A27058:406
The true history of councils enlarged and defended against the deceits of a pretended…
The true history of councils enlarged and defended against the deceits of a pretended vindicator of the primitive church, but indeed of the tympanite & tyranny of some prelates many hundred years after Christ, with a detection of the false history of Edward Lord Bishop of Cork and Ross in Ireland ... and a preface abbreviating much of Ludolphus's History of Habassta : written to show their dangerous error, who think that a general council, or college of bishops, is a supreme governor of all the Christian world ... / by Richard Baxter ... ; to which is added by another hand, a defence of a book, entitled, No evidence for diocesan churches ...The true history of councils enlarged and defended against the deceits of a pretended vindicator of the primitive church, but indeed of the tympanite & tyranny of some prelates many hundred years after Christ, with a detection of the false history of Edward Lord Bishop of Corke and Rosse in Ireland ... and a preface abbreviating much of Ludolphus's History of Habassta : written to shew their dangerous errour, who think that a general council, or colledge of bishops, is a supream governour of all the Christian world ... / by Richard Baxter ... ; to which is added by another hand, a defence of a book, entituled, No evidence for diocesan churches ...
London: printed for Tho. Parkhurst, 1682
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.
CHAP. III. Of Mr. M's notice that I am Unlearned.
§ 1. MR. M's Preface Contracteth the Chief things which he hath to say against me in his book, that the Reader may find them there all together. And of these [that I am unlearned] is not the least. And if that be any of his question I assure him it shall be none of mine. I am not yet so vain as ⟨p. 55⟩to plead for my Learning: Yea, I will gratify him (though he accuse me of being against repentance) with an unfeigned confession that my ignorance is far greater than his accusation of unlearnedness doth import. Alas I want the knowledge of far more excellent things than languages. I do but imperfectly know my self, my own soul, my own thoughts and understanding: I scarce well know what knowing is. Verily if no knowledge be properly true that is not adequate to the object I know nothing: And subscribe to Zanchez, quod nihil Scitur, (by such as I.) Alas Sir I groan in darkness from day to day, & I know not how to be delivered! How little do I know of that God whom the whole Creation preacheth, and of that Society which I hope to be joined with for ever, and that world which must be my hope and portion, or I am undone. Many whom I am Constrained to dissent from upbraid me with my ignorance, and I suppose it is that for which they silence me, reproach, hate and prosecute me; even because I have not knowledge enough to discern that all their impositions are lawful (or else I know not what it is for) But none of them all can (and will) tell me, how I should be delivered from this ignorance: If they say, [It must be by hard study] I can study no harder than I have done. If they say [I must be willing to know the truth] I take my self for sure that I am so: If in that also I am ignorant, in thinking that I know my own mind when I do not, what else then can I hope to know? If they say [You must be impartial] I think I am so, saving that I must not deny or cast away the truths already received. If they say [You should read the same books which have convinced us] I read far more of the Papists and Prelatists and other sects that write against me, than of those that are for me. And the more I read the more I am confirmed. And when these men preach and write against the Calvinists, they render them odious as holding that men are necessitated to sin and to be damned, and that it is long of Gods Decree which cannot be resisted: