Reformed Founders

The Second Helvetic Confession

The Second Helvetic Confession

Written 1561 or 1562 · Printed at Zurich, March 1566 · 30 chapters

In brief

The Second Helvetic Confession is a 30-chapter statement of the Reformed faith by Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor in Zurich. He wrote it for himself around 1561 or 1562 and added it to his will in 1564. In March 1566 it was printed at Zurich, at the request of Elector Frederick III of the Palatinate, in the name of most of the Swiss Reformed churches and Geneva. Churches in Scotland, Hungary, France, and Poland approved it between 1566 and 1578. “Helvetic” means Swiss.1

A private confession that went public

Bullinger wrote it in Latin, for his own use. Philip Schaff, the 19th-century historian of the creeds, calls it “an abiding testimony of the faith in which he had lived and in which he wished to die.” Schaff and Britannica date that first draft to 1562. The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland and the PC(USA) date it to 1561.2

In 1564 plague came to Zurich, and Bullinger caught it. He expanded the confession and added it to his will for the city council.3

Then a German prince needed it. Late in 1565, Elector Frederick III of the Palatinate asked Bullinger for a clear and full statement of the Reformed faith (by one account he wrote to Theodore Beza in Geneva too). Frederick was due before the Imperial Diet at Augsburg in 1566, which was meant, as Schaff puts it, “to act on his alleged apostasy.” Bullinger sent the text he already had. Beza came to Zurich for talks, and Bullinger accepted a few small changes, some of them to meet objections from Bern.4

Christoph Froschauer the Younger printed it at Zurich in March 1566; the preface is dated March 1. Frederick wanted it in Latin and German, and Bullinger made the German translation himself. Beza oversaw a French one in Geneva.5

Before the confession itself, the first edition prints 2 older texts: the imperial edict of 380, issued in the names of the emperors Gratian, Valentinian, and Theodosius, and a creed printed under the name of Pope Damasus. The title gives the reason. The ministers published it to testify that they remain in the unity of the true and ancient church of Christ and spread no new or erroneous teachings. The preface says the same about the churches of their own day:

So that careful readers will discover that we have not separated and broken off by wicked schism from the holy Churches of Christ in Germany, France, England, and other nations in the Christian world; inasmuch as we truly agree with them all and each, in this confessed Christian verity, and do embrace these Churches with sincere love.

Preface, translated by Owen Jones (1865)6

Who signed it

The 1566 title page names the churches: Zurich, Bern, Schaffhausen, St. Gallen, Chur and the Graubünden leagues, Mulhouse, and Biel, with the ministers of Geneva joining them. Basel, which had its own confession, held out for a long time and signed later. Neuchâtel joined in 1568.7

In Scotland, the church’s ministers wrote to Beza from St Andrews in September 1566 to approve “every chapter and every sentence,” with one exception. Chapter 24 approves of churches that freely keep festivals for Christ’s birth, circumcision, passion, resurrection, and ascension, and for the sending of the Holy Spirit. The Scots kept none of them:

these festivals at the present time obtain no place among us; for we dare not religiously celebrate any other feast-day than what the divine oracles have prescribed.

The Scottish ministers to Beza, St Andrews, September 15668

Hungary’s Reformed ministers accepted it at the Synod of Debrecen in 1567, and France’s national synod at La Rochelle approved it in 1571. Poland followed in the 1570s; Schaff gives 1571 and 1578, Britannica 1578.9

Britannica dates the start of the “Reformed tradition,” which it calls “the fusion of Zwinglian and Calvinist thought,” to this confession and to the 1549 agreement between Bullinger and Calvin.10

What it covers

Schaff calls it “in substance a restatement of the First Helvetic Confession, in the same order of topics, but with great improvements in matter and form.” Here are its 30 chapters, in the titles of Schaff’s English version:11

