(Confessio Helvetica prior, also called Second Confession of Basel, Confemio Basiliensis posterior, in distinction from the Basel Confes sion of 1534; see Basel, Confession of.); The reformatory movement of Switzerland was for a long time with out a uniform formula of confession, each city having its own confession. It was only in 1536 that the necessity for uniformity was felt, when Pope Paul III. (q.v.) convened a general council, to meet in Mantua in the following year. The desirability of a union between the Reformed and the Lutherans was recognized, and Capito of Augsburg and Butzer of Strasburg especially tried to influence the Swiss Reformed in the direction of union. Luther expressed a longing for peace in several letters to tipper German cities. The chief task of the mediators was to have a Swiss formula of the Lord's Supper prepared which would meet the approval of Luther. At the end of 1534 Butter held a convention of Swabian cities on the question of the Lord's Supper at Constants, to which the Zurich Reformers sent a Confesfio super eucharistia with the approval of Basel, Schaffhausen, and St. Gall. It acknowledged that the true body and the true blood of Christ are really present in the Lord's Supper, and are offered to the believers who eat the true body by faith. All ideas of substance were guarded against, but the people of Bern refused their signature. Even a more moderate formula, drawn up by theologians of Zurich and Basel in 1535 at Aarau, did not satisfy the people of Bern. They desired a general meeting, and this was convened by the magistrates of Zurich, Bern, Basel, Schaffhaueen, St. Gall, Mühlhausen, and Biel, on Jan. 30, 1536, at Basel. A general confession was here drawn up by Bullinger of Zurich, Myconius and Grynaeus of Basel, and others. They were joined later by Leo Jud of Zurich and Megander of Bern, and still later by Butter and Capito.
The confession declared emphatically that the Lord's Supper is not merely a human act of confession, but that the bread and wine are food and nourishment of spiritual and eternal life. Nevertheless, the confession did not go beyond the statement of the spiritual partaking of the person of the crucified Christ. Speaking generally, it removed the peculiarities of Zwinglian theology most offensive to the Lutherans in the spirit of the Zwinglian Reformation. This spirit finds expression in the arrangement of the whole-the Scripture, its inter pretation and "purpose" forms the basis (arts. i.-v.), upon which the doctrines of salvation (vi.-iii.) and then, with characteristic minuteness of detail, the doctrines of the Church, the Word, the sacraments, and church ordinances (xiv.-xxvii.) are dis cussed. In particular points the Reformed spirit is recognizable from the still intact union of the new life with the faith of salvation (art. xiii.); also from the doctrine of the Church, which places the invisible congregation of the exalted Christ in the foreground, and emphasizes as the sign of the visible congregation " " common, public, and orderly dis cipline " (art. w.).
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