been injurious to humanity it self if I had thought such men as incredible as some have now declared themselves in Print to be I scarcely now believe any meer humane History any farther than the agreement of men of contrary minds and interests in matters of common and easie notice giveth a kind of natural evidence to it beyond what it borroweth from the honesty of the Writer or at least farther than the footsteps of very great Candor Conscience and unbyassed impartiality shall speak more for my belief than the Authors most confident words or Oaths And herein modest men and disinterested Peace-makers are now believed by me before all the greatest the learned'st and the most zealous Contenders in the world Davids saying that All men are Lyars and Pauls Let God be true and every man a Lyar were too much overlooked by me till men themselves had told me what they are and warned me to cease from man as vanity Mr. Danvers his accusations were partly of such publick parties the ancient Churches the Novatians the Donatists the old Brittains the Waldenses the Wickliffians c. and partly of such publick Writings as Augustines and many others as one would think any Scholar that will read the cited Books might soon see whether he or I be the falsifyer especially about a practical matter in which their Judgments could not easily be hid from all the Adversaries about them no more than from those of their own mind and way His accusation of the Novatians he neither defendeth that I see nor confesseth to be a slander but silently passeth all the matter by His Accusation for such it is of the rest for the most part at least he still defendeth He cannot Repent of it and I can no more believe him when I have read the Books that are our Records than I can if he would as fiercely contend that the Bishops or Church of England are Anabaptists because of his accusation of the now Bishop of Lincoln But should I be so injurious to the Reader and my self as to cast away precious time in again and again answering his untrue Citations and expositions of words which are before our eyes and which neither his word or mine can satisfie any Reader of who must know the truth by the Books themselves when he tells men of my writing for Popery Conformity c. can his yea or my nay go for proof with any that is in doubt which of us saith true Must not the perusal of the full words decide the Case And so it must as to his Accusations of the several Churches and Parties in questions And if his Believers would be perswaded that the Welsh Tongue is the common Language of England if he do but vehemently affirm it and revile such as contradict him I could not help it nor must I write books about it as long as he hath leisure Ink and Paper to hold on His Exclamations of the unsatisfactories of these general answers or refusals shall not tempt me to cast away the little relicts of my time in numbring and disproving all the Vntruths that he hath written and will write By what Law am I condemned to such a Drudgery The very first Paragraph of this his third Reply hath more than one or two But the chief substance of his Book is his reiterated accusation of my words in my first Book that many then Baptized naked for which as a heynous Calumny I must Repent Readers my Conscience telleth me that Repentance is such an excellent healing Duty that I shall loath my self so far as I find my self unwilling of it But is it possible for a man to Repent of all that the several contradicting Sects Papists Quakers Anabaptists c. call him to Repent of when that is best with one side which is the worst to divers others We are openly agreed 1. That the Baptizing naked is not the usual way of the Anabaptists in England 2. That it was not the way of the most of them when I wrote that book 3. That we heard of none with us in England that for any considerable time continued it The Questions remaining are 1. Whether when I wrote those words the common Fame or Report of the Countrey where I lived took it not for as certain that divers then in some places did it as the most Scriptural way as that the Quakers Quaked and that the Ranters Swore 2. Whether ever any Anabaptist that then was acquainted with me yea or any one person denyed it to my hearing or knowledge 3. Whether Mr. Tombes denyed it when I wrote it All these I will no farther trouble the Reader about than to tell him that he neither doth or can disprove me and should I recant what I said of these three questions I must tell three downright Lyes And is that a safe way of Repenting 4. But let the question be whether I did well to believe it I answer I believed it not as a Divine Revelation but as a Humane Report which constrained a proportionable belief which it was not in my power to deny 5. But should I not yet disbelieve it Answer I am more willing to do it than not but I am not able I do believe according to the measure of the aforesaid evidence that it is a Truth I cannot believe the contrary I hear not a word to warrant me to disbelieve it it is not in my power and I must not lie to say that I believe it not 6. But the next Question is Did I not say more or mean more