l the States,
took its place, till it too was dissolved by the defeat of Austria in
1866, and which gave ascendency to Prussia and ensured the erection of
the German empire on its ruins.

CONFERENCE, a stated meeting of Wesleyan ministers for the
transaction of the business of their Church.

CONFESSIONS OF FAITH, are statements of doctrine very similar to
Creeds, but usually longer and polemical, as well as didactic; they are
in the main, though not exclusively, associated with Protestantism; the
16th century produced many, including the _Sixty-seven Articles_ of the
Swiss reformers, drawn up by Zwingli in 1523; the _Augsburg Confession_
of 1530, the work of Luther and Melanchthon, which marked the breach with
Rome; the _Tetrapolitan Confession_ of the German Reformed Church, 1530;
the _Gallican Confession_, 1559; and the _Belgic Confession_ of 1561. In
Britain the _Scots Confession_, drawn up by John Knox in 1560; the
_Thirty-nine Articles_ of the Church of England in 1562; the _Irish
Articles_ in 1615; and the _Westminster Confession of Faith_ in 1647;
this last, the work of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, has by its
force of language, logical statement, comprehensiveness, and dependence
on Scripture, commended itself to the Presbyterian Churches of all
English-speaking peoples, and is the most widely recognised Protestant
statement of doctrine; it has as yet been modified only by the United
Presbyterian Church of Scotland, which adopted a Declaratory Statement
regarding certain of its doctrines in 1879, and by the Free Church of
Scotland, which adopted a similar statement in 1890.

CONFESSIONS OF ROUSSEAU, memoirs published after his death in 1788,
in which that writer makes confession of much that was good in him and
much that was bad.

CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE, an account which that Father of the
Church gives of the errors of his youth and his subsequent conversion.

CONFUCIUS, the Latin form of the name of the great sage of China,
Kung Futsze, and the founder of a religion which is based on the worship
and practice of morality as exemplified in the lives and teachings of the
wise men who have gone before, and who, as he conceived, have made the
world what it is, and have left it to posterity to build upon the same
basis; while he lived he was held in greater and greater honour by
multitudes of disciples, till on his death he became an object of
worship, and even his descendants came to be r