A26883:52
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,…
Richard Baxter's Catholic theology plain, pure, peaceable, for pacification of the dogmatical word-warriors who, 1. by contending about things unrevealed or not understood, 2. and by taking verbal differences for real,Richard Baxter's Catholick theologie plain, pure, peaceable, for pacification of the dogmatical word-warriours who, 1. by contending about things unrevealed or not understood, 2. and by taking verbal differences for real,
London: printed by Robert White for Nevill Simmons, 1675
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.
THE PREFACE, AGAINST CLERGY MENS Contentions, AND Church-distracting Controversies.
THE PREFACE, AGAINST CLERGIE MENS Contentions, AND Church-distracting Controversies.
THAT the Churches of Christ are dolefully tempted and distracted by Divisions, no man will deny that knoweth them: That the Clergy is not only greatly culpable herein, but the chief cause, cannot be hid. But which part of the Clergy it is, and what be their dividing Errors and Crimes, and how they should be cured, is indeed easy for the truly faithful and impartial Spectators to perceive, but exceeding hard (as experience tells us) to make the Guilty throughly know, and harder to do much effectually for the cure. For the error and sin which is the true cause, is its own defence, and repelleth and frustrateth the Remedies. And so each party layeth it from themselves, on others, and hate all that accuse them, while they are the sharpest (and perhaps most unjust) accusers of the rest.
THAT the Churches of Christ are dolefully tempted and distracted by Divisions, no man will deny that knoweth them: That the Clergie is not only greatly culpable herein, but the chief cause, cannot be hid. But which part of the Clergie it is, and what be their dividing Errors and Crimes, and how they should be cured, is indeed easie for the truly faithful and impartial Spectators to perceive, but exceeding hard (as experience tells us) to make the Guilty throughly know, and harder to do much effectually for the cure. For the error and sin which is the true cause, is its own defence, and repelleth and frustrateth the Remedies. And so each party layeth it from themselves, on others, and hate all that accuse them, while they are the sharpest (and perhaps most unjust) accusers of the rest.
I shall here freely tell the Reader the History of my own Conceptions of these matters, and then my present