APPENDIX VII

TRANSLATION OF PASSAGES QUOTED FROM DOCUMENTS AND FORMULARIES OF FAITH

ARTICLE II.

Page 30.

REFORMATIO LEGUM, "De Haeresibus," Cap. 5

"With regard to the twofold nature of Christ there is dangerous and varied error; some of them are of the sect of the Arians, laying it down that Christ is man in such a way as to deny that He is God. Others so judge Him to be God as not to recognise that He is man, and talk nonsense with respect to His body, as though it were divinely assumed from heaven, and descended into the Virgin's womb, and that in its passage through Mary, it passed as it were through a channel or tube."

Page 33.

SECOND HELVETIC CONFESSION, Art. XI. :—

"Further, by His passion and death, and by all the things which, by His advent in the flesh, He did and suffered for our sake, our Lord reconciled the Father in heaven to all believers."

ARTICLE V.

Page 45.

ORTHODOX CONFESSION [of the Eastern Church]:-—

"The Church teaches how the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone as the fount and source of the Godhead."

ARTICLE VI.

Page 47.

TETRAPOLITAN CONFESSION, Cap. 1 :—

"We commanded those who amongst us exercised the office of preaching that they should teach from the pulpit nothing else than what is contained in the sacred Scriptures, or may be certainly proved thereby."

FRENCH CONFESSION, Art. V. :

"And since this is the sum of all truth, containing all that is requisite for the worship of God, and for our salvation; we declare that it is not lawful for men, nor even for angels themselves, to add anything to that Word, or to take away anything from it, or to alter anything at all in the same."

SCOTCH CONFESSION, Art. XIX. :—

"We believe and confess that the Scriptures of God are sufficient to instruct, and make perfect, the man of God."

BELGIC CONFESSION, Art. VII. :—

"We believe also that this Holy Scripture does most perfectly contain all the will of God, and that therein all those things whatsoever are abundantly taught, which must be believed by men that they may attain salvation."

Page 48.

SECOND HELVETIC CONFESSION, Art. I. :

"And in this Holy Scripture the universal Church of Christ has all things most fully expounded, such as pertain both to a saving faith, as well as to the due framing of a life pleasing to God. And in this respect it is expressly commanded by God, that nothing should be either added to, or taken from, the same."

COUNCIL OF TRENT, Session IV. :—

"The synod. perceiving that this truth and discipline are contained in the written books, and the unwritten traditions, which, received by the Apostles from the mouth of Christ Himself, or from the Apostles themselves at the dictation of the Holy Spirit, have come down even to us, transmitted as it were from hand to hand: the synod, following the examples of the orthodox fathers, receives and venerates, with equal affection of piety and reverence, all the books both of the Old and New Testament, since one God is the author of both, as also the said traditions, as well those appertaining to faith as to morals, as having been dictated either by Christ's own word of mouth, or by the Holy Spirit, and preserved by a continuous succession in the Catholic Church."

ORTHODOX CONFESSION [of the Eastern Church]:

"It is evident how the several parts of the Faith have their validity and sanction, partly from Holy Scripture, and partly from ecclesiastical tradition. . . . There are, therefore, two oracles of doctrines; some Scripture hands down, namely, such as are contained in the Divine

books of Holy Scripture, and some are doctrines handed down by word of mouth by the Apostles, and these have been interpreted by the Councils and the Holy Fathers; and on these two the Faith is founded."

CALVIN'S INSTITUTES, I. ix. 1:—

"For there have lately arisen certain unsteady persons, who, most haughtily professing to be taught by the Spirit, themselves reject all reading, and deride the simplicity of those who still attend to (what they themselves call) the letter that is dead, and that killeth.”

Ibid., I. vii. 1:—

Page 50.

"But there has generally prevailed a most dangerous error, viz., that Scripture has only so much weight as is conceded to it by the suffrages of the Church, as though the eternal and inviolable truth of God depended upon the choice of men."

Ibid., I. vii. 5

"Let this, therefore, remain decided, that they whom the Holy Spirit has inwardly taught entirely acquiesce in the Scripture, and that it is self-authenticated, neither is it right that it should be made a subject of proof and reasoning; but the certitude which it deserves with us it obtains by the testimony of the Spirit."

