A26887:222
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.
XVI. It is impossible to know which have been true General Councils: and therefore impossible to know which of their Decrees are Gods word, and the Churches faith. They are utterly disagreed of this among themselves. Bellarmine and the Papalines tell us it is those only that are approved by the Pope, (and so if all the Christian world had no more wit than to send their Bishops from all parts of the Earth, to sit as long as ⟨p. 75⟩the Council of Trent did (divers Popes Reigns) it is in the Popes power whether they shall be Approved Councils when all is done). But how know we which are Approved? Is it by the Decree of other Councils? No: None hath ventured to determine it. It is therefore by Common Historical Evidence: And so your faith must be thereinto resolved. And yet here History faileth you. How many Councils are Controverted? Bellarmine will partly tell you. What wanted Ephes. 2? What wanted that at Basil? And many more such, I have elsewhere debated.
XVII. There never was a real General Council in the world (unless you will call the twelve Apostles one.) This is the great cheat of the Papists: which I wonder all men that ever read History do not see as plainly, as any lie in History can be seen. Was it not the Roman Emperors that called the Councils? Had they any power out of their own dominions? Were not all the Patriarchs only in one Empire? Is their Jurisdiction mentioned in the Concil. Nicene. any further extended? Read in Binnius Surius or any others, the subscribed Names to all the Councils, and then peruse the Maps and Topography of the Roman Empire and the notitias Episcopatuum (even Aub. Myraeus famed ⟨p. 76⟩for a feigner) and you will see that all the Councils were made up of the subjects of the Empire alone, or such as had been thereto accustomed while they were their subjects, (and but few of them,) unless some odd Bishop that no man knows what he was: Indeed when Scythia and Persia wanted help, they placed a Bishop in an Imperial City near Scythia (as Tomis) and Persia, and gave him leave to help the Country as far as he could, and called him Bishop of Scythia or Persia.