A27015:702
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.
The same Question also I would put, if they take all or most of the Pastors for this Church.
Quest. 11. But if they take a General Council for the Church, I would first know, How we shall be sure that ever there hath, at least, these thousand years, been ever a true General Council in the world? The Popish Doctors (as Doctor Holden de Resolut. fid. li. 1. cap. 9. pag. 156.) say that [It must arise to that degree of universality that there may not be any suspicion of conspiracies and combined factions, that so every prudent man may be able heartily to say that the Assemblies are truly General.] And is it so, when there are none but the sworn obliged vassals of the Pope of Rome, and the Greeks, Ethiopians, Protestants, &c. and most of the Church are absent? and when it is a known combination to promote their own espoused cause?
Quest. 11. But if they take a General Council for the Church, I would first know, How we shall be sure that ever there hath, at least, these thousand years, been ever a true General Council in the world? The Popish Doctors (as Doctor Holden de Resolut. fid. li. 1. cap. 9. pag. 156.) say that [It must arise to that degree of universality that there may not be any suspicion of conspiracies and combined factions, that so every prudent man may be able heartily to say that the Assemblies are truely General.] And is it so, when there are none but the sworn obliged vassals of the Pope of Rome, and the Greeks, Ethiopians, Protestants, &c. and most of the Church are absent? and when it is a known combination to promote their own espoused cause?
Quest. 12. And then is the whole foundation of ⟨p. 290⟩Divine faith extinct and lost, when there is no General Council? It may be we may have no General Council of a hundred or six hundred, or a thousand years together? Have we no Church then? Or no certainty of Scripture or of the faith? If they say that we are certain by the determinations of former Councils, then they speak of the Church that is past and gone, of which I moved the doubts before: And the Canons of these we can read and understand as well as the Pope: But when we appeal to former Councils and Ages, they would hold us to the present Church, and that must be their own: and so be sure to be judges in their own cause.