A26975:329
Of national churches their description, institution, use, preservation, danger, maladies and cure, partly applied…
Of national churches their description, institution, use, preservation, danger, maladies and cure, partly applied to England / written by Richard Baxter for promoting peace ... and for the fuller explication of the Treaty for Concord in 1660 and 1661, and of the Kings gracious declaration about ecclesiastical affairs ... and for further explication of his treatise of episcopacy ...
London: printed by T. Snowden for Thomas Parkhurst, 1691
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.
§ 7. And seeing it is the summa Potestas, or Sovereignty that is the unifying and denominating Form of a Political Society, it clearly followeth that those that now go under the name of Papists or Roman Catholics, are indeed of three distinct sort of Churches, and not as they pretend of One. But names not understood delude the ignorant, saying it is but One Church, maketh it not One.
§ 7. And seeing it is the summa Potestas, or Soveraignty that is the unifying and denominating Form of a Political Society, it clearly followeth that those that now go under the name of Papists or Roman Catholicks, are indeed of three distinct sort of Churches, and not as they pretend of One. But names not understood delude the ignorant, saying it is but One Church, maketh it not One.
§ 8. They uncharitably and very hurtfully mistake, 1. Who say that Popery essentially began when God and Constantine exalted the Bishops, and Pride in many abused that mercy. 2. And they that say it essentially began when Image-worship began. 3. And they that date it from the assumed Name of Universal Bishop, or Head of the Universal Church (which Leo I. assumed and Phocas gave Boniface) as long as they meant not the Universal Church on all the Earth, but only the Universal in the Empire, which was long meant.
§ 9. Now among all temptations to Popery, I never found any of difficult weight but these.