The Church of the Reformation asserted the sole au- thority of Holy Scripture in matters of doctrine; and al- though it received the a?cumenical symbols, it deter- mined their character as being testinwnia fithi simply, i. e. testimonies certifying tlie understanding of the Word of God current in the Church at a given time. The worth of confessions is accordingly made to tlepend on their agreement with the Scriptures, and they may be altered and improved. The autiior of the A uffusiana repeatedly uiulertook a thorough revision of his work ; Luther did the same with the iSmalccild A rticles ; and the evangelical estates not only apfiroved of Melanc- thon's Varia/a. but in 1537 directed their theologians at the Convention of Smalcalil to revise the confession. The beginnings of an obligatory support of the confes- sion are, however, apparent at au earl\'.day. Subscrip- tion to the Aiif/sbuiy Confession was occasionally re- quired during the fourth decade of the 16th century, and in 1533 the theological faculty of Wittenberg were required by statute to teach sound doctrine as contained in the ancient creeds and the Aiigsburr/ Confession, A growing disjiosition to insist on uniformity of teaching became manifest, and it was this which gave rise to the Osiandrian Controversies (q. v.). In the middle of the 16th century the various corpora doctrinm began to ap- pear: in 1560 the Corpus Doctr. Philippicum ; in 1561 the C, D. romeraniciim ; in 1567 the C. D. Pritthenicinn, etc. The conclusion was made in 1576 with the For- mula of Concord (q. v.), and this names the writings to which symbolical authority is given b_v reason of a unanimous approval of their teachings, and is itself in- cluded among them. A rigid subscription was demand- ed in the countries where these writings were received by the civil government. The dispute with Calixtus (q. v.) led the Lutheran theologians to postulate a me- diate inspiration, and consequently a divine authority, for the symbolical books; Ijiit the distinction between the canon of Scripture and such standards is nevertheless constantly preserved in word, if not always in fact. In reality, the symbolical books were regarded as a Kavwv rfji; TviaTHOQ throughout the 17th century side by side with the Scriptures, inasmuch as the faith was grounded directly on the symbol rather than on the Bible.
The Reformed churches have produced no written symbol which has formal autliority over them all; l)ut they have clierislicd a very detinite conviction of con- fessional unity among them, as may appear from the fact that the difl'erent Refortned confessions, and partic- ularly the more important of them, the Helvetica, Galli- cana, Scoticii, Beltjiea, etc., are received in all such churches as embodiments of the pure type of doctrine, and from the further fact tiiat the members of a Church holding to one of these confessions may pass bevond the territory within which such confession has authority, but cannot pass from one confession to another l>y join- ing a Church which adheres to another of the Reformed confessions. All such persons are regarded simply as members of the Reformed Church. The number of Re- formed symbols was inHueiitial also in directing atten- tion upon their substance rather than upon the formu- lated letter, it being conceded that witli respect to the latter the confession is not infallible and incapable of further improvement. Such changes, however, are not to be needlessly' undertaken, nor may individuals sub- ject the confessional standards at will to experiments in the interests of novelty. Great care has ever been ex- ercised to preserve the purity of the confessional sym- bols, in some instances carried to the extent of requiring the subscription of the clergy and the officers of state to doctrinal standards settled by law. (Basle and Geneva even required such subscription of the body of their citi- zens. The Reformed Church of East Friesland alone never required subscription to its symbol.) The 17th centurj' produced symbols in this body also, e. g. the Canons of Dort and the Helvetic Consensus, both of which go beyond even the Formula of Concoj-d in scholastic rigidness. The beginning of the 18th cen- tury saw a reaction, however: Spener already ventured to doubt the necessity of symbols, since the Church had so long existed without them, and expressed his dissent from the doctrine of their inspiration and infallibility. A century afterwards it was conceded that obligation to adhere to the symbol holds only with reference to es- sentials; and a majority of critics asserted that the un- essential, not directly religious and merely theological, which deserves no place at all in a creed, was greatly in excess over that which is really essential. The conflict with rationalism caused many modifications in the views of tlie churches; but subscription to the creed was gen- erally insisted on, though the obligation thus assumed was often but lightly felt. In the present period, the reaction against rationalism has occasioned a revival of 17th-century confessionalism in man}- quarters; and, on the other hand, a liberal tendency requires a break- ing-away from the authority of sj'mbols as being simply moninnents of the faith of our fathers and evi- dences of former conquests, and also as being adverse to the genius of Protestantism. See Confession of
F.\ITH.
The abstract right of the Church to require submis- sion to its standards is evident, but it is a question which must be answered, May the Protestant Church assert that right, and, if it may, then to what extent? It is evident that the more recent symbols, as being more restrictive and separative in character than the older confessions and creeds, are of inferior authority. It is also clear that the spirit and substance of a confes- sion have greater importance than attaches to the form or letter. Neither the Auysburg Confession nor the Heidelberg Catechism constitutes the Protestant Confes- sion of Faith, and must be regarded simply as essays towards formulating the body of Protestant doctrine, which may be tested by criticism and revised. Doctri- nal iHirity in tlie concrete is, after all, a relative thing, and the Church is under the necessity of persisting in the work of grounding its teachings more solidly on the Word of God and of developing them further towards their ultimate consummation. A distinction must ac- cordingly be admitted between heterodoxy of a more or less serious tyiie, which consists in departing in some