“too studious to be read easily”! LOL! 108 word sentence with 10 commas equates to “too studious”? our education system truly fas failed us.
the problem the Anabaptist or Baptist has is the Scriptures, Sacred Tradition and secular history all tell us they are following false doctrines and seek to destroy the unity of the Church.
so the fact that NO ONE had a 66 book Bible before the 16th century ( including the Apostles ) means nothing when PRIDE is involved.
to the Catholic, Jesus established a visible Church, and sent the Holy Spirit to lead it to all truth and promised to be with it ALWAYS, even to the end of the age. This Church is AUTHORIZED to teach and baptize. Jesus said the gates of hell would not prevail against it, and that the elect can’t be fooled by false teachers. Jesus prayed that His followers be ONE and Paul commanded there be no dissension in the Church.
to the Baptist, once John died, the Holy Spirit was withdrawn and the Church was on it’s own to stay faithful to the Word of God. since men are sinful, eventually ( 2nd century ) the Church went apostate and was in darkness for 1,400 years until the truth was re-discovered in the Scriptures. no one could correctly read the Scriptures for 1,400 years, so false doctrines abounded. this narrative is completely UNSCRIPTURAL, but it does appeal to the EGO OF THE NATURAL MANN.
The Church is not a man made club like the moose club, IT IS THE BODY OF CHRIST ON EARTH. It is also the instrument that the Holy Spirit uses to bring men and women to Christ.
NO ONE WAS SAVED AFTER PENTECOST WITHOUT THE CHURCH BEING USED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT TO BRING SOULS TO CHRIST. I challenge anyone to show me one instance where someone read the Scriptures and was saved in the NT. The Holy Spirit works thru the Church, not against it. I also challenge anyone to find a Scripture where we are commanded to DECIDE DOCTRINE ON OUR OWN BY READING SCRIPTURE, RATHER THAN FOLLOWING THE DOCTRINES AS TAUGHT BY THE CHURCH. the Bereans searched the Scriptures to see if what the Church taught was true. Is that what is done today? For example, the Church teaches baptism is for the forgiveness of sins and points to Acts 2:38. do the present day “bereans” look to Acts 2:38 to see if this true? NO THEY DON’T. They will twist the Scriptures to try and oppose what the Church ( under the guidance of the Holy Spirit ) has taught for 2,000 years.
so the pattern that was established in Acts 8 remains. the eunuch was reading the Scriptures and needed someone ( the Church ) to explain it to him ( TEACHING ) and when he accepted the Church’s teaching, He was Baptized. And as is clear from the text, he was baptized for the remission of his sins, receiving the Holy Spirit and being placed into Christ. He absolutely was not baptized as a first act of obedience, nor for a public testimony. SORRY BAPTISTS!
In other words, true to your sophist form, ignore what refutes you (including that Rome herself did not have an indisputable cannon until the year Luther died, while the Prots overall settled much quicker on theirs, consisting of two respective ancient ones) and just continue posting the more of same old spurious polemics.
In this it is a straw man, that erroneously presumes the material sufficiency of SS (nor prima Scriptura) does not provide for evangelists and the magisterium, and imagines that RC evangelism is that of Acts 8 (your choice of text),
in which not a word is said about submission to Rome or the other obligatory advertising about her,
and the authoritative substantiation for this faith was Scripture, as it was for preaching,
while (again) the condition of whole-hearted faith for baptism by a deacon,
who did not get his mission orders (to go to the desert) from Rome,
while the baptized soul was left to go on his way with only his Bible! Not very RC, who latter would put restrictions on laymen reading the Bible)
While also presuming the baptist position on baptism as to publicly confessing faith in the Lord Jesus - which type of confession Christ commanded - (Mt. 10:32; cf. Rm. 10:9,10) requires a lot of people (it need not), any more than putting the ring on in getting married (to which it is likened) does. It is confessing Christ by body language.
Of course, also utterly absent from Scripture, which can basically be superfluous to a RC, are other things previously listed, from prayed to the departed to a separate class of clergy called sacerdotal priests, to perpetual, assured formulaic infallibility as per Rome, upon which her distinctive supremacist claims of really rest, and the necessity of such to establish writings as Scripture and preserve Truth, and as being the real basis for assurance of Truth, versus conformity to what was established as Scripture, in text and in power, to the glory of Almighty God.