The Westminster Confession

On 12 June 1643 the Lords and Commons of the English Parliament, having resolved that government of the church by bishops was “evil” and should be taken away, called an assembly of divines to advise them (Ordinance calling the Westminster Assembly, 12 June 1643). It was to meet at Westminster, by London, on 1 July and to treat of the liturgy, discipline, government and doctrine of the Church of England, on such matters as Parliament put to it and no others (Ordinance calling the Westminster Assembly, 12 June 1643).

In September the House of Commons took the Solemn League and Covenant, whose signers swore to preserve the Reformed religion in Scotland, to reform religion in England and Ireland “according to the Word of God, and the example of the best reformed Churches”, to bring the churches of the three kingdoms to the nearest uniformity in religion, confession of faith, form of church government, directory for worship and catechising, and to extirpate popery and prelacy (Solemn League and Covenant, art. 1–2). The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland had already commissioned five ministers, Samuel Rutherford among them, and three elders to treat with the divines at Westminster (Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 19 August 1643, commission (pp. 93–94)). The minutes show Rutherford in debate: in October 1645, when a member argued that Christ in some sense paid a price for all, he denied that the general offer of the gospel requires it (Minutes of the Westminster Assembly, Session 522, 22 October 1645 (pp. 152–154)).

The Confession was presented to Parliament as the Assembly’s “humble advice” and printed in 1647 (Westminster Confession title of the edition of 1647). Its first chapter lists the books of Scripture and says that the Apocrypha are “no part of the Canon” (Westminster Confession 1.2–4, 1.6, 1.10). The authority of Scripture depends “wholly upon God”; the whole counsel of God on all things necessary for his glory and for man’s salvation, faith and life is either expressly set down in it or may be deduced from it “by good and necessary consequence”; and the supreme judge in controversies of religion is “the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture” (Westminster Confession 1.2–4, 1.6, 1.10).

The third chapter treats God’s eternal decree, the matter judged at the Synod of Dort: God has “freely and unchangeably” ordained whatever comes to pass, “yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures”; some men and angels are predestinated to everlasting life and others foreordained to everlasting death, and those chosen to life are chosen “without any foresight of faith or good works” (Westminster Confession 3.1, 3.3, 3.5). The Shorter Catechism opens with the question of man’s chief end and answers: “to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever” (Westminster Shorter Catechism q. 1).

The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland approved the Confession on 27 August 1647 as “a common Confession of Faith for the three kingdomes”, with a reservation about the magistrate’s power to call synods (Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 27 August 1647 (pp. 158–159)). In 1690 the Scottish Parliament ratified it as the public confession of that church (Confession of Faith Ratification Act 1690 ratifying clause).