The Scots Confession

John Knox tells in his History how the Confession came to be written. The Parliament of August 1560 asked the barons and ministers who had petitioned for reform to set down the sum of the doctrine they wished established, and they presented this text within four days; elsewhere he names himself and five other ministers as those who had drawn up “the Doctrin”. It was read in Parliament article by article and approved by vote. The parliamentary record closes it with the note that it was ratified by the three estates at Edinburgh on 17 August 1560.

Its preface offers to correct anything that can be shown from Scripture to be amiss. Among its twenty-five articles, the eighteenth names three marks by which the true church is known: the true preaching of the word of God, the right administration of the sacraments, and church discipline rightly administered. The twenty-first rejects both the view that the sacraments are bare signs and the doctrine of transubstantiation. The twenty-fourth gives rulers the duty of maintaining true religion and suppressing idolatry. The text is the reformers’ own statement and speaks of the Roman church throughout in the language of a party at war with it.