A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian EcclesiasticsBaxter, Richard
Religion
A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian Ecclesiastics
Baxter, Richard
Casuistry; Christian sociology
But this will have the same solution as the former. If this antichrist
were the open, professed enemy to Christ, then all this were true:
because their corrupt additions would not by dark consequences, but so
directly contain the denial of christianity or the true ministry, that
it were not possible to hold both. But (as our divines commonly note)
antichrist is to sit in the temple of God, and the pope's treason is
under pretence of the greatest service and friendship to Christ,
making himself his vicar-general without his commission. So they that
receive power from him, do think him to be Christ's vicar indeed, and
so renounce not Christ, but profess their first and chief relation to
be to him, and dependence on him, and that they would have nothing to
do with the pope, if they knew him to be against Christ. And some of
them write, that the power or office is immediately from Christ, and
that the pope, ordainers, and electors do but design the person that
shall receive it (because else they know not what to say of the
election and consecration of the pope himself, who hath no superior).
And the Spanish bishops in the council of Trent held so close to this,
that the rest were fain to leave it undetermined; so that it is no
part of their religion, but a doubtful opinion, Whether the power of
bishops be derived from the pope, though they be governed by him?
But as to the other, the case seemeth like this: if a subject in
Ireland usurp the lieutenancy, and tell all the people that he hath
the king's commission to be his lieutenant, and command all to submit
to him, and receive their places from him, and obey him; and the king
declareth him a traitor, (antecedently only by the description of his
laws,) and maketh it the duty of the subjects to renounce him; those
now that know the king's will, and yet adhere to the usurper, though
they know that the king is against it, are traitors with him: but
those from whom he keepeth the knowledge of the laws, and who for want
of full information believe him to be really the king's lieutenant,
(and specially living where all believe it,) but yet would renounce
him if they knew that he had not the king's commission; these are the
king's subjects, though in ignorance they obey a usurper. And on this
account it is that Archbishop Usher concluded, that an ignorant papist
might be saved, but the learned hardly. But when the learned, through
the disadvantages of their education, are under the same ignorance,
being learned but on one side but to their greater seduction, the case
may be the same.
The same man therefore may receive an office from Christ, who yet
ignorantly submitteth to the pope, and receiveth corrupt additions
from him.
But suppose I be mistaken in all this, yet to come to the second
question,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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