are able to instruct sufficiently in all points of faith that we are bound to believe, and all good duties that we are bound to practice.
7. All and every the Articles contained in the Nicene Creed, the Creed of Athanasius, and that which is commonly called the Apostles’ Creed, ought firmly to be received and believed, for they may be proved by most certain warrant of holy Scripture.
OF FAITH IN THE HOLY TRINITY.
8. There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the maker and preserver of all things, both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead, there be three persons of one and the same substance, power, and eternity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
9. The essence of the Father doth not beget the essence of the Son; but the person of the Father begetteth the person of the Son, by communicating his whole essence to the person begotten from eternity.
10. The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, is of one substance, majesty, and glory with the Father and the Son, very and eternal God.
OF GOD’S ETERNAL DECREE AND PREDESTINATION.
11. God from all eternity did, by his unchangeable counsel, ordain whatsoever in time should come to pass; yet so, as thereby no violence is offered to the wills of the reasonable creatures, and neither the liberty nor the contingency of the second causes is taken away, but established rather.
12. By the same eternal counsel God hath predestinated some unto life, and reprobated some unto death: of both which there is a certain, number, known only to God, which can neither be increased nor diminished.[1]
13. Predestination to life is the everlasting purpose of God whereby, before the foundations of the world were laid, he hath constantly decreed in his sacred counsel to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ unto everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honor.
- ↑ Lambeth Articles, i., iii.
