Philip Schaff · 15 of 85

The Belgic Confession. A.D. 1561. Revised 1619.

CONFESSIO BELGICA.

[The Belgic Confession, composed in French by Guy de Brès (died a martyr, 1567) for the Churches in Flanders and the Netherlands, 1561, was adopted by a Reformed Synod at Emden, 1571, and by the National Synod of Dort, 1619, which subjected the text to a careful revision by a comparison of French, Dutch, and Latin copies.

The French text is taken from the authentic MS. of 1580, with the revision of Dort, as reprinted by the Société évanigelique Belge, at Brussels, 1850, under the title, La Confession de foi des églises réformées Walonnes et Flamandes, including a table of various readings. The headings of articles are supplemented from the Latin editions.

The English text (made from the Latin) is the one authorized by the 'Reformed (Dutch) Church in America,' and printed in its Constitution, etc. (New York, 103 Fulton Street). An older English version in the English Harmony of Confessions, Cambridge, 1586, and a recent one by Owen Jones, in Church of the Living God, etc. London, 1865, pp. 203–237.

A Latin translation, probably made by Beza, or under his direction, appeared in the Harmonia Confessionum, Geneva, 1581, and in the first edition of the Corpus et Syntagma Confessionum, Geneva, 1612; another, by Festus Hommius, Leyden, 1618; this was revised by the Synod of Dort, reprinted (as revised) in the second edition of the Corp. et Syntag. (1654), and (in its original form), with various readings, in Niemeyer's Collectio (pp. 360–389). It is also given in the Oxford Sylloge Confessionum (pp. 327–354). The Latin texts in these editions differ considerably.

There are several Dutch and German editlons, and a Greek version (ἐκκλησιῶν τῆς Βελγικῖς ἐξομολόγησις), made by Jac. Revius (Lugd. Batav. 1635, and Amstelod. 1638). The Greek edition before me (Utrecht, 1660) gives the Greek and Latin in parallel columns, and contains also the Heidelberg Catechism in Latin, with the Greek version of Fred. Sylburg.]