father."

The great opposition which arose during his lifetime continued after his death, and found classic expression in the highly venerated confession of Petrus Mogilas, metropolitan of Kiev (1643).(1643).

Curiously enough, the synod refused to believe that the heretical confession it refuted was actually by a former patriarch of Constantinople; yet the proofs of its genuineness seem to most scholars overwhelming.

In negotiations between Anglican and Russian churchmen the confession of Dositheus l usually comes to the front.

After travelling in various countries of northern Europe, he settled down at Wittenberg, where he made the acquaintance of Luther and Melanchthon, and signed the Augsburg confession.

The Articles of Marburg, which thus came into being, contain the doctrine of the Trinity, of the personality of Christ, of faith and justification, of the Scriptures, of baptism, of good works, of confession, of government, of tradition, and of infant baptism.

Compare the MS. copy of the confession in the British Museum, Cotton MSS.

His attendance was accordingly requested, and the invitation was willingly accepted as giving him a long-wished-for opportunity both of publicly vindicating himself from charges which he felt to be grievous, and of loyally making confession for Christ.

The confession of faith issued by the London-Amsterdam church (the original of the Pilgrim Fathers' churches) in 1596 declares that the Christian congregation having power to elect its minister has also power to excommunicate him if the case so require (Walker, Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism, p. 66).

This enumeration was also adopted in 1575 as against the Augustan confession of the year 1540 by Jeremiah Patriarch of Constantinople, and again in a council held in the same city in 1639 to anathematize Cyril Lucar, who with the Anglicans recognized two only, baptism and the Eucharist.

The sacrament of confession and penance He equally instituted when He assigned the power of the keys to the Apostles.

The Protestants were requested to submit a statement of their opinions, and on June 25th the " Augsburg Confession " was read to the diet.

The confession was drafted by Melanchthon,.

In the first part of the confession the Protestants seek to prove that there is nothing in their doctrines at variance with those of the universal Church " or even of the Roman Church so far as that appears in the writings of the Fathers."

The confession was turned over to a committee of conservative theologians, including Eck, Faber and Cochlaeus.

Finally Christian III., an ardent Lutheran, ascended the throne in 1536; with the sanction of the diet he severed, in 1537, all connexion with the pope, introducing the Lutheran system of Church government and accepting the Augsburg Confession.

There was no other way but to legalize the new faith in Germany, but only those were to be tolerated who accepted the Augsburg Confession.

During the three or four years which followed the signing of the Augsburg Confession in 1530 and the formation of the Schmalkaldic League, England, while bitterly dep ouncing and burning Lutheran heretics in the name of the Holy Catholic Church, was herself engaged in severing the bonds which had for well-nigh a thousand of years bound her to the Apostolic See.

These parliament enacted into the terrible statute of " The Six Articles," in which a felon's death was prescribed for those who obstinately denied transubstantiation, demanded the communion under both kinds, questioned the binding character of vows of chastity, or the lawfulness of private Masses or the expediency of auricular confession.

In 1560 a confession of faith was prepared by John Knox and five companions.

While the Roman Catholic religion was declared to be that accepted by the majority of Frenchmen, the state subsidized the Reformed Church, those adhering to the Augsburg Confession and the Jewish community.

In spite of continued persecution a national synod was assembled in Paris in 1559, representing at least twelve Protestant churches in Normandy and central France, which drew up a confession of faith and a book of church discipline.

Faustus Sozzini, a native of Sienna (1539-1603), much influenced by his uncle Lelio Sozzini, after a wandering, questioning life, found his way to Poland, where he succeeded in uniting the various Anabaptist sects into a species of church, the doctrines of which are set forth in the Confession of Rakow (near Minsk), published in Polish in 1605 and speedily in German and Latin.

That modern Unitarianism is all to be traced back to Sozzini and the Rakow Confession need not be assumed.

The eucharist is to be celebrated every Lord's Day, and preceded by confession of sins, "that your sacrifice may be pure.

Thus it has been used broadly of all theological doctrines, and also in a narrower sense of fundamental beliefs only, confession of which is insisted upon as a term of church communion.

The Augsburg Confession (1530) is divided into numerous " articles," while Luther's Lesser Catechism gathers Christianity under three " articles "- Creation, Redemption, Sanctification.

On the other hand, the Augsburg Confession protests its loyalty to the decretum of Nice.

The (second) Helvetic Confession (1566) adopted in Switzerland, Hungary, Bohemia and elsewhere, was his work.

All these set forth in their symbolical books the supreme place of Scripture, accepting the position which Zwingli laid down in 1536 in The First Helvetic Confession, namely, that "Canonic Scripture, the Word of God, given by the Holy Spirit and set forth to the world by the Prophets and Apostles, the most perfect and ancient of all philosophies, alone contains perfectly all piety and the whole rule of life."

Zwingli's theological views are expressed succinctly in the sixtyseven theses published at Zurich in 1523, and at greater length in the First Helvetic Confession, compiled in 1536 by a number of his disciples.'

In point of doctrine they acknowledged the seven sacraments, but gave them a symbolical meaning; they prayed to the Virgin and saints, and admitted auricular confession, but they denied purgatory and the sacrifice of the mass, and did not observe fasts or festivals.

A synod was held in 1532 at Chanforans in the valley of the Angrogne, where a new confession of faith was adopted, which recognized the doctrine of election, assimilated the practices of the Vaudois to those of the Swiss congregations, renounced for the future all recognition of the Roman communion, and established their own worship no longer as secret meetings of a faithful few but as public assemblies for the glory of God.

We hear 3 of " Brownists " in London about 1585, while the London petitioners of 1592 refer to their fellows in " other gaols throughout the land "; and the True Confession of 1596 specifies Norwich, Gloucester, Bury St Edmunds, as well as " many other places of the land."

Later (1883) a large committee, previously appointed, framed a more full confession of faith (the " Commission Creed,"), with the same end in view.

In 1868 civil rights were declared to be independent of religious confession.

By degrees, he obtains a full confession - not from the serpent, whose speech might not have been edifying, but from Adam and Eve.

He had previously published a catechism in Latin verse dedicated to the king, a work highly approved even by his opponents, and also a Latin translation of the Scottish Confession of Faith.

In course of time changes grew up. (I) From the 3rd century onwards, secret (auricular) confession before a bishop or priest was practised.

For various reasons it became more and more common, until the fourth Lateran council (1215) ordered all Christians of the Roman obedience to make a confession once a year at least.