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A26962 Naked popery, or, The naked falshood of a book called The Catholick naked truth, or, The Puritan convert to apostolical Christianity, written by W.H. opening their fundamental errour of unwritten tradition, and their unjust description of the Puritans, the prelatical Protestant, and the papist, and their differences, and better acquainting the ignorant of the same difference, especially what a Puritan and what a papist is / by Richard Baxter ... Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691. 1677 (1677) Wing B1315; ESTC R13884 120,987 206

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you deny them this and make them to be as out of the true Church and state of Life If yea Q. 2. Did all that the Apostles Baptized believe all the Apocrypha and all the Decrees of your Councils and your Oral Traditions Q. 3. Did the ancient Fathers and Catechists teach all those to the Catechumens before they Baptized them Q. 4. And were not those all Christians and in the true Church and in a state of Life whom the Apostles Baptized without the profession of any such Belief Q. 5. What was the Creed the Symbolum fidei used for if not to distinguish the Faith of the Christian Church from Infidelity Heresie and all without And if all the Decrees of Councils be as necessary to be the Symbol of Faith why were they not all made up into a Creed and why is the Creed differenced from them all to this day And why do you not cause the Baptized to recite and profess all these Councils Decrees but only the old Christian Creed Q. 6. Doth not Christ at the Institution of his Sacrament Mat. 28. expresly promise that he that believeth according to Baptism in the Father Son and Holy Ghost shall be saved Q. 7. Is it not a reproach to God and the Christian Religion to tell the World that God hath written us by his Spirit so great a Book as the Bible is and yet there is not in it enough to Salvation but that abundance unnecessary to Salvation is in it and some necessary things left out Q. 8. Have your Oral superadded Traditions more Evidence of Truth than the Bible or more Evidence of Necessity to be believed Not more Evidence of Truth For you confess the certain Truth of all the Bible and that as fully manifest as your Additions If it have more Evidence of Necessity what is it It is not because it is a Divine Revelation For so you confess all the Bible to be And do you pretend to a Tradition that saith You may be saved without most of the Bible though it be of God but not without fasting on Frydays or on the Vigils of Saints-days or other such Traditions But if you will make both the whole Bible and Tradition necessary to be believed it must be either Explicitely or as you call it Implicitely If Explicitely that is as each Point is particularly understood and believed then it 's doubtful whether there be one Man in the World that is a Christian and can be saved If Implicitely that is Virtually as it is in some General Proposition what is that General Is it that All that God revealeth is true Or that All that the Spirit of Christ in his Apostles delivered to the Church as his word is true These we all agree in if this will serve the turn Is it that the Church is the Ministerial Keeper of the Sacred Doctrine as delivered This also we agree in Or is it that the Church de eventu shall never corrupt alter or lose this word or any part of it If you mean it of every particular Church we are agreed of the contrary You confess that many Churches have fallen to Heresie and many Apostatized from the Faith If you speak of the Universal Church we are agreed that the Universal Church shall never Apostatize for if Christ had no Church he were no Head of it And we are agreed that they shall never turn such true Hereticks as hold not truly all the Essentials of Christianity For such also are no Christians because each Essential part is necessary to the Essence But whether the Universal Church much more the Greater part may not make or receive some culpable alteration by Amission Omission or Commission we have reason to question We never heard any Proof that the Negative was necessary to Salvation nor is it held by all your selves and whether by any one man I cannot tell For you take the Bible to be Gods Word and your knowledge of the various Readings of the Hebrew and Greek Copies and the multitude of Errours in the Vulgar Latine corrected by P. Clem. 8. and Sixtus 5. do satisfie all the World that you hold that the Universal Church or the major part even your own may culpably erre or alter the very written Word of God And who would then believe you if you said But the Unwritten Word it cannot alter It 's true indeed the Essentials considered as Written or Unwritten all the true Church nor any one Christian while such cannot deny But sure if many thousand Errours may be found in that Book which you take your selves for the Word of God and this through the fault or failing of such as have had the keeping of it and all Divine Revelations are to be believed and all the Word of God is Divine Revelation it notoriously followeth That your own Church hath not kept all that is matter of Divine Faith from alteration So that