A27015:467
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.
3. And for the Minor of your Argument, I answer. 1. The Ethiopian, Alexandrian and other Churches can as truly boast of these qualifications as Rome. 2. The Papists lay a higher claim to them then they can make good. As 1. I have showed already how far they are from unity, who are not only of so many Religions or ways of Discipline; and of so great distance in many doctrinals, as the controversies among themselves do manifest, but also are so disagreed about the very centre of their union, their infallible sovereign Power, whether it be in the Pope, or a General Council, or both? Besides their unity is but of their own party, the Romanists: And so all other parties are at some unity among themselves: or many at least. If John of Constantinople had prevented the Pope, and got the Title of universal Bishop, or Pope, as he did (by composition) of universal Patriarch; and had pretended that this would have united the Churches, I think it would not have justified his cause.
3. And for the Minor of your Argument, I answer. 1. The Ethiopian, Alexandrian and other Churches can as truely boast of these qualifications as Rome. 2. The Papists lay a higher claim to them then they can make good. As 1. I have shewed already how far they are from unity, who are not only of so many Religions or wayes of Discipline; and of so great distance in many doctrinals, as the controversies among themselves do manifest, but also are so disagreed about the very center of their union, their infallible soveraign Power, whether it be in the Pope, or a General Council, or both? Besides their unity is but of their own party, the Romanists: And so all other parties are at some unity among themselves: or many at least. If John of Constantinople had prevented the Pope, and got the Title of universal Bishop, or Pope, as he did (by composition) of universal Patriarch; and had pretended that this would have united the Churches, I think it would not have justified his cause.
2. How can the Papists for shame pretend to universality either as to the present or former ages? Is it nothing that all the Ethiopian, Greek, and Reformed Churches are not of their party, besides many a thousand more? Or will they arrogantly condemn all the rest of the Christian world as heretical, and then say that they are the whole Church? Did they not learn this of the Donatists? But what is become of their modesty who pretend to an universality, for the time past, when all the Christian world was against their present belief, and there was not such a thing as a Papist known (and revealed to us) in the world of six hundred years after the birth of Christ.