A26947:941
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 if John of Constantinople in prosecution of his title of Universal Patriarch, had concluded as you, that none in the world are Christs members but his members, nor of the Church, but his subjects, had not this been a notorious schism? Tell us then what Church he had forsaken, and answer your self.
But your last Caution in a parenthesis, doth condemn your selves. What I Must that Church that's true be visible from Christs time? then as Constantinople, nor most other were never true Churches (which is false) so Rome it self was never a true Church (which is false also) Did you think that there was a Church at Rome in Christs time? Sure you are not so ignorant. By this Rule there should be no true Church, but that at Jerusalem, and those in Judea.
But your last Caution in a parenthesis, doth condemn your selves. What I Must that Church that's true be visible from Christs time? then as Constantinople, nor most other were never true Churches (which is false) so Rome it self was never a true Church (which is false also) Did you think that there was a Church at Rome in Christs time? Sure you are not so ignorant. By this Rule there should be no true Church, but that at Jerusalem, and those in Judaea.
But suppose you had said [since the Apostles time] This also had excluded most Churches on earth. But if you mean the Universal Church, we grant you easily, that it hath been visible ever since Christs time: but not alway in one place or Country. Is not the greater part of Christians in the world, whom you schismatically unchurch, a visible company? Doubtless you know they are. Yea the Abassines and many Churches that being out of the Roman Empire, did never so much as submit to your Primacy of Order, nor had you ever any thing to do with them (more then to own them as Christians) yet now are condemned by your Arrogancy, because they will not begin in the end of the world, to enter into a new Church, which they nor their Fore-fathers had ever any dependence on. It was a shrewd answer of an old woman, that the Emperor of Habassia's Mother gave to Gonzalus Rodericus the Jesuit, pressing her to be subject to the Pope as the Vicar of Christ, or else she could not be subject to Christ [Neque ego, inquit illa, neque mei sancto Petro obedientiam negamus: in eadem nunc sumus fide, in quae fuimus ab initio: ea si recta non erat, cur per tot aetates ac secula nemo repertus est, qui nos errrantes commonerent] i. e. We are in the