though many of your Wranglers will not distinguish the Essentials of Christianity called Fundamentals from the Integrals and Accidentals as if Christianity were nothing and had no determinate Essence yet this sheweth that you must do it whether you will or not or else you must confess that your Church may alter any thing or every thing as it hath done all these fore-mentioned Which we will not confess of the Church Universal But I suppose that we have not yet met with the Faith that you account necessary to salvation It is that the Pope of Rome and a General Council cannot erre in delivering to us the Apostolical Doctrine to be believed And this is an implicite believing of all that is written in Scripture and that is delivered orally from the Apostles If so words and names go very far with you as to mens salvation Is this to believe a thousand things which a man never knew or heard of if he do but believe the Infallibility of your Church What! Believe that which I never once thought of But this is but Implicite Faith A cheating Name for No-belief of those things For by Implicite here you can mean only Virtual and that is no Actual Belief of that thing at all but of something else which would infer more were it known Nay Virtual is too high a Name for it But will this serve the turn to salvation to believe that the Pope and his Council are Infallible What! though the same Person believe not in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost nor any of the Articles of his Creed no not a Life to come If you say Yea Then will you call this Christianity to believe in the Pope and not in Christ Or do you mean that men may be saved without Christianity but not without Popery If so why was not the Popes Name rather than Christs put into Baptism and the Creed or at least with Christs But the insuperable difficulty is How must I believe that the Pope hath this Infallibility From Christ or otherwise If not from Christ tell me
shewed Having said thus much more to shew that your Foundation is Sand who send us from Books to our Grandfathers as infallible and that this is no better a ground than the Abassines Greeks and others may build on as well as you and that we our selves have a far surer and Universal Tradition than the Papacy hath and have your own consent to every word of our Objective Religion I now proceed to consider of your Character of Parties CHAP. II. YOU describe to us four supposed Parties I. The Puritan II. The Prelatical Protestant whom your Fitz-Simmons calleth The Formalist III. The Papist as you suppose us falsly to describe him IV. The Papist as you suppose him truly described whom you call The Apostolical Christian In all which you shew that you are far from Infallibility and a man unfit for your Relations to trust in so great a Case I. I confess you give the Puritan a very laudable description in comparison of the Prelatist Protestant and the feigned Papist And you tell us that you were once a Puritan your self and you own still that which you describe as Puritanism only adding Popery to it which you think it wants I confess you speak incomparably more honourably and charitably of Puritans than some malicious interessed Persons of their own Protestant Profession will do But 1. You deal not informingly in your describing a Puritan before you distinguish that ambiguous ill-made word It hath three common acceptions among us at least First The ancientest as it signifieth the old or later Catharists who held that they were perfect if they are not belyed And none come nearer these than the Papists and Quakers certainly Protestants are far from it Secondly the old Non-conformists had the name of Puritanes put on them by those that were against them For what reason I leave them to answer to God Thirdly and because these Non-conformists lived strictly and were for much preaching and praying and holy conference and spending the Lords-day in holy Exercises and serious diligence in working out our Salvation and were sharp against drunkenness swearing and such other sins therefore the vulgar Rabble of vicious ones that durst not rail at Piety under the name of Piety took the advantage of the Bishops displeasure at the Non-conformists and of the name Puritane and put that name upon all Christians among them that were notably serious in practical Godliness perswading themselves that they were all but Hypocrites And so the name among the vulgar Rabble grew common to godly Conformists and Non-conformists And as if loquendum cum vulgo had been a Law by this means the Devil did more hurt both to godliness rendring it among the vulgar to he but odious Hypocrisie and Singularity and to Episcopacy making Multitudes that disliked the wickedness of the Rabble to think that all this came from the Bishops and it did more to advance and honour the Non-conformists because the name was formerly theirs as such than by any one thing that I remember in all my younger days This the godly Conformists grievously complained of as Bishop Downame in his Spit●le Sermon called Abrahams Tryal and Mr. Robert Bolton who saith that he believeth that never poor persecuted Word passed through the Mouths of wicked Men with more bitter scorn since Malice first