Helvetic Confessions

Yeah, in fact, this is a great, I think, very pastoral application that supports what you guys are saying.

The Second Helvetic Confession, the preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.

Wherefore, when this Word of God is now preached in the church by preachers lawfully called, we believe that the very Word of God is proclaimed and received by the faithful." and that neither any other word of God is to be invented nor is to be expected from heaven, and that now the word itself which is preached is to be regarded, not the minister who preaches.

For even if he be evil and a sinner, Nevertheless, the word of God remains still true and good.

Let's continue.

The second Helvetic confession, chapter 11.

Okay.

This is reformed.

We also believe and teach that the eternal son of the eternal God was made the son of man from the seed of Abraham and David, not from coitus of the man and the Ebionite said, but was most chastely conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the ever virgin Mary.

as the evangelical history carefully explains to us.

So the Helvetic Confession affirms the perpetual and ever virginity of Mary.

Anthony Stafford in The Life and Death of the Virgin Mary, 1635.

And so the book of God is no dead book.

And then there's a great statement from the Second Helvetic Confession written in 1566 by Heinrich Bollinger Zwingli's successor at Zurich, where he says that When ministers lawfully called and ordained proclaim the Word of God, it is the Word of God.

Now, this doesn't mean that they automatically wield the Word of God, but rather they make this distinction saying there's the external call of the gospel that must be accompanied by the internal call of the gospel or the work of the Spirit.

And so that's why we can say there's a greater emphasis— And we can say even to freedom and emphasis upon the sovereign work of the Spirit, both in the preaching of the Word, the reading of the Word, and the administration of the sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper.

Formulated in 1561, you've got the 1939 articles or the Lambert articles.

You've got the Second Helvetic Confession, right? And so the idea was that unlike the authority or like the councils, unlike the creeds, the confessions are not...

They are not even co-ordinate with the Word of God, but rather they are subordinate to the Word of God.

This was the principle upon which Sola Scriptura was built, that only Scripture is the sole and infallible rule of faith.