(4.) That the apostles baptized, and caused others to baptize many thousands, and settle many churches, before any part of the New Testament was written, even many and many years.
(5.) That the apostles did their work as well and better than any that succeeded them.
(6.) That their successors in the common ministry, did, as far as any church history leadeth us up, instruct and catechise men in the meaning of the baptismal covenant, (which is the christian faith,) before they baptized them: yea, they kept them long in the state of catechumens usually, before they would baptize them. And after baptized but twice a year, at Easter and Whitsuntide (as our liturgy noteth). And they received an account of their tolerable understanding of religion, before they would receive them into the church.
(7.) No doubt then but the apostles did cause the baptizable to understand the three articles of Christ's own creed and covenant, and to give some account of it before they baptized them, ordinarily among the gentiles.
(8.) No doubt therefore but they used many more explicatory words, to cause them to understand those few.
(9.) There is neither proof nor probability, that they used a composure of just the same words, and no more or less: because they had to do with persons of several capacities, some knowing, who needed fewer words, and some ignorant and dull, who needed more: nor is any such composure come down to our hands.
(10.) But it is more than probable, that the matter opened by them to all the catechumens was still the same, when the words were not the same. For God's promises and man's conditions are still the same (where the gospel cometh). Though since by the occasion of heresies, some few material clauses are inserted. For all christians had one christianity, and must go one way to heaven.
(11.) It is also more than probable, that they did not needlessly vary the words, lest it should teach men to vary the matter: but that all christians before baptism, did make the same profession of faith as the sense, and very much the same as to the very words; using necessary caution, and yet avoiding unnecessary preciseness of formality; but so as to obviate damnable heresies, that the christian profession might attain its ends.
(12.) Lastly, no doubt but this practice of the apostles was exemplary, and imitated by the churches, and that thus the essentials of religion were, by the tradition of the creed and baptism, delivered by themselves, as far as christianity went, long before any book of the New Testament was written: and every christian was an impress, or transcript, or specimen of it.[392] And that the following churches using the same creed, (wholly in sense, and mostly in words,) might so far well call it the apostles' creed; as they did both the Western and the Nicene.
[390] Vid. Usher and Vossium de Symbolis.