at least than that it was but at that time the practise of many but not of most or their ordinary way and that I knew it no otherwise than by uncontradicted Fame Answer Either I did say or mean more or I aid not If I did I hereby renounce it and declare that I wronged them If I did not as I know I did not to say I did were to lie and is it worthy his writing a Book to tempt a man to lie If he will prove that I said more the words must decide it if that I meant more he is not to be believed of my heart as if he knew it better than I. But he proveth it that I intended them all contrary to my most express words 1. He saith it is my scope and design 2. From my Arguments which take in the whole Party 3. From the Instance c. Reader If I were to teach a man to understand my book before he wrote against it I should have some little hope of true dealing in his Report how weak soever his Arguing were But when I must deal with a man that understandeth not plain English because partiality will not suffer him and will not learn to understand what he doth not and yet cannot forbear a publick contradicting it till he understand it would it not be a slavery to be tyed to write against such a man as long as he would write should I live
Christians in this and former ages in such things I will have no Communion with you The Fathers likened Re-ordaining and Re-baptizing If any would satisfie his own Conscience with being ordained again for surety not Unchurching Degrading Avoiding Reproaching Persecuting those that are not of his mind I would break no peace with such a Re-ordained Person But if the Re-ordaining Sectaries will say as you Our way only is right we only are the true Ministers and Churches and turn like to Donatists I am not of their mind And I here profess that while I tell you of my dissent from your Extream it implyeth no liking of the contrary extream of those that would confound the Christians the Heathens so far as equally to Baptise all their Children if any Baptized person will but perfidiously promise that for them which they never made any intelligent man believe that ever they intended to perform Nor can I love the Hypocritical Religion of the Pharisees which turneth almost all into Ceremony as if they had to do with none but Children nor the turning of Catechising and Confirmation into a lifeless Formality to be instead of a serious Profession at age of the Christian Covenant and a solemn intelligent transition to the Church Priviledges of the Adult I know that it is Satans game first to draw Hypocrites to mortifie Gods Ordinances and turn Religion into an Image or a Carkass and thence to stir up others in several Sects instead of Reviving them to Loath and Bury them Woe to the World because of Offences and Woe to them by whom they come Before I come to my Fourth Part which is my Application to my self I must take notice of some more of your Applicatory Letter in the way And if I disorderly repeat some things in following so disordered a Leader you at least whatever others do must take it patiently it being far short of the tedious work which you seem to call for You would have Mr. Danvers his Letter Answered and you would have better Proof for Infant Baptism It is not in my power to believe the Reasons of my two Books which you generally take for none to be no sound Reasons nor to believe Mr. Danvers his Books not to be such a bundle of most gross mistakes and Vutruths as I scarce ever before met with from a professed Christian If I mistake it is not in my power to do otherwise were I to die this hour And if I have offended the Anabaptists by a faithful perswading them to Repent of the doleful work which they have made in England my Conscience more accuseth me for doing it no more than for doing so much If you take all men for as bad as you describe me that wish your Repentance for such works and also for our woful Church Divisions and differ from you about Infant-Baptism and that yet beg for mutual forbearance and peaceable Communion with you I am not of your spirit or mind and hope neither to live nor die in so narrow a Communion As for any more Answering any of you those that I converse with tell me it is needless I repent that I have been drawn by Contenders so often to interrupt more useful work If more be needful let them do it that have leisure and longer life You say that It is now a common question whether ever I will die a Martyr I am sorry that your Acquaintance are hardened and used to questions that so little concern them and that are so unmeet for their Determination If Suffering be the best State how happy hath this Kingdom been made by the OVERTURNERS Do you mean that you doubt whether ever the Anabaptists will have Power enough to effect it they attempting what they did against me too late just when they and their Co-partners were a pulling down themselves and others Or do you mean that till we are Martyred we are not capable of your good Opinion And are all the Anabaptists Graceless that are yet Unmartyred Or have more Anabaptists than Poedobaptists been Martyred in our times Or is it only your Prognostick on supposition of my Tryal