5, and XIX., Sec.2.The Apostles' and Nicene Creeds are also universally received by our churches.

Hence any District Synod, connected with the General Synod, may, with perfect consistency, adopt this Platform.
DOCTRINAL BASIS OR CREED.
Whereas it is the duty of the followers of Christ to profess his [sic] religion before the world (Matt.x.

32), not only by their holy walk and conversation, but also by "walking in the apostles' doctrines" (1 Cor.xiv.

32), and bearing testimony "to the faith once delivered to the saints" (Jude 3), Christians have, from the earlier ages, avowed some brief summary of their doctrines or a Confession of their faith.
Such confessions, also called symbols, were the so-called Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, &c., of the first four centuries after Christ.
Thus also did the Lutheran Reformers of the sixteenth century, when cited by the Emperor to appear before the Diet at Augsburg, present the Confession, bearing the name of that city, as an expose of their principal doctrines; in which they also professedly reject only the _greater part_ of the errors that had crept into the Romish Church.
(See conclusion of the Abuses Corrected.) Again, a quarter of a century after Luther's death, this and other writings of Luther and Melancthon, together with another work which neither of them ever saw, the Form of Concord, were made binding on ministers and churches, not by the church herself, acting of her own free choice, but by the civil authorities of certain kingdoms and principalities, in consultation with some prominent theologians.

The majority of Lutheran kingdoms, however, rejected one or more of them, and the Augsburg Confession alone has been acknowledged by the entire Lutheran Church.