Today i wanted to share a brief passage from a old Christian text. Below is a short history of the Canons of Dort, and following the history is one of the most beautiful passages of theology I have ever read. Enjoy. mark
The oldest of the doctrinal standards of the Christian Reformed Church is
the Confession of Faith, popularly known as the Belgic Confession, following
the seventeenth-century Latin designation "Confessio Belgica." "Belgica"
referred to the whole of the
divided into the
Guido de Bres, a preacher of the Reformed churches of the
died a martyr to the faith in the year 1567. During the sixteenth century the
churches in this country were exposed to the most terrible persecution by the
Roman Catholic government. To protest against this cruel oppression, and to
prove to the persecutors that the adherents of the Reformed faith were not
rebels, as was laid to their charge, but law-abiding citizens who professed
the true Christian doctrine according to the Holy Scriptures, de Bres prepared
this confession in the year 1561.
Article 1: Belief
We all believe in our hearts
and confess with our mouths
that there is a single
and simple
spiritual being,
whom we call God
eternal,
incomprehensible,
invisible,
unchangeable,
infinite,
almighty;
completely wise,
just,
and good,
and the overflowing source
of all good.
Article 2: The Means by Which We Know God
of the universe,
since that universe is before our eyes
like a beautiful book
in which all creatures,
great and small,
are as letters
to make us ponder
the invisible things of God:
his eternal power
and his divinity,
as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20.
All these things are enough to convict men and to leave them without excuse.
Second, he makes himself known to us more openly
by his holy and divine Word,
as much as we need in this life,
for his glory
and for the salvation of his own.