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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

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and many times is the worshipping use of Images forbidden And yet they will use them say God what he will How plainly hath Christ instituted the Lords Supper in both kinds and how oft is it recited and they confess it was so used by the antient Church for many an hundred years And yet they will presume to alter all and to forbid the Cup even because they will do it Abundance of such instances may be given of their contradicting Scriptures Reason 20. Yea Popery fighteth with sense and reason and would make men not only mad but sensless For upon pain of damnation we must believe that the Bread in the Sacrament is no Bread and that the Wine is no Wine My eyes and my taste and my feeling tell me that it is Bread and Wine and if I know not Bread and Wine when I see it and touch it and taste it then I must be mad or sensless And then how can I tell that I know any thing at all And yet must I be here burnt at the stake and hereafter burnt in Hell for ever if Papists be my Judges unless I will believe that the substance of the Bread and Wine is turned into the substance of the body and blood of Christ and that there is now the colour and smell and taste and quantity of Bread and Wine without Bread and Wine The colour which I see and the taste which I relish are the colour and taste Of what Of nothing Nor of Bread and Wine For now there 's no such thing Not of the Body and Blood of Christ for that they deny and well they may So that if I know bread and wine when I see and feel and taste them then do I know that Popery is a deceit And if I do not then I know nothing For if sense deceive us all deceives us Moreover it is against the knowledge and experience of our own hearts Popery tells you that none are saved or have Charity but Papists because forsooth they are all out of the Church Here then is an Argument which Christians have in their breasts that all the Papists on earth cannot answer Look what degree of assurance you have that you have Charity or any special Grace and so much assurance you have that Popery is a meer chear which would perswade you that none have Charity but Papists If any stand not to this censure he is no Papist For if a Protestant may have Charity and be saved then the Church of Rome is not the whole Catholick Church Yea if you know any Protestant on earth that you are perswaded is a true Christian you must needs be as much perswaded that Popery is false In the mean time remember this to their credit that by their own confession never did a godly honest man turn Papist nor can they desire any such to turn So that every man that hath saving grace is sure Reason 21. Popery doth too much befriend ungodliness to be the way of God It is fitted to build up the Kingdom of darkness 1. How it befriendeth Ignorance and fighteth against the means of Knowledge I have toucht before 2. They make people believe that many of their sins are but venial and properly no sins against no Law and do not so much as deserve damnation and therefore they need no Saviour nor pardon of that punishment 3. Concupiscence which inclineth men to all actual sin they tell them is no sin in the Baptized but before it is 4. Their very frame and course of devotion is so formal that a man would wonder that rational men could approve of it Such a multitude of ceremonies and histrionical actions and inventions of men do they think to serve God with that one would think they could not make themselves believe that the most wise and holy God will regard them See my Book against Popery pag. 162 163. It is against the nature of a spiritual man to think such a service suitable to God which is liker a Stage-play or a Morrice-dance But the Mass bites not the profane are well enough pleased with this We find the worse our people are the proner are they to such formalities Reason 22. And indeed the issue of their way doth frighten me from it I find none of ours so prone to turn to them as the most ungodly I hope well of many among them but I never had the happiness to meet with a heavenly experienced Christian that would speak feelingly of the work of the Spirit upon their souls among them all And almost all that ever I was acquainted with were exceeding ignorant Many of them of no Religion at all not knowing who Christ is nor very little that a Christian should know And many of those few that are among us are of scandalous careless lives and few have any better then a formal wordy kind of Religiousness to say so many prayers and observe such hours and daies and the like Look among the common sort of the Papists and impartially compare their Churches with ours and see whether there be any comparison to be made in the holiness of the professors At Rome it self the seat of his Holiness they have large revenues to the Church for the licensing or permitting of whore-houses Reason 23. And I confess I see not how they can be excused from Idolatry in worshipping the creature with a Divine worship They first call the consecrated Bread the very flesh of Christ it self and their Lord God and then they worship it as God and carry it abroad in procession to that end and command all to worship it with Divine worship on pain of Damnation To pass by their praying