A26892:5853
A Christian Directory
A Christian directory, or, A sum of practical theology and cases of conscience directing Christians how to use their knowledge and faith, how to improve all helps and means, and to perform all duties, how to overcome temptations, and to escape or mortify every sin : in four parts ... / by Richard Baxter.A Christian directory, or, A summ of practical theologie and cases of conscience directing Christians how to use their knowledge and faith, how to improve all helps and means, and to perform all duties, how to overcome temptations, and to escape or mortifie every sin : in four parts ... / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed by Robert White for Nevill Simmons, 1673
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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 same answer serveth to the Objection as it extendeth to the erroneous Doctrines which they preach, which are but by Consequence against the Essentials of Religion.
2. But it is a greater doubt, Whether any power of the Ministry can be conveyed by Antichrist, or from him? And whether God will own any of Antichrists administrations: Therefore seeing they profess themselves to have no office but what they receive from the Pope, and Christ disowning his usurpation, the same man cannot be the Minister of Christ and Antichrist; as the same man cannot be an officer in the Kings Army and his Enemies.
But this will have the same solution as the former. If this Antichrist were the open professed enemy to Christ, then all this were true: Because their corrupt additions would not by dark consequences, but so directly contain the denial of Christianity, or the true Ministry, that it were not possible to hold both. But (as our Divines commonly note) Antichrist is to sit in the Temple of God, and the Popes Treason is under pretence of the greatest service and friendship to Christ, making himself his Vicar General without his Commission. So that they that receive power from him, do think him to be Christs Vicar indeed, and so renounce not Christ, but profess their first and chief relation to be to him, and dependence on him, and that they would have nothing to do with the Pope, if they knew him to be against Christ. And some of them write, that the Power or Office is immediately from Christ, and that the Pope, Ordainers and Electors do but design the person that shall receive it (Because else they know not what to say of the Election and Consecration of the Pope himself who hath no superior.) And the Spanish Bishops in the Council of Trent held so close to this, that the rest were fain to leave it undetermined; so that it is no part of their Religion, but a doubtful opinion, Whether the power of Bishops be derived from the Pope, though they be Governed by him.