# The Families of Reformed Confessions



## Whitefield (Feb 3, 2009)

While finishing marking up an addition to my webpage:

Historic Proof of the Doctrinal Calvinism of the Church of England by Augustus Toplady

I had a thought that I would like to run by others on this board. Most of the discussion I have seen here deals with three families of Reformed confessions 1) WCF, 2) 1689 Confession, and 3) 3 forms of Unity. But rereading Toplady got me to thinking that there is a fourth: 4) the Thirty-nine Articles. I'm curious as to why they don't get mentioned much. Are they not to be considered a valid confession for Reformed bona fides?


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## discipulo (Feb 3, 2009)

Whitefield said:


> While finishing marking up an addition to my webpage:
> 
> Historic Proof of the Doctrinal Calvinism of the Church of England by Augustus Toplady
> 
> I had a thought that I would like to run by others on this board. Most of the discussion I have seen here deals with three families of Reformed confessions 1) WCF, 2) 1689 Confession, and 3) 3 forms of Unity. But rereading Toplady got me to thinking that there is a fourth: 4) the Thirty-nine Articles. I'm curious as to why they don't get mentioned much. Are they not to be considered a valid confession for Reformed bona fides?



Actually the Westminster Divines in 1643 were working on the basis of the Thirty Nine Articles of the Church of England 
The Assembly spent the first part of its work in an attempt to revise the Thirty Nine Articles.
Only when the Scottish delegates joined they insisted on a new confession, that would be supra national, so to speak, and only then the Parliament instructed the Assembly to draw up a new confession.

So the WCF has the 39 articles as one of its roots.


and Toplady the same year (1774 ) he published the Historic Proof of the Doctrinal Calvinism of the Church of England
also published The Church of England Vindicated from the Charge of Arminianism.


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## Casey (Feb 3, 2009)

There's also the Second Helvetic Confession which, as I understand it, represents another Reformed "family."


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## yeutter (Feb 3, 2009)

Compare the 39 Articles and the Augsberg Confession. It is clear that Archbishop Cramner was looking ar the Augsberg when he wrote the 42 Articles which were revised under Archbishop Parker to become todays 39 Articles.
Archbishop Ussher took these Articles and expanded them to create Irish Articles of Religion. Prof. B. B. Warfield has shown that the Westminster drew heavily on the Irish Articles of Religion.

-----Added 2/3/2009 at 05:04:20 EST-----



discipulo said:


> Actually the Westminster Divines in 1643 were working on the basis of the Thirty Nine Articles of the Church of England
> The Assembly spent the first part of its work in an attempt to revise the Thirty Nine Articles.
> Only when the Scottish delegates joined they insisted on a new confession, that would be supra national, so to speak, and only then the Parliament instructed the Assembly to draw up a new confession.


The Scots had a very fine confession of faith prior to the Westminster. The Scots Confession of 1560 was written by John Knox. It was adopted in 1567 and remained the confession of the Scottish Church until it was superceded by the Westminster in 1648.

-----Added 2/3/2009 at 05:13:16 EST-----

The Scots Confession of 1560 may be found at
Scottish Confession of Faith (1560)


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## Hippo (Feb 3, 2009)

Whitefield said:


> While finishing marking up an addition to my webpage:
> 
> Historic Proof of the Doctrinal Calvinism of the Church of England by Augustus Toplady
> 
> I had a thought that I would like to run by others on this board. Most of the discussion I have seen here deals with three families of Reformed confessions 1) WCF, 2) 1689 Confession, and 3) 3 forms of Unity. But rereading Toplady got me to thinking that there is a fourth: 4) the Thirty-nine Articles. I'm curious as to why they don't get mentioned much. Are they not to be considered a valid confession for Reformed bona fides?



Your website is very impressive. I have run accross it in the past looking for Toplady texts and it is great to realise that you are a PB member.

How do you get the source files to mark up, do you scan documents or do you have an electronic format to start with?

I have tried to do this myself and have found it really difficult.


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## discipulo (Feb 3, 2009)

Hippo said:


> Whitefield said:
> 
> 
> > While finishing marking up an addition to my webpage:
> ...



That’s right, I had not seen it was your own site Pastor Lance.

Indeed, great work, and so good you provided that important title online.

I am doing some gathering of Toplady’s hymns and poems for a thread here, and several works are just available as image facsimiles.


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## Whitefield (Feb 3, 2009)

Hippo said:


> Whitefield said:
> 
> 
> > While finishing marking up an addition to my webpage:
> ...



