A26947:343
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.
If they say that most of the Bishops of the world are Heretics or Schismatics, and had nothing to do to be there, we are sure that this is but the impudent censure of a sect, that unchurcheth most of Christs Church, for far less faults then it self is guilty of: But how is this heavy censure proved?
If they say that most of the Bishops of the world are Hereticks or Schismaticks, and had nothing to do to be there, we are sure that this is but the impudent censure of a sect, that unchurcheth most of Christs Church, for far less faults then it self is guilty of: But how is this heavy censure proved?
5. Nay to make short of it, its plain by this Definition, that a General Council is but a name (at least since the days ⟨p. 80⟩when the Church lay in a narrow room) and that no such thing is to be expected in the world. For 1. If all Bishops, or half come thither, what shall their poor flocks do the while? 2. How many years must they be travailing from America, Ethiopia, and all the remote parts of the Christian world? 3. So much shipping, and provision, and so many thousand pound a man is necessary for the Convoy of many, that alas the poor Bishops be not able to defray the hundred part of the charge. 4. Abundance of them are so aged and weak, that they are unfit for the journey. 5. Their Princes are some of them Infidels, and some at wars, and will never give them leave to come. 6. They must pass through many Kingdoms of the enemies, or that are in wars, that will never suffer them to pass. 7. The tediousness, and hazards of the journey, with change of air is like to be the death of most of them, and so its but a plot to put an end to the Church. 8. The length of General Councils is such (some of them being ten years, and some (as that at Trent) eighteen years) that so many Bishops to be so long absent from home, is but to give up the Church to Infidelity or Impiety (unless the Bishops be such things as the Church can spare.) 9. When they come together, they cannot many of them understand one another, because of the diversity of their languages. 10. And the Number would be so great, that ten or twenty Council-houses or rooms would not hold them: so that they could not Converse in one Assembly: so that a true General Council now, is but a name to amuse those that think the world is no bigger then a man may ride over in a weeks journey.