I have more cause to distrust my self and beg Gods strengthning Grace than boastingly to foretel Though all men deny thee yet I will not But your talk of my flight and others suffering by proxie for me doth but shew that you have not that care of avoiding Falshoods in matter of Fact which might invite us to think that you are liker than others to be sound in Doctrine But had you not mistaken yet I might have admonished you not to have condemned every Anabaptist that hath taken a grosser flight than a sick mans going for his health into the Countrey when he had neither any Flock nor Vndertaking nor Call to hinder him At least that you mock not at Paul for being let down by the wall in a Basket nor at Christ for his flight into Aegypt or withdrawing into the Wilderness and into Gallilee c. nor for saying When they persecute you in one City flee to another or at least pass no hard sentence on your self for being yet alive no nor on Mr. Tombes for Writing against Separation and for Communion with the Parish Churches But in the end you Beseech me in the Bowels of Jesus Christ and as I will shortly answer at the great and dreadful Tribunal that among my other Errata I would repent of that absurd and Heretical position of a Baptismal Covenant of Grace running in a Fleshly Line Answ But 1. Just thus the Quakers dreadfully adjâ—re me to repent of all that 's against their way and must I therefore do it And yet Mr. Hicks Ives and other Anabaptists treat them far more sharply than cover I did the Anabaptists 2. I have so many years looked for my appearing at the Tribunal of Christ that if I should not be true to that Light which doth appear to me I were more unexcusable than yet you think me But will your word at that Tribunal pass for Law or for my Justification if I should contradict the Grace and Covenant of God and his Church Laws and state from the dayes of Adam to this day How shall I be sure that it is the Bowels of Christ and not Self-conceitedness and the Zeal of a dividing Sect in which you make this carnest sute to me 3. Especially when you so unintelligibly recite my supposed Errour and give me not a word of Answer against that abundance of Scripture proof which I have brought This is too unsatisfactory an answering of Books to Beseech us to repent of them 4. The Wisdom from above is Pure Peaceable and without Partiality Is yours so Ask any Impartial man whether you write like one that knoweth himself You here call us to Repent of a Position as Absurd and Heretical Did I ever call your Opinion Heretical Not that I remember Such writing as this of mine is fiery but your large Invectives without one word of
that Infants Baptized none in the world excepted and dying before actual sin are certainly Saved not allowing us to preach Christs Gospel if we cannot say that all This is certain were it Faith in Christ himself the weak in Faith should be received and such as you on the other side that account us even Heretical if we will not be so unthankful to God as to deny and reject the precious Covenant Hopes and Church-relation of our Children You know that with what measure you mete it is measured to you again by many and that no small number of Christians have numbred Anabaptists with Hereticks and yet I that have dealt otherwise with you am your most fiery Adversary And why Any judicious By-stander may see though you cannot just as as W. Pen lately seemed to think more favourably of me than of others till in an open dispute I had detected the evil of his cause and then he had rather be a Socrates at judgment than such a nominal Christian as I so you and your Brethren that are like you because a Book or two of mine have cross'd the Interest of your Party think I deserve all that you pronounce of or against me so powerful is Interest with most mens understandings so far as it is your mistake of the Interest of Christ that does mislead you I easily bear it as the infirmity of a weak and prejudiced judgment But so far as it is the interest of your Party which is abused against the publick interest of Christs Church it is selfish and such as is described at large in James 3. As for your talk of Mr. Danvers his words against my Heterodoxes in other matters and your supercilious insulting as if he were unanswered I say 1. I take him to be fully answered and if you do not that proveth it not to be as you affirm 2. What more should I answer What doth he but recite some scrap of my words Had he done it truly and fully had that been any Argument against them Do I need to answer my own words before any Charge against them be proved or proof once attempted Was it not enough for me to lay down the Contraries to my Doctrines and leave the Reader to choose which he seeth best Dare you not own the Contraries and yet continue your accusation of my words Would not the World whom I blame not if they think that I have written too many Books already condemn me for a fool indeed if in the condition that I am in the Cant of such men as he and you should draw me to write another Volumn in Defence of a Volumn that defendeth it self to all judicious Impartial Readers and that against