A confession of faith made by common consent of divers reformed churches beyond the…A confession of fayth made by common consent of diuers reformed churches beyonde the…

Seeing that God from the beginning, ¹would have man saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth, it must needs be that ever there was, and now is, and to the end of the world there shall be ⟨p. 48⟩²a Church, that is to say, a company of the faithful, called and gathered out of the world, a company, I say, of all the Saints, to wit of them, which do truly know, and rightly worship the true God in Christ their saviour, according to his word, and by the aide of the holy Ghost: to be short; which are made partakers of all goodness, offered freely unto them, through Christ by faith. All these be citizens of one City, living under one Lord, under one kind of laws, being alike partakers of all good things: For so the Apostle calleth them, fellow citizens with the Saints, and of Gods household folk, naming them saints, who abiding in the earth, are faithful, sanctified by the blood of gods soon: Of whom this article of our ³belief speaketh, wherein it is said, I believe the holy catholic church, The Communion of Saints. And seeing that there is always one only God, one mediator between God and man Jesus, our Messiah, and one shepherd ⁴of the whole flock, one head of this ⟨image 93⟩body, to conclude, one spirit, one salvation, one faith, one Testament or covenant, it followeth necessarily, that there is one only Church also: Which therefore we call Catholic, ⁵because it is universal, & is dispersed throughout all the parts of the world and extendeth it self to all times, being limited and enclosed in no place, or time. We condemn therefore the Donatists, who straightly enclosed ⁶the church, in, I know not what corners of Aphrike. Neither do we allow the Romish Clergy, who bests that almost the only Romish church, is the catholic Church.