A Detection of the Dangerous Tendency, Both for Christianity and Protestancy, of a Sermon by G.C.D.D. on the Spirit of the Gospel, by a Member of the Aletheian Club [Staurophilus]. (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1771. Excerpt: ... tctie reverse; for, it declares the civil magistrate freed from fiich rash promise as he has made beyond the limits of his authority only, after he has done all in his poxuer to fulfil it. We shall by and by fee more fully, what was the true doctrine of this Council about the point in question; at present I must fay a word to another of its Canons commonly appealed to by Protestants, to make out their charge; and also, to one of the fourth Council of Lateran used by them for the fame purpose.: The answer to both these is very short, viz. That they are both spurious, and never were made by either of these Councils. Even Mr Collier himself our English Protestant historian, in the fifth book of his first volume of Ecclesiastic history, acknowledges, That that of Lateran is not found in any copy coeval with the Council, but is transcribed from a later record. In fact it was first produced to light by a Ger man, some hundred years after the time of the Council, who found it in a manuscript compiled by somebody, he knew not who. And, as for the other ascribed to the Council of Constance it never appeared in any printed or authentic collection of the acts of that Council, it is only transcribed by L'Enfant, the Calvinist historian, who fays, he got it in a copy found in the Vienna library. Both the one and the other are rejected by all Catholicks as spurious, except Bellarmine and some few Popish schoolmen, who were imposed upon by that of Lateran; but their opinions thereupon are universally condemned. Here then, Gentlemen, you evidently see, that if the author of the sermon, . on the spirit of the gofjbcl, in appealing to rescripts and Councils, to prove his charge against the Papists, has those in view which I have here examined, they are just as much to his p..