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A Brief Confession or Declaration of Faith set forth by an Assembly of Messengers, Elders and Brethren of the Baptized Churches, An. 1663. Whereunto is Added, A few Explanatory Supplements; and the Testi∣mony of many of the Ancient Writers of Christianity.
Article, 1.
WE believe and are verily confident, that there is but one God the Father, of whom are all things, glorious and unsearcheable in all his Attributes, 1 Cor. 8. 6. * 1.1 But to us there is but one God the Father, of whom are all things, Isa. 40. 28. * 1.2 Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the Earth, fainteth not neither is weary, there is no searching of his under∣standing?
The witness of the Ancients.
* 1.3 Chrysostom, upon Eph. Chap. 1. Speaking of Christ saith, Behold God is called the God of him that took Flesh; and if ye will not so he is called the Father of God, the Word.
* 1.4 Augustine, Confess. l. 13. c. 5. — Thou, O Father, in the beginning that is in thy wisdom, born of thy self equal and co-eternal with thee; that is to say in thy son, hast created Heaven and Earth — And now under that name of God I understood the Person of the Father; who made all; and under the name of the beginning, the name of the Son in whom he made all, &c.
Again, L. 1. c. 4. And what shall we say, my God, my Life — or what can any man say when he speaks of thee? and wo to them that speak nothing in thy praise, seeing those that speak most are too dumb in it.
Article 2.
* 1.5 That God in the beginning made man upright and put him into a state of Glory [of an earthly Paradisical nature] without the least mixture of misery, from which he by transgression fell, and so came into a miserable, and mortal estate, subject to the first death.
The witness of the Ancients.
* 1.6 In saying Earth thou art, and to Earth thou shalt return, he signifieth the death of the Body, in leaving the soul; therefore we must think he spake not