1. Of the Holy Scripture Being the True Word of God 2. Of Interpreting the Holy Scriptures; and of Fathers, Councils, and Traditions 3. Of God; the Unity and the Trinity 4. Of Idols; or of Images of God, of Christ, and of Saints 5. Of the Adoration, Worship, and Invocation of God Through the Only Mediator Jesus Christ 6. Of the Providence of God 7. Of the Creation of All Things; of Angels, the Devil, and Man 8. Of Man’s Fall; Sin, and the Cause of Sin 9. Of Free-Will, and So of Man’s Power and Ability 10. Of the Predestination of God and the Election of the Saints 11. Of Jesus Christ, Being True God and Man, and the Only Saviour of the World 12. Of the Law of God 13. Of the Gospel of Jesus Christ: Also of Promises; of the Spirit and of the Letter 14. Of Repentance, and the Conversion of Man 15. Of the True Justification of the Faithful 16. Of Faith and Good Works; of Their Reward, and of Man’s Merit 17. Of the Catholic and Holy Church of God, and of the One Only Head of the Church 18. Of the Ministers of the Church, Their Institution and Offices 19. Of the Sacraments of the Church of Christ 20. Of Holy Baptism 21. Of the Holy Supper of the Lord 22. Of Holy and Ecclesiastical Meetings 23. Of the Prayers of the Church, of Singing, and of Canonical Hours 24. Of Holydays, Fasts, and Choice of Meats 25. Of Catechising, of Comforting and Visiting the Sick 26. Of the Burial of the Faithful, and of the Care Which Is to Be Had for Such as Are Dead; of Purgatory, and the Appearing of Spirits 27. Of Rites, Ceremonies, and Things Indifferent 28. Of the Goods of the Church, and the Right Use of Them 29. Of Single Life, Wedlock, and Household Government 30. Of the Magistracy

In its own words

These passages come from the English version in Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom (1882). Schaff names no translator; he says several chapters were taken, with slight changes, from the English Harmony of Reformed confessions first printed at Cambridge in 1586.12

Who settles a dispute. Bullinger respected the church fathers, “as far as they agree with the Scriptures.” The final word belongs to God speaking in Scripture:

Therefore, in controversies of religion or matters of faith, we can not admit any other judge than God himself, pronouncing by the Holy Scriptures what is true, what is false, what is to be followed, or what to be avoided.

Chapter 213

Predestination, pastorally. Chapter 10 teaches election and then turns straight to how a believer should think about it. It warns against guessing who is lost:

yet we must hope well of all, and not rashly judge any man to be a reprobate

And it tells the anxious where to look:

Let Christ, therefore, be our looking-glass, in whom we may behold our predestination.

Chapter 1014

One church. Bullinger used “catholic” in its old sense, meaning universal:

it follows necessarily that there is but one Church, which we therefore call Catholic because it is universal, spread abroad through all the parts and quarters of the world, and reaches unto all times, and is not limited within the compass either of time or place.

Chapter 1715

The Lord’s Supper. Believers receive Christ’s true body, by faith. And Christ, whose body is in heaven, is present spiritually when the church celebrates the Supper:

by spiritual meat we mean not any imaginary thing, but the very body of our Lord Jesus, given to us; which yet is received by the faithful not corporeally, but spiritually by faith

Yet the Lord is not absent from his Church when she celebrates the Supper.

Chapter 2116

For chapter 1’s lines on preaching, see Bullinger’s page.

Four common claims, checked

“Its first chapter is headed ‘The Preaching of the Word of God Is the Word of God.’” The idea is in Bullinger’s text. The phrase is a note in the margin of the 1566 Latin: Prædicatio uerbi Dei est uerbum Dei. Schaff’s English leaves the margin notes out. The heading people quote in capitals comes from the English text in Arthur C. Cochrane’s Reformed Confessions of the 16th Century (1966), reprinted in the PC(USA) Book of Confessions.17

“It was written to reconcile Lutheran and Zwinglian views.” Partly. Union with the Lutherans was the setting of the First Helvetic Confession of 1536. The Second began as Bullinger’s personal confession. When it was printed in 1566, it was meant to back Frederick III by showing that the Reformed agreed with other Protestants and held the ancient faith.18

“Frederick III had it translated into German.” The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica says so. Frederick did want it in German, but Bullinger made the translation himself, and it was printed in Zurich.19

“Scotland adopted it in 1566.” Mostly. The Scottish ministers approved it with one exception: the holy days of chapter 24 (see above).20

Questions people ask

Who wrote the Second Helvetic Confession?

