Forty Centuries of Christian Writing

The Penitential of Finnian

Finnian · 6th century

A tariff of penances matching each sin with its remedy, and prescribing that contraries be cured by contraries — the greedy to give, the angry to be patient.

The Penitential of Egbert

Egbert of York · d. 766

A northern English tariff of penances covering perjury, theft, violence, sexual sin, and the eating of blood, with reductions for the poor and the ill.

The Penitential Book

Robert of Flamborough · d. c. 1224

A confessor's manual in dialogue form, showing how to question a penitent gently, in what order, and how to avoid suggesting sins they had not thought of.

The Canons of the Fourth Lateran Council

The Fourth Lateran Council

Seventy canons defining transubstantiation, requiring annual confession and communion, forbidding clergy to take part in ordeals, and imposing distinguishing dress on Jews and Muslims.

The Statutes of Salisbury

Richard Poore · d. 1237

Diocesan statutes applying the Fourth Lateran reforms in England: what a parish priest must know, how to hear confessions, and what must be kept in a parish church.

Summa on Penitential Cases

Raymond of Peñafort · c. 1175–1275

A confessor's manual sorting sins by kind and circumstance, with detailed treatment of usury, marriage, restitution, and what to do about a penitent who cannot pay back what he stole.

The Manual of Parish Priests

Manipulus Curatorum

Guido de Monte Rochen · 14th century

What a parish priest must know to administer the sacraments and hear confessions, written for clergy with little formal training.

The Confession of Faith to Mehmed II

Gennadios Scholarios · c. 1400–c. 1473

A summary of Christian doctrine written at the sultan's request by the first patriarch appointed after the conquest, phrased to be intelligible to a Muslim reader.

The Augsburg Confession

Philipp Melanchthon · 1497–1560

Twenty-eight articles presented to the emperor, stating what the evangelical churches teach and what abuses they have corrected, phrased as conservatively as honesty allowed.

Apology of the Augsburg Confession

Philipp Melanchthon · 1497–1560

A long defence answering the Catholic Confutation article by article, with the treatment of justification running to more than a third of the whole.

The Smalcald Articles

Martin Luther · 1483–1546

Luther's own statement, written when he expected to die, of what could be negotiated at a council and what could not — the article of justification standing first and immovable.

The Scots Confession

John Knox and five others

Drafted in four days for the Scottish parliament, warm and narrative in style, defining the marks of the true church as the word preached, the sacraments rightly used, and discipline exercised.

The Belgic Confession

Guido de Brès · 1522–1567

A confession written for the persecuted Reformed churches of the Low Countries and thrown over a castle wall to the authorities with a plea for toleration.

The Second Helvetic Confession

Heinrich Bullinger · 1504–1575

Written originally as its author's private testament, and adopted across Switzerland, Scotland, Hungary, Poland, and Bohemia within a few years.

The Thirty-Nine Articles

The Church of England

Doctrinal articles combining Reformed teaching on scripture, justification, and predestination with a conservative retention of episcopacy and the creeds.

The Formula of Concord

Jakob Andreae, Martin Chemnitz, and others

A settlement of the disputes that split Lutheranism after Luther's death — free will, good works, the Lord's Supper, the person of Christ — negotiated over years.

The Book of Concord

The Lutheran churches of Germany

The three ancient creeds bound together with the Augsburg Confession, its Apology, the Smalcald Articles, both catechisms, and the Formula of Concord.

The Eastern Confession of the Christian Faith

Cyril Lucaris · 1572–1638

A confession by a patriarch of Constantinople teaching predestination, justification by faith, and scripture's authority over the church — in Calvinist terms.

The Westminster Confession of Faith

The Westminster Assembly

Thirty-three chapters of Reformed doctrine drafted by an assembly of divines during the English Civil War, accompanied by a Larger and a Shorter Catechism whose first question asks what the chief end of man is.

The Savoy Declaration

The Congregational churches of England

Westminster doctrine with a congregational polity — each gathered church complete in itself, with no authority above it but Christ.

The Confession of Dositheus

The Synod of Jerusalem

A synodal confession rejecting Lucaris point by point and defining Orthodox teaching on scripture, the sacraments, and the church against Calvinism.

The Helvetic Consensus Formula

The Swiss Reformed churches

A confession defending limited atonement against Saumur theology and asserting the inspiration of the Hebrew vowel points as part of the original text.

The Second London Baptist Confession

The Particular Baptist churches of England

The Westminster Confession revised by Baptists, following it closely except on baptism, church government, and the relation of the magistrate to religion.

Life Together

Gemeinsames Leben

Dietrich Bonhoeffer · 1906–1945

A short account of the shared life of the Finkenwalde seminary — the day together, the day alone, confession, service — with a warning that a community which loves its own ideal of community will destroy the real one.