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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A27001	The Quakers catechism, or, The Quakers questioned, their questions answered, and both published for the sake of those of them that have not yet sinned unto death and of those ungrounded novices that are most in danger of their seduction / by R[i]chard Baxter.	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.	1655 (1655)	Wing B1363; ESTC R28362	39,590	58

But I 'll tell you what do When you come home go to some of your Gossips the Friers or other Papists and ask them this Question Whether it be a true Church which set up the Spanish Irquisition and Caused the French Massacre and hath by flames and sword drawn out the bloud of so many hundred thousand true Christians Ask them Whether the Butcheries of the Waldenses and the Irish murders were done by a true Church It may be they will give you a most satisfactory Answer then I can because you will sooner hear them Your third Question is about Infant-Baptism Of that I have already written a whole Book which in modesty you should peruse before you call to me for more Have you soberly read what I have there wrote already If not to what purpose should I write more to you of the same subject Only to your Query I will adde this Query to your Founders the Anabaptists Whether by this time they do not feel Gods plagues upon their party And whether God do not visibly testifie against them from Heaven in giving up their disciples to all kinde of abominations And whether the Plague of Pharaoh be not on those hearts and of the blinded Sodomites on their eyes that in all this can see no reason at least to be very suspicious of their way and whether they are yet resolved to wink on to destruction or to stay till all turn Quakers Ranters or infidels And how much England yet feels it self beholden to Separation and Anabaptistry And whether it be not the Seperated and Anapaptists Churches that are emptied by the Quakers Your fourth fifth sixth seventh eight and ninth Queries are all about Tythes The substance of which I had answered long ago to some of your leading Bretheren in a Book called The Worcestershier Petition Defended to which Book I referre you to spare the labour of speaking one thing twice and modestly should have taught you to take notice of that which I have done already before you call for the same things again Only let me now adde these Queries also to you Qu. 1. Whether have you read any of those Books that are written long ago to prove that Tythes are still of Divine Right If you have not were it not well beseeming a tender Conscience to hear all that can be said before men adventure to rail against that which they do not understand Qu. 2. Whether there be not sufficient Scripture to warrant a man to Dedicate part of his Lands to God for the service of his Church and promoting of his Worship Yea Whether they did not in the Primitive times so Dedicate all selling it and laying down the Price at the Apostles feet Qu 3. Is it not lawfull to take and use that which is so Dedicated And if the Apostles and first Church Officers might take all May not we take the Tenths when they are thus Devoted Qu. 4. If our Ancestours many an Age ago have given the Tenths to the Church for the Ministry are not those sacrilegious Church-robbers that should now take them away having nothing to do with them And do not you counsel men to the sin of Iudas or of Ananias and Sephira Qu. 5. If one that bears the bag prove a Iudas and Thief or one Nicolas a Deacon should lead a Sect of Nicolaitans your Predecessours Whether are all the Apostles therefore Thieves or all the Churches and Pastors greedy dogs for taking much more then the Tenths even mens whole Estates that gave them to that use Qu. 6. Whether I or other Ministers do ask the people so much for preaching as the Quakers receive themselves Do not you receive meat and drink to sustain your lives But we ask not meat and drink of any nor any thing else that is theirs The Tythes is none of theirs nor ever was nor their fathers before them but they bought or took Leases of their Lands with the Condition of paying the Tenths as none of their own We ask them not for a peny but only to divide between theirs and ours and give us our own Qu. 7. If it be not a wrong to the people more then to the Ministers to have the standing Church-maintenance taken away Why then do people petition so hard for Augmentations where Means is wanting Or else do worse Qu. 8. If the Supream Rulers of the Commonwealth may lay an Excise or Tax on the Nation and pay Souldiers with one part of it what forbids but that they may pay Ministers of the Gospel with the other part And if they may lay a Tax for them Why may they not fix a setled Maintenance in Tenths for them much more why may they not let them possesse that which is theirs already by their fore-fathers gift Qu. 9. Where doth any Scripture forbid paying or taking Tythes I have shewed you in my other Book where it commandeth allowing sufficient Maintenance Shew where it condemneth the Tenth part any more then the ninth or the eleventh or twelfth Qu. 10. When God hath commanded a sufficient maintenance in general and left it to humane prudence to judge what is sufficient before they give it If then a man shall say Where doth the Scripture require the Tenths and you are no true Ministers who take the Tenths Is not this as wise as to say Though Christ and his Apostles did wear clothes yet shew where any of them preacht in doublet or breeches or stockings or else you are false Prophets for wearing these Is not this as wise arguing as the other and to the same purpose And where you ask us so oft whether the Apostles took the Tenths I tell you again they took more that is men sold all and laid down the money at their feet It 's true that then the poor also were maintained out of it And if you will shew a Commission to examine us we will give you an account how far we maintain the poor out of our meer tenth part In the mean time it 's unreasonable that you demand that we should so maintain them as to suffer no beggars For if all that a Minister hath will not maintain twenty poor people if he give it them all how should he then maintain a hundred with it Your 10th Qu. is Whether Christ enlighteneth every one that cometh into the world To which I answer Yea he doth so All that come into the world of nature he enlighteneth with the light of Nature so called because that it is a knowledge gotten by the Book of the Creatures and natural means without supernatural Revelation though it be of grace also as it is freely given after a forfeiture And all that come into the world of grace he enlighteneth with the light of supernatural Revelation Having said as much to this Query as you require I will gratis adde something that I may please you by supererrogation I lately saw another Paper of your Queries which you have disperst in other places which speaks

