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…

Ans. 1. There is a change of the very subject of the question. It is [Popery] that we are disputing of; and this argument instead of Popery speaks of [The Religion of the Church of Rome.] The Religion of the Church of Rome hath two parts; First, the Christian Faith: Secondly, their own corruptions depraving and contradicting this Faith: The first as it standeth alone uncontradicted in the Religion which •e profess: The second is it that we call Popery, and •ay, It is no safe way to salvation. 2. And of this I deny the Minor, and say that Popery is not the ancient Religion, the Apostles and Primitive Church never knew it: There was no such creature as a Papist known in all the world till six hundred years after the birth of Christ: It was about 606. when Pope Boniface did first claim his universal Papacy and ⟨p. 176⟩Headship: and after that it was not till about one thousand years that the usurpation and Tyranny was consented to any thing generally in th• West: And even the multitudes, still dissented, and some opposition was still made against it; and all the Eastern Churches and the rest of the Christian world did dissent. Of these things there is enough said to silence all the Papists on earth in Bishop Usher de contin. successione & slatu Eccles. Occident. and his Answer to the Jesuits Challenge, and by Bishop Jewell, and Doctor Field, and in many of the old Treatises against the Pope published together by Goldastus, which show us that he settled not his Kingdom without continual opposition and contradiction. We affirm that Popery is a mere novelty, and challenge all the Papists in the world to prove the Antiquity of it. When they have once arrogated to themselves the name of the Catholic Church, and taught the people to believe as the Church believes, that is, to believe that all is true which the Pope and his Clergy will report of themselves, it is then an easy matter for them to prove any thing to be true which makes for their turn: then they may say, The Fathers are for them, and that they have their Papal sovereignty from St Peter, when there is never a true word in it. Then they may frame and forge new Decretals, and cut out of the Ancient Writers th• which is against them, and bring forth spurious writings under their names; and tell the people that our Religion begun with Luther: