A27015:719
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.
Moreover, if this Popish foundation had been then known, do you think that the Fathers would not have appealed to Rome, for a decision of all their perplexing controversies? What readier way to have silenced all gain-sayers, and ended all strifes, and to have saved the labour of so many volumes, then to have bestowed their pains with all dissenters upon this one point alone [That Rome is infallible] and then have sent them thither for satisfaction in all the rest. Common reason must needs have told men of such principles, that this was the way? But do we find that this way was taken? How come we then to have so many volumes of the Fathers controversial writings, and not one Book, or Chapter, or leaf or line, to prove the Roman infallibility?
Moreover, if this Popish foundation had been then known, do you think that the Fathers would not have appealed to Rome, for a decision of all their perplexing controversies? What readier way to have silenced all gain-sayers, and ended all strifes, and to have saved the labor of so many volumes, then to have bestowed their pains with all dissenters upon this one point alone [That Rome is infallible] and then have sent them thither for satisfaction in all the rest. Common reason must needs have told men of such principles, that this was the way? But do we find that this way was taken? How come we then to have so many volumes of the Fathers controversal writings, and not one Book, or Chapter, or leaf or line, to prove the Romane infallibility?
And because the order of our discourse hath brought us up to the judgement of the Fathers, I shall here give you a brief taste of their judgement in this point, and so conclude this argumentation.
In the contention about Easter day between the Eastern & Western Churches,1