A26947:356
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.
What would you have more Sirs? Do you not see yet what the Popish Catholic Church is; and what they mean when they mouth it out to you, and ask you whether your private Judgement be safer or wiser then that of the whole Church, or of all the Christian world? You see they mean all this while but one man, whom Gretser and others plainly confess they call the Church. So that indeed it is General Councils, and all the Christian world or Church that are the ignorant, fallible, and oft erring ⟨p. 84⟩part; and it is one man, (that sometime is reputed an incarnate Devil by a General Council too) that is the unerring Pillar of the Church, and wiser then all they. Do you not see that they make a mere nothing or mockery of General Councils, any further then they please the Pope? And can you expect that any thing should please them that is against his Greatness, or, as Julius the second calls it, [his holding the place of the great God, the Maker of all things, and all Laws?] What a vile abuse is it then of the Pope to trouble the world by the meetings and Consultations of General Councils, when he can sit at Rome and contradict them infallibly, and, Good man, is fain to save the Catholic Church from the Errors that General Councils (the Representative Catholic Church) would else lead them into: and therefore could he not with less ado infallibly make us Laws, Canons, and Scriptures without them? For sure that which the Pope can do against a General Council, he can do without them. If he can Infallibly contradict a General Council, and Infallibly Rule us contrary to their Judgement, he may no doubt Infallibly Rule us without them. And therefore of late times they have learnt so much wit, that you may look long enough before you see a General Council. And I think the Council of Constance were no better Prognosticators then William Lilly, nor no more effectual Lawgivers then Wat Tyler, when they Prognosticated or Ordained Decennial Councils: And I will be judged by all the world.
What would you have more Sirs? Do you not see yet what the Popish Catholick Church is; and what they mean when they mouth it out to you, and ask you whether your private Judgement be safer or wiser then that of the whole Church, or of all the Christian world? You see they mean all this while but one man, whom Gretser and others plainly confess they call the Church. So that indeed it is General Councils, and all the Christian world or Church that are the ignorant, fallible, and oft erring ⟨p. 84⟩