Guido de Bres, a Reformed preacher working underground in the Low Countries under Spanish rule, wrote the Belgic Confession in 1561 and had copies thrown over the wall of the castle at Doornik, together with a letter addressed to Philip II, arguing that the persecuted Reformed believers of the Netherlands were loyal subjects and orderly Christians rather than the seditious sectarians the authorities took them for. He drew heavily on the French Confession of Faith that the Reformed churches of France had adopted the previous year under Calvin's influence, adapting its thirty-seven articles to the situation of the Low Countries and sharpening its language against Anabaptists as well as against Rome, since Dutch Reformed leaders were anxious to distinguish their movement from the radical reformers whose disorder had already brought reprisals on dissenters generally.
The articles move in the order a systematic confession expects, from the existence and knowable attributes of God and the authority of Scripture, including a list of the canonical books meant to settle disputes over the Apocrypha, through the Trinity, creation, providence and the fall to Christ, justification, the church, its marks and its government, and finally the sacraments and civil government. De Bres paid for the confession with his life: he was captured and executed in 1567, one of many Reformed ministers who did not survive the persecution the document had tried to answer.