Animadversions on a treatise entitled Fiat lux, or, A guide in differences of religion,…Animadversions on a treatise intituled Fiat lux, or, A guide in differences of religion,…

2. It is also doughtily supposed, That whatever is spoken of the Church in the Scripture, belongs to the Roman-Church, and that alone; The Privileges, the Authority, the Glory of the Church are all theirs; as the mad-man at Athens thought all the Ships to be his, that came into the Harbour. I suppose, he will not contend, but that, if you deny him ⟨p. 231⟩this, all that he hath said besides, is to little purpose. And, I believe, he cannot but take it ill, that any of his Readers should call him to an account, in that which he every where puts out of question. But this, he knew well enough, that all Protestants deny; that they grant no one privilege of the Catholic Church as such, to belong to the Roman. All, that any of them will allow her, is but to be a putrid corrupt member of it; some say, cut off, dead, and rotten. But yet that the Catholic Church and the Roman are the same, must be believed, or you spoil all his market. The Church is before the Gospel, gives testimony unto it, none could know it, but by her Authority, nothing can be accepted as such, but what she sets her seals unto; so that, to destroy the Church, is to destroy the Gospel? What then, I pray? Suppose all this, and all the rest of his Assertions about the Church, pag. 199, 200, &c. to be true, as some of them are most blasphemously false; yet, What is all this to his purpose? Why this is the Roman-Church of which all these things are spoken. It may be, ⟨p. 232⟩the Roman-Church indeed, of which much of it is spoken, even all that is sinfully derogatory to the glory of Christ and his Apostles upon whom and whose Authority the Church is built, and not their Authority on it, Ephes. 2.18, 19, 20. But, what is truly spoken in the Scripture of the Church, doth no more belong to the Roman, then to the least Assembly of Believers under Heaven; wherein the Essence of a true Church is preserved; if it belongs unto it at all. And yet this rude Pretence, and palpable Artifice is the main Engine in this Section, applied to the removal of men from the Basis of the Scripture. The Church, the Church! the Roman-Church, the Roman-Church! and these forsooth are supposed to be one and the same; and the Pope to have Monopolized all the privileges of the Church, contrary to express Statute-law of the Gospel. Hence he pretends, That if to go out from the Catholic be evil, then not to come into the Roman is evil;