to Saints and Angels and the Idolatrous expressions that many of their writers do use of the Virgin Mary and their setting one Saint or other to almost all the offices in the world and filling the world with most ridiculous lying stories in their Legends even to the reproach and dishonour of Christianity it self Reason 24. And it is not likely their way should be of God which must be carried on by such ungodly means as it is O the cruelty that they have exercised in the world the streams of precious blood that they have shed the bone-fires that they have made of holy persons when they had first perswaded the world that they were the servants of the Devil and continue to slander and blaspheme them when they are dead And when we discover to the people the most palpable of their misdoings they make them believe that all that we say are lies If their cause were Gods it needed not such supports as these Reason 25. And their Doctrine leadeth not to settle the soul in a durable well-grounded peace for they lead men so much to their own works and make so light of pardon and reconciliation by the blood of Christ and lead men so much to ceremonies and deny them assurance of Justification or Salvation when they have done all and then design them to the flames of Purgatory when they die unless the Pone will be so charitable as to ease them that there is little setled Peace of Conscience to be hoped for that way Reason 26. And though their errours are so many and so great that most Protestants take the Pope to be the Antichrist yet are they so arrogant as to pretend to Perfection as the Quakers do Yea to a double perfection Not only to be perfect without any sin but venial which is none but also to be perfect by works of supererogation and better then ever God Commanded them to be Reason 27. And to make all remediless their Church is said to be Infallible and so we must never hope that they should repent of any errour that ever they incurr for then they should give away their Infallibility So that there is no other cure for them but by ceasing to be Papists as there is no Peace to be expected from them to the Church but by the deposing their pretended Universal Head the Roman Pope Reason 28. And to make all desperate and open the door to other errours they have added all the Apocryphal Books to the Canon of the Holy Scriptures contrary to the Council of Laodicea and the consent of many ages of the antient Church as Doctor Cosin hath fully shewed and Dr. Reynolds and many others before him Reason 29. Yea they have added Tradition it self to be received with equal pious affection and reverence with the holy Scriptures Concil Trident. Sess 2. And this Tradition must remain unknown to others and unproved and we must take their words for it when they have thus equalled it with the Word of God corrupting thus the fountain of faith Reason 30. And when the Pope hath done this mischief to the world they say that no power on earth can judge him Though General Councils have deposed many and Bellarmine confesseth in the case of Marcellinus that they may declare an Infidel Pope to be out of the Church and that the Church may bear arms against the Pope when he would oppress it and in Schisms may see that the Church be provided yet for all this none may judge the Pope Reconcile these if you can But herein they are disagreed among themselves In this one sheet of paper I have not room to mention their many other errors nor to annex the proofs of all these charges But I offer my self to make them good to the face of any Papist living And now I leave it to the judgement of those that are not willing to be deceived Whether the Roman or the Reformed be the truer Catholick and which of them is liker to be saved and in the safer way I doubt not but this Paper will be answered by some body It s a bad Cause indeed that a man of learning can say nothing in But if the silly people will be satisfied that it s answered without understanding any thing in the answer that should satisfie a reasonable man let them even be deceived seeing they choose deceit and let them take what they get by it July 25. 1657. FINIS
call their opinions the old Religion and to perswade the simple that we are an upstart generation and that our Church is but of two or three hundred years standing because we have forsaken the Roman novelties and are turned back to the Primitive Antiquity For our parts we say and say again Let him be the scorn of the Churches that believeth any Catholick Church that is less then sixteen hundred years of continuance And Let him be counted a man of no Religion that is of a Religion that is less then sixteen hundred years old And what can he expect but to be accurst of God that believeth any Gospel of less then sixteen hundred years continuance Gal. 1.8 9. Let us go to the Gospel the Records of Antiquity and see there whether our Religion or their opinion be the elder and let the oldest carry it without contradiction Where find you that Jerusalem Corinth Galatia Philippi and all or any Church in the world was then commanded to obey the Church of Rome or that ever she was called the Mistress of all Churches or the Universal Church Then Rome was but a particular Church like the rest and now forsooth it is become the Mistress and Catholick Church without obedience to which there is no salvation if the Pope