Baxters Narrative of His Life and Times, Part 2 · Section 10 · Letter 1
The Letter to the Lady Anne Lindsey.
Madam!
THE Reasons that moved me to be so importunate with you for a Conference in your hearing with the ablest Jesuit, Priest, or other Papist you could get, were (as I told you) 1. My very high esteem of your truly Honourable Mother; whose Sorrow hath been so great for your Delusion, that I must confess, though but a Stranger, I suffer much with her by Compassion. And as it would much relieve her if you were recovered, so if God deny her that Mercy, it will somewhat satisfie her Conscience, that she hath not been wanting in the use of means. 2. And for your own sake, whom I the more compassionate, because you are not only the Daughter of such Parents, but of so modest and sober a Disposition your self, that I am not out of hopes of your Recovery, though the Disease be such as few are cured of that catch it by relapse and desertion of the Truth.
I can imagine nothing but Consciousness of a bad Cause, that can cause them thus to decline a Conference. You say the Person well knoweth me (though I know not him) and dare trust himself, &c. why then will he not meet me to debate the Case? He cannot but have exceeding great odds or advantages of me as to personal preparations: for they are trained up meerly to this work (I am loath to say to deceive) and have all the helps that Art can afford them. I was never of any Universitie, nor had one Months assistance of any Tutor in all my Studies, of Sciences or Theology. If you can get no Jesuit, Fryar … Priest that will fairly debate his Cause with one of so poor Preparations and Abilities, doth it not shew that they are lamentably diffident of their Cause. All the Conditions or Terms that I desire to be before agreed to are but these. 1. That I may one day produce my Reasons why you should not have turned Papist, and therefore should return; and he Answer them as I urge them. And that the next day (or the first if he desire it) he will produce his Reasons why you ought to turn to them as you did, and I answer them. 2. That we may speak by turns, without interrupting one another. 3. That whatever Passages must be determined by Books (or Witnesses) that are not at hand, they may be noted down, and left till there be leisure to peruse them. 4. That there be two Witnesses on each side (of whom one to be a Scribe) and as many more as he desireth; And I, and those with me, shall be engaged to do him no wrong by any discovery of his Person, to endanger him as to the Law or Governours. This is all that I should oblige him to beforehand. I again intreat you, if one will not, get another to moderate the Work. I understand by you, that the Person you depend on avoideth me not in any Contempt: for you tell me he hath honourable thoughts of me, and well knoweth me. If so, why will he not confer with me, as well as he hath done with Dr. Gunning?
For Writing, 1. It's like he knoweth that I am here engaged in so much unavoidable Work, that I have scarce time to eat or sleep. 2. You cannot but know that by Writing it's like to be a year, or many years work: And themselves have cut me out Work enough already for my Pen, if I had no more (and now would take me off it, that I might be forced to omit one). I look not to live to end a Dispute by Writing, so many are my Infirmities, and are you content to stay so long before you have the benefit? 3. If Writings will be useful to you, may you not as well read what is written already? Many great Volumes are yet unanswered by them. 4. I have already written divers Writings against their Delusi…ns (viz. The Safe Religion; A Key for Catholicks, &c. A Winding sheet for Popery; The true Catholick and the Catholick Church described; A Disputetion with Mr. Johnson about the Success… Visibility of the Church] and they never answered any one of them; no not so much as the single Shet that ever I heard o… When they have answered them all, let them call for more, or offer writing. 5. But yet, rather than be wanting to you, let the Person but vouchsafe … this Verbal Conference first, and try what we can do in a few hours there, and if there shall then appear to be cause …o prosecute it by Writing, I intend not to fail of taking the first opportunity for it, that greater Duties will permit. I have done my part in urging you and them with my offer, till you call me unto more.
In the mean time, Madam, may I intreat you to read impart…ally and deliberately, 1. My little Book called, The Tr… Catholick and Catholick Church, &c. (which I shall send or bring you). 2. My Preface before the Disputation with Mr. Iohnson and the Letters in the end, and the Second Part, and then the first. 3. My two first Books against Popery (The Safe Religion and The Key): For your former reading of them; before any doubting had made you observe the stress of Arguments, is nothing; if you will but now read them again impartially after your contrary Conceptions, continue a Papist if you can. And truly if you will not do thus much for your own Soul, because Men engage you to the contrary, that dare not appear to make good their own Cause, I must be a Witness against you before the Lord, that you wilfully resused Instruction, and sold your Soul at too cheap a rate.
