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A27001 The Quakers catechism, or, The Quakers questioned, their questions answered, and both published for the sake of those of them that have not yet sinned unto death and of those ungrounded novices that are most in danger of their seduction / by R[i]chard Baxter. Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691. 1655 (1655) Wing B1363; ESTC R28362 39,590 58

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almost only of This Inward Light In which I perceived 1. That you falsly intimate that we deny the necessity of an inward light when as we maintain that the external light of the Word alone is not sufficient without the inward light of the Spirit 2. You there intimate to us a supposed sufficiency of the inward light that every man in the world hath Concerning which I shall say more anon and now only demand of you 1. Whether you mean it is sufficient to leave men without excuse That we maintain as well as you or is every mans light sufficient to his salvation If so Q. 2. Was it sufficient before Christ preached the Gospel and sent his Apostles Or is it now sufficient to all that never heard the Gospel If so Is not the Gospel a vain and needlesse thing or are you Christians that dare so affirm Q. 3. If the world have sufficient light what need they your teaching or discourse or conviction Q. 4. If all have sufficient light within them what need there any converting grace Q. 5. Then why did Christ send Paul to open mens eyes and to turn them from darknesse to light if they had sufficient light before Act. 26. 18. Q 6. I pray you do not disdain to tell me when you have rub'd your eyes if all men have sufficient light within them Why you got up into the Judgement seat and pronounced me so oft to be in darknesse and to be void of the light and to have none of the Spirit If all have it why may not I have it But let me tell you further in your ear that we that you so frantickly bawl against have read Bellarmine and other Papists so oft that we cannot be ignorant who are your Teachers though your selves are ignorant We know how earnestly the Jesuites would perswade us that there is a light in every mans conscience which if he improve and husband well God is bound to give such additions as shall make it become saving and that by the good use of natural light men may certainly get supernatural and that it is in mens own power what light soever they have to improve it to salvation Your 11th Query is Whether we have seen Gods face Ans. Whether these be Learning or Teaching or quarrelling or doting Questions I leave to your consideration but what Call you had to propound them to such Serpents Dogs and Children of the devil as you call us I know not But however I 'le answer you truly 1. By the eye of reason I have seen that there is a God and that he is infinite incomprehensible most great and most good c. 2. The same I have seen more cleerly by the eyes of faith 3. But I never saw God by the eye of flesh for none can so see God and live Nor hath any man seen God at any time saving the only begotten Son who is in the bosome of his Father he hath declared him 4. Nor have I seen him in glory intuitively or as the glorified in heaven do If you say you have seen more I shall not be very forward to beleeve you till I see better fruits of it I also therefore demand of you Whether he that hath seen God do not abhor himself as Iob did in dust and ashes and whether the true knowledge of God do not ever abase the soul and make a man very mean in his own eyes And then is it likely that ever those men had the true knowledge of God who make it their businesse to exalt themselves as having the Spirit and beign perfect without sin and to revile and bedung other men with their reproaches as being all the Children of the devil and of darknesse that be not of their strain and rave not as they do The Pharisee that thanked God he was not as other men nor as the Publicane spoke humbly and modestly in comparison of you and yet was he counted a proud self-justifier If ever you come to the least saving sight of God it will mightily change the proud strain of your spirits and make you abhor the thoughts of your present evil waies Your 12. Query is Whether we have the same infallible Spirit as the holy men of God had that spoke forth the Scriptures Ans. Why must you know this Are all Dogs and Serpents with you that have not that Infallible Spirit But we hear the croakings of your Papist guides in that word Infallible that's the pillar of their Kingdom and the master-point of their New Religion That their Church is infallible For denying which Knot the Jesuite against Chillingworth and a late ●otable gawdy Orator S. W. against Dr Hammond and others of them would fain perswade us that we subvert Christianity and are little better then Infidels because we are not Infallible But I will answer you and your Masters together in a word 1. The Prophets and Apostles had infallible Inspirations of new matters of divine verity not before revealed because they were to be Gods penmen and Messengers of such New Revelations I have none such that I know of 2. The Prophets and Apostles were guided infallibly in the manner as well as the matter so that every word that they wrote to the Churches was infallibly true I have no such Infallibility nor your Grandfather the Pope neither He may erre while he pretendeth to the greatest Infallibility in deciding Controversies 3. What man soever he be in the world that beleeves any Truth he doth infallibly believe it For he that is in the right is not deceived so far and he that is not mistaken is so farre infallible which is no more then non fallitur 4. But if by Infallibility you should mean the clearnesse and subjective Certainty as distinct from the objective and the bare truth of our conceptions then I say that 's another thing then Infallibility and not to be so called and of that Certainty men have different degrees All true Christians are certain of their Fundamentals yet sometime with some doubting so that they may finde cause to say with the Apostles Lord Increase our Faith or We beleeve help thou our unbelief But in lesser controverted Points which Salvation dependeth not on the best man on earth may erre much more be uncertain So that in a word Every Church in sensu composite while a Church is infallible in the essentials of Christianity and so is every true Christian And also they know infallibly every other truth that indeed they know because Truth is Truth whether they know it or not and when they do know it they are not deceived But in many things we all erre because we know but in part and so farre are deceived Well I say still Fair fall the honest humble Christian that will confesse with Paul that we know but in part For I shall never like pretenders to un-erring Infallibility more I know but two such pretenders and they are both the most abominable deceivers and deceived