A27015:394
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 very Pharisees thought that their vulgar were cursed that knew not the Law, and the Papists will not let it be made known to them lest it make them accursed. God saith [To the Law and to the Testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them, Isa. 8.20.] The Papists cry out precul — hinc away: let it alone, meddle not with ⟨p. 147⟩it, it will make you Heretics: And indeed they have had large experience that the way which they call heresy, and contradicteth their impieties, is most effectually promoted by the word of God: and therefore they think they have some reason to speak against it. Saint John saith [These things are written that ye might believe, and that believing ye might have life through his name] Joh. 20.31. The Papists say, Read not these holy writings, lest they destroy your faith, and bring you to damnation. When the man Luk. 10.26, asketh Christ [What shall I do to inherit eternal life?] Christ answereth him thus [What is written in the Law? how readest thou?] directing to the course which the Papists do forbid. The Apostle saith, that [Whatsoever things were written aforetime, were written for our Learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scripture might have hope] Rom. 15.4. But the Papists will not have men learn that, which was written for their Learning, Comfort and Hope. Joh• wrote to fathers, young men, and children, 1 John 2.12, 13, 14. Gods anger against the Jews was that [He had written to them the great or wonderful things of his Law, and they had accounted them as strange things] Hos. 8.12. And the Papists will force people to be strange to these writings. Yet how familiar (comparatively) they were to the vulgar Jews and their very children •s known and acknowledged. Is it not a high advancement of the Gospel Church, above the legal Jewish Church, which the Papists do vouchsafe it? That we may not have the same liberty or means of knowledge as the very children of the Jews had? Their children must be taught the Scripture, lying down and rising up, and our eldest people even to