THE CONFESSION OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

I believe and confess my Lord God, eternal, infinite, immeasurable, incomprehensible, and invisible, one in substance, and three in person, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, who by His almighty power and wisdom, has not only of nothing created heaven and earth, and all things therein contained, and man after His own image, that He might in Him be glorified, but also by His fatherly providence governs, maintains, and preserves the same, according to the purpose of His will.

I believe also and confess Jesus Christ the only Savior and Messiah, who being equal with God, made Himself of no reputation, but took on Him the shape of a servant, and became man, in all things like unto us, except sin, to assure us of mercy and forgiveness: for when through our father Adam’s transgression, we were become children of perdition, there was no means to bring us from the yoke of sin and damnation, but only Jesus Christ our Lord, who giving us that by grace, which was by nature His, made us through faith the children of God, who when that fullness of time was come, was conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, born of the virgin Mary (according to the flesh) and preached in earth the gospel of salvation, till at length by tyranny of the priests, He was guiltlessly condemned under Pontius Pilate, the president of Jewry, and most slanderously hanged on the cross between two thieves, as a notorious trespasser, where taking upon Him the punishment of our sins, He delivered us from the curse of the Law.

And for as much as He being only God, could not feel death, neither being only man, could overcome death, He joined both together, and suffered His humanity to be punished with most cruel death, feeling in Himself the anger and severe judgment of God, even as He had been in extreme torments of hell, and, therefore, cried with a loud voice, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Thus of His mercy: without compulsion, He offered up Himself as the only sacrifice to purge the sins of the world, so that all other sacrifices for sins are blasphemous and derogate from the sufficiency hereof, which death, albeit it did sufficiently reconcile us to God, yet the Scriptures commonly do attribute our regeneration to His resurrection. For as by rising again from the grave the third day He conquered death, even so the victory of our faith stands in His resurrection: and, therefore, without the one, we cannot feel the benefits of the other. For as by His death sin was taken away, so our righteousness was restored by His resurrection. And because He would accomplish all things, and take possession for us in His kingdom, He ascended into heaven, to enlarge the same kingdom, by the abundant power of His Spirit, by whom we are most assured of His continual intercession towards God the Father for us.

“The Confession of Faith in the Geneva Bible,” in Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation, ed., James T. Dennison, (Grand Rapids Michigan: Reformation Heritage Books, 2010), 2:182-183.

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