A26947:109
A key for Catholics, to open the juggling of the Jesuits, and satisfy all…A key for Catholicks, to open the jugling of the Jesuits, and satisfie all…
A key for Catholics, to open the juggling of the Jesuits, and satisfy all that are but truly willing to understand, whether the cause of the Roman or reformed churches be of God ... containing some arguments by which the meanest may see the vanity of popery, and 40 detections of their fraud, with directions, and materials sufficient for the confutation of their voluminous deceits ... : the second part showeth (especially against the French and Grotians) that the Catholic Church is not united in any merely humane head, either Pope or council / by Richard Baxter, a Catholic Christian and Pastor of a church ...A key for Catholicks, to open the jugling of the Jesuits, and satisfie all that are but truly willing to understand, whether the cause of the Roman or reformed churches be of God ... containing some arguments by which the meanest may see the vanity of popery, and 40 detections of their fraud, with directions, and materials sufficient for the confutation of their voluminous deceits ... : the second part sheweth (especially against the French and Grotians) that the Catholick Church is not united in any meerly humane head, either Pope or council / by Richard Baxter, a Catholick Christian and Pastor of a church ...
London: printed by R.W. for Nevil Simmons, 1659
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.
CHAP. III.
Argum. 1. IF there be any godly honest men on earth besides Papists, then Popery is false and not of God. But there be godly honest men on earth besides Papists: therefore Popery is false, and not of God.
The Major is proved thus. It is an Article of the Popish faith, that there are no godly honest men on earth, besides Papists: therefore if there be any such, Popery is false, (By godly honest men, I mean such as have true love to God, and so are in a state of salvation.) The Antecedent I prove thus. 1. Their very definition of the Church doth make the Pope the Head, and confine the membership only to his subjects, making the Roman Catholic Church (as they call it) the whole. 2. But yet lest any ignorant Papists say, I may be a Roman Catholic without believing that all others are ungodly, and shall be damned, I will give it you in the Determination of a Pope and general Council. Leo the tenth, Abrog. Pragm. sanct. Bull. in the 17th. General Council at the Lateran, saith [And seeing it is of necessity to salvation, that all the faithful of Christ be subject to the Pope of Rome, as we are taught by the testimony of divine Scripture, and of the holy Fathers, and it is declared in the Constitution of Pope Boniface 7. &c.] And Pope Pius the second was converted from being Aeneas Sylvius by this Doctrine of a Cardinal, approved by him at large, Bull. Retract. in the Vol. 4. of Binnius, p. 514. [I came to the Fountain of Truth, which the holy Doctors, both Greek and Latin show; who with one voice say, that he cannot be saved that holdeth not the unity of the holy Church of Rome; and that all those virtues are maimed to him that refuseth to obey the Pope of Rome; though he lye in sack cloth and ashes, and fast and pray both day and night, and seem in the other things to fulfil the Law of God.] So that if a Pope and General Council be false, then Popery is false. For their infallibility is the ground of their faith, and they take it on their unerring authority. But if the Pope and a General Council be to be believed, then no man but a subject of the Pope can be saved: no, though he fast and pray in sack-cloth and ashes day and night, and seem to fulfil the rest of the Law of God. Its certain therefore that if