A26962:80
Naked popery, or, The naked falsehood of a book called The Catholic naked truth,…Naked popery, or, The naked falshood of a book called The Catholick naked truth,…
Naked popery, or, The naked falsehood of a book called The Catholic naked truth, or, The Puritan convert to apostolical Christianity, written by W.H. opening their fundamental error of unwritten tradition, and their unjust description of the Puritans, the prelatical Protestant, and the papist, and their differences, and better acquainting the ignorant of the same difference, especially what a Puritan and what a papist is / by Richard Baxter ...Naked popery, or, The naked falshood of a book called The Catholick naked truth, or, The Puritan convert to apostolical Christianity, written by W.H. opening their fundamental errour of unwritten tradition, and their unjust description of the Puritans, the prelatical Protestant, and the papist, and their differences, and better acquainting the ignorant of the same difference, especially what a Puritan and what a papist is / by Richard Baxter ...
London: printed for N. Simmons, 1677
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 you had meant by a Puritan a meer Non-conformist as such, you would not so laudably have described the work of God upon his Soul and Life as you have done: For if most Non-conformists be such, yet so are many others as well as they. And it's easy to see what a deceitful course it is to take up a name of many significations, and such as signifieth no different Religion at all, as to any one Article of Faith, nor any more difference in, or about Religion, than such as is among most Christian Churches; and much less than is among your selves.
If you had meant by a Puritane a meer Non-conformist as such, you would not so laudably have described the work of God upon his Soul and Life as you have done: For if most Non-conformists be such, yet so are many others as well as they. And it's easie to see what a deceitful course it is to take up a name of many significations, and such as signifieth no different Religion at all, as to any one Article of Faith, nor any more difference in, or about Religion, than such as is among most Christian Churches; and much less than is among your selves.
Besides that the plainer name of a Non-conformist is of no determinate nor certain signification, save only in general to notify one that Conformeth not to all that is imposed on him; but what that is, the name doth not signify.
Besides that the plainer name of a Non-conformist is of no determinate nor certain signification, save only in general to notifie one that Conformeth not to all that is imposed on him; but what that is, the name doth not signifie.
A Non-conformist in Scotland is one thing, in England another thing, as the Impositions are different. Nonconformity twenty years ago, or forty years, was one thing. Non-conformity since 1662. is quite another thing. And Non-conformists differ among themselves: If twenty things be imposed as necessary to the Ministry, he is a Non-conformist who consenteth but to nineteen of them; and so is he that consenteth but to eighteen, or to seventeen, or to sixteen, and so on, as well as he that consenteth to none of them. And that there is so much difference among them is no wonder to them, nor any considerate Man; for they hold Christian Love and Communion with those that agree with them in the foresaid common Principles and Practice of Christianity, (as far as they require not them to sin:) And they are not of a different Religion from every one that fasteth not on Fridays, or Saints Vigils, &c. as you seem to be, nor