one that proveth nothing in it to be Erronious And as for those that will not impartially peruse the words accused I have no reason to think that they will make any better use of a Defence if I should write it And as I am past doubt that Mr. D's Quarrels and your Justification of them are the effect of meer ignorance self-conceit partiality and passion so if you prove to be the knowing men and I the ignorant I am sure it is not through my neglect of Study nor unwillingness to know or own the Truth And I have no cause to envy you the felicity of your greater Wisdom But if it be a Wisdom that tendeth to bitter strife and to confusion and destroyeth your Love to those that differ from you I will remember that my peace lyeth more on my Love to you than on yours or any mans else to me As for your talk about my words in my first book that some did then Baptize naked I have given you a true answer To contradict what I said were to lie I know not that you Baptize any at all but by report of others and so I heard that then of some so credibly as that I am not able now because you call for proof almost thirty years after to disbelieve it I undertake not to prove it now nor that the Quakers then used to Quake or Vomit seeing now no such thing is seen among them If really it was a misreport and never any Baptized naked in England nor in other Lands I wish that no man may believe it But did Mr. Danvers take this for so heynous an injury and yet himself in2 Books labour to prove that for many hundred years Baptizing naked was the ordinary Custome O how far will partiality blind men Was it the Custome of all the Churches and yet a Reproach to be retracted to say that at one time divers did so if fame not then denyed by any of those Anabaptists that I converst with may be believed To conclude Sir The importunity of Mr. Danvers and you have not been unprofitable to me It hath caused me as you desired to Review my old thoughts of Infants Church-membership and Baptism and to renew my thanks to the God of Mercy who hath not left all the World in their Infancy unredeemed nor without a Promise or Covenant of Grace nor left Christian Parents to mourn for their dead Infants as those that are without hope of their Salvation and have no Promise on which to ground their hope It hath renewed my sense of the great obligation that lyeth on believing Parents both of gratitude to God and duty for their Children It tells me that they may now love their Children as the members of the Church of Christ and need not nay must not take them as members of the Kingdom of the Devil nor yet stretch their Brains to prove that there is a middle Region like Purgatory or Limbus Infantum hereafter between the Kingdom of Christ and the Kingdom of the Devil And that it is a sad employment for Parents to dispute their own Children out of the Blessings of Gods Covenant and to prove them to be in Satans Kingdom and not in Christs Yea it hath reminded me how much the Interest of Infants in their Parents case is founded by God in nature it self and to bless God for that inscription in Stone of the second Commandment and that marvellous voice from Heaven Exod. 34. 6 7. I believe that the Synod of Dort said truly Acts 1. 17. That Faithful Parents need not doubt of the Election and Salvation of their Children dying in Infancy before the violation of the Baptismal Covenant And seeing God hath pronounced our Children holy and not unclean and told us that of such is the Kingdom of God it remindeth me how careful Parents should be as thankfully to dedicate them to God so carefully to educate them according to their Covenant remembering that as the Parents Consent and dedication of them to God is the Condition of their first right to the Covenant benefits so those Parents do Promise their pious education and if they after prove false in such Promises on their part they must not charge God with unfaithfulness if it go worse with their Children than
so long I joyned together as the mode of their Re-baptizing their doing it in cold water or Rivers some naked and the rest the usual way next naked that is in a linnen Shift or Vest only to cover them I took that which in the hotter Countreys was safe to be in our frigid Countreys a breach of the sixth Commandment and can prove that he that said Go learn what that meaneth I will have Mercy and not Sacrifice would not have plunging over head in Cold Water to be the ordinary way with us I supposed that as among the naked Indians use maketh nakedness a less provocation to Lust than it would be here so also in the hotter Regions of the world their appearing publickly next to naked in one linnen Vest or Shift was less unseemly than it would be here David might dance so before Ark though Michel thought it impudent and they might usually were such Garments as would not have kept their Nakedness from being seen if they had gone by steps upon the Altar and such as if it were but turned aside would leave their nakedness as Noah's was to spectators Custome is of great signification in such things But I appeal to common Modesty with us in England whether it would not be a breach of