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…

Its true that when Rome being then the ruling City of the world did come to own Christianity, that the Glory of the Empire occasioned the Bishop to be called Primae sedis Episcopus, as one that was to take place of the rest of the Patriarchs, who had their several orders or places •ssigned them (as Alexandria to be the second, Antioch the third, &c.) which Bellarmi•• confesseth might be after lawfully changed: but as Alexandria had not the Government of Antioch by that precedency, so neither had Rome any government, of the rest: And as Constantinople was afterward set up ⟨p. 117⟩above Alexandria and Antioch (and claimed to be above Rome) so might it as lawfully have been set up above Rome But what ever be said about their quarrels of precedency, which pride begun and cherished, yet its most evident in all antiquity, that of many hundred years after Christ, there was no such Catholic Church in being, or known, as was centred in the Pope as the head or universal Bishop or Governor, or in Rome as the Mistress of the rest. We have long ago challenged them to give us the least proof of such a Church in all antiquity, and they give us nothing, but such forced passages that are nothing to their purpose, that its hard for the most charitable rational man to believe that they do indeed believe themselves, and do not know that they hypocritically endeavour to cheat poor souls by their vain cavils. All the Papists on earth will never be able to answer what our Divines have said already to prove the novelty of their Papal headship: nor can all the Popes servants in the world bring us one word of currant antiquity for many hundred years after Christ, to prove that ever such a Church was once dreamed of, as they now call the Roman Catholic Church. Indeed Rome was called then, a Catholic Church, and so was Alexandria, Antioch, and all that held the Catholic faith, and were not heretical: but it was never known till Boniface had usurped the Title of universal Bishop above 600. years after Christ (which he procured by Phocas a Murderer that usurped the Empire when he had slain the Emperor Mauritius) that the Roman Church and the Catholic Church was all one, or that it was necessary to make any particular Church or person Catholic, that they acknowledge the universal headship and jurisdiction of the Roman Pope, much less his infallibility.

Its true that when Rome being then the ruling City of the world did come to own Christianity, that the Glory of the Empire occasioned the Bishop to be called Primae sedis Episcopus, as one that was to take place of the rest of the Patriarchs, who had their several orders or places ssigned them (as Alexandria to be the second, Antioch the third, &c.) which Bellarmi confesseth might be after lawfully changed: but as Alexandria had not the Government of Antioch by that predecency, so neither had Rome any government, of the rest: And as Constantinople was afterward set up