The Guanabara Confession of Faith was a Calvinist creed from 1558. The first Protestant writing in Brazil, and in all of the Americas, it was written by the French Huguenots Jean du Bourdel, Matthieu Verneuil, Pierre Bourdon and André la Fon, who were taken under arrest by Villegaignon. Twelve hours after writing it, the authors were hanged.
Guanabara Confession (1558) According to the doctrine of Saint Peter Apostle, in his first epistle, all Christians must be ready to give reason of the hope which is inside them, and this with all meekness and benignity, we sign beneath, Lord of Villegaignon, agreed (according the measure of grace that the Lord has conceded us) to give reason, to each point, how you had appointed and ordered us, and starting by the first article:
I. We believe in one God, immortal, invisible, creator of skies and earth, and all things, visibles and invisibles, who is distinguished in three persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, who constitute the same substance in eternal essence and a same will; the Father, source and beginning of all blessing; the Son, eternally beget by the Father, who, fulfilled the plenty of time, came in flesh to the world, being conceived by the Holy Ghost, was born by the virgin Mary, breed under the law to rescue those who were under the law, in order to we receive the adoption of His own sons; the Holy Ghost, proceeding by the Father and the Son, master of all Truth, speaking by the prophets, inspiring the things which were said by our Lord Jesus Christ to the apostles. He is the unique Consoler in affliction, giving constancy and perseverance in all good. We believe that is mister only worship and perfectly love, beg and invoke the majesty of God in faith or individually.
II. Worshipping our Lord Jesus Christ, we don't separate one nature from other, confessing the two natures, namely, divine and human, which are inseparable.
III. We believe, concerning to the Son of God and the Holy Spirit, what the Word of God and the apostolic doctrine, and the symbol, teach us.
IV. We believe our Lord Jesus Christ will judge living and dead people, in a visible and human form like He ascended to the heaven, executing such judgement, in the form that predict us in twenty-fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, having all the power to judge, given by the Father, being man. And, concerning our prayers, the Father will appear in the Son, we understand this because the power of the Father given to the Son will manifest in that judgement, but we don't want to confound the people, because they are really distinguished one of other.
V. We believe in the holy sacrament of the supper, with the corporal figures of the bread and the wine, the faithful souls are really and actually feed with the very substance of our Lord Jesus, as our bodies are feed with food, even so we don't want to say that the bread and the wine be transformed or transubstantiated in His body, because the bread keeps in its nature and substance, like the wine, and there is no change or alteration. However, we distinguish this bread and wine from other bread which is dedicated to habitual use, because this is a sacramental sign, which the truth is infallibly received. Nevertheless, this receipt is made only by the faith and we cannot imagine as being fleshly, neither prepare the teeth to eat, as said St. Augustine: "Why do you prepares the teeth and the stomach? Believe, and you have eaten." Therefore, the sign does not give us the truth, neither the thing which is denoted; but our Lord Jesus Christ, by His power, virtue and kindness feeds and preserves our souls, and make they partners in His flesh and His blood, and all of His benefactions. Let us see the explanation of Jesus' words: "This is my body." Tertullian, in the fourth book against Marcion, explain in this way: "this is the sign and the figure of my body." St. Augustine says: "The Lord doesn't avoid to say: 'This is my body', when he just give the sign of his body." Hence (as it is ordered in the first canon of the Council of Nicea), in this holy sacrament we can't imagine nothing fleshly and distract in the bread and the wine, which are proposed by signs, but elevate our spirit to the skies and contemplate by the faith the Son of God, our Lord Jesus, seat at the right of God, His Father. In this way, we could swear the article about the Ascension, along with many other sentences of Augustine, which we are omitting, because they are long.