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A27169 A discourse shewing that Protestants are on the safer side, notwithstanding the uncharitable judgment of their adversaries and that their religion is the surest way to heaven. Beaulieu, Luke, 1644 or 5-1723. 1687 (1687) Wing B1572; ESTC R20774 24,111 46

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IMPRIMATUR Septemb. 19. 1687. JO. BATTELY Rmo in Pri. ac Domino Wilhelmo Archiepiscop Cantuar. à Sacris domesticis A DISCOURSE SHEWING That Protestants are on the Safer Side notwithstanding the uncharitable Judgment of their Adversaries AND That THEIR RELIGION is the Surest Way to Heaven LONDON Printed for Richard Chiswell at the Rose and Crown in St. Paul's Church-yard MDCLXXXVII The PREFACE COming accidentally into a Family always frequented and of late much disturbed by some Roman Catholicks who by fulminating Damnation against all Protestants had terrified some Friends I applied my self to clear their Doubts and to remove those Fears wherewith the Noise and Threats of Hell-fire had affected their Minds This engaged me into a long Debate with one of the Parties who was very positive and earnest in maintaining the utter Impossibility of being saved out of the Church of Rome And upon that it came to be enquired Whether it be their Relation to Rome or their Relation to Christ that Men are to be saved by Whether our State of Eternity depends upon the Talk or Confidence or hard Censures of Men or or upon the Truth of our Religion and our Sincerity in professing of it Whether it be the ever-living God or any mortal Men that make true Religion Whether that be not the Best which best agrees with the Divine Revelation And whether our Saviour had referr'd us to Rome and the Papal Authority for the knowledg of Saving Truth or plainly taught by Himself and by his Apostles all that is requisit and sufficient to Salvation About these we differ'd but yet agreed upon the whole that the great odds in point of safety which they apprehend to be betwixt them and us must be grounded upon the Excellency of their Religion above ours and must therefore appear in their Faith Worship and Morals which are the essential parts of Religion and make it right or wrong according as they are themselves The Talk I then had about this Subject and the occasion of it put me upon writing the ensuing Discourse Wherein my chiefest Aim hath been to fix my Reader upon that which is positive with us and is maintained on all sides that being altogether requisit and of it self sufficient to make a Man a good Christian And then to consider those Points in belief and practice about which we differ and to shew on which side lies the Advantage for means of Grace and certainty of Salvation The INTRODUCTION THE Church of Rome would not only have all her Dictates received as Divine and true but would likewise have nothing received as such but what she delivers insomuch that her Writers would persuade us that we can have no Assurance of the Truth of our common Christianity because we receive it not from the Infallible Chair and rely not on its Authority for the proving of it As if a Man could not know and firmly believe that Jesus Christ came into the World to save Sinners without so much as having heard any thing of a Roman Church and her Infallibility And as if those great Truths which God hath revealed were not to be embrac'd and assented to because they are his but depended upon the good Pleasure of a Party of Men who can no more add greater Authority to what God hath declared than they can make their own Sayings of an equal Authority with God's We can admit that Church for a joint Witness with other Christian Churches that the Bible is the Word of God and that the Christian Creed is the Catholick Faith But there is no reason to think that any thing is the more true or the more necessary meerly because she saith it That which is equally attested by all Christian Churches who were all Depositories of the Divine Oracles and of the Christian Religion hath a cogent and a clear Evidence But that wherein she stands divided from all the rest and bears witness only to her own Prerogatives is either true because she asserts it which none will dare to say or ought to be proved by the Testimony of the whole Christian Church and of Divine Revelation which she can never do So we have this great Advantage in those things which we assert as Points of Saving Faith that we have the plain and express Words of Holy Scripture and the Concurrence of the whole Church whereas those things which we reject are made a Creed only by one particular Church not above one hundred Years agone and have no Ground in Holy Writ Some may dispute with us about our Rites or Discipline or some abstruse and disputable Points But for that Faith whereon we ground our Hopes of Salvation nothing can be objected against it It is the same wherein every Christian is baptised the same which was before the Reformation and before the Want of it in Times of greatest Purity the same Faith was profest and in the worst of Times under the greatest Corruptions it was still preserved and that not in one Kingdom or only here in the West but in all Patriarchates and in all Christian Churches in the World We have neither added nor diminish'd nor made any Alteration in that Rule of Faith which is the Badge and the Ground of Christianity So that as to this Point our Religion is now as it was long before Luther We have no other Creed than that which was universally profest all along Our Dispute with the Church of Rome is about their new one made since Luther and profest no where else but in her Communion that we cannot embrace It hath neither the same Authority from God nor from Men as hath the Catholick Belief To make this plain here I set the two Creeds at large to be consulted as the Reader finds occasion The Catholick and Apostolick Creed explained by the Nicene and the Athanasian in what concerns our Saviour's Divinity but never enlarged until the Council of Trent I Believe in God the Father Almighty Maker of Heaven and Earth And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord. Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost born of the Virgin Mary Suffered und●r Pontius Pilate was crucified dead and buried He descended into Hell the third Day he arose again from the Dead He ascended into Heaven and sitteth on the Right Hand of God the Father Almighty From thence he shall come to judg the Duick and the Dead I believe in the Holy Ghost The Holy Catholick Church The Communion of Saints The Forgiveness of Sins The Resurrection of the Body And the Life everlasting The Roman Creed I Most stedfastly admit and embrace the Apostolical and Ecclesiastical Traditions with the rest of the Constitutions and Observations of the Roman Church I also receive the Holy Scripture according to that sense which the Holy Mother Church whose it is to interpret it hath held and doth hold nor will ever understand or interpret it otherwise than acccording to the unanimous Consent of the Fathers I profess also that there are seven true
