VIII. However, two things can be stated about these confessions: first, their necessity; then, their authority. As to the necessity, we say that it is not absolute, as if the church could not do without them. For there was a time when she was without them, being content with the ecumenical creeds alone or even without these, content with the formula of Scripture alone; but hypothetical on the hypothesis of a divine command and of the condition of the church, from the time when heresies, the danger of contagion, the calumnies of adversaries and intestine discords in religion began to disturb her, that the necessity and justice of our secession fro the church might be manifested, that they might be formulas of agreement and a bond of saving union by which all the pious might be held together in one body and so all distractions, dangerous dissents and schisms, wounding the truth and unity of the church, might be shunned.

IX. Their authority ought indeed to be great with the pious in the churches but still sinking below the authority of the Scripture. For the latter is a rule, they the thing ruled. It alone is self-credible (autopistos) with respect to words as well as to things, divine and infallible; they, as divine in things, still in words and manner of treatment are human writings. Faith is immediately and absolutely due to it; to them an examination is due and that having been made, if they agree with the word, faith. It is the constant and immutable canon of faith; while they are subject to revision and new examination, in which it is right not only to explain and amplify them, but also to correct whatever fault should be found in them and reform according to the rule of the word. Hence it is evident that they err here in excess who hold such confessions as the rule of the truth itself and make them equal to the word of God. They are at best secondary rules, not of truth, but of the doctrine received in any church, since from them can be seen and decided what agrees with or what differs from the doctrine of the church.

X. Therefore, their true authority consists in this—that they are obligatory upon those who are subject to them in the court of external communion because they were written by the churches or in the name of the churches, to which individual members in the external communion are responsible (1 Cor. 14:32). Hence if they think they observe anything in them worthy of correction, they ought to undertake nothing rashly or disorderly (ataktōs) and unseasonably, so as to violently rend the body of their mother (which schismatics do), but to refer the difculties they feel to their church and either to prefer her public opinion to their own private judgment or to secede from her communion, if the conscience cannot acquiesce in her judgment. Thus they cannot bind in the inner court of conscience, except inasmuch as they are found to agree with the word of (which alone has power to bind the conscience).

XI. Therefore, they err in defect who acknowledge no authority or a very slight authority in confessions; such are the neutrals and Libertines, who, to consult their own interests, profess nothing certain and determinate, but amid the conflicts of contradictions are undecided and fluctuate and, falling in with the winds of fortune, bend their sails to their influence. Their religion, consequently, you would properly call (if they have any) a monthly faith; nay, even a daily (hēmerobion) or hourly. Unorthodox persons and heretics are such who, seeing that they are checked by such formulas as by a bridle that they may not scatter their errors to the winds, endeavor in every way, either openly, or secretly and by cunning, to destroy their authority.

Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, trans. George Musgrave Giger, ed. James T. Dennison, Vol. 3, Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1992, pp. 284-5

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