I tried when I was last with you, to revive your Reason, by proposing to you the Infallibility of the Common Senses of all the World; and I could not prevail though you had nothing to answer that was not against Common Sense. And it is impossible any thing controverted can be brought nearer you, or made plainer than to be brought to your Eyes and Taste and Feeling: and not yours only, but all Mens else. Sense goes before Faith. Faith is no Faith but upon Supposition of Sense and Understanding; if therefore Common Sense be fallible, Faith must needs be so.
But methinks yet I should have hope of reviving your Charity: You cannot be a Papist indeed, but you must believe, that out of their Church (that is out of the Pope's Dominions) there is no Salvation; and consequently no Justification and Charity, or saving Grace: And is it possible you can so easily believe your religious Father to be in Hell; your prudent, pious Mother to be void of the Love of God, and in a state of Damnation; and not only me (that am a Stranger to you) but all the Millions of better People in the World, to be in the same State (of Gracelesness and Damnation) and all because we believe not that the Pope is Christ's Vicar General, or Deputy on Earth, and dare not subject our selves to his usurped Dominions? When we are ready to protest before the Lord, as we shall answer it at his Bar, that we would be his Subjects but for Fear of the high Displeasure of the true Head and King of the Church, and for fear of sinning and Damning our own Souls: And that we are heartily willing to read, and study and pray, and hear all that can be said for them; and some of us read as much of their Writings as of our own and more; and would not stick at Cost or Pains, or Loss or Shame; were it to travail over Land and Sea to find out that they are in the Right (if that would do it, and they be so indeed). But the more we study, the more we pray to God for his Assistance, the more diligently we search, we are the more resolved and convinced, that their way, as it differeth from ours, is false; and that they are the most Superstitious, Tyrannical, Leprous part of the Catholick Church, condemning the main Body, because they will not be under their abominable Dominion, and will not sin as much as they. We hold all that was held necessary by the Apostles and the ancient Church; and we dare not make a new Faith to our selves, as the Papal Sectaries have done: Must we renounce both our Sense and Reason, and put out the Eye of Natural Understanding, and also renounce the Catholick Church and Christian Charity, and step into the Throne, and pronounce Damnation not only upon all the Saints of God that we have been acquainted with our selves, but also on the Body of Christ which he died for, even on the far greatest part of the Universal Church; and all this because they will not depart from the Word of God, to corrupt his Doctrine, Discipline and Worship, and herein obey an usurping Vice Christ? must we do all this, or else be judged to Damnation by the Sectaries of Rome? For my part, I shall be so far from fearing their Sentance, that I appeal to Christ, whose Body they condemn; and I had rather be tortured in their Inquisition, and cut as small as Herbs to the Pot, and be accounted the odiousest Wretch on Earth, than be guilty of being a Papist at all, but especially on such hellish Terms as these. If the greater part of the Church must be damned as no part of the Church, it will be impossible to prove your Sect or Fragment to be the Church, any more than any other. Christ is the Saviour of his Body, Eph. 5. 23, and to him, as to its Head, it's subject, ver. 24. and this Body is that which is sanctified by him, ver. 26. And by one Spirit all his Members are baptized into one Body, 1 Cor. 12. 12, 13. Did you never note, where the Unity of the Body is fulliest described, that Apostles themselves are made but Members, and Christ only the Head, 1 Cor. 27, 28, 29. Eph. 4. 4, 5, 7, 11. There is but one Lord, &c. but diversity of gifts, of whom the Apostles are the chief. And when Thousands were added to the Church, (even such as should be saved, Acts 2. 47.) what made them Christians but the Baptismal Covenant? and what were they Baptized into, but into the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost? Peter or Paul baptized none into their own Names, nor dare the Pope himself, lest his Innovation be too visible. Christ hath said, He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, Mark 16. 16. Did they ever then subject any Baptism to the Bishop of Rome? Was the Eunuch Acts 8. subjected to the Pope, that only saith [I believe that Iesus Christ is the Son of God] and was Baptized? If men could not be saved without believing in the Pope, and being subject to the Church of Rome, how comes it to pass that none of the Apostles preached this necessary Article of Faith? Why did they never say, You must believe in, or be subject to the Pope of Rome, or you cannot be saved? Would they be so unfaithful as to hide a necessary Article? Why did Peter himself, Acts 2. by Baptism take Three thousand into the Church without preaching any of this Doctrine to them. The Gospel professeth, that he that hath the Son hath Life, 1 Joh. 5. 11, 12. and whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life, Joh. 3. 16. and that there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Iesus, that walk not after the Flesh but after the Spirit. And now up steps a Man of Rome, and presumeth to Reverse the Gospel, and say, [It's no such matter; for all this they shall not be saved, unless they will be my Subjects?]
