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,…

P. Uncleanness must not be touched, nor sin partook of, nor lukewarm indifferency to sin entertained; we must go as far from sin as we can. But, poor deceived souls run into it, under the conceit of going far enough from it, and sometimes into greater than they avoid.

P. Uncleanness must not be touched, nor sin partaked of, nor lukewarm indifferency to sin entertained; we must go as far from sin as we can. But, poor deceived souls run into it, under the conceit of going far enough from it, and sometimes into greater than they avoid.

S. What sin have such Protestants run into in their opposition to Popery?

P. I will tell you some, I. In Doctrine: and II. In the consequent• and practice. I. It is more than one injudicious Protestant Divine that hath printed such unsound Opinions as these in opposition to Popery for want of judgement. 1. While they plead against the Romish false Tradition, they have weakened faith, by denying that necessary use of Historical Tradition of Scripture which Christianity doth suppose: (As others have denied the necessary use of Reason unto faith.) 2. They have wronged the Church by undervaluing the Tradition of the Creed and the Essentials of Christianity, by many means besides the Scriptures. 3. They have much wronged the Protestant Cause by denying the perpetual Visibility of the Church, and almost given it away, as I have showed against Johnson. 4. And their denial of its Universality, and confining it long to the Waldenses and such others, is an exceeding injury to the Church and Truth. 5. And so is some mens over-doing as for the Scripture, who teach men that they can be no surer of Christianity, (as delivered many years in Baptism before any of the New Testament was written,) than they are that there is no one error in all the Bible, by the carelessness of the Scribes and Printers, nor any humane frailty in the phrase. 6. And also their feigning the Scripture perfection to consist, in its being a particular determiner of all those circumstances of which it is only a general rule. 7. And those that make every form of prayer, or Ceremony to be Antichristian. 8. And those that make Justifying faith to be a certainty or full persuasion that we are elected and pardoned and shall be saved. 9. And those that say, that To believe that I am justified is to believe Gods Word, or ides divina; either (as most say) because one of the premises is in Scripture, or (as excellent Chamier saith) because the Witness of the Spirit is Gods Word.