A27015:543
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.
But yet one other Argument he hath, though not from Scripture, and no more: and that is from a double pretended experience: And his first experience is [That in all the other Patriarchal seats there have been Heretics, but not in that of Rome.] But here 1. Bellarmine must be judge, or the Pope who is a party, before all the Patriarchs can be thus condemned. 2. And what if that were true? Can he say the like of all the Bishops, as well as Patriarchs? If not, they may as well hence prove themselves infallible, as the Pope can do. 3. Whether ever there were in the chair at Rome either Pope Liberius an Arian, Pope Honorius a Monothel•te, Pope John denying the immortality of the soul, with abundance more such like, we shall have fitter opportunity to open anon, to the shame of this experiment of Bellarmines.
But yet one other Argument he hath, though not from Scripture, and no more: and that is from a double pretended experience: And his first experience is [That in all the other Patriarchal seats there have been Hereticks, but not in that of Rome.] But here 1. Bellarmine must be judge, or the Pope who is a party, before all the Patriarchs can be thus condemned. 2. And what if that were true? Can he say the like of all the Bishops, as well as Patriarchs? If not, they may as well hence prove themselves infallible, as the Pope can do. 3. Whether ever there were in the chair at Rome either Pope Liberius an Arrian, Pope Honorius a Monothel•te, Pope John denying the immortality of the soul, with abundance more such like, we shall have fitter opportunity to open anon, to the shame of this experinemt of Bellarmines.
His second experiment is that [The Pope without a Council hath condemned many Heresies, which upon that very account have been taken for true Heresies by the whole Church of Christ] Ans. But you must first unchurch the greatest part of the Catholic Church, and damn most of the Christians on earth, the Greeks, Armenians, Abassines, &c. and make your own faction, to be the whole Church of Christ, before you will ever give us the least proof of this. All the Church doth not do that which your flatterers do. Nor did the ancient Church do any such thing. As other Bishops condemned Heresies as well as the Pope, so many a Heresy was judged such by the faithful, without any more interposition of the Pope then another Bishop.