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A

CATECHISM

AND

CONFESSION OF FAITH,

APPROVED OF AND AGREED UNTO

BY THE

GENERAL ASSEMBLY

OF THE

PATRIARCHS, PROPHETS, AND APOSTLES, CHRIST HIMSELF
CHIEF SPEAKER IN AND AMONG THEM.

Which containeth a true and faithful account of the principles and doctrines, which are
most surely believed by the Churches of Christ in Great Britain and Ireland, who are
reproachfully called by the name of Quakers; yet are found in the one Faith with
the Primitive Church and Saints, as is most clearly demonstrated by some plain
Scripture Testimonies, (without Consequences or Commentaries) which are here
collected, and inserted by way of Answer to a few weighty, yet easy and familiar
Questions, fitted as well for the wisest and largest, as for the weakest and lowest
Capacities. To which is added, an Expostulation with, and appeal to, all other
Professors.

BY ROBERT BARCLAY.

Search the Scriptures, (or, ye search the Scriptures) for in them ye think ye have
aternal Life, and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come unto me,
trat ye might have Life.-John v. 39, 40.

PHILADELPHIA:

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THE PREFACE

TO THE READER.

SINCE first that great apostacy took place in the hearts and heads of those who began, even in the apostles' days, to depart from the simplicity and purity of the gospel, as it was then delivered in its primitive splendour and integrity, innumerable have been the manifold inventions and traditions, the different and various notions and opinions, wherewith man, by giving way to the vain and airy imaginations of his own unstable mind, hath burthened the Christian faith. So that indeed, first by adding these things, and afterwards by equalling them, if not exalting them above the truth, they have at last come to be substituted in the stead of it; so that in process of time truth came to be shut out of doors, and another thing placed in the room thereof, having a show and a name, but wanting the substance and thing itself. Nevertheless, it pleased God to raise up witnesses for himself almost in every age and generation, who, according to the discoveries they received, bore some testimony, less or more, against the superstition and apostacy of the time; and in special manner, through the appearing of that light which first broke forth in Germany, about one hundred and fifty years ago, and afterwards reached divers other nations, the beast received a deadly wound; and a very great number did at one time protest against, and rescind from the church of Rome, in divers of their most gross and sensual doctrines and superstitious traditions. But, alas! it is for matter of lamentation, that the successors of these Protestants are establishing and building up in themselves that which their fathers were pulling down,

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