commentary

An Exposition of the Symbole or Creed of the Apostles

1595 · 12 entries

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By

William Perkins

Dates

first published 1595

Tradition

anglican, reformed

Also called

An Exposition of the Creed; Perkins on the Creed

Follows

An Exposition of the Symbole or Creed of the Apostles, according to the tenour of the Scriptures, and the consent of Orthodoxe Fathers of the Church. By William Perkins, John Legatt’s first printing, Cambridge, 1595 (Huntington Library’s copy) (Cambridge); STC 19703, ESTC S120654 · the scan (PDF) , from archive.org

Transcribed

From EEBO-TCP A09411Checked against a copy at archive.org: every heading (the dedication’s, the contents’, the resolution’s, the exposition’s, “God, the Father Almightie.”, the errata’s); the first page of the exposition and the page where Perkins takes up each clause (pp. 1, 5, 25, 118, 148, 172, 304, 333, 371, 397, 420, 515, 521, 532) and its last (543–544); the dedication’s first and last pages; twenty pages drawn at random (pp. 93, 97, 140, 177, 188, 204, 233, 234, 261, 274, 322, 372, 394, 411, 428, 467, 476, 486, 493, 520) and pp. 3, 6 and 117, word by word; and the TCP’s I and J against the printing’s, by Claude, for cco3, 2026-10-29

License

Public domain

Notes

William Perkins (1558–1602), fellow of Christ’s College and lecturer at Great St Andrew’s, Cambridge, catechised on the Creed in Cambridge (Edward Russell, Earl of Bedford, to whom he dedicates it, “vouchsafed when you were in Cambridge to be an hearer thereof”) and presents it as “an Exposition of an other part of the Catechisme”. He expounds the Creed article by article, each part’s doctrine, then its comforts and duties, as his “Resolution of the Creede” divides it. Each entry is the exposition of one of apostles’s twelve clauses, from the paragraph where Perkins takes up its words (“Now followeth … in these words, Conceiued by the holy Ghost, borne of the Virgin Marie”); its text is Markdown, its margin notes footnotes. The printing has no headings in the exposition but “God, the Father Almightie.” (a heading in entry 1); an entry is titled by its clause. Entry 1 begins with Perkins’s treatise of faith, his exposition of “I beleeue”, and goes on through God, the Trinity, the Father, his omnipotence, the creation, providence and the fall; entry 2 begins with the covenant of grace, whose “foundation” is Christ, and goes on with his four titles; entry 4 has the whole of the humiliation, its general part (“the estate of Christ after his birth”) and the passion, crucifixion, sacrifice, burial and descent into hell; entry 6 the ascension and the sitting at the right hand; entry 9 the Church, with predestination, the mystical union and the communion of saints. The book’s opening (the text, “I beleeue in God, &c.”, and what the Creed is, its name and its use), the general uses after the last clause, the dedication, the table of contents, the “Resolution of the Creede” (a folded table) and the two lists of errata are prose/; the title page is left out. The text is as printed, not as its errata amend it. Imported from EEBO-TCP A09411 by scripts/import-tcp.mjs (--kind commentary --on apostles --sermons), from a copy of the TEI divided at those places, keeping its spelling and its marks for what it couldn’t read (•, ▪, 〈◊〉, and 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 for Greek and Hebrew), but where the scan was read. EMENDATIONS.md gives the conventions and every correction. The PDF is EEBO’s film as archive.org has it, a page an image; the printing’s page numbers skip 35–36 and are misprinted or repeated in a dozen places, as the TCP gives them.

On

Apostles’ Creed

Download

perkins1595.json · 1.3 MB