A26887:216
The certainty of Christianity without popery, or, Whether the Catholic-Protestant or the papist have…The certainty of Christianity without popery, or, Whether the Catholick-Protestant or the papist have…
The certainty of Christianity without popery, or, Whether the Catholic-Protestant or the papist have the surer faith being an answer to one of the oft canted questions and challenges of the papists, sent to one who desired this : published to direct the unskilful, how to defend their faith against papists and infidels, but especially against the temptations of the Devil, that by saving their faith, they may save their holiness, their comfort and their souls / by Richard Baxter.The certainty of Christianity without popery, or, Whether the Catholick-Protestant or the papist have the surer faith being an answer to one of the oft canted questions and challenges of the papists, sent to one who desired this : published to direct the unskilful, how to defend their faith against papists and infidels, but especially against the temptations of the Devil, that by saving their faith, they may save their holiness, their comfort and their souls / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed for Nevil Simons, 1672
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.
And we have all your valid testimony in, with ours. As you are part of the witnesses that received the Scriptures, and as you have among you the Teachers and Professors of them, or have any other Evidence of their truth, besides a pretended Power to Judge ⟨p. 71⟩for all the world, you are a part (and but a part) of our Historical witness. And cannot the Pope and his Council tell us as credibly whether Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, were ever in the world, and their writings be not spurious, as they are part of the world that hath credibly received it, as if they pretend a power to judge infallibly whether it be so or not?
And we have all your valid testimony in, with ours. As you are part of the witnesses that received the Scriptures, and as you have among you the Teachers and Professors of them, or have any other Evidence of their truth, besides a pretended Power to Iudge ⟨p. 71⟩for all the world, you are a part (and but a part) of our Historical witness. And cannot the Pope and his Council tell us as credibly whether Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, were ever in the world, and their writings be not spurious, as they are part of the world that hath credibly received it, as if they pretend a power to judge infallibly whether it be so or not?
XI. It is an injury to God for such arrogant fellows to pretend that he hath entailed on them a power to do that, which he enableth men by Natural means to do as well and better without them. As to pretend that God hath given them a judicial power, to tell us whether the Statutes of England are true or spurious? Whether ever there were such Kings or Parliaments as made them? &c. Doth not the Certain Historical Tradition of the world suffice for this without a supernatural power? If you say that soul-concernments must have more certainty than bodily? I answer, 1. The more impudent are you that would give us less. 2. The nature of the matter alloweth ordinarily no more. As sense told the seers of Christs and the Apostles Miracles that they saw them, and the hearers and readers of the Gospel that they heard and read it, so all the difference