I. Of Doctrine.

Seeing that Christ Jesus is He whom God the Father has commanded only to be heard and followed of His sheep, we urge it necessary that His Evangel be truly and openly preached in every kirk and assembly of this realm; and that all doctrine repugning to the same be utterly suppressed as damnable to man's salvation.

Lest upon this generality ungodly men take occasion to cavil, this we add for explication. By preaching of the Evangel, we understand not only the Scriptures of the New Testament but also of the Old; to wit, the Law, Prophets, and Histories, in which Christ Jesus is no less contained in figure, than we have Him now expressed in verity. And, therefore, with the Apostle we affirm, that all Scripture inspired of God is profitable to instruct, to reprove, and to exhort. In which books of Old and New Testaments we affirm that all things necessary for the instruction of the Kirk, and to make the man of God perfect, are contained and sufficiently expressed.

By the contrary doctrine, we understand whatsoever men, by laws, councils, or constitutions have imposed upon the consciences of men, without the expressed commandment of364 God's Word; such as vows of chastity, forswearing of marriage, binding of men and women to several and disguised apparels, to the superstitious observation of fasting days, difference of meat for conscience' sake, prayer for the dead, and keeping of holy days of certain saints commanded by man, such as be all those that the Papists have invented, as the feasts, as they term them, of apostles, martyrs, virgins, of Christmas, circumcision, epiphany, purification, and other fond feasts of our Lady. Which things, because in God's Scriptures they neither have commandment nor assurance, we judge utterly to be abolished from this realm; affirming farther, that the obstinate maintainers and teachers of such abominations ought not to escape the punishment of the civil magistrate.