A26860:499
An answer to Mr. Dodwell and Dr. Sherlock, confuting an universal humane church-supremacy aristocratical…An answer to Mr. Dodwell and Dr. Sherlocke, confuting an universal humane church-supremacy aristocratical…
An answer to Mr. Dodwell and Dr. Sherlock, confuting an universal humane church-supremacy aristocratical and monarchical, as church-tyranny and popery : and defending Dr. Isaac Barrow's treatise against it by Richard Baxter ; preparatory to a fuller treatise against such an universal sovereignty as contrary to reason, Christianity, the Protestant profession, and the Church of England, though the corrupters usurp that title.An answer to Mr. Dodwell and Dr. Sherlocke, confuting an universal humane church-supremacy aristocratical and monarchical, as church-tyranny and popery : and defending Dr. Isaac Barrow's treatise against it by Richard Baxter ; preparatory to a fuller treatise against such an universal soveraignty as contrary to reason, Christianity, the Protestant profession, and the Church of England, though the corrupters usurp that title.
London: printed for Thomas Parkhurst, 1682
Chapter 5: Wherein Mr. Dodwell's deceits, and the danger of them do consist.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
5. What Superiors say and do, I need not mention.
6. And to perfect all, some Preachers in Press and Pulpit, and you in Discourse, declare us in danger of damnation, as Schismatics, unless we will give over Preaching the Gospel. O how easy were it to me to avoid that damnation! And if I incur it, how dearly do I purchase it! It is a sad case that such poor souls as we are in, that would fain know Gods will whatever study or suffering it cost us, and after our most earnest search and prayers, believe that if we forsook our trust, and office, and the peoples souls, we should be judged as sacrilegious, perfidious hypocrites, and yet we are told by wiser and greater men, that our labours and sufferings do but damn us; may not a man be damned at a cheaper rate than Forty pound a Sermon, or the loss of all his worldly Estate, and lying with malefactors, and perhaps dying in a Goal, under the published sacred infamy of being Schismatics and enemies of the public Government and peace, &c? But this also we must be fortified against. For Satan is sometime utterly impudent, and will say, Damn your selves by perfidiousness, and let the people be damned quietly, or else you shall be damned for Schismatics. But the long noise of damning Papists and Quakers have somewhat hardened or emboldened us. It was an early trick, Act. 15. Except ye be circumcised and keep the Law of Moses, ye cannot be saved. When lands and livings will not prevail; when profit, pleasure and honour fail; when poverty, reproach and prisons will not serve, then comes, You cannot else be saved. How many Sects say, Say as we say, and do as we do, and follow us, or you cannot be saved? But saith St. Paul, It is a small thing with me to be judged of man, or at mans day: I have one that judgeth me, even the Lord, (to whom we will appeal whatever you say against it.) But you must give me leave to think, that to draw men from their great duty, and the saving souls, to heinous ⟨p. 142⟩sin, as in the name of Christ, and to frighten men into Hell with the fear of damnation, and the abused Word of God, hath heinous aggravations, which enticing men by sensuality to drunkenness, whoredom or theft, hath not.