A26975:389
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
Chapter 12: The Three other Reasons for Popery answered briefly.
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.
2. The Bishops have made the greatest Schisms and Division in the Church that ever was made, by sinful Usurpation and Corruption, and Impositions, and Persecutions, Unchurching the far greatest part of Christians, and appropriating the Church Title to his own Sect alone. All the Bloody Murders of the Waldenses, Bohemians, and other Protestants, the Inquisition, the present Wars that France hath involved Europe in, are on pretence of Unity: We like not the Unity that Satan maintaineth, and that at such a rate of Blood.
3. But I have before and elsewhere proved that the Protestants for all their Divisions have a far better Unity than the Papal Church hath, so that this Question is elsewhere and here sufficiently answered.
Quest. V. Whether the Errors of the Protestants do not so disparage them as to make the Roman Church more Honourable?
Ans. 1. That is, should not Men choose a Leprosy to cure an Itch? We deny not but where Controversies show our Differences among our selves, one Party must needs be in an Error, either de re, or de nomine. But we agree in all that's necessary to Salvation and Brotherly Love: And Pride, and Envy, and Malignity, are more the Causes of our Disagreement than our Religion. Especially unskilfulness in Words and stating Cases. I have endeavoured to show in many Books (especially my End of Doctrinal Controversies, my Catholic Theology and Methodus Theologiae) that our Differences are most in Words whose sense is not mutually understood.