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A47606
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A short confession of faith containing the substance of all the fundamental articles in the larger confession put forth by the elders of the Baptist churches, owning personal election and final perserverance.
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Keach, Benjamin, 1640-1704.
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1697
(1697)
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Wing K86; ESTC R24038
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16,842
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52
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passive Obedience only apprehended by Faith and that Faith in no sense tends to make Christ's Merits more satisfactory unto God but that he was as fully reconciled and satisfied for his Elect in Christ by his Death before Faith as after otherwise it would render God only reconcileable not reconciled and make Faith part of the Payment or Satisfaction unto God and so lessen the Merits of Christ as if they were defective or insufficient Yet we say it is by Faith that we receive the Atonement or by which means as an Instrument we come to apprehend and receive him and to have personal Interest in him and to have our free Justification evidenced to our own Consciences Of Adoption XIV WE believe Adoption is an Act of God's Free Grace whereby such who were the Children of Wrath by Nature are received into the Number and have Right to all the Privileges of the Sons of God and that such who are adopted are also by the Spirit regenerated and hence said to be born of God Of Sanctification XV. THAT Sanctification is the Work of God's Free Grace also whereby we are renewed in the whole Man after the Image of God and are inabled more and more to die unto Sin and live unto Righteousness And that the Benefits we receive and which flow from or accompany Justification are Adoption Sanctification Peace of Conscience Manifestations of God's Love Joy in the Holy Ghost an Increase of Grace an Assurance of eternal Life and final Perseverance unto the end Of the Souls of Men at Death XVI WE believe that at Death the Souls of Believers are made perfect in Holiness and do immediately pass into Glory and their Bodies dying in Union with Christ or dying in the Lord do rest in their Graves till the Resurrection when they shall be raised up in Glory And that their Souls being reunited to their Bodies they shall be openly acknowledged and acquitted and made compleatly blessed both in Soul and Body and shall have the full Injoyment of God to all Eternity And that the Souls of the Wicked at their Death are cast into Hell or are in Torment and that their Bodies lie in the Grave under Wrath and shall by virtue of the Power of Christ be raised from the Dead and their Souls being re-united to their Bodies shall be judged and condemned and cast into a Furnace of Fire or into unspeakable Torment with the Devil and his Angels for ever and ever Of the Law XVII WE believe God requires Obedience of Man and that the Rule of that Obedience is the moral Law as it is in the Hands of Christ which teacheth all Persons their Duty to God and to Man the Sum of all being this to love the Lord our God with all our Hearts with all our Souls and with all our Strength and our Neighbours as our selves And that tho the Law is abolished as a Covenant of Works and as so considered we are dead to it and that dead to us yet it remains as a Rule of Life and Righteousness for ever XVIII We believe no mere Man since the Fall is able in this Life perfectly to keep the Holy Law of God and that every Offence against the Law deserves eternal Death tho some Sins are more heinous in God's Sight than others And that God as a simple Act of Mercy will not doth not pardon any Man neither doth it seem consistent with his Holiness and Justice so to do without a full Satisfaction wherefore he substituted Christ in our room and stead perfectly to keep the whole Law and to die or bear that Wrath which we deserved for our breaking of it he being pleased in his infinite Love and Grace to transfer our Sins Guilt and Punishment upon his own Son who took our Nature upon him as our blessed Head and Representative that his active Obedience and Righteousness might be our just Title unto eternal Life and his Death who bore our Hell-Torments be our full Discharge from the Wrath of God and eternal Condemnation And that all who would receive this Title and have this Discharge so as to escape God's Wrath and the Curse of the Law must fly to Christ and lay hold on him by Faith which Faith is known by its Fruits having lively Sin-killing Soul-humbling Self-abasing Christ-exalting and Heart-purifying Operations always attending it Of Faith and Repentance XIX WE believe that Faith is a saving Grace or the most precious Gift of God and that it is an Instrument whereby we receive take hold of and wholly rest upon Jesus Christ as offered to us in the Gospel That Repentance unto Life is also a saving Grace whereby a Sinner out of a true Sense of Sin and Apprehension of God's Mercy in Christ doth with Grief and Hatred of his Sins turn from them And that tho Repentance is in order of Nature called the first Principle of the Doctrine of Christ yet we believe no Man can savingly repent unless he believes in Jesus Christ and apprehends the Free Pardon and Forgiveness of all his Sins through the Blood of the everlasting Covenant and the Sight and Sense of God's Love in a bleeding Saviour being that only thing that melts and breaks the stony Heart of a poor Sinner as the Sight of a free Pardon from a Prince humbles the stout Heart of a rebellious Malefactor Of the Means of Grace XX. WE believe that the outward and more ordinary means whereby Christ communicates to us the Benefits of Redemption are his Holy Ordinances as Prayer the Word of God and Preaching with Baptism and the Lord's Supper c. and yet notwithstanding it is the Spirit of God that maketh Prayer Reading c. and specially the Preaching of the Word effectual to the convincing converting building up and comforting through Faith all the Elect of God unto Salvation And that it is the Duty of all that the Word may become effectual to their Salvation to attend upon it with all Diligence Preparation and Prayer that they may receive it with Faith and Love and lay it up in their Hearts and practise it in their Lives Of Baptism XXI WE believe that Baptism is a Holy Ordinance of Christ or a pure Gospel-Institution and to be unto the Party baptized a sign of his Fellowship with Christ in his Death Burial and Resurrection and of his being grafted into him and of Remission of Sins and of his giving himself up to God through Jesus Christ to walk in Newness of Life We also believe that Baptism ought not to be administred to any but to those who actually profess Repentance towards God and Faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ That the Infants of Believers ought not to be baptized because there is neither Precept or Example or any certain Consequence in the Holy Scripture for any such Practice And we