must save us Where read you that any Apostle did direct men to receive the Christian Faith upon the Credit of the Church of Rome Or When did Paul or Barnabas or any Preacher tell the people You must believe in Peter or in the Church of Rome before you can believe in Christ Or You must believe the Christian Doctrine on the Credit of the Church Or That Church is made the judge of all Controversies O how many Sermons have we of the Apostles and the Fathers for many hundred years after and never such a word in them How many Nations and souls converted and never such an argument used with them How many controversies hotly debated and never such a remedy propounded The Romish Dominion was then unknown Reason 9. Moreover their Profession is much made up of meer contradictions and the subjects of the Pope are sworn to these contradictions at least those in Orders By the Trent Confession they are to swear that They will never take and interpret Scripture but according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers And yet they swear in the same Oath to many particulars which the Fathers were against and many which they never unanimously consented in They either know not what the Fathers hold or else they know that there 's but a small part of the Scripture or at least far from all that the Fathers do interpret with unanimous consent And there is not one of an hundred or a thousand of them that knows what the Fathers do unanimously consent in and what not their volumns being so many and so great and time so short and most so idle or necessarily diverted In abundance of Texts the Fathers differ among themselves And here the swearers do bind themselves never to interpret those Scriptures at all till a Messenger from heaven shall tell them what the Fathers are agreed on since their death They are sworn also to embrace the sense of their Church whereas the Fathers and their Church do frequently disagree They are sworn to all things delivered defined and declared by the Canons and Occumenical Councils and this without doubting O strong faith when even mens faith in Christ himself is oft mixt with such doubting that we must pray Lord encrease our Faith I believe help my unbelief Yea there is not one of a multitude of them that knows what all these Canons or Councils do contain Yea when these Canons and Councils do frequently contradict each other and yet they are sworn to believe them all The Council at Constance decree that a General Council is above the Pope and the Council of Basil did second them but the Council of the Laterane under Julius 2. and Leo 10. decree that the Pope is above a General Council The Council of Trent doth add to the Canon of Scripture contrary to the Council of Laodicea and Carthage 3. and the Papists at this day go contrary to the current judgement of the Church in adding the Apocryphal Books to the Canon Abundance more of their contradictions may be shown Reason 10. Moreover Popery is an uncertain Profession both for the foundation and the matter of it the sense and the perfection No man can fully tell what it is or when he hath it and when he hath it not For the foundation of it their Councils and Nations are yet disagreed whether the Pope or General Council be the chief and which must be followed when they disagree and which is the infallible Judge of Controversies And for the matter how few in the world can tell what is in all the Canons and Councils and Fathers and what is their sense and abundance other uncertainties I have fully manifested in my Book against Popery Disp. 2. 3. And for the very Articles of Faith I have there shewed that they are still to them uncertain whether they have yet all or not because that the Pope may make those to be points of faith as to the people that were not so before and so he may encrease them who knows how much Every time that the Pope determines a Controversie he makes us a new Article of faith As he lately did against the Jansenians And how many hundred controversies are yet to be determined and consequently so many Articles to be added Reason 11. Moreover Popery is a humane Faith and not a Divine It leadeth us but to man and bottometh us on man and therefore leaveth us short of God They must first believe the Christian Doctrine and truth of Scripture on the authority of the Pope or Church and then they must take the meaning of every word of Scripture upon the credit of the Roman Church and Fathers So that the very upshot of all their Religion is They believe the Scripture to be the Word of God and Christ to be the Son of God because the Church of Rome doth tell them so And how know they that this Church is Infallible Because they say so themselves or because the Scripture saith they are infallible but who knows where But which is the infallible Church of Rome The Pope saith one A Council saith another A Council confirmed by a Pope saith a third And how knows the world that these are the acts of the Pope and that he confirmed the Council Because such a Cardinal or our Parish Priest or a Jesuit saith so And here it is that the people are left Reason 12. Popery fets up a Head for the Universal Church that cannot possibly govern it and a Center for the Church in which it cannot possibly unite And so it is but a titular Head and a name and shadow good for nothing but to divide and vex the servants of God but