will I
confess also before My Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall
deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father which is in
heaven," Matt. 10, 32. 33. The same duty of confessing their faith,
_i.e._, the truths concerning Christ, is enjoined upon all Christians by
the Apostle Paul when he writes: "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth
the Lord Jesus and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him
from the dead, thou shalt be saved," Rom. 10, 9.

In the light of these and similar passages, the trinitarian baptismal
formula prescribed by Christ evidently required from the candidate for
Baptism a definite statement of what he believed concerning the Father,
Son and Holy Ghost, especially concerning Jesus Christ the Savior. And
that such a confession of faith was in vogue even in the days of the
apostles appears from the Bible itself. Of Timothy it is said that he
had "professed a good profession before many witnesses," 1 Tim. 6, 12.
Heb. 4, 14 we read: "Let us hold fast our profession." Heb. 10, 23: "Let
us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering." Jude urges
the Christians that they "should earnestly contend for the faith which
was once delivered unto the saints," and build up themselves on their
"most holy faith," Jude 3. 20. Compare also 1 Cor. 15, 3. 4; 1 Tim. 3,
16; Titus 1, 13; 3, 4-7.

10. Apostles' Creed and Early Christian Writers.

The Christian writers of the first three centuries, furthermore, furnish
ample proof for the following facts: that from the very beginning of the
Christian Church the candidates for Baptism everywhere were required to
make a confession of their faith; that from the beginning there was
existing in all the Christian congregations a formulated confession
which they called the rule of faith, the rule of truth, etc.; that this
rule was identical with the confession required of the candidates for
Baptism; that it was declared to be of apostolic origin; that the
summaries and explanations of this rule of truth, given by these
writers, tally with the contents and in part, also with the phraseology
of the Apostles' Creed; that the scattered Christian congregations, then
still autonomous, regarded the adoption of this rule, of faith as the
only necessary condition of Christian unity and fellowship.

The manner in which Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin, Aristides, and
other early Christian writers present the Christian truth frequently
reminds