A27015:544
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.
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.
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 Catholike Church, and damne 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 Heresie was judged such by the faithful, without any more interposition of the Pope then another Bishop.
Having seen thus how little their great Champion hath to say for the Popes infallibility, I could willingly have looked about me into some of the rest of them, to see if they can say any more; but that its known that most of them tread the same path Only I may not over pass the new way that some of them have taken up of late, to prove their infallibility, and to avoid their common Circle. And this you may see in the Jesuits late superficial answer to Chilling worth. Forsooth, they tell us, that when they prove the infallibility of their Church from Scripture, it is but for our sakes because we confess the Authority of Scripture, but not of their Church. But when they go according to the true nature and order of the matter, then they set the Church before the Scripture, and independently of it.] The reason of this Jesuit (supposed to be Knot) is this [Because the Church is before the Scripture, and because the