A27015:37
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
To the reader: To the Literate Romanists that will read this Book.
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.
First, I have been most offended with those doctrines and practices, that did most notoriously run against the stream of the Holy Scripture; for here the case was so plain that without any singular acuteness it might be discerned: as in your Latin Service of God with those that understand it not, your administering the Bread in the Lords Supper without the cup; that Image-worship which your Writers do maintain, forbidding Priests marriages, with many such like. And yet suspecting my own understanding, I read what your Writers say also for these: But when I saw how palpably they forced the text, it increased my dislike: And then knowing that you contradicted the Scriptures in these, and finding withal that you build your faith upon your Churches Infallibility, I was exceedingly turned against your profession, when I saw your foundation so clearly overthrown. But yet this was not all: There was scarce any thing that more offended me, then the tendency of your Doctrines, to destroy the Knowledge of the people, and lead them on in ignorance, and please and deceive them by a company of ceremonies, instead of a Reasonable service of God: and the manner of your worship I could never digest. Other things did grate very hard upon those truths which I was confirmed in, but these went against the very bent of my heart, and ⟨image 10⟩crossed the very ends of my Religion and my Life. Your keeping the Scriptures from the Laity, as far as you do; and maintaining it so commonly to be the Original of Heresies to translate them into a known tongue; and making it so deadly a crime to have a Bible which they can read; with your Latin Service aforesaid, and the formalities and scenical worship in which you train up the ignorant vulgar with many other things in your doctrine and practice, are such as leave me but little room for deliberation, whither I should own them or not, because they are so plainly against the very end of the Christian Religion. Had these things come under my consideration in a carnal state, when the flesh was my end, and not God I know not how I should have entertained them. But your own Doctors consent that God must be my end, and chiefly Loved, desired, and sought: And will you teach a man this, and hoodwink him when you have done? Will you bid him love God, and keep him from the Knowledge of him?
First, I have been most offended with those doctrines and practices, that did most notoriously run against the stream of the Holy Scripture; for here the case was so plain that without any singular acuteness it might be discerned: as in your Latin Service of God with those that understand it not, your administring the Bread in the Lords Supper without the cup; that Image-worship which your Writers do maintain, forbidding Priests marriages, with many such like. And yet suspecting my own understanding, I read what your Writers say also for these: But when I saw how palpably they forced the text, it increased my dislike: And then knowing that you contradicted the Scriptures in these, and finding withal that you build your faith upon your Churches Infallibility, I was exceedingly turned against your profession, when I saw your foundation so clearly overthrown. But yet this was not all: There was scarce any thing that more offended me, then the tendency of your Doctrines, to destroy the Knowledge of the people, and lead them on in ignorance, and please and deceive them by a company of ceremonies, instead of a Reasonable service of God: and the manner of your worship I could never digest. Other things did grate very hard upon those truths which I was confirmed in, but these went against the very bent of my heart, and