ought to exercise the said Gift to the Edification of the Church when desired and that no Brother ought to take upon him to preach until he has a lawful Call so to do Moreover we believe that it is the indispensible Duty of every Church according to their Ability to provide their Pastor or Elders a comfortable Maintenance as God hath ordained that he that preaches the Gospel should live of the Gospel and not of his own Labour but that he should wholly give himself up to the Work of the Ministry and to watch over the Flock being to be freed from all secular Business and Encumbrances of the World and yet that it is abominable Evil for any Man to preach the Gospel for filthy lucre sake but he must do it of a ready mind Of the First Covenant XXX WE believe that the first Covenant or Covenant of Works was primarily made with Adam and with all Mankind in him by virtue of which he stood in a justified state before the Fall upon the condition of his own perfect and personal Obedience But by the Fall he made himself uncapable of Life by that Covenant That the Law God gave by Moses to Israel was of the same nature of that given to Adam being a second Ministration of it but not given for Life but to make Sin exceeding sinful and to shew how unable Man was in his fallen state to fulfil the Righteousness of God and so with the Ceremonial Law it was given in subserviency to the Gospel as a Schoolmaster to bring Sinners to Christ Of the New and Second Covenant XXXI WE believe the Covenant of Grace was primarily made with the second Adam and in him with all the Elect who as God-man or Mediator was set up from everlasting as a Common Person or as their Head and Representative who freely obliged or ingaged himself to the Father for them perfectly to keep the whole Law in their Nature that had sinned and to satisfy Divine Justice by bearing their Sins upon his own Body i. e. the Guilt of all their Sins which were laid upon him and that he sustain'd that Wrath and Curse in his Body and Soul that was due to them for all their Transgrestions and having received their discharge from Wrath and Condemnation he gives it out to all that believe in him and obtain Union with him who are thereby brought actually into the said New Covenant and have a personal Right to all the Blessings thereof Of Election XXXII WE do believe that God from all Eternity according unto the most wise and holy Counsel of his own Will freely and unchangeably decreed and ordained for the manifestation of his own Glory some Angels and some of the lost Sons and Daughters of Adam unto eternal Life and that their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished and that others are left or passed by under a Decree of Preterition And that those of Manking that are predestinated and fore-ordained are particularly and personally design'd unto eternal Life and these God according to his eternal and immutable Purpose and good pleasure of his Will did chuse in Christ the Head of this Election unto everlasting Glory of his meer free Grace without any foreseen Faith or Obedience and Perseverance therein or any thing in the Creature as a Condition or Cause moving him thereunto and all this only to the Praise of his own glorious Grace Of final Perseverance XXXIII WE believe all those whom God hath chosen and who are effectually called justified and sanctified in Jesus Christ can neither totally nor finally fall away from a state of Grace but shall certainly persevere therein unto the end and eternally be saved and this by virtue of their Election or the immutable Decree of God and the unchangeable Love of God the Father and by virtue of their Union with Christ together with his Death Resurrection and Intercession as also from the nature of the Covenant of Grace and Suretyship of Christ and through the indwelling of the holy Spirit who abideth in them for ever Of the Resurrection XXXIV WE believe that the Bodies of all Men both the Just and Unjust shall rise again at the last day even the same numerical Bodies that die tho the Bodies of the Saints shall be raised immortal and incorruptible and be made like Christ's glorious Body and that the dead in Christ shall rise first Of Eternal Judgment XXXV WE believe that God hath appointed a Day in which he will judg the World in Righteousness by Jesus Christ or that there shall be a general Day of Judgment when all shall stand before the Judgment-seat of Christ and give an account to him for all things done in this Body and that he will pass an eternal Sentence upon all according as their Works shall be Of Marriages XXXVI WE believe Marriage is God's holy Ordinance that is to say between one Man and one Woman and that no Man ought to have more than one Wife at once and that Believers that marry should marry in the Lord or such that are Believers or Godly Persons and that those who do otherwise sin greatly in violating God's holy Precept and that Ministers as well as others may marry for Marriage is honourable in all Of Civil Magistrates XXXVII WE do believe the supream Lord of Heaven and Earth hath ordained Magistrates for the good of Mankind and that it is our Duty in all civil and lawful things to obey them for Conscience sake nay and to pray for all that are in Authority that under them we may live a godly and peaceable Life and that we ought to render unto Cesar the things that are Cesar's and to God the things that are God's Of lawful Oaths XXXVIII WE do believe it is lawful to take some Oaths before the Civil Magistrate an Oath of Confirmation being to put an end to all Strife nay and that it is our Duty so to do when lawfully called thereunto and that those that swear ought to swear in Truth in Righteousness and in Judgment Of Personal Propriety XXXIX WE do believe that every Man hath a just and peculiar Right and Propriety in his own Goods and that they are not common to others yet we believe that every Man is obliged to administer to the poor Saints and to the publick Interest of God according to his Ability or as God hath blessed him FINIS POSTSCRIPT THere is something contained in the 13th Article that may seem to want some Explication in these words speaking of a Man actually and personally justified that his Sins past present and to come are all forgiven We believing that if any Sins of a justified Person were afterwards charged upon him it must of necessity make a breach in