Richard Baxter's Catholic theology plain, pure, peaceable, for pacification of the dogmatical word-warriors who,…Richard Baxter's Catholick theologie plain, pure, peaceable, for pacification of the dogmatical word-warriours who,…

SECT. XXIV. The sum and end of this Discourse of certain Perseverance.

339. The end and sum of all that I have said of Perseverance is but this, that the controversy is neither, 1. Of such weight; nor, 2. Of such facility and certainty, as that it should be made necessary to our charitable converse or Church Communion to hold either this or that: But we should number it with the dogmata not to be imposed on others, nor fit to make any breach in the love and concord of Christians; and for my part, I profess that I take him for the worser Christian caeteris paribus, whom I hear with disaffection blotting the names of others with notes of unsoundness and culpability, for dissenting in this point on one side or other, either as holding or as denying the certain Perseverance of all the justified, than those that differ from me in the point it self, without any proud supercilious confidence. And that it is to be numbered with Tolerable Opinions, I have proved by these Arguments, in sum, 1. That which is so difficult that very few of the Learned and Godly Teachers of the Church in all ages could discern a certainty of it, cannot be a point so great or clear, as to be made necessary for all Christians or all Pastors of the Church to agree in: But such is this: For my part I profess that though my judgment incline more one way than the other, it is with no certainty that I am in the right, and I see so great difficulties after my hardest studies and search, that my inclination is not without much doubtfulness: And humility and modesty forbid me, to profess a certainty or too much confidence for a Doctrine, which I openly say, I cannot prove or find that any one Christian held of about 1000 years after the Apostles days, ^*I have not read all Books, and therefore there may have been some such that I know not of: But I know of none, that I remember for a far longer time. I know the Learned Bishop Robert Abbot and others cite Augustine as on that side; But it's past all controversy, that it is not all the justified but only all the elect whose Perseverance he asserted. And I am not he that would be separated from the Communion of all the ancient Churches, and Doctors, and all the Greeks and Lutherans of these times.