---
title: 'Warfield on the Devotional Value of Reformed Creeds'
type: post
author: 'R. Andrew Myers'
date: 2023-09-03
url: https://confessional.org/blog/2023-warfield-on-the-devotional-value-of-reformed-creeds
---

# Warfield on the Devotional Value of Reformed Creeds

“I do not think I go astray, therefore, when I say to you in all seriousness that the second and third volumes of Dr. Schaff’s Creeds of Christendom have in them more food for your spiritual life — are ‘more directly, richly and evangelically devotional’ — than any other book, apart from the Bible, in existence. Nor can I think myself wrong in directing you specifically to the Reformed Creeds as, above all others, charged with blessing to those who will read and meditate on their rich deposit of religious truth. Our Scotch forefathers turned for spiritual nourishment especially to ‘the Sum of Saving Knowledge and the Practical Use Thereof,’ which had come to be a stated portion of the current editions of the Confession of Faith, just because that volume circulated at first chiefly as a devotional book and a directory for practical religion. This treatise has never been a part of our ‘Church book.’ But in the Westminster Confession we have something even better. Read what Dr. Thornwell tells us of what the study of the Confession did for his soul, and then ask yourselves whether it may not do the same for you too. By the side of the Westminster Confession put the Heidelberg Catechism: where will you find more faithful, more probing Christian teaching than this? I beg you, brethren, feed your souls on the Christian truth set forth with so much combined clearness of apprehension and depth of feeling in these great formularies.” — [**B**.**B. Warfield**](/authors/b-b-warfield), *Spiritual Culture in the Theological Seminary* (1904)