The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms

“Calvin did not believe a church would survive long without a catechism. He wrote to England telling them that in order for lasting reform to stick, they needed a catechism: 'it is like the seed to keep the good grain from dying out, and causing it to multiply from age to age.' ”

"That learned gathering of divines was representative of a movement which bequeathed to us a tradition of pastoral theology unsurpassed in the history of Christianity in the English-speaking world. The members of the Assembly (in their corporate work, lives and writings) offer to us a pattern of ministry that was biblically grounded, theologically informed, culturally engaged and pastorally effective. The devotional value of the Westminster documents has never before been so underestimated as it is today. And yet there waits a deep pool of living water for the refreshing of the soul for any who will take the time to drink. The divines provide for us both a profound, reverent, affectionate exposition of the doctrines of the Bible, and a worthy model of the function of truth in the pursuit of godliness, thus making a wonderful contribution to the cultivation of 'Christian piety' or 'heart religion.'”

"As far as I am able to judge by the information of all history of that kind, and by other evidences left us, the Christian world, since the days of the apostles, had never a synod of more excellent divines than this and the Synod of Dort.”

"I stand in awe at the profound level of theological and biblical precision manifest in the Westminster Confession of Faith. I would argue that the Westminster Standards are the most precise and accurate summaries of the content of biblical Christianity ever set forth in a creedal form. In my judgment, no historic confession surpasses in eloquence, grandeur, and theological accuracy the Westminster Confession of Faith.”

"In these forms of words we possess the most complete, the most fully elaborated and carefully guarded, the most perfect, and the most vital expression that has ever been framed by the hand of man, of all that enters into what we call evangelical religion, and of all that must be safeguarded if evangelical religion is to persist in the world. Surely the very possession of Standards like these differentiates the fortunate churches which have inherited them as those best furnished for the word and work of the Christian proclamation and the Christian life. May God Almighty infuse their strength into our bones and their beauty into our flesh, and enable us to justify our inheritance by unfolding into life, in all its completeness and richness and divinity, the precious gospel which they have enfolded for us in their protecting envelope of sound words!”