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and confound us from the Holy Scriptures? Why do they not challenge us to that trial? Why do they not shew that we have departed from Christ, from the Prophets, from the Apostles, from the Holy Fathers? Why do they hesitate? Why decline the examination? It is the cause of God: why then fear to try it by his unerring Word? But if we are Heretics who submit all our controversies to the Holy Scriptures, and appeal to those very writings which we know were sanctioned by God's own authority, and prefer them to all others which the genius of man can compose; by what name ought those persons to be designated, who shrink from the sentence of the Holy Scriptures; that is, the Judgment of God himself? and who, preferring their own idle dreams, cold conceits, and foolish traditions, have for so many ages corrupted the doctrines of Christ and his Apostles? When Sophocles,* the tragic poet, being now advanced in years, was accused before the judges by his children, as a lunatic, and as one who in his dotage wasted inconsiderately his property, and had need of a guardian; it is said that in vindication

*Cicero de Senectute.

of himself the old man appeared in court, and reciting the Edipus Coloneus, a most elegant and elaborate tragedy composed during the time of his alleged indisposition, triumphantly asked the judges if that appeared the production of a madman. In like manner, we, who are considered by our opponents as insane, and traduced by them as Heretics having no communion with Christ, nor the church of God, have thought it neither useless nor irrelevant, to make a candid and open confession of our faith, and of the hope which we have in our Saviour Christ; that the whole world may know our sentiments on every Article of Religion, and be able to decide, whether that Faith, which we shall prove to be agreeable to the words of Christ, the writings of the Apostles, and the tenets of the Catholic Fathers, and which has been sanctioned by the authority of so many ages, is merely the enthusiasm of Madmen, and a conspiracy of Heretics.

CHAP. II.

AN EXPOSITION OF THE DOCTRINES AND PRECEPTS SANCTIONED BY THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND AT THE

TIME OF THE REFORMATION.

WE Believe that there is one divine nature and essence, which we call GoD; and that this is divided into three equal Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; all of whom possess the same power, the same majesty, the same eternity, the same divine attributes, the same substance: and although these three Persons are so manifestly distinct, that neither the Father is the Son, nor the Son the Holy Ghost, nor the Father; yet we maintain that there is but One God: that he alone is the Creator of heaven and earth, and of all things under heaven.

We Believe that Jesus Christ, the only Son of the eternal Father, as had been decreed before the foundation of the world, when the fulness of time was come became incarnate, and took upon him the whole nature of man from the pure and blessed Virgin, that he might disclose to man

kind the secret unrevealed purposes of his Father which had been concealed from all ages and generations, and that he might, in his human form, complete the mystery of our Redemption, and nail our sins,* and the written obligation which was against us, to the Cross.

We Believe that for our sakes he died, was buried, and descended into hell; that on the third day, by divine power, he rose again, and returned to life; that after forty days, in the sight of his disciples he ascended into heaven that he might fulfil all things, and placed that self-same body in which he was born, had lived, and been ignominiously treated-wherein he had suffered the most excruciating torments, and cruel death, † had risen from the grave, and ascended to the right hand of his Father, in a state of majesty and glory, far above all principality and power, dominion and influence, and above every Name which is named, not only in this world, but in that which is to come; that He now sitteth there, and will there remain till all things are completed. And although the Divinity and Majesty of Christ are indeed every where difAug. Tract. 50. in Joh. † Acts iii. 21.

* Col. ii. 14.

fused, yet it is necessary, (as St. Augustin saith)* that his body be in one place; for we believe, that although Christ gave majesty to his body, he did not on that account take from it the corporeal nature; nor must we deny our Saviour † to have been human as well as divine, but believe, as Vigilius, the Martyr, says, that Jesus has left us in his human, but not in his divine nature, and that although he is absent from us in the form of a servant, yet he is always with us in the form of God. §

We believe that Christ will come again from thence, to exercise a general judgment, as well upon those he shall then find living, as the dead.

We believe that the Holy Ghost, the third person of the blessed Trinity, is truly God, not made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding from both the Father and the Son, in a way not known to mortals, and impossible to be explained by them. That it is his office to soften the hardness of the human heart, when by the salu

*Tract. 30. in Joh.

† Aug. ad Dardan. Contra Eutych. lib. 1.

§ Fulgentius ad regem Thrasymundum.

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