Where to begin

Anyone coming to these documents for the first time may feel a little lost: there are many of them, they are old, and some bear unfamiliar names. These lines are meant to help you find your bearings.

What they are

In 1643, in the midst of civil war, the Parliament of England called an assembly of divines to reform the Church of England according to the Word of God. It met for the first time on 1 July of that year in Westminster Abbey, in London, and that is where its name comes from. There were more than a hundred ministers, joined by some members of Parliament and, after the Solemn League and Covenant of September 1643, by commissioners from the Church of Scotland. In six years of work they drew up what we now call the Westminster Standards, which many Presbyterian churches have held ever since as their rule of doctrine, worship and government.

There are five documents. The Confession of Faith sets out in thirty-three chapters what the Church believes, from Scripture to the last judgment. The Shorter Catechism and the Larger Catechism teach that same faith by question and answer, the one briefly and the other at length. The Directory for the Publick Worship of God orders the worship of the congregation, and the Form of Presbyterial Church Government explains how the Church is governed by pastors and elders, meeting in the assembly of each congregation, in the presbytery and in synods.

Under the heading of Accompanying Documents, the menu also gathers other texts that surround them: those that preceded them in Scotland, the covenants that led to the Assembly, the Directory for Family Worship and the prefaces of the London edition of 1658, among others.

Why they are worth reading

These documents are not a museum piece. For almost four centuries they have taught the faith to children and adults, trained ministers, and given churches on every continent, from Scotland to Korea, a precise way of saying what they believe. There are several reasons why this has been so.

The best of the Reformation, gathered together

When the Assembly met, the Reformed faith had been preached, written down and defended against Rome for more than a century. The Standards gather up that work with an order and a precision that few confessions have attained. They lay down that everything necessary for the glory of God and for man's faith, life and salvation is in Scripture, and that nothing at any time is to be added to it, “whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men”. They teach that God justifies the sinner not by infusing into him a righteousness of his own, but by imputing to him the obedience and satisfaction of Christ, which are received by faith alone. And they require that Scripture be translated into the language of every people, so that the Word of God may dwell plentifully in all.

This is not only the judgment of their heirs. Richard Baxter, who was not a member of the Assembly, wrote that, as far as he could judge, the Christian world had never had, since the days of the apostles, a synod of more excellent divines than this one and the Synod of Dort.

A complete Reformation

Luther recovered the Gospel of justification by faith, and that is no small thing. But the Lutheran Reformation stopped there. The Augsburg Confession (1530) declares that in its churches “the mass is retained” and “is celebrated with the highest reverence” (now without the sacrifice, which it rejects, but with its name, its vestments and a good part of its order), and adds that “almost all the customary ceremonies are also preserved”. It further requires the keeping of those rites that can be observed without sin, “such as certain holidays, feasts and the like”. So images and crucifixes, altars and the calendar of feasts remained standing.

The Church of England went further in doctrine, but not in the rest. Its Thirty-Nine Articles affirm that “the Church hath power to decree Rites or Ceremonies”, and with that power it kept in the Book of Common Prayer feasts and ceremonies inherited from Rome (Christmas, Easter and the saints' days, the sign of the cross in baptism, kneeling to receive communion) and went on being governed by bishops. From the 1560s onwards, many ministers asked for these things to be removed, and they went unheard. In the years before the Assembly, under Archbishop Laud, it was even moving backwards: the communion tables were moved back to the east wall, where the altars had stood, and fenced in with rails, and the canons of 1640 commended doing reverence on entering the church and on leaving it.

It was Geneva that carried the Reformation through to the end. Calvin put it in writing: “I know how hard it is to persuade the world of this: that God disapproves of all forms of worship instituted apart from his Word”. That principle passed to Scotland with Knox, and the Solemn League and Covenant bound itself to the reformation of religion in England and Ireland according to the Word of God and “the example of the best reformed Churches”.

The Standards completed that work. The Confession laid down the principle on which everything rests: that God is to be worshipped only as he himself has commanded in Scripture, and not “according to the imaginations and devices of men”. In worship it is not enough that something is not forbidden: it must be commanded. That is why the Larger Catechism counts among the sins against the second commandment “the making any representation of God” in any kind of image. And the Directory took the place of the Prayer Book, left behind the ceremonies of human invention and laid down that “Festival days, vulgarly called Holy-days, having no warrant in the word of God, are not to be continued”, because the only holy day that Scripture commands is the Lord's Day.

The Confession leaves no doubt about the rest. It says that the sacrifice of the mass is “most abominably injurious to Christ's one only sacrifice”, declares transubstantiation repugnant to Scripture, to common sense and to reason, and calls monastic vows “superstitious and sinful snares”.

With the sacrifice, the priest fell too. The Church of England had ceased to teach the sacrifice of the mass, but its ordination book went on making “Bishops, Priests, and Deacons”, and its Prayer Book put into the mouth of the priest, at the sick man's side, the words “I absolve thee from all thy sins”. The Lutheran churches, for their part, taught that “private absolution ought to be retained in the churches”. The Standards know no priest but Christ, who executes that office “in his once offering himself a sacrifice without spot to God” and “in making continual intercession” for his people. That is why worship admits no mediation “of any other but of Christ alone”, and the Form of Government counts no priests among the officers that he has given to his Church, but “pastors, teachers, and other church-governors, and deacons”. The one who presides over worship is a minister of the Word, and what stands before the congregation is not an altar, but a table, so placed that the communicants may sit about it.

