A27015:779
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.
While there is quarrel about the words and questions ⟨p. 329⟩about the newness, and occasion about the ambiguities, and complaints about the Authors, and strife about the parties, and difficulty in consents, and while every one begins to be an Anathema to another, almost no one now is Christs. For we are carried about by an uncertain wind of Doctrine, and either while we teach we trouble, or while we are taught we err. And what is the change that is in the last years belief? The first decreeth that the word homousion shall be silenced: The next decreeth and preacheth the homousion: The third doth by indulgence excuse the word usia which was simply before used by our fathers. The fourth and last doth not excuse it, but condemn it. and at last its come to this, that there is nothing remaineth established and inviolable with us, nor *with any before us. And as for the likeness' of God the Son to God the Father, it is the Belief of our miserable time, that he is not like in whole, or but in part. We are excellent *judges (or Arbitrators) sure, the seekers of the heavenly mysteries who do calumniate in our professions of the faith of God, we decree yearly and monthly Beliefs of God; we repent of our decrees, we defend them, we Anathematize those that were defended, we damn other mens matter in ours, or they damn ours in theirs, and biting one another, we are consumed one of another. A Belief is again sought for, as if there were no belief. A belief must be written, as if it were not in our hearts. Being already regenerated by faith, we are now taught to believe: As though the ⟨p. 330⟩Regeneration were without Belief. We learn Christ after Baptism; as if Baptism could be anything *without the faith o• Christ — p. 309. Among these shipwrecks of faith the heritage of our heavenly patrimony being no• almost profligate, it is the safest way for us to retain that first and only Evangelical Belief confessed in Baptism and understood, and not to change that good Belief which only I have received and heard. Not as if those things which are contained in the Council of our Fathers,