entred into the Heart of Man Really the permitting of the common Rabble of all the debauched Sinners of the Land to make serious godliness a common scorn under the name of Puritanisme had as great a hand as any thing I know in all our Confusions Fourthly and it added Fuel to the Fire when some brought up a fourth sence of the Word some say Mar. Ant. de Dom. Spalatensis was the inventor of it and that was Doctrinal Puritanes by which name they understood those by some called Calvinists by others Anti-Arminians who held the Doctrine of your Dominicans or of the Jansenists Now who can well tell which of these sorts of Puritanes you were and talk of while you Characterize the second sort as well as the first and yet distinguish them from Prelatick Protestants 2. But which ever it is observe here that you own the Puritanes Religion still and say I have not so much left Puritanism as Prelaticks call it as added that to it wherein I found it come short of the holy Apostles Doctrine and Institutions p. 1. And when you have described the Puritane as one seriously conscionable and regardful of his Salvation at large you add If this be to be a Puritane would to God all the World were Puritanes I am so far from being Converted from thus much of a Puritane that I most heartily wish I could Convert all the World to it 3. But yet your description of him is so very false that I may conclude when you turned as you think from being a meer Puritane to be a Papist you never knew what a Puritane is nor indeed ever were a Puritane your self unless you take the word as fitted to your self and such as you If you had meant by a Puritane a meer Non-conformist as such you would not so laudably have described the work of God upon his Soul and Life as you have done For if most Non-conformists be such yet so are many others as well as they And it 's easie to see what a deceitful course it is to take up a name of many significations and such as signifieth no different Religion at all as to any one Article of Faith nor any more difference in or about Religion than such as is among most Christian Churches and much less than is among your selves Besides that the plainer name of a Non-conformist is of no determinate nor certain signification save only in general to notifie one that Conformeth not to all that is imposed on him but what that is the name doth not signifie A Non-conformist in Scotland is one thing in England another thing as the Impositions are different Non-conformity twenty years ago or fourty years was one thing Non-conformity since 1662. is quite another thing And Non-conformists differ among themselves If twenty things be imposed as necessary to the Ministry he is a Non-conformist who consenteth but to nineteen of them and so is he that consenteth but to eighteen or to seventeen or to sixteen and so on as well as he that consenteth to none of them And that there is so much difference among them is no wonder to them nor any considerate Man for they hold Christian Love and Communion with those that agree with them in the foresaid common Principles and Practice of Christianity as far as they require not them to sin And they are not of a different Religion from every one that fasteth not on Fridays or Saints Vigils c. as you seem to be nor from every one that doth so nor from every one that thinketh not in every thing as they think or that prayeth in other words than they for no two Men in the World
and allowed them so many and various Societies and with so great Priviledges as obliged them generally to uphold and serve him Though he cruelly persecuted all that were against his Power and Interest yet he allowed almost all the Diversities of such as would but unite in him and serve him 6. And as he so twisted his own and all his Clergies Interest that they were all ready to obey and defend him against their several Princes and thereby had a great power in every Christian State in Europe so keeping all his Clergie unmarryed their wealth still accumulated and flowed into the Church And the Eastern Empire being first weakned and then overthrown and the Western Nations kept weak and in continual Wars against each other there was none well able to resist his Pride but one party still was ready to flatter him partly to keep their own Clergy in Peace and partly to have his help against their Enemies And the grand Cheat by which they were commonly deceived was that they lookt more at his present possession of Primacie than at the reason and right by which he claimed it and so he that had been Prime Patriarch in one Empire set up by the Prince still claimed the right of the same places when the Empire was dissolved as if the Subjects of the Kings of France Spain c. must obey him because they did so when they were the Subjects of Constantine Theodosius Valentinian c. For by little and little he changed his Title mentioned in the Council of Calcedon into a pretended Divine Right and so they that would not have obeyed him as set up by Caesar and his Councils obeyed him as if he had been set up by God For the name of St. Peter and his Chair and Successour was used as the common blind And next to that he did by degrees change his claim of a Primacie in the Empire into a claim