A27015:477
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.
Thus far the most of them seem to be agreed. But when these mysteries of iniquity come to be opened, they fall all to pieces. For 1. Sometimes they say that the judgement of the Church is Gods word after a sort: sometime that it is some middle thing between a Testimony Divine and Humane. e2. And what the formal object of faith is, they are not all of a mind: whether it be only the Prime Truth, or whether the Revelation of the Material object be any part of the formal: (But I confess this controversy is more verbal then real.) 3. fAnd what place here to assign to the Testimony of the Church, they are not agreed neither. g4. Especially ⟨p. 191⟩they are divided in the main, viz. what this Church is which is the infallible Judge, and into whose judgement their faith is resolved, whether it be the present Church or the former Church? Whether it be the Pope only (at least in case of difference between him and his Council) or whether it be a General Council though the Pope agree not (as the French and Venetians say?) hYea whether it be the Clergy only, or the Laity also that are this Church? Nay some of them plead Universal Tradition (as Holden, White, Vane, and divers other Englishmen of late) as if that were the same with the Roman Tradition, or as if it were the point in controversy between us and them. And ordinarily they use to tell us of [All the Church] and [All the Christian world] and to mouth it in such swelling words, that the simple hearer would little think that by [All the Church] they meant but one man, or at the utmost, him and his factious Clergy? So also they are disagreed among themselves whether ithe Bishops in a General Council are Judges with the Pope or only the Popes Counsellors? Yea or what a General Council is? Though they all agree that it is not necessary that it be out of all the Christian world, much less the Bishops of all Churches, but only some of those that adhere to the Pope of Rome, yet they agree not whether it must be freely elected by all the Bishops of the Romish faction, or only so many and of such Countries as the Pope shall choose? and whether the major part of the Council must concur with the Pope, or the Pope and the Minor part may not