Belgic Confession

The Confession of Faith, popularly known as the Belgic Confession, is a doctrinal standard document to which many of the Reformed churches subscribe. The Confession is part of the Three Forms of Unity.

The name Belgic Confession follows the seventeenth-century Latin designation Confessio Belgica. Belgica referred to the whole of the Low Countries, both north and south, which today is divided into the Netherlands and Belgium. The confession's chief author was Guido de Bres also known as Guy or Guido de Bray, a preacher of the Reformed churches of the Netherlands, who died a martyr to the faith in 1567.

History

During the sixteenth century the churches in the Netherlands were exposed to terrible suppression by the Roman Catholic government. To protest against this suppression and to prove to the Catholic authorities that the adherents of the Reformed faith were not rebels, as was laid to their charge, but law-abiding citizens who believed they professed the true Christian doctrine according to the Holy Scriptures, de Bres prepared this confession in 1561. In the following year a copy was sent to King Philip II, together with an address in which the petitioners declared that they were ready to obey the government in all lawful things but that they would "offer their backs to stripes, their tongues to knives, their mouths to gags, and their whole bodies to the fire," rather than deny the truth expressed in this confession.

Although the immediate purpose of securing...
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