of Primacie in all the World and his claim of a meer Primacie into a claim of Soveraignty or Governing Monarchy If you ask me how could he blind Men so far as to make such a change You seem not to know Man-kind nor to observe common experience Do you not consider what power the Clergie had every where got with the People What an advantage possession and St. Peters name were And how lamentably ignorant they kept the People Do we not see that even in our more knowing times yea among Protestants yea with some Divines the evident distinction between their Humane Right and their pretended Divine Right and between an Universal Council or Church of the Empire and of the whole World have not been sufficiently observed in our Disputes against them And the additional Countries of voluntary Subjects in Brittain Hungary Sweden Denmark c. which of later times since his Imperial Primacie have fallen in to him have much helped to blind the people herein and to serve his Claim as by Divine Right For which ends his Emissaries have taken great pains at the East and West Indies in China and Japan and Congo and once they made an attempt in Abassia and among the Greeks and in many other Nations of the World laudably seeking to win some Heathens to Christ that they might win them to the Pope and turbulently seeking to disturb the Greeks and other Christian Churches to draw them to the obedience of the Pope The Doctrines by which they promote their design are more than I may now stay to open I. One of the chief is by depressing the Honour of the sacred Scriptures as insufficient to acquaint us with all Gods will that is necessary to our salvation without supplemental Tradition that so all men might be brought to depend on them as the Keepers of Tradition But 1. Is their Tradition yet written in any of their own Books or not If not where are they kept And who knoweth what they are Is it not strange that so many Doctors in so many Ages all remembring them would none of them ever write them down Are they in the Memory of the Pope only What of those that could not read or that were condemned as Hereticks of Infidels Then all the World must receive them from the Popes Memory If so must it be Word or Writing And had he no Memory of them before he was Pope But if it be in other Mens Memories that your unwritten Traditions are kept in whose is it If in all the Doctors of your Church why did not Luther Melancthon Pet. Martyr and the rest that turned from you know them Or did they suddenly forget them all when they turned Protestants And how vast must your necessary Religion be if yet it must have more in it unwritten than is to be found in all your great Volumes of Councils and your huge Library But I suppose you will say that all your unwritten Traditions are now written If so they are not unwritten And how long have they been written and by whom If Fathers and Sons could keep them unwritten in memory a thousand years why not 1100 and why not 1600 c. If they were written in the beginning where be the Books Are they not such as other Christians can read and understand as well as you or an illiterate Pope If there be a necessity of having them in writing now was there not the same necessity to former Ages 2. I suppose you will send us to your Councils for those Traditions But if the Bishops know them not before they come to the Council how do they begin to know them then Do they go thither for a new miraculous Revelation of an old Tradition left with the whole Church 1. But do not Councils oft determine things confessedly uncertain to the Church before and yet out of utter uncertainty it suddenly becometh an Article of Faith For Instance the great Council at Basil saith Bin. sess 30. p. 80. A hard Question hath been in divers parts and before this Synod about the Conception of the glorious Virgin Mary and the beginning of her Sanctification Some saying that the Virgin and her Soul was for some time or instant of time actually under Original Sin Others on the contrary saying that from the beginning of her Creation God loving her gave her Grace by which preserving and freeing that blessed Person from the Original Spot We having diligently lookt into the Authorities and Reasons which for many years past have in publick relation on both sides been alledged before this holy Synod and having seen many other things about it and weighed them by mature consideration do Define and Declare That the Doctrine affirming That the glorious Virgin Mary the Mother of God by the singular preventing and operating Grace of God was never actually under Original Sin but was ever free from all Original and actual Sin and was holy and immaculate is to be approved held and embraced of all Catholicks as godly and consonant to Church-worship Catholick Faith right Reason