If you say that those may be saved that Sin for want of Light; I answer, 1. On this account your Doctors teach the Salvation of Heathens, (Are those of your Church?) and so no otherwise of Christians than of Heathens. 2. Either these wanting your Light are in the Church or out. If in it, then a Man may be of the Church without being a Papist, which is against your Faith. If out of it, then it seems Men out of the Church may be saved, and Christ is the Saviour of more than his Body, which is against your Faith and ours. 3. Who is it that hath sufficient Light? if all that have heard or read the frivolous Reasonings of the Papists, then your Parents, and almost all of us must perish: But if it be any other Light which must be had, you know not what measure to give us to discern it, nor ever will know; and so you make your Church invisible, while the Members of it cannot be known: For none can know of another (by your Rule) whether his Light be sufficient or not? And I pray you, are not all the Indians of America, that never heard of Christ, the Members of your Church? for their Light sure is not sufficient to shew them either the Pope or Christ. Hath he the heart of a right Christian that can thus damn two or three parts of all the Christians in the World, for not believing in a Wretch at Rome, that sometime is an Infidel himself, (for so was Pope Iohn 23. judged to be, by the great General Council at Constance, even one that believed no Resurrection, which is worse than a Turk, or Jew, or some Heathens).
And it's a wonder to me, that if your own Soul hath ever been seriously conversant with God in Holy Worship, you can savour and suit with the Cantings, and Repetitions, and Stage Devotions of the Papists: and that a Latin Mass should be believed to be the acceptable way of Worship; when the Holy Ghost hath so plainly and copiously disowned that serving of God in an unknown tongue, 1 Cor. 14.
Pardon me, if I intreat you to make a deliberate search into your Heart and former Ways, and try whether you conversed with God in the Spirit, and were serious in your Faith and Love and Worship: If you were not, no wonder if an unsound superfical Religion be easily let go, and such an unexperienced Heart can suit with a Canting, Carnal, Iudicrous kind of Devotion; or if God so far forsake a Soul that was not sound and serious in the Religion once professed by you. But if it was better with you, then its strange your Soul can so lose its relish; and its stranger that one, that was a Member of Christ, and in the Church and justified before, should turn to a Sect that tells them, they were not what they were, and must come to them for what they had already.
And whereas all the pretence you shew me for your Change was the difference that you found amongst us Protestants, and our condemning one another, do you not know that in Policy, greater Differences are tolerated among the Papists under the Names of divers Orders, by far than any are between the Presbyterian, Independant and Episcopal Protestants. And that none but ungodly or uncharitable passionate People with us, do deny any of these Parties to be true Members of the Universal Church: If you here met with any one that doth condemn the other, as no parts of the Church of Christ, they spake not according to the Protestant Religion, and you can no more charge us with the Railings of every Fellow that is drunk with domineering Pride or Passion, than with the words of the next Scold or Quaker, or Papist that you shall hear Reviling us.
I have said more to you than at first I intended. I look on you as one about that Age, when Conscience useth to receive its first serious deep Impressions, and the Papists falling in with you just at that time, (I doubt before you had heartily received the Life of what before you professed, and had time to be rooted and stablished in the Truth) the opportunity served them to your Delusion: That it may not prove to your everlasting Destruction, shall be the Prayers, and if you admit them, the faithful Endeavours of
Your Servant in obedience to Christ, though to no Vice-Christ, Rich. Baxter. Dec. 1. 1660.