the seventh Commandment to come to Church or walk the Streets or appear in Assemblies in our Shirts and Smocks Now this man first feigneth me to say that it is Adultery because I say it is a breach of the seventh Commaadment as if nothing but Adultery were there forbidden Next to prove that I mean it of them all that They Baptize naked he alledgeth that I said that all or most did it naked or next naked and are these all one pray doth he not disprove himself Is it not sure that he that saith some Baptize naked and others next naked doth not say of all that they Baptize naked What should one say to such a man as this But he saith that some naked and next naked are much at one Answer That 's but another of his Untruths from whom they flow so easily that I may not number them A grosser and lesser breach of the seventh Commandment are not much at one with me I never said or thought that they were If I had is that any thing to the question in hand Can he prove that I said All Baptized naked if I had said that I took next naked to be as bad 2. But de facto doth he deny the latter it seems here that he doth I profess also that I go in this but by Common Fame If they Baptize not next naked in one linnen Shift I never heard it denyed till now I renounce the mention of it if it be untrue but it is not in my power to disbelieve it But because I never saw it if he will say that they Baptize them all in hats bands and cuffs I will not peremptorily deny it But he will prove that I meant not Common Fame because I add Experience c. But sure I never alledged my own Experience I never saw any of them Baptize I never heard a Ranter Blaspheme though I have read Letters full of it nor I never saw a Quaker quake If you say that they never did so I will not prove it But how shall other mens Experiences be known to me but by Report or Fame And I think that the more common and uncontradicted the Report is it is the more probable I have not leisure to go on at this rate with such a Writer I again profess that I had rather Retract what I said than not if I could do it without lying but I cannot But Reader what 's all this to the Question Whether our Infants are in Covenant with Christ or Visible Members of his Church Is it not a meer Diversion But the last Question is Have I not wronged their Cause by wronging the Persons in believing Fame that ever any of them Baptized naked Answer 1. I have not the books now to peruse men of his Spirit though of another Opinion have disabled me at this time from confuting him by books But I am past doubt that I have read of their Baptizing naked in forreign Writers 2. But Reader Could one that had read this Book of his against me for this passage as injurious believe if he had not seen his other Books that it is this same man himself who in his two former Books maintaineth it against us that for many hundred years Baptizing naked was the Churches Practise Was this no injury Or shall the same man take me as injurious for believing the same of some of them for a very little time I hope I have almost done with such Disputers As to what he saith of Mr. Lambes and Mr. Allens who have left them exceedingly as he hears blaming me for broaching much more for defending this slander I answer 1. His Heresay's have quite lost their credit with me I believe it never the more for his hearing it They never blamed me to my face and I think that they are men likely to do it in that friendly way if any way and therefore at least I may hear from them hereafter and if so their reproof shall be willingly considered If it be true I suppose it is because they have mistaken me as he doth as if I had spoken that of their ordinary practice which I mentioned only as the practice of some only at that time which was as short and confined as the Quakers quaking 2. Is it a slander of Mr. Tombes his citing Vossius or of Vossius cited by him to say that some Baptized naked in former times 3. Is it then no slander of Mr. Danvers to say and stiffly defend it that the ancient Churches ordinarily did so Doth he who so pleadeth for Immersion because it was the first way now take it for well done in the ancient Churches and an intollerable slander that it should be said to have been done of any of late He next cometh to defend his false Report of a Paper which I read to some people that I preached to The first hour that ever I spake to them I openly professed that we met not there as separating from the publick Assemblies but for the necessary instructing of the people who else had none nor any publick Worship of God The Parish of Giles where I lived and the Parish of Martins where I preached are supposed to have 1000000. souls or neer of these it is supposed that not above 6000. can hear in the Parish Churches at the most and the incumbent of one had not officiated at all for many years it grieved me to think that while the King aintainerh a Corporation and Revenew for propagating the Gospel in America and the Jesuites are justly praised for doing so much to propagate it in the East Indies we should sluggishly suffer America and the Indies to come so neer Whitehall and so famous and