Selected quad for the lemma: england_n
Text snippets containing the quad
|
ID |
Title |
Author |
Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) |
STC |
Words |
Pages |
|
A76227
|
A winding-sheet for popery. By Richard Baxter, Catholick.
|
Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.
|
1657
(1657)
|
Wing B1454; Thomason E1602_5; ESTC R208914
|
13,418
|
15
|
the Uniting and Ruling of them which is so much pretended to is a flat impossibility It is not morally possible to bring all the Christian world to be of the Popish opinion herein it being a point that is so void of cogent evidence from Scripture and Reason that they are both against it It is naturally impossible for the Pope of Rome to be the faithful Governor of all the world if they would consent How many years must they be travelling or sailing to Rome from the Antipodes or other remote parts of the earth Most of them that had causes of Appeal to the Pope would either be drowned at Sea or destroyed by enemies in the passages or spent with travel or Navigation or wasted with age through the length of their journey And when they come to him how insufficient would the poor man be to decide all their matters How many thousand would be waiting every hour at his Holiness doors when he hath leisure but for a few How long would it be from the beginning of a controversie to the end by that time these poor men had travelled back again so many thousand miles And when all the Princes of a great part of the world are usually in wars will they give their subjects leave to travail so far and that where the Prince is an enemy to Christianity as the Turk is Or would the Princes that he is in war with give leave to his subjects to pass through their Dominions Let us see first how well an Universal Monarch would rule the world by Civil Government though yet that is more easie before a spiritual Monarch be set up Reason 13. And worst of all this false pretended Head and Center of the Churches Unity doth make our Concord Impossible till this Head be taken down The Papists are the greatest hinderers of the Unity and Concord of Christians I am confidently perswaded in all the world And yet all this mischief is done to the Church under the pretence of Unity and Concord What if a subject should set up himself in Ireland or Scotland and say The Prince is absent and I am his Deputy and all are Rebells that unite not in me Could there be a greater hinderer of Unity then this man For all that submit to him are Rebells and all that do not he will endeavor to oppress So is it with the Pope If we unite in him we hazard a breaking off from Christ at least it is such a sin that the Christian world will never venture on and if we refuse it the Papists proclaim us Hereticks and will have no Peace with us So that the Church will never have Concord till this false Head be taken off and Christ only be our Head Reason 14. Moreover the Papists are at such difference among themselves that its little encouragement to us to joyn with them They differ in many hundred points as the writings of the Schoolmen the Thomists and Scotists and Ockamists the Dominicans Franciscans and Jesuites and other divisions among them do declare If you say This is not in points of faith I answer 1. That is as pleases the Pope or Roman Church who may make them points of faith at pleasure 2. The reason why the Pope determineth them not is much because his Disciples are disagreed about them 3. They differ in their great fundamental it self even the seat of Supremacy and Infallibility one part telling us it is the Pope and the other that it is a General Council This one difference surmounteth all the differences of the Reformed Churches if they were set togther Forsooth we cannot be Christians nor know the Scriptures to be the Word of God but on the Authority of the Church And when we come to know what the Church is in Spain and Italy its one thing and in France another Reason 15. Moreover the way of Popery is a way of meer delusion and vain ostentation They advance the Pope to be the final Judge of Controversies or a General Council as others and when they have done they are never the nearer an end of them He seeth many hundred Controversies among them and dare not speak a word to determine them The Church of Rome is the true expounder of the Scriptures and yet many hundred differences are known to be among their own Expositors and many hundred Texts that the people understand not and yet this Oracle will not speak this Judge is as dumb as a fish and leaves us all in as much doubt and ignorance and contention as if we had no Judge So that all the importunity in the world cannot open his mouth And yet he learnedly inveighs against the Protestants that have no Judge of Controversies What is it to make fools of men if this be not Reason 16. And what a cafe do the Papists put the Universal Church into when our faith and the decision of our doubts must depend upon such a man as abundance of their Popes have been Many of their own writers call them no better then Apostates Hereticks Murderers Adulterers Sodomites Conjurers and such were the Heads of the Catholick Church a long time together I know the silly people are told by their lyars that all this is lyes But let them put it to the tryal if they dare whether I will not as fully prove it out of their own writings as that ever King William was alive in England And are condemned Hereticks and devilish Murderers and Adulterers likely to be the infallible Judges of all Controversies Reason 17. And many a time they have two and there and sometune four Popes at once so that no man knew which was the Pope And when Eugenius was deposed by a General Council yet he continued in by force and from him is the succession And yet are these Saint Peters successours Reason 18. Moreover Popery is a way of darkness They flie the light like Bats and Owls and therefore it cannot be of God Their publick prayers and praises of God are performed in a tongue which the people understand not Their writers call it the Original of all Heresies to translate the Scriptures into a known tongue And now they are forced at last to do it themselves they disswade the common people from the reading of it Yea they suffer no man to read such a translated Bible but by a License from the Ordinary which any man may know is not ordinarily granted in their own Dominions Many a man have they burnt to ashes for reading the Bible in a known tongue And how much they befriend the peoples ignorance in many other waies their writings and sad experience tell us Reason 19. Yea their profession is contrary to the light They presume to contradict the very Word of God Paul hath written a whole Chapter 1 Cor. 14. against publick praying or prophecying in an unknown tongue And yet they will use it and make the silly people believe that Paul meaneth no such matter as he speaks How many