name p. 47. What men many Bishops and Conformists have been and are in England p. 48. The Religion which is uppermost right or wrong will be professed usually by the most and therefore by bad men p. 49. It is worse with the Papists who are many very bad even where they differ from superiours and suffer ibid. His accusations of Puritanes and Prelaticks Protestants about imputed Righteousness and inherent confuted A true description of the Protestants judgment of justifying Righteousness p. 51 52 c. His derision of Imputed Righteousness as a Mummery p. 54 55. His gross slander that we are for meer Imputed Holiness p. 55. The true middle way about Indifferent Rituals p. 56. I. Of his charge on Prelatists for silencing Puritanes for not observing Fasts c. which they neglect themselves p. 57. Puritanes and Papists fasting 2. Of wax tapers on the Altar p. 58. 3. Of the Sign of the Cross p. 58 59. 4. Of the real presence p. 60. 5. Of Confession and Absolution p. 61. 6. Of bowing at the Name Jesus and Images p. 62. 7. Of the Surplice Girdle Stole and Casuble p. 63. 8. Of praying for the Dead p. 64. 9. Of the Government of the Pope and Councils p. 65. 1. Whether Gods Wisdom require it 2. Civil and Ecclesiastick Monarchy of the whole world Compared p. 66 67. 3. Is the Pope Universal Apostle or Teacher p. 55. 4. Whether the Pope be Head but in the Vacancy of Councils p. 66. 5. Most of the Christian World by far are no Papists 68. 6. The Pope dissenteth from General Councils and so far from the Universal Church we own them when he doth not 69. 7. The difference between the Kings Headship and the Popes 37. 8. Puritanes are for the Kings supremacie 70. 9. How far they submit their judgment to the Churches p. 70. 10. The Church teacheth us the Faith but may not judge in partem utramlibet viz. that there is no God no Christ no Heaven c. p. 71. II. It 's Schismatical and worse to feign that various habite Gestures Meats c. make various Religions Q. 1. Do variety of Liturgies make various Religions 2. Is not Religion more concerned in the Papists Doctrinal Differences among themselves about Predestination Grace Free-will the immaculate conception and hundreds more in the School Doctors and about the deposing excommunicating and killing Kings and about all the Controversies mentioned by the Jansenists in the Jesuits Morals and by Mr. Clarkson in the Practical Divinity of the Papists than in variety of Clothes Formes or Ceremonies And is it not as laudable for Protestants to hold Union and Communion with them that use not the same words or rites as in the Church of Rome to tolerate without so much as any disowning censure the foresaid Doctrinal Differences about King killing when excommunicate Murder Adultery Fornication Perjury Lying Stealing c. mentioned in the foresaid Books p. 72. CHAP. IV. H. W's ill forming Accusations which he can best answer p. 77. What Grotius meant by Papists p. 79. I. Of Papists Image-worship p. 79. II. Of Popes Pardons p. 80. III. Their praying to the Virgin Mary 83. IV. Latine prayers 84. V. Implicite belief in Teachers 85. VI. Preferring the Churches Laws to Gods 87. VII Obedience 88. CHAP. V. THe true History of the Papacie its original and growth 94. 1. The ancient Church took not the Papacie to be of Gods institution but Mans fully proved p. 99. c. 2. The Roman Primacie was ever but one Empire and not all the Christian People in the world proved p. 103 c. 3. Councils were General only as to the Empire and not the World p. 104. Five exceptions p. 106. Remarks upon the Africans pretended schism Austin being one p. 112. The not able words of Mel. Canus against the Roman Universality 113. The means of the Popes last growth to maturity 119. The doctrines by which they do their work p. 122. 1. Depressing the Scriptures sufficiency and crying up their Traditions which are again conjuted 123. 2. Pretending Antiquity and Universality 125. Both confuted The objection of Heresie and Schism to other Churches answered p. 127. 3. Aggravating our Divisions and boasting of their Unity p. 128. Even the scandalous contending Sects among Protestants have more Unity with each other than the Papists proved 4. Their vile Counsel to men to suspect all Religion and suspend it to make them Papists Boverius to our late King p. 131. CHAP. VI. WHat the Pope is in forty Characters or inadequate conceptions of him p. 134. c. CHAP. VII WHat a Papist is The word PAPIST is equivocal Many sorts are called Papists that differ both in the Foundation and the very Form and the Subject and the Terminus of Church Power and are not formally one Church as is commonly thought pag. 165. A PAPIST of the most learned sort described who placeth the Authority Universal and the Infallibility in the Pope and Council agreeing Thirty Properties or Characters of them The first about the Resolution of their Faith into the Authority or Infallibility of the Church proposing How Protestants resolve their Faith and how they take it from their Teachers p. 169. c. See the rest CHAP. VIII WHat the Papists Church called the Roman Catholick Church is in twenty Characters p. 184. CHAP. IX TWenty Properties of the Protestant's Religion as it differeth from Popery 187. ERRATA PAge 26. line 28. for Turrian read Pisanus p. 76. l. 7. for in r. it p. 97. l. 21. r. Presbyters p. 93. l. 20. r. Roman p. 94. l. 2. for or r. of p. 107. l. 1. for Gothes r. Vandals p. 110. l. 4. dele and. p 115. l. 13. for Com. r. Corn. p. 123. l. 11. r. Libraries p. 156. l. 28. r. Greatreaks Errata in Roman Tradition c. Page 18. l. 1. for most real r. Moral p. 20. l. 5. r. Georgians p. 29. l. 16. r. Sirmium p. 37. l. 5. for sind r. said