That the Apostles' Creed received additions after the
Apostolic age, seems almost certain; not to mention the perplexing
circumstance that so many of the Latin Fathers, who give almost the
words of the Apostolic Creed, declare it forbidden absolutely to write
or by any material form to transmit the 'Canon Fidei', or 'Symbolum' or
'Regula Fidei', the Creed [Greek: kat' hexochaen], by analogy of which
the question whether such a book was Scripture or not, was to be tried.
With such doubts how can the Apostles' Creed be preferred to the Nicene
by a consistent member of the Reformed Catholic Church?
Ib. p. 67.
They think while you (the Independents) seem to be for a stricter
discipline than others, that your way or usual practice tendeth to
extirpate godliness out of the land, by taking a very few that can
talk more than the rest, and making them the Church, &c.
Had Baxter had as judicious advisers among his theological, as he had
among his legal, friends; and had he allowed them equal influence with
him; he would not, I suspect, have written this irritating and too
egometical paragraph. But Baxter would have disbelieved a prophet who
had foretold that almost the whole orthodoxy of the Non-conformists
would he retained and preserved by the Independent congregations in
England, after the Presbyterian had almost without exception become,
first, Arian, then Socinian, and finally Unitarian: that is, the
'demi-semi-quaver' of Christianity, Arminianism being taken for the
'semi-breve'.
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