A27015:468
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.
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.
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 condemne 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.
3. And for their succession, we undertake to prove it interrupted long ago, and that there were no true Bishops at Rome of a long time: Though men have sat there that were chosen by Cardinals, and call themselves Bishops or Popes, yet if according to the Scripture and ancient Councils, they were matter utterly uncapable of that form, then its plain that they were but Statues, and had but the name without the thing, i. e. the office or authority, and therefore are unworthy also of the name it self. Let me name two or three of their own Writers that bear witness of this. And first their great parasite Cardinal Baronius saith (ad an. 912. §. 8.) [What then was the face of the holy Roman Church? how exceeding filthy, when the most potent and yet most sordid Whores did Rule at Rome? by whose pleasure Sees were changed, Bishops were given, and which is a thing horrid to be heard, and not to be spoken, their sweet hearts (or mates) were thrust into Peters chair being false Popes, who are not to be written in the Catalogue of the Roman Popes, but only for the marking out of such times.] And after he well adds to show that the interruption was not like to be only in the succession of true Bishops [And what kind of Cardinal Priests and Deacons think you we must imagine that these monsters did choose? when nothing is so rooted in nature as for every one to beget his like] See more in Baron. ibid. Platina speaking of the evil of those times (de Benedict. 4.) saith that [By ambition and bribery the holy chair of Peter was rather seized on, then possessed.]