Canons (commonly known as those of Bishop Overall's convocation book) passed in the year 1606 in the convocation which was first called in 1603, primo Iacobi I and was continued by adjournments and prorogations to 1610.

Book I

1. If any man shall affirm with any pagan, heretic, atheist or any other profane persons which know not, or believe not the Scriptures, either that heaven and earth have no beginning or that the world was made by angels or the devil, that the world was not otherwise made by Christ than as he was an instrument of God the Father in making it, or that he did not as God, create our said parents Adam and Eve, he doth greatly err.

2. If any man shall affirm that men at the first, without all good education or civility, ran up and down in woods and fields as wild creatures, resting themselves in caves and dens, and acknowledging no superiority one over another, until they were taught by experience the necessity of government, and that thereupon they chose some among themselves to order and rule the rest, giving them power and authority so to do, and that consequently all civil power, jurisdiction and authority was first derived from the people and disordered multitude, or either is originally still in them, or else is deduced by their consents naturally from them, and is not God's ordinance originally descending from him and depending upon him, he doth greatly err.

3. If any man shall affirm either that our first parents, after their fall, or consequently any of their posterity, could serve or please God truly by any natural powers or faculties that were left in them after the said fall, or that the mystery of salvation through Jesus Christ was not a secret whereunto our corrupt nature could not attain, or that our Saviour Christ is not the promised seed that should break the serpent's head, or that any can possibly be partakers of everlasting life without faith in him, he doth greatly err.