Gallic Confession (1559)
French
Protestant statement of religious belief. Protestantism began to take hold during
the second and third quarters of the sixteenth century. In 1555 a congregation
was organized in Paris, holding regular services and having a formal
organization; and during the years immediately following, similar groups sprang
up elsewhere in France. In May, 1559, representatives of these congregations
met in Paris under the moderatorship of Francois de Morel, the local pastor,
for their first national synod, at which a system of church discipline was
approved. This assembly received from Geneva a draft confession of faith in
thirty-five articles and expanded it into forty. These articles began with the
Triune God, revealed in his written Word, the Bible. Then they affirmed
adherence to the three ecumenical creeds, Apostles', Nicene, and Athanasian. They
proceeded to expound basic Protestant beliefs: man's corruption through sin,
Jesus Christ's essential deity and vicarious atonement, justification by grace
through faith, the gift of the regenerating Holy Spirit, the divine origin of
the church and its two sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, and the
place of the political state as ordained by God "for the order and peace
of society." They asserted the doctrine of predestination in a moderate
form.
This revamped confession was adopted by the synod, and in 1560 a copy was presented to King Francis II with a plea for tolerance for its adherents. At the seventh national synod, held at La Rochelle in 1571, this Gallic Confession was revised and reaffirmed. It remained the official confessional statement of French Protestantism for over four centuries.
See also CONFESSIONS OF
FAITH.