A27015:469
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.
QUERY. Whether the Infallible Judgement of the Roman Pope, or his Clergy must be the Ground of our Belief of the Christian Doctrine, or of our Receiving the Holy Scriptures as the Word of God? N.
QUERY. Whether the Infallible Judgement of the Romane Pope, or his Clergy must be the Ground of our Belief of the Christian Doctrine, or of our Receiving the Holy Scriptures as the Word of God? N.
Having already enquired whether the Romanists or the Reformed Churches are in the safe way to Salvation; we shall now more particularly enquire whether their faith or ours be built on the surer grounds. Our Belief is thus resolved: we believe the Christian Doctrine to be True, because the True God is the Author of it. We discern that God is the Author of it, both by his Intrinsic and Extrinsic Seals or attestations of it: in that it beareth his image and superscription, and is confirmed by his undoubted uncontrolled Miracles, ⟨p. 187⟩and other effects which lead us to the cause. The revealing containing signs or characters are the the holy Scriptures. That these Books were written by the Prophets, Apostles and Evangelists, and were confirmed by Miracles, and are uncorrupted in the main, we are infallibly assured of, by the evident certainty of the historical attestation and Tradition: For we depend not barely on the credit of a deceivable or deceitful man (such as is the Pope of Rome) or of any fallible society of men; but on such History as we can prove by plain reason to be infallible, containing in it, besides the Testimony of the Pope and all his party, the same Testimony also of all the rest of the Christians in the world, yea and of the very Heretics who were enemies to much of the truth; and enough also even from the mouths of Infidels to confirm us: so that by this infallible history, and universal Tradition, we have a fuller discovery that these Books are the same that were written by the Apostles, &c. then we have that the Statutes of Parliaments in the Reign of King James or Queen Elizabeth, are the same that they pretend to be: And to a man that heareth not God himself or the Lord Jesus or the Apostles, and hath not their immediate inspirations, we know not how the Laws of heaven should be more fitly delivered in an ordinary rational way, nor what surer other means such as we can expect, who live at such a distance from the first receivers of it: unless we would have God to speak to every man as he did to Moses, or have Christ or Apostles still among us, or unless God must make us all Prophets by his extraordinary inspirations.