that those things are from God which are proposed to our Faith so that persuaded as we are we might for Temporal Designs play the Hypocrites and dissemble but we can never become Proselytes to the Church of Rome And whilst we have reason to believe that those Articles of Faith which are peculiar to that Church are rather contrary to God's Revelation than contained in it and so think it our Duty to disown their Roman Creed We are so far from apprehending our selves to be in danger of Damnation for so doing that we rather believe we should incur that Danger if against our Persuasion and Conscience we should solemnly protest and declare those things to be our Belief and our Faith which indeed are not so How just and material are our Objections against each particular Doctrine which Rome would impose upon us is to be seen in many of the late Treatises upon those Subjects So here I shall give no further Account why we reject the Roman Creed than by making upon it these three general Reflections which alone might be sufficient to prove that it can in no wise be necessary to Salvation 1. That the Roman Creed seems to be calculated for the Meridian of This World rather than for the obtaining the Happiness of That which is to come The Christian Creed doth make no Man greater or richer here on Earth it is a Profession of our Faith in God Father Son and Holy Ghost which unites us to him engageth us to love and to serve him and to confess Christ before Men and obey his Gospel the end of it is to make us hope well and live well to give us Comfort against all Sorrows and Strength against all Temptations But the Roman Creed makes the Roman Court very great and very rich and makes Men have a great dependence upon it It establisheth those Opinions which much advance the Roman Dominion making Rome to be the Mother and Mistress of all Churches engaging Men to submit intirely to her in embracing all her Traditions and Constitutions and obliging all hers that have any Power to use it to the utmost to bring all Men as they are able under her Obedience Then for Gain you have several Articles the Doctrine of Purgatory and of Indulgences the Worship of Saints and Images which doth not exclude Gifts and Oblations to them and the Sacrifice of the Mass offered as they are paid for it for the living or for the dead besides all the Appeals to Rome and the Bulls and Expeditions from it Read their whole Creed over again and you will clearly see that it all makes for the Empire or the Profit of Rome 'T is a shrewd Suspicion that they that have made it and impos'd it upon the World did therein regard their own Advantage more than the Truth of Christian Religion When the old universal Christian Creed makes all for the Honour of God and for the Sanctification and Salvation of human Souls and this new particular Creed is all for the Glory and the Power of Rome who that hath not resign'd up his reason but will be forc'd to think that the one is to bring Men to Heaven and the other to bring Profit to Rome 2. A Man will be so much the more confirm'd in this Opinion when he shall observe that the Roman Zeal is all turned this Way The Endeavours of their Zealots are much greater to make Men of the Roman Persuasion as to the controverted Points than to make Christians in what we are all agreed and amongst them a Man that believes the Bible and the ancient Creeds is as much damn'd and hated as if he were a meer Turk or Heathen Their Proceedings against them whom they call Hereticks have been more bloody and violent than against meer Unbelievers as if owning the same God and Saviour and the same Articles of Hope and Redemption were nothing except we also own the same Submission to Rome It may be reckoned as an Instance of their great Earnestness to progagate their Creed that their later Miracles for more than these five hundred Years are all in the behalf of it The Faith once delivered to the Saints was evidenced by those ancient Miracles recorded in the Bible But this Growing Faith of Rome is recommended to Peoples Belief by later Wonders such as their Legends and Breviaries and many Books of Devotion contain I need not say that many of those Miracles here in the Western Church are so dubious and ill-contriv'd that they make little for the Credit of those Doctrines which they are design'd to vouch I only note that they are all intended for to make credible those Points of the Roman Faith which are destitute of the Testimony of God's Word and of the Universal Church and that if we had not better Miracles and much better attested for the Proof of that Religion that came from Jerusalem than they have for that which came from Rome Libertines would not want an advantageous Plea to justify their Infidelity And 3. We may add that this Roman Creed is both new and confin'd whereas the Christian is as Catholick as the Church it self that is is equally extended to all Times and Places was ever every where receiv'd and is now profest in all Churches and in all Parts of the World Instead of this Universality for Ages and Extension the Roman Creed bears date 1564 and being dated from Rome is profest by none but those of that Communion which are but few in comparison with the rest of the Christian World So that if you pass into the African or Greek or Eastern Churches which are vast and numerous you shall find no other Creed but that of the Apostles explained by the Nicene and the Athanasian if in some of these Places they have some of the Roman Opinions or some of their own as doubtful and new yet they have no other Confession of Faith than as we have in our Reformed Churches in the West Nay even in the Church of Rome in the third Session of the Tridentine Council 1546 they made a Decree that according to the Example of the Fathers they would make a Confession of that Faith which in ancient times had been an impenetrable Shield against all Heresies which alone had been used for the Conversion of Unbelievers for the Confusion of Hereticks and for the Confirmation of the Faithful and then repeated the Nicene Creed and no more declaring That that was the express and formal Faith of the Church of Rome that Faith which is the Principle of Christian Unity and the sure and only Foundation against which the Gates of Hell shall never prevail Happy had it been for the Christian World if this matter had so remain'd and the Roman Articles under Pius 4. eighteen Years after had not been made a necessary and essential Part of the Catholick Faith However 't is to be observ'd further that even now in the Roman Church when they baptize Children or grown Persons