the Quakers and desired my thoughts of them and their waies which seemed to him agreeable to the Scriptures I Have perused your Request and am glad that you are not so confirmed in your misery but that you will yet ask advice of your Friend I pray God you be so ingenious and happy as to take it It is a very sad thing to me and should be so much more to you to think that after so much pains as you have taken in duty and so much zeal as you have professed for God you should yet be so unacquainted with the will and Word of God and Christ should have so little interest in your heart as that such horrid unchristian doctrines and practices should be so easily entertained by you and so far approved of I marvell why you took it for so great a work of grace to convert you from prophanesse and now will take it for a greater work to convert you to it again or to much worse Was it not the same Ordinances that you despised before Conversion which you now much more desp●se Was it not the same Ministers that thou you scorn'd whom ye now reproach with far greater bitternesse if you do as those whom you pleade for do Is it not the same Christians whom you then derided and now revile at and condemn as Children of the devil O miserable man Is all your hearing and praying come to this Dare you meet the Messengers of Christ in the face and tell them they are Liars and deceivers Dare you cast out the holy worship of Christ as false worship and seek to draw people into the contempt of it Dare you damn those Churches and millions of Saints that Christ hath bought with his precious bloud Dare you seek to draw men to hate their Teachers whom Christ hath set over them and to hate his people as if they were the Children of the Devil and to hate his worship and holy waies Alas that ever a man in his wits should look upon such abominations as amiable and much more that any man should be so mad as to do this under the Name and profession of a Christian That you can imagine that the furious opposition to the whole Army of Christ his Officers Church and Ordinances can yet be a work that Christ accepteth That you should no better know Christs work from Satans nor know that it is the Dragon whose warfare these men do manage I must needs professe that it is a very grievous thing in mine eyes that after all our pains with mens souls and after the rejoycings which we had in their seeming conversion and zealous lives we should yet see so much ignorance levity and giddinesse of professors as that they are ready to entertain the most horrid abominations That the devil can no sooner bait his hook but they greedily catch at it and swallow it without chewing yea nothing seems too grosse for them but so it seems Novelty all goes down I am afraid if they go a little further they will beleeve him that shall say The Devil is God and to be worshiped and obeyed Shall I freely tell you whence all this comes Even from h●llish pride of heart You see it not it 's like in your self or in them but I shall endeavour to make you see it both in your selves and them For your selves you confesse to me that you have long thought that Infant-Baptism was an errour and that now you think the Quakers are in the right and yet you neither did once reade any one of those Books which we have written to prove Infant-Baptism to be a duty nor did once scriously and impartially lay open your doubts to your Teacher nor ask his advice as if you were even then too good to enquire and would venture your soul to save you a little labour yet are you now confident that you are in the right and he and all of his minde are in the wrong You know you are a young man and have had little opportunity to be acquainted with the Word of God in comparison of what your Teacher hath had If you presume that you are so much more beloved of God then he that God will reveal that to you without seeking and study which upon the greatest diligence he will not reveal to him what can this conceit proveed from but pride God commandeth study and meditating day and night in his Laws Your Teacher hath spent twenty if not an hundred hours in such Meditation where you have spent one He hath spent twenty if not an hundred hours in praier to God for his spirit of Truth and Grace where you have spent one His prayers are as earnest as yours His life is much more holy and heavenly then yours His Office is to teach and therefore God is as it were more engaged to be his Teacher and to make known his Truth to him th●n to you Is it not then apparent pride for you to be confident that you are so much wiser then he and that you are so much more lovely in Gods eyes that he will admit you more in to the knowledge of his Mysteries then those that have better used his own appointed means to know them and for you in ignorance to run about with the Shell on your head exclaiming to the world of the ignorance of your late Teachers I say not that you do so But the Quakers whom you approve of do so and much more I pray you tell me Did you ever study well what Paul meant ● Tim. 3. 5. where he requireth that he that is Ordained should not be a Novice lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the Condemnation of the devil The Word translated a Novice signifieth a New Plant a late Convert or new or young Christian You see here that such are in most danger of being lifted up with pride and why so but because 1. They have not yet knowledge enough to acquaint them with their ignorance and great weaknesses 2. Nor have they yet grown to a just degree of humility and other establishing preserving graces You see also that to fall into Pride is to fall into the condemnation of the devil You know sure that it is no wrong to you to say that you are but a Novice or raw Christian for it is but a few years since you came out of utter ignorance and carnality and therefore that you have reason to be very watchfull against this sin yea by the evidence that you give in against your selves you might see that you are too farre ensnared in it already And for the Quakers you are blinde if you see not their horrible Pride You 'le perhaps think it strange that Pride should be the very Master-sinne in them that go in so poor a garb and cry out against Pride so zealously as they do and go up and down the world as if they were sent from Heaven to perswade men to wear no Lace or Cuffs or Points and