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Title:  Christianity abused by the Church of Rome, and popery shewed to be a corruption of it being an answer to a late printed paper given about by papists : in a letter to a gentleman / by J.W.
Author: Williams, John, 1636?-1709.
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to) Your obedience is come abroad unto all Men; by which doubtless no more is to be understood, but that the Conversion of many to Christianity in that City was spread throughout the Roman World; and did tend much to the propagation of it, as that City was then the Imperial Seat. This is the ex∣plication given of this place by some of their own Writers, viz. Rigaltius, in his Notes upon St. Cy∣prian, Epist. p. 78. and Tolet who in c. 1. ad Rom. An∣not. 16. calls it a true Exposition, and saith it's to be understood as 1 Thes. 1. 8.As for the term Mother, I hope he means not that the Gospel first came from thence; for in that sense she was a Daughter, and not a Mother. And if any Church could pretend to any Authority from that consideration, it must be Jerusalem, which in this sense was the Mother of us all. But if he means thereby, that she was an Original and Apostolical Church, planted by the Apostles, or in Apostoli∣cal times (for so Tertullian useth these Words alike lib. de proscript. cap. 21. when he calls them Ma∣trices & Originales Ecclesiae, and again Ecclesiae Apo∣stolicae) then such also was Ephesus in Asia, and Co∣rinth in Achaia, &c. as Tertullian there shews, c. 32. and 36. of which Churches it will be hard for him to find any thing remaining, and which, while they did remain, he must acknowledg to have fallen and been grosly corrupted. And therefore Rome's being a Mother Church, in this sense, is no security against Apostasie, Heresie and Schism.2. Apostasie, he saith, is a renouncing not only the Faith of Christ, but the very Name and Title to0