A26887:97
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.
§. 4. And here Revelations are pretended against Revelation, yea the superstruct against the fundamental, the consequent against the antecedent, the less certain against the more certain; yea certain forgery fathered on God, against his Certain Natural Revelations. For, 1. We are men before we are Christians; we have sense before we have faith. We can have no certainty of faith, but by means of the Certainty of sense: For we cannot tell that there is any man or book in the world, nor that ever we saw a letter or heard a word. What then shall we believe?
2. And they have nothing but pretended Miracles against this Constant Evident Natural Revelation. For every Priest (how sottish and wicked soever) to turn Bread into no Bread and Wine into no Wine when he list: For all the Priests in the world ⟨p. 28⟩these sixteen hundred years to do this every week, or each day that they celebrate their Mass, publicly or privately, must needs be an undeniable Miracle (if true) being as much beyond all natural power as raising Lazarus from death: And to make these miracles as universal, constant, and easy as Gods worship in the Assembly, is to turn Miracles into the familiarest of Gods dealings: And hath not all this need of good proof, to prove Gods natural Revelations to be as ordinarily and universally false?
2. And they have nothing but pretended Miracles against this Constant Evident Natural Revelation. For every Priest (how sottish and wicked soever) to turn Bread into no Bread and Wine into no Wine when he list: For all the Priests in the world ⟨p. 28⟩these sixteen hundred years to do this every week, or each day that they celebrate their Mass, publickly or privately, must needs be an undeniable Miracle (if true) being as much beyond all natural power as raising Lazarus from death: And to make these miracles as universal, constant, and easie as Gods worship in the Assembly, is to turn Miracles into the familiarest of Gods dealings: And hath not all this need of good proof, to prove Gods natural Revelations to be as ordinarily and universally false?