A27015:256
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.
9. Pro. Yet these better sort of Papists are commonly tainted with so much of their corruptions as makes their salvation much more difficult; so that we may well judge that it is fewer by far that are saved among them, then in the Reformed Churches. Even as it is possible for men to scape catching the Plague that live among the infected, and its possible for the infected to escape with their lives, but where one scapes many dye, and its I think more ⟨p. 88⟩dangerous to live in an infected house or air then in a sound one.
Prop. 10, A man that cordially and practically receiveth the whole body of Popery, and so is a co• pleat Papist, is in so great danger of eternal damnation, as that it is a very hard question whether it be possible for him at the same time to hold cordially the fundamentals of Christianity, and so to be in a state of Salvation? Which because it is so hard a question that Protestant Divines are of different opinions about it, some thinking it possible for such to be saved, and some impossible, I will not presume here to determine it, seeing the matter in hand doth not call for the determination of it.
Prop. 11. Whosoever is saved among the Papists; whether he be more or less tainted with theirs errors, it is not By Popery that he is saved, but from Popery, or against it by the Christian faith. So that if a Papist may be saved, it must be as a Christian, and not as a Papist: Popery and Christianity having some contrariety; so that it must be by the prevalency and predominency of the Christian faith against Popery if ever he be saved. If a liar might be saved it must not be by lying, but by faith in Christ and repentance. If a Leper, or one that hath the Plague, or the like diseases, may live, it must not be by the Leprosy or Plague that they must live; but by natural vigour and the help of Medicine by which they are preserved from the killing power of these diseases,