FRENCH CONFESSION, Art. IV. :—

"We acknowledge these books to be Canonical; i.e., we account them as the norm and rule of our faith, and that not only by the common consent of the Church, but also much more by the testimony and inward persuasion of the Holy Spirit, by whose intimation we are taught to discern those books from other Ecclesiastical books."

Page 51.

SCOTCH CONFESSION, Art. XIX. :—

"We assert, therefore, that those who say that the Scripture has no other authority than that which it has received from the Church are blasphemers against God, and injurious to the true Church."

BELGIC CONFESSION, Art. V. :

"These books alone we receive as sacred and Canonical, whereupon our faith may rest, and whereby it may be confirmed and established. And we believe without any doubt all those things which are contained in them, and that not so much because the Church receives and sanctions them as Canonical, as because the Holy Spirit bears witness to our consciences that they came forth from God, and most of all because they

themselves, by themselves, bear witness to and sanction this their own sacred authority and sanctity."

SECOND HELVETIC CONFESSION, Art. I. :

"We believe and confess that the Canonical Scriptures of the holy prophets and apostles, of both Testaments, are the very true Word of God, and that they have sufficient authority of themselves, not from mien. For God Himself spake to the fathers by the prophets and apostles, and still speaks to us through the Holy Scriptures."

Page 52.

S. JEROME, Preface to the Books of Solomon:

"As, therefore, the Church indeed reads Judith, and Tobias, and the Maccabees, but does not receive them amongst the Canonical Scriptures, so also she reads these two volumes for edification of the people, not for establishing the authority of Ecclesiastical doctrines."

ARTICLE VII.

Page 53.

REFORMATIO LEGUM, "De Haeresibus," Cap. 4 :—

"Many are found in our own time, amongst whom the Anabaptists are especially to be reckoned, who, if any one quote the Old Testament to them, regard it as now abrogated and altogether obsolete, referring all things that are commanded therein to the ancient times of our forefathers. Therefore they determine that none of those things ought to apply to us."

Page 54.

CALVIN'S INSTITUTES, II. x. 1 :—

"Moreover, what otherwise would be very useful, the monstrous scamp Servetus and some madmen of the sect of the Anabaptists have rendered necessary for us, who think no otherwise of the people Israel than of a herd of swine, whom they pretend to have been pampered by the Lord in this world, without any hope of immortality in heaven."

ARTICLE IX.

Page 71.

REFORMATIO LEGUM, "De Haeresibus," Cap. 7:

"In regard to the stain of sin, contracted from our birth, which we call Original Sin, in the first place the error of the Pelagians, and next

that of the Anabaptists, must be avoided and got rid of by us. In this matter they agree in stating, against Scriptural truth, that Original Sin affected Adam only, and did not pass over to his posterity, and that it does not affect our nature with any wrong disposition, except that, owing to the fault of Adam, there is set forth a harmful example of sinning, which leads men to imitate and acquire the same iniquity."

Page 72.

BELGIC CONFESSION, Art. XV. :

"Original Sin is the corruption of the whole nature, and hereditary fault, with which even infants themselves are defiled in their mother's womb."

CALVIN'S INSTITUTES, II. i. 8:

"And therefore infants themselves also, as they bring their own condemnation into the world with them, are guilty by their very own fault, not by that of another."

'Original Sin therefore appears to be an hereditary depravity and corruption of our nature, diffused through all parts of the soul, which first makes us subject to God's wrath, and then produces works in us which Scripture calls works of the flesh."

COUNCIL OF TRENT, Session V. :

"If any one asserts that the transgression of Adam injured himself alone, and not his posterity; and that the holiness and righteousness received from God, which he lost, he lost for himself alone, and not for us also; or that he, defiled by the sin of disobedience, has only transfused death and pains of the body unto the whole human race, but not sin also, which is the death of the soul; let him be anathema."

FORMULA OF CONCORD:

Page 73.

"It is the loss of original righteousness, with which man was created in Paradise, or of the image of God, after which man had been created at the beginning in truth, holiness, and righteousness."

FRENCH CONFESSION, Art. IX. :—

"So that his own nature is wholly corrupt, and being blinded in spirit and depraved in heart, he has lost, without any exception whatever, all that integrity. For although he has some discernment of good and evil, nevertheless we affirm that whatsoever he has of light soon becomes darkness when the question is that of seeking God, so that by his own understanding and reason he can in no way approach to Him."