Talk:Exposition of the Creed

State of the article

The article in its present condition isn't much of an article--and with this long, long quote, I doubt it can stand: it looks like something for Wikiquote. However, I have no doubt that a Google Books search should quickly deliver something worthwhile; find the sources and you'll find the interest and the material. Drmies (talk) 02:22, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

• Maybe that was optimistic. Google Books has mainly primary texts to offer, and Google Scholar has only this. There's a related problem here: "exposition of the creed" isn't just the title of the book. It might well be that a more notable use of the phrase is in the more general sense--the phrase is used for "expositions of the creed" for more than 1800 years. Drmies (talk) 02:32, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
  • I can scan in the title page from my second printing and attach it if that would help. Its really more of something to fill in the main page which talks about his interactions with Martin Luther than anything else while not cluttering up the main page. I am open to all suggestions as to improvement. The title of the book is as I have indicated: "A playne and godly Exposytion or Declaration of The Commune Crede (which in the Latin tongue is called Symbolum Apostolorum) and of the .x. Commanudmentes of goddes law. Newly made and put forth by the most famous clarke Mayster Erasmus of Roterdame AT THE Request..." I note that the use of "u" as "u" and not "v" probably dates this printing from at least the 17th century. BibleBill (talk) 13:45, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

"Excerpt"

From the article:

I Believe in God

Again, although others do affirm that the existence of God is a truth evident in itself, so as whosoever hears but these terms once named, that God is, cannot choose but acknowledge it for a certain and infallible truth upon the first apprehension; that as no man can deny that the whole is greater than any part, who knoweth only what is meant by whole, and what by part; so no man can possibly deny or doubt of the existence of God, who knows but what is meant by God, and what it is to be; yet can we not ground our knowledge of God's existence upon any such clear and immediate evidence: nor were it safe to lay it upon such a ground, because whosoever should deny it, could not by this means be convinced; it being a very irrational way of instruction to tell a man that doubts of this truth, that he must believe it because it is evident unto him, when he knows that he therefore only doubts of it because it is not evident unto him.

Although therefore that God is, be of itself an immediate certain, necessary truth, yet must it be evidenced and made apparent unto us by its connection unto other truths; so that the being of the Creator may appear unto us by his creatures and the dependency of inferior entities lead us to a clear acknowledgment of the supreme and independent being...

We find by the experience of ourselves that some things in this world have a beginning...

Now if there be anything which had a beginning, there must necessarily be something which had no beginning, because nothing can be a beginning to itself. Whatsoever is, must of necessity either have been made, or not made; and something there must needs by which was never made, because all things cannot be made. For whatsoever is made is made by another...

If then all things which are made were made by some other, that other which produced them either was itself produced, or was not: and if not, then have we already an independent being; if it were, we must at last come to something which was never made, or else admit either a circle of productions, in which the effect shall make its own cause, or an infinite succession in causalities, by which nothing will be made: both which are equally impossible...

And although these effects or dependent beings singly considered by themselves do not infer one supreme cause and maker of them all, yet the admirable order and connection of things show as much; and this one supreme cause is God...

Again, as all things have their existence, so have they also their operations for some end; and whatsoever worketh so, must needs be directed to it... Even men in natural actions use no act of deliberation: we do not advise how our heart shall beat, though without that pulse we cannot live; when we have provided nutriment for our stomach, we take no counsel how it shall be digested there, or how the chyle distributed to every part for the reparation of the whole; the mother which conceives taketh no care how that conceptus shall be framed...

What then can be more clear, than that those natural agents which work constantly for those ends which they themselves cannot perceive, must be directed by some high and over-ruling wisdom. Now what the artificer is to works of art, who orders and disposes them to other ends than by nature they were made, that is the maker of all things to all natural agents, directing all their operations to ends which they cannot apprehend; and thus appears the maker to be the ruler of the world, the steerer of this great ship, the law of this universal commonwealth, the general of all the hosts of heaven and earth. By these ways, as by the testimony of the creature, we come to find an eternal and independent being ... God.

Neither is this any private collection of particular ratiocination, but the public and universal reason of the world. No age so distant, no country so remote, no people so barbarous, but gives a sufficient testimony of this truth. When the Roman eagle flew over most parts of the habitable world, they met with atheism nowhere... they showed no nation was without God. And since the later art of navigation improved hath discovered another part of the world, with which no former commerce hath been known, although the customs of the people be much different, and their manner of religion holds small correspondency with any in these parts of the world professed, yet in this all agree, that some religious observances they retain, and a divinity they acknowledge...

Nor is the reason only general, and the consent unto it universal, but god hath still preserved and quickened the worship but unto his name...

Things which are to come are so beyond our knowledge that the wisest man can but conjecture... The works of nature appear by observation uniform, and there is a certain sphere of everybody's power and activity. If then any action be performed which is not within the compass of the power of any natural agent ... it must be ascribed to a cause transcending all natural causes... Thus every miracle proves its author, and every act of omnipotence is a sufficient demonstration of a deity...

Every particular person hath a particular remembrance in himself, as a sufficient testimony of his Creator, Lord and Judge. We know there is a great force of conscience in all men, by which their thoughts are every accusing or excusing them...

It is necessary thus to believe there is a God... This necessary truth hath been so universally received, that we shall always find all nations of the world more prone unto idolatry than to atheism, and readier to multiply than deny the deity...