Some are scanned, some are from PDF files ... and some are "hard typed". It started as a repository for things I had read and wanted quick access to, so I marked them up in HTML. When I realized what I had compiled, I decided to buy space on server and offer it all to whomever it would help. The D'Aubigne work was the longest I did (it took about 3 months of part-time work). Things got easier once I learned about .css files and macros in Notepad++. I do my proof reading using Compozer. That's probably more than you were asking.

-----Added 2/3/2009 at 09:43:15 EST-----



discipulo said:


> Hippo said:
> 
> 
> > Whitefield said:
> ...



This link is my favorite Toplady material on my sight.


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## JohnOwen007 (Feb 4, 2009)

yeutter said:


> Compare the 39 Articles and the Augsberg Confession. It is clear that Archbishop Cramner was looking ar the Augsberg when he wrote the 42 Articles [...]



Cranmer certainly had the Augsburg Confession as a resource for the 39 Articles. However, he also clearly moved in a direction away from the AC. Cranmer had gone through a Lutheran phase in his own life, but then ultimately became convinced of a reformed theology, particularly (at this stage in the reformation) of the sacraments (not to mention predestination). Hence, the 39 Articles are clearly reformed and not Lutheran.


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## Hippo (Feb 4, 2009)

Whitefield said:


> Some are scanned, some are from PDF files ... and some are "hard typed". It started as a repository for things I had read and wanted quick access to, so I marked them up in HTML. When I realized what I had compiled, I decided to buy space on server and offer it all to whomever it would help. The D'Aubigne work was the longest I did (it took about 3 months of part-time work). Things got easier once I learned about .css files and macros in Notepad++. I do my proof reading using Compozer. That's probably more than you were asking.



Do you use just a regular flatbed scanner and what OCR programme are you using?

MY success in scanning and OCR'ing text to an acceptable standard has been very limited. I usually just scan to pdf and use pagemaker's OCR but the results are quite poor most of the time. Your results are much more impressive.

Mike


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## Jimmy the Greek (Feb 4, 2009)

Whitefield said:


> . . .
> This link is my favorite Toplady material on my sight.



Thanks, Lance. I too have enjoyed the use of the resources on your site for a couple of years now.


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## Whitefield (Feb 4, 2009)

Hippo said:


> Do you use just a regular flatbed scanner and what OCR programme are you using?
> 
> MY success in scanning and OCR'ing text to an acceptable standard has been very limited. I usually just scan to pdf and use pagemaker's OCR but the results are quite poor most of the time. Your results are much more impressive.
> 
> Mike



I use an inexpensive Canon scanner (CanoScan LiDE) and the OCR software which came with it (OmniPage). I usually scan at 300dpi (sometimes 400dpi). It gives me about 3%-5% error rate. I load the .txt file into Notepad++ for some styling macros I wrote, and then I proofread it in Compozer with the spellchecking on. If you look at the Warfield index on my page, most of the longer works were scanned from books and submitted to the above process.


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## Classical Presbyterian (Feb 4, 2009)

Whitefield said:


> Hippo said:
> 
> 
> > Do you use just a regular flatbed scanner and what OCR programme are you using?
> ...



Your time management skills are a wonder! When do you sleep?


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## Whitefield (Feb 4, 2009)

Classical Presbyterian said:


> Your time management skills are a wonder! When do you sleep?



Next year


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## CovenantalBaptist (Feb 4, 2009)

I would also mention that the London Baptist Confession (1689) and the Savoy Declaration are roughly in the same family as the Westminster (with the obvious differences on the ordinance of baptism and some aspects of polity).

The Baptists came out with a confession in 1644 that had as a primary purpose to place themselves in line with the Puritan/Separatist movement and in order to declare that they were not Anabaptists. Secondarily, they wanted to separate themselves from the excesses of the continental Anabaptists. Three signatories from that confession also signed the 1677 Second London Confession (which was only published after William and Mary came to England in 1689 and legalized religious freedom). The 1677/89 was designed to be an expression of ecumenical unity with our Presbyterian and Congregationalist brethren affirming many areas of agreement after the Presbyterians published the 1646 WCF. We would do well to remind ourselves of this essential unity on this board as I think we can all have a tendency towards an excessive sectarianism at times. 

You can compare line for line the differences in four confessions (WCF, Savoy, LBCF and Philadelphia) with this handy chart


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