A08483:11
An exposition of the Symbol of the ApostlesAn exposition of the Symbole of the Apostles
An exposition of the Symbol of the Apostles, or rather of the articles of faith In which the chief points of the everlasting and free covenant between God and the faithful is briefly and plainly handled. Gathered out of the catechising sermons of Gasper Oleuvian Trevir, and now translated out of the Latin tongue into the English for the benefit of Christ his Church. By John Field.An exposition of the Symbole of the Apostles, or rather of the articles of faith In which the chiefe points of the euerlasting and free couenant betweene God and the faithfull is briefly and plainly handled. Gathered out of the catechising sermons of Gasper Oleuvian Treuir, and now translated out of the Latine tongue into the English for the benefite of Christ his Church. By Iohn Fielde.
London: printed by H. Middleton for Thomas Man, 1581
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
They love him that keep his words, and he beautifieth them, not only as guests & strangers, but as Citizens and Saints,1 and such as are of his own household. These are they that fly as the clouds, (such is the multitude of them dispersed upon the face of the earth) and they mount up as Doves to his window.2 ⟨p. 6⟩And this is both called & is the Church of the living God,3 the foundation and pillar of truth, the body of Christ, the house of the highest, the keeper & teacher of the Gospel, the mother of the faithful, cleansed of Christ and precious unto him. This is no particular synagogue, whorish and disobedient, impure and filthy, full of rebellion and falsehood, as is that synagogue of Rome which hath departed from her first faith and love: which although the Papists would advance above the skies, (always like Cuckoos singing one & the same song, and shamelessly begging that which they should chiefly prove:) yet they shall never be able, though they burst their harts for it, to prove it to be either the Catholic Church of Jesus Christ, or a member of it. For they maintain another head besides Christ, another word besides the word of Christ, unwritten verities or rather absurd untruths, preferring the commandments of a sinful man, before the unchangeable and everlasting trueth of God. And truly, I do not a little wonder, ⟨p. 7⟩what madness is entered into their brains, that with such Owls faces, they dare in the open light of the Gospel, schritch forth their old absurdities, as though now after the great instruction of the truth, they were able to thrust forth unto us (as in times past when they lead us in the dark) their counterfeit ware, to deceive us, and so turn us away from the glorious light of our salvation. We had thought they had received their answer long ago, & would never have durst to look the trueth in the face again: but now as they are continually instructed from that same enemy of truth, so they bring forth their old rotten stuff, and their new Jesuits have furbished over their old arguments of their blind predecessors, & as if they were spicke & span new, they offer them unto us. But we find them all of one metal.