Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history. On this episode we are

beginning a series I've entitled confessing like it's 1559 that year

1559 was a very busy year for confessions. There is the French confession of faith, there's a Polish

confession of faith, an Hungarian confession of faith, and even an Italian

confession of faith. All of these have touch points back to Geneva and of course the leader of the

Reformed Church in Geneva, John Calvin. On this episode, let's jump into a

confession that was very near and dear to Calvin's heart.

He was, after all, a son of France.

And so let's look at the French confession of faith.

In 1557, a group of pastors in Paris drafted an 18 article

confession of faith. They sent it off to Calvin and he studied it very carefully, made many annotations on it, and we actually

have that copy with his handwriting preserved and it's there in Geneva.

Well, two years later in 1559 this group of ministers in Paris

expanded and they called for an historic moment it was the first National Synod of the French Reformed Church.

A group of ministers were sent from Geneva and they had an expanded version of that

confession of faith in their hands. It now consisted of 35

articles and so they arrived at Paris to participate in the Synod. While in

Paris five more articles were drafted up were stuck at the front of the confession and so we have it the 1559 French confession of faith with 40 articles.

The confession begins with the letter to the king.

This is King Francis II.

It pleads their case as reformers, as a church that is being unduly persecuted, that they are simply standing up for

the word of God, that they are constituting and constructing a church around the word of God and not around as they say in the letter,

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