French Confession Origin

When the Geneva delegation was dispatched to the First National Synod of the French Reformed Church in 1559, they carried with them not eighteen articles but thirty-five. Whether Calvin was the exclusive author of this augmented version or whether he enjoyed the collaboration of Beza and Viret (even others) is still disputed. The 1559 confession of the students at the Geneva Academy shows striking similarities to the augmented thirty-five-article version—hence a Genevan provenance cannot be doubted. It is alleged (but again disputed) that Chandieu was appointed by the Paris Synod to make the final revisions, expanding thirty-five articles to the present forty. The additional five articles are primarily at the beginning of the confession. Hence the thirty-five-article version is considered the “Geneva” recension; the forty-article edition the “Parisian” recension

 

James Dennison, Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation: 1523-1693, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2008-2014), 140.