Heinrich Bullinger, the chief pastor of Zurich from 1531 to 1575. Beza took part in talks in Zurich before it was printed, and Bullinger accepted a few small changes. Read Bullinger’s page.21

When was the Second Helvetic Confession written?

Bullinger wrote the first version in 1561 or 1562 (the sources differ), expanded it in 1564, and saw it printed at Zurich in March 1566.22

What is the difference between the First and Second Helvetic Confessions?

The First was drawn up at Basel in 1536 by Bullinger, Oswald Myconius, Simon Grynaeus, Leo Jud, and Kaspar Megander, in 27 articles. Martin Bucer and Wolfgang Capito were at Basel too, and some sources give Bucer a hand in it. It came out of an effort at union with the Lutherans and the call for a general church council. The Second is Bullinger’s own work, in 30 chapters, and covers the same topics in the same order at much greater length.23

Is the Second Helvetic Confession still used today?

Yes. It is in the PC(USA)’s Book of Confessions, in the English text from Cochrane’s 1966 collection; the book goes back to the one the United Presbyterian Church adopted in 1967. And the Reformed churches of Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia name it in their shared 2009 constitution, with the Apostles’ Creed and the Heidelberg Catechism.24

Did John Calvin help write it?

No. Calvin died on May 27, 1564, almost 2 years before it was printed. Geneva’s ministers signed it, and Beza took part in the talks in Zurich. Bullinger and Calvin had already agreed on the Lord’s Supper in 1549, in the Consensus Tigurinus. See Zwingli vs Calvin.25

What does “Helvetic” mean?

Swiss. It comes from Helvetia, a Latin name for Switzerland that Renaissance humanists took from the ancient Helvetii. The 1566 title page describes the signers as ministers “in Heluetia.”26

Read it yourself

  • English Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vol. 3 (1882), appendix, pp. 831-909. Free at the Internet Archive and as an online text at CCEL.
  • Latin, the first edition Confessio et expositio simplex orthodoxae fidei (Zurich: Froschauer, March 1566). Free at e-rara.
  • Modern English the text from Arthur C. Cochrane’s Reformed Confessions of the 16th Century (1966), in the PC(USA) Book of Confessions (free PDF), sections 5.001 to 5.260.

