A27015:101
The safe religion, or, Three disputations for the reformed catholic religion against popery proving…The safe religion, or, Three disputations for the reformed catholike religion against popery proving…
The safe religion, or, Three disputations for the reformed catholic religion against popery proving that popery is against the Holy Scriptures, the unity of the catholic church, the consent of the ancient doctors, the plainest reason, and common judgment of sense it self / by Richard Baxter.The safe religion, or, Three disputations for the reformed catholike religion against popery proving that popery is against the Holy Scriptures, the unity of the catholike church, the consent of the antient doctors, the plainest reason, and common judgment of sense it self / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed by Abraham Miller for Thomas Underhill, 1657
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.
And I need not to say but these two things for proof of the point.
1. That their own Writers confess that the Affirmative or Positive part of our Religion, as it was here in England professed, was not against the word of God, contained in the holy Scriptures, only they told us that the Negatives were, of which we shall consider further anon.
2. As it is the great care of the Papists to keep the Scriptures from the people, accounting it the Original of Heresies to have them translated (as Arboreus and many expressly say) and burning men to ashes for reading the Scriptures, when God will burn them in Hell, if they obey them not (which they are not like to do without knowing them) so experience hath convinced them that where the reading of the Scriptures in a known tongue is but permitted, there doth our Religion most increase, and Popery decay; so that if this one means were but ⟨p. 16⟩permitted, in Spain and Italy as it is whether they will or no in other parts, undoubtedly the Popes Kingdom would soon come down: I say, if they durst but permit men to read the Word of God in a known tongue. They know this well enough, or else they would never so torture poor Christians by the Inquisition for having a Bible in their houses. They have sure some humanity in them, as well as others: and therefore could never go so exceeding far beyond the Turk in Cruelty to Christians themselves, but that they know their whole cause and Kingdom is concerned in it, and if once Scripture get in, they are gone. In a word, multitudes of volumes have already proved that Scripture is against Popery.
2. As it is the great care of the Papists to keep the Scriptures from the people, accounting it the Original of Heresies to have them translated (as Arboreus and many expresly say) and burning men to ashes for reading the Scriptures, when God will burn them in Hell, if they obey them not (which they are not like to do without knowing them) so experience hath convinced them that where the reading of the Scriptures in a known tongue is but permitted, there doth our Religion most encrease, and Popery decay; so that if this one means were but