---
title: 'Samuel Miller on the Value of Creeds and Confessions'
type: post
author: 'R. Andrew Myers'
date: 2022-06-03
url: https://confessional.org/blog/2022-samuel-miller-on-the-value-of-creeds-and-confessions
---

# Samuel Miller on the Value of Creeds and Confessions

“Creeds and Confessions do not claim to be in themselves *laws* of Christ’s house, or *legislative enactments*, by which any set of opinions are *constituted truths*, and which require, on that account, to be received as truths among; the members of his family. They only profess to be *summaries*, extracted from the Scriptures, of a few of those great gospel doctrines, which are taught by Christ himself; and which those who make the summary in each particular case, concur in deeming important, and agree to make the test of their religious union. They have no idea that, in forming this summary, they make any thing truth that was not truth before ; or that they thereby contract an obligation to believe, what they were not bound by the authority of Christ to believe before. But they simply consider it as a list of the leading truths which the Bible teaches, which of course, all men ought to believe, because the Bible *does* teach them ; and which a certain portion of the visible church catholic agree in considering as a formula by means of which they may know and understand one another.” — [Samuel Miller](/authors/samuel-miller), *The Utility and Importance of Creeds and Confessions* (1824), pp. 8-9