A26912:533
A defence of the principles of love, which are necessary to the unity and…
A defence of the principles of love, which are necessary to the unity and concord of Christians and are delivered in a book called The cure of church-divisions ... / by Richard Baxter ...
London: printed for Nevil Simmons, 1671
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.
EXCEPT. XXVII. Answered. You say He seems to us very much to disparage the reputation of honesty, when he scruples not to 1affirm [It oft falleth out that honest people are like straying sheep, if one leap over the hedge, the rest will crowd and strive to follow him.] This we think is enough to make people afraid of being honest, if indeed when they are so, they are so apt to go astray.
- 1Whether honest people be not apt to stray after one anothers example.
Answ. 1. Do I need to cite you an hundred Texts in which this sinning, straying inclination is charged upon honest men? When Paul saith of himself, what he doth, Rom. 7. and David of himself, Psal. 119. 176. And he that saith that he hath no sin deceiveth himself, and the truth is not in him, And there is not a just man that doth good and sinneth not. Did not Pauls carnal Corinthians, and Legal Galatians go astray one after another? Are you sure that they that followed their Leaders into all those sects which Epiphanius ⟨p. 117⟩and others mention, were all dishonest? And all they that followed Swinkfeldius, and Behmen, and Sti•felius, and Muntzer, and such others? And all they that have followed Dr. Crispe, or Arminius, or the Leading Anabaptists, or Seekers, of these ages? Yea, or all they that did and said those contrary and confounding things in our late troubles, which must not to you be mentioned? Are you sure that none of all these were honest? Or are you sure that none of them went astray? Even when they contradicted, yea, killed one another? Or are you sure that some seduced not the rest? At least you should not have forgotten in the doing of it, that you were then writing an Antidote to keep honest people from being infected by my book for Love and Unity; And if honest people are in no such danger, why laboured you in vain? Your intenseness upon what your passion sets you on, hindereth your memory of what you cannot choose but know.