A27015:372
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.
The last Rule is but a mere trick of wit to get the ⟨p. 135⟩key into the Popes hand alone: To which I say, 1. A Church that hath had an interrupted succession of true Pastors from the Apostles, may fall into many errors in process of time, which in Tertullians and Irenaeus days, when the memory of all the Apostles practices were so fresh, they could not fall into so easily. 2. Those Churches have received their unwritten verities, either by writings from their predecessors or without: If by writings, why cannot others find it there as well as they? If without, it must be an uncertain, and mutable means; or by a means so public still that all as well as they may know of it. 3. And we undertake to prove that the succession of true Pastors of the Romish See hath been long ago, and often interrupted. And therefore this Rule will not serve your turns.
The last Rule is but a meer trick of wit to get the ⟨p. 135⟩key into the Popes hand alone: To which I say, 1. A Church that hath had an interrupted succession of true Pastors from the Apostles, may fall into many errors in process of time, which in Tertullians and Irenaeus dayes, when the memory of all the Apostles practices were so fresh, they could not fall into so easily. 2. Those Churches have received their unwritten verities, either by writings from their predecessors or without: If by writings, why cannot others find it there as well as they? If without, it must be an uncertain, and mutable means; or by a means so publike still that all as well as they may know of it. 3. And we undertake to prove that the succession of true Pastors of the Romish See hath been long ago, and often interrupted. And therefore this Rule will not serve your turns.
But though I have been long upon this principle of the Papists to prove the uncertainty of their faith, yet the next is the chief that I intended, which also proveth the mutability of it.