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The Sum of Saving Knowledge

With the Practical Use Thereof


by David Dickson and James Durham1


All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” (John 6:37 ESV)


A brief Sum of Christian Doctrine as Contained in Holy Scripture, and set forth in the Confession of Faith and the Catechisms as Agreed upon by the Divines at Westminster, and received by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland


Edinburgh,

Printed by Evan Tyler, Printer to the King's most Excellent Majesty, 1660.A

Printed by George Swintoun and Thomas Brown, 1671B

Printed by the heir of Andrew Anderson, Printer to His most Sacred Majesty, 1685C

[Primary Sources, with reference to other facsimiles as needed.]D,E,F,G,H,I,J


Rendered into Contemporary American English

by Tom Sullivan, Editor




Copyright © 2026 by Tom Sullivan


Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with Invariant Sections being the GNU Free Documentation License, this paragraph, copyright information, and the large sections: The Sum of Saving Knowledge and The Practical Use of Saving Knowledge, except for the Scripture passages for which other versions of the Holy Bible, generally known to be reliable and well translated, may be substituted, with no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in Appendix 7, entitled "GNU Free Documentation License". (Because the The Sum of Saving Knowledge and The Practical Use of Saving Knowledge sections and license and copyright information are invariant, translators of those sections must include and preserve them in the original English, for example, in appendices.) A transparent (publicly modifiable) copy of this document in the Open Document Format (ODF) standard (OpenDocument) is available at //https://beforgiven.info/HostedLiterature.htm.


The original works are in the public domain, but the source facsimiles were from Early English Books Online. The editor has used standardK the “Copyleft” license to preserve general public rights of free use and free distribution and publication of this book, while preventing others from encumbering copies or derivative works with restrictive copyrights. Details of the Copyleft license follow in the Appendix 7. Its length is a reflection of the difficulties of securing our rights in an over-lawyered and bureaucratic society.


Scripture passages enclosed in quotation marks and followed by a version designation (ESV, NASB, or NKJV) are exact full or partial quotations used by generous permission under the following publisher copyrights. (Out of respect for the original Sum, numerous partial quotations are used without attempting to use ellipses or letters to designate which portion of the verse is being quoted.):

ESV (or no version designation):

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. ESV Text Edition: 2011. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license.2 The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.3 Used by permission. All rights reserved.

NASB:

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org

NKJV:

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

1 The authors were seventeenth century Scottish ministers held in high repute by many. More information may be found in Appendix 2.

2 This restriction is inapplicable because it is intended that this book be propagated under the GNU Free Documentation License.

3 This provision does not at all prohibit one from substituting a different Bible version in English or any other language.

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