By Casey Case · Sources last checked October 12, 2026

Sources

  1. Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vol. 1, The History of Creeds, 6th ed. (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1919), pp. 390-396, Internet Archive; Emidio Campi, “Helvetische Bekenntnisse,” Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (2001, edited 2007); Britannica, “Helvetic Confession.” All accessed Oct. 12, 2026. ↩︎
  2. Schaff, Creeds, vol. 1, p. 392; Britannica, “Helvetic Confession“; Campi, “Helvetische Bekenntnisse“; Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Book of Confessions (Louisville, 2016), introduction to the Second Helvetic Confession, p. 76. ↩︎
  3. Schaff, Creeds, vol. 1, p. 392 (“during the raging of the pestilence”); Campi, “Helvetische Bekenntnisse.” ↩︎
  4. Schaff, Creeds, vol. 1, p. 393; Campi, “Helvetische Bekenntnisse,” which says Frederick wrote to both Beza and Bullinger and that Bern raised some objections, met with small corrections. ↩︎
  5. Confessio et expositio simplex orthodoxae fidei (Zurich: Christoph Froschauer, March 1566), title page and end of the preface, Zentralbibliothek Zürich, e-rara; Schaff, Creeds, vol. 1, p. 393, which gives the day as March 12; Campi, “Helvetische Bekenntnisse“; Helmut Meyer, “Froschauer, Christoph,” Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz, on the elder Froschauer’s death from plague in 1564 and his nephew Christoph the Younger. ↩︎
  6. 1566 edition, e-rara, title page, preface, edict (“EDICTVM IMPERATORIVM”), and “SYMBOLVM DAMASI”; Schaff, Creeds, vol. 1, p. 395, which notes that several creeds bear Damasus’s name. The title is paraphrased from the 1566 Latin. Preface from Owen Jones, The Church of the Living God; also, the Swiss and Belgian Confessions (London: Caryl Book Society, 1865), p. 84, Internet Archive. Schaff’s English omits the preface, and he calls Jones’s translation “complete, but inaccurate” (vol. 1, p. 390), so this passage was checked against the 1566 Latin. ↩︎
  7. 1566 edition, title page, e-rara; Schaff, Creeds, vol. 1, pp. 393-394; Campi, “Helvetische Bekenntnisse.” ↩︎
  8. “The General Assembly to Theodore Beza,” St Andrews, September 4, 1566, in The Works of John Knox, ed. David Laing, vol. 6 (Edinburgh: Thomas George Stevenson, 1864), pp. 544-550, quoted from pp. 547-548, Internet Archive. Laing’s English is the Parker Society translation in Zurich Letters (1842). Chapter 24: Schaff, Creeds, vol. 3, p. 899. ↩︎
  9. Schaff, Creeds, vol. 1, p. 394; Britannica, “Helvetic Confession.” ↩︎
  10. Britannica, “Heinrich Bullinger,” accessed Oct. 12, 2026. ↩︎
  11. Schaff, Creeds, vol. 1, p. 394; Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vol. 3, 3rd ed. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1882), appendix, “English Version of the Second Helvetic Confession,” pp. 831-909, Internet Archive. ↩︎
  12. Schaff, Creeds, vol. 3, p. 831. ↩︎
  13. Schaff, Creeds, vol. 3, chapter 2, pp. 833-834, Internet Archive. ↩︎
  14. Schaff, Creeds, vol. 3, chapter 10, pp. 848-849, Internet Archive. The Latin has speculum, often translated “mirror.” ↩︎
  15. Schaff, Creeds, vol. 3, chapter 17, p. 869, Internet Archive. Schaff prints “Catholic” in small capitals. ↩︎
  16. Schaff, Creeds, vol. 3, chapter 21, p. 893 and p. 895. ↩︎
  17. 1566 edition, fol. 1v, margin, e-rara; Schaff, Creeds, vol. 3, pp. 237 and 831-832; PC(USA), Book of Confessions, 5.004 and the credit on p. 77, note 1, which reprints the text from Cochrane’s Reformed Confessions of the 16th Century (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1966). ↩︎
  18. Campi, “Helvetische Bekenntnisse,” which says Frederick wanted to prove the Reformed agreed with the Protestants inside and outside the Empire; Schaff, Creeds, vol. 1, pp. 388 and 392-395. ↩︎
  19. “Helvetic Confessions,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed. (1911), vol. 13, p. 253, Wikisource; Schaff, Creeds, vol. 1, p. 393; Campi, “Helvetische Bekenntnisse“; 1566 edition, title page. ↩︎
  20. Works of John Knox, vol. 6, p. 547. ↩︎
  21. Schaff, Creeds, vol. 1, pp. 390 and 393; Hans Ulrich Bächtold, “Bullinger, Heinrich,” Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (1998, edited 2011). ↩︎
  22. See notes 2 to 5. ↩︎
  23. Schaff, Creeds, vol. 1, pp. 388-389 and 394; Campi, “Helvetische Bekenntnisse,” which names “Johann Jakob Grynaeus,” born 1540; the HLS article “Grynaeus, Simon” (edited 2009) says Simon took part in drafting the First Helvetic Confession in 1536; Britannica, “Helvetic Confession,” which says Bucer assisted. ↩︎
  24. PC(USA), Book of Confessions (2016), contents and 5.001 to 5.260; Britannica, “Book of Confessions“; A Magyar Református Egyház Alkotmánya (Constitution of the Hungarian Reformed Church, adopted at Debrecen, May 22, 2009), §1(1), consolidated text with 2013 amendments, reformatus.hu. ↩︎
  25. Schaff, Creeds, vol. 1, pp. 390, 393, and 433; 1566 edition, title page; Francis Higman, “Consensus tigurinus,” Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (2000, edited 2005). ↩︎
  26. PC(USA), Book of Confessions, p. 76; Thomas Maissen, “Humanismus,” Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (2005, edited 2015), on Enea Silvio Piccolomini’s Helvetia (1458); André Holenstein, “Corpus helveticum,” Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (2005), on the humanists’ revival of the Helvetii’s name; 1566 edition, title page. ↩︎