A27015:739
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 Gregory in Epist. 78. saith [It is a thing too hard to endure that our Brother and fellow Bishop, should be alone called Bishop in contempt of all the rest: And what other thing doth this arrogancy portend, but that the time of Antichrist approacheth already, in so far as he imitated him who disdaining the company of Angels assayed to ascend to the top of singularity?]
A man would think that all this should be plain enough to resolve us beyond all further doubting, that the Popes Universal Episcopacy is new. But to t•• the Papis• have no thing to say, but a foolish ⟨p. 307⟩pretence that John of Constantinople would have been the sole Bishop on earth, and have had no Bishop else but himself alone, which the Pope never arrogated. Ans. A silly shift, which supposeth all the world to be so unreasonable as to be satisfied with any thing, or else would make them so: A shift that hath not a word of proof to support it, but contradicteth the full course of History, and the words of Gregory themselves, which all show that it was but an universal Episcopacy to which all other should be subject, which John of Constantinople did challenge; if so much. And all their show of proof of the contrary is, because Gregory here saith that [He would be alone called Bishop] But that's not as if directly in terms, but only by consequence, he is supposed to lay such a claim, in that he claimed the title of universal Bishop. 1But I now see that the Papists will make a nose of wax of their own Popes Writings as well as of the Scriptures; and that the Pope hath no more the gift of speaking intelligibly than Peter, Paul or Christ himself is by them supposed to have. And therefore what should they talk any more of a living judge, when that living judge himself cannot speak so as to be understood?
A man would think that all this should be plain enough to resolve us beyond all further doubting, that the Popes Universal Episcopacy is new. But to t the Papis have no thing to say, but a foolish