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,…

S. But Popery is an heinous evil; and corrupt nature is so prone to evil, tha• you need not thus dissuade men from going too far from it, or from over-doing against it, no more than from being overmuch religious.

S. But Popery is an heinous evil; and corrupt nature is so prone to evil, tha• you need not thus disswade men from going too far from it, or from over-doing against it, no more than from being overmuch religious.

P. You may say the same as truly of the errors on the contrary extreme: All of them are evil, and men are prone to evil: But 1. Little know you how common it is in the world to spend mens zeal against the real or supposed evil of other mens Opinions, and thereby to strengthen the mortal evil of their own carnal affections and passions, and worldly lives, and to take a zeal for Truth and Orthodoxness for real Holiness, while usually such miss of Truth it self. 2. And you know not the wiles of Satan, how ordinarily he betrayeth a good Cause by the ill management of its most zealous friends, and doth undo by over-doing. When he will play the Devil indeed with Eve, he will seem to be more than God himself for Knowledge of Good and Evil, and for the advancement of mankind to be like God; and God shall be accused by him as if he were untrue, and envied our perfection. When he will play the Devil indeed with Christ, he will seem to be more for valiantness and trusting God than Christ was, and pleadeth Scripture for tempting God. When he will, play the Devil indeed in the Pharisees, he will be stricter for the Sabbath, and for Discipline in avoiding the company of the Publicans and sinners, and stricter in fastings and diet and other observations than Christ himself; And he will be a zealous enemy to Blasphemy, and a zealous Royalist for Caesar, and a zealous honourer of the Temple and the Law, when Christ, or Paul, or other Apostles are to be destroyed by it. And when he will play the Devil in the Nicolaitans, Simonians, and Gnostic Heretics, he will seem to be for higher knowledge, and greater liberty than the Apostles were. And so when he would sow discord among Christians, and would kill their Love, and divide Christs Church, and set them in a mental and oral War against each other, he will aggravate the errors and faults of others, and he will seem a more zealous friend of Truth, and enemy to Popery, Heresy, Error, Superstition, false Worship, or other faults than Christ is: But he knoweth why.