Christ, the only Head of the Church

With the worship, prelacy fell too. In the Church of England the king was the supreme governor of the Church and ruled it through archbishops and bishops, who had authority over the other ministers: they alone ordained, and pastors and congregations were subject to them. It was, in substance, the hierarchy that Rome had had, with the king in the place of the pope. By the Solemn League and Covenant, England and Scotland swore to extirpate it, and the Assembly replaced it with the government it found in the New Testament.

The Confession lays the foundation: “The Lord Jesus, as king and head of his Church, hath therein appointed a government in the hand of Church officers, distinct from the civil magistrate”. There is no other head of the Church but him: not a king, not a bishop, nor can the Pope of Rome be so in any sense. The Form of Government puts it into practice. Ministers are equal among themselves and govern the Church together with the elders; ministers are ordained by the presbyters, not by a bishop; and congregations are not left on their own, because, as it says, “It is lawful, and agreeable to the word of God, that there be a subordination of congregational, classical, provincial, and national assemblies, for the government of the church”. It is the government of the Church of the apostles, where the same men are called both bishops and presbyters.

A faith proved in the life of the churches

The Confession was the model from which the Congregationalists started in the Savoy Declaration, and the Baptists in the London Confession. The Shorter Catechism was learned by heart for generations in homes, schools and churches: in Scotland it was for more than two centuries the basis of teaching in the schools, and in New England it was printed in the primer from which children learned to read. But their value does not lie in their age or in how widely they spread, but in the fact that they set out, with order and clarity, what Scripture teaches, and prove it from Scripture at every step.

Reading that can be recommended without reserve

That is why, after the Bible itself, few books can be recommended with such confidence. At a time when many Christians cannot say precisely what they believe, these documents teach how to know the faith, defend it and pass it on: they teach the believer who studies alone, the father who wants to teach it to his children, and the church that wants to confess it with one voice.

Where to begin

There is no need to read everything, still less in one sitting. The simplest thing is to begin with the Shorter Catechism. It has 107 short questions, and the very first already points to where everything else is heading: “What is the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever.” A couple of questions a day is enough, read or listened to.

After that, the Confession of Faith is a good next step; it says the same things in more detail. Its first chapter, on the Holy Scripture, is the foundation for the rest, and it is well worth starting there. The Larger Catechism then helps you go deeper, above all in what it teaches about the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer. The Directories and the Form of Government can wait until you want to know how that faith is lived out in worship and in the Church.

Each section opens with a short introduction that places the document in its time, and it helps to read it first.

Not everything carries the same weight

There is a great deal of material here, and not all of it serves the Christian life in the same way. Part of it feeds faith. Another part, also of great value, matters above all for knowing the history.

First of all, of course, comes the Bible itself, which these documents do no more than summarize. Alongside it come the psalms, which are the Word of God and which the Directory directs to be sung in the congregation and in the home; the Psalter gathers them with their tunes. Then come the Catechisms and the Confession of Faith, which are the heart of this site. For everyday use two short writings are also a help: the Sum of Saving Knowledge, which was written to explain the way of salvation to plain people, and the Directory for Family Worship.

The Directory for the Publick Worship of God and the Form of Government deal with the order of worship and the government of the Church. Every Christian does well to know them, though they concern more closely those who bear some responsibility in it.

The rest of the Accompanying Documents (the Scottish covenants and the Solemn League and Covenant, the Scots Confession and the Second Book of Discipline, the revision of the Thirty-Nine Articles, the acts of approval, the prefaces of 1658) and the Revisions of the WCF serve above all to understand where these documents came from, in what circumstances they were written and how the churches received them. They are of great value, but they are not the place to begin, and anyone with no interest in history can leave them for later. The Solemn Acknowledgement is a partial exception, because its examination of the sins of a whole nation can also be read with profit for the soul.

How to read them

Slowly. These are seventeenth-century texts, written with great care, and they yield more when read little by little, and read again, than straight through.

With the Bible open. Almost every statement has beside it the passages of Scripture on which it rests. The Assembly added them so that any reader could check for himself that what is said is in the Word of God.

Without confusing them with it. These documents do not set themselves on a level with Scripture: they seek to summarize it faithfully, and they submit to it. The Confession itself says so when it declares that the Supreme Judge of every controversy is “the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture”, and that synods and councils “may err, and many have erred”, so that they are not to be the rule of faith, but “a help”.

And, if possible, in company. They were written to be taught in families and in churches, and they are better understood when read with others, asking about whatever is not clear.

How to use this site

The documents can be listened to in every language of the site except Arabic, and in almost all of them the text is highlighted as it is read aloud; with the play-all button, the sections play one after another. Each document can be downloaded whole as a PDF, and the search box at the top finds any word or phrase in all of them. The site is in fourteen languages, which you can switch from the flag next to the menu, and in the Online Bible there are several versions of the Bible to read, compare and search.

Some words that may be unfamiliar

Elder (or presbyter): An officer of the church chosen by the congregation to govern it together with the pastor.
Presbytery and synod: The presbytery is the assembly of the pastors and elders of several congregations; the synod brings together those of a region or of a whole nation.
Covenant: In doctrine, the relationship God establishes with man, in the covenant of works and in the covenant of grace. In history, the solemn oaths by which Scotland, England and Ireland bound themselves to maintain the Reformed faith.
Prelacy: The government of the Church by bishops and archbishops with authority over the other ministers. The Assembly rejected it.
Civil magistrate: The public authority, whether a king, a parliament or a judge.
Lord's Day: Sunday, which the Confession also calls the Christian Sabbath: one day in seven that God has set apart for worship and rest.
Sacraments: Baptism and the Lord's Supper, the two signs and seals instituted by Christ.