Baxter - BX1763 B28

( 37) were currant, and which not ? Sure they donot ; no, not the laft at Trent : So that it is not, de fide, with your felves, which are the true Councils, and which not. 3. How doth a later Council know which former Coun- cils were true ? Not becaufe they find fo themfelves ; for then all would be true : If it be by any Charaders, what be they, and whymay we not know them ? 4. How do Councils know which way moll Writers went, or what they wrote ? As it cannot be expe 'ted that theBifhops that met at Trent fhould remember byTradition what all theChriftians in the world (aid or thought in every Age ; fo neither were all Writers words known to themwithout Book, by verbal Tradition. I pray you tell me truly, whether ever any General council took that way to prove what Tuflin, 7ertullian, cyprian, B4ì1, Gregories, Merolla, Augauftine, Chryraporn, &c. faid and held , by fhewing that they had it byTradition from other Coun- cils Decrees, or their Fathers telling them fo, rather thanby looking into theWritings of the Authors them- felves ? And your own Doors commonly tell us what the Fathers held, byciting the Fathers words, and not by telling us, that either Councils, or their Fathers, or Mo- thers, or Nurses told them what they faid or held, [ex- cept in the common Effentials of Chriftianity, the Sacra- mental Covenant, Creed, Lords-Prayer, Decalogue, and that the Scripture is Gods Word] which all Chriftians acknowledge are delivered to us, as bytwo hands, vix, by verbal andpraEtical Tradition, and by the Scripture . it felf. But if it be the Prefent church real, (that is, the con- tent of Chriftians) which mull tell us what was held, in the former Ages (which for ought I find is it that you flye. to ;) though the ignorant cannot try this,all knos - ing_

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