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
which they never did nor never will do Yea and I must have taught all Christian Parents that though they must love their Children as they are their own as Heathens do yet that they must not Love any one Infant in the world as a Member of Christ or of his Church and in his Covenant X. And by all this what a Scandal should I have given to the Atheists Infidels Papists and Profane to harden them in their Contempt of Godliness and Derision or Accusations of Religious men as if all serious Religion among us were but Pride Contention Humour and Hypocrisie and a Cloak for our Malaâ—ies and Crimes Yea I might have tempted them to Persecution and quieted their Consciences in silencing Christs Ministers for the sake of such whom they think they use not so ill as they deserve XI And alass what a distraction and scandal should I have caused to the ignorant and weak when they see so many wayes and hear men calling them this way and that way and terrifying them with Gods Judgment and the charge of Sin if they be not of this mind or of that till poor people that have a plain Rule left them by Christ are driven out of all Religion or out of their Wits as not knowing of what side and way to be XII And I should have been like enough to have been drawn into the guilt of Persecution my self while I cryed out against Persecution I might have Persecuted my Brethren with my Tongue and thought it necessary to the promoting of the cause of God to blast their just Reputation and to make them by falshoods to become despised lest their names should hinder my design Yea who knows but I might my self have joyned with those whom you judged the persecuting Silencers of the Ministers of Christ and Ruiners of the Churches Peace by endeavouring the continuance of those same Impositions and keeping Ministers out of the publick Ministry and depriving them of all the established Maintenance which in the judgment of the Sectaries themselves is heynous sin and all this lest Repentance and Altering such Impositions unless they will do it as far as the said persons desire should weaken their Party and leave them under greater disagvantages and to have thus desired mens impenitent Continuance of that which is accounted heynous Persecution and Devastation of the Churches and starving many thousand Souls and undoing Ministers and their Families might have made all this to be my own by such consent yea and endeavour and the pitiful shift of opposing a Comprehension to keep off our own Sufferings or our weakening and the dividing of the Non-conformists might have been an Opiate to my Conscience for so heynous an Iniquity XIII Yea who knows but I might have come to that inhumanity and immodesty as to falsifie publick History against the common notice of all the Learned world and to have faced down mankind that the Novatians were against Infant Baptism and so were the Donatists and that Austin wrote divers Books against them as holding that Opinion and that the Brittains of old were of the same mind and the Waldenses since and Wickliffe also c. And if Learned men had wondred at my impudence I might have comforted my self that my followers will believe me yea and to have furiously calumniated those that detect my sin and call me to Repentance and to have reproached them as foolish and fiery who will defend the Mercies of Christ and their Infant hopes and title to pardon and salvation These and many more evils I might have been seduced into if I had yielded to those reasonings that would have drawn me to deny the Graces of the Covenant and which in my youth once did cause some doubting in me till I diligently studyed the point my ignorance of the true nature of the Covenant and Baptism and the weakness of many Writers Arguments against the Anabaptists being then my great Temptations And now Sir I thank you for calling me in the bowels of Christ as I will answer it at Gods dreadful Tribunal to a Review of the Cause which I was drawn by your Brethren to defend For it causeth me in the Review of the Nature and Reasons of it to renew my thankfulness to God for my preservation and that he hath made any use of me to vindicate his Covenant and the Mercies given by it to mankind and for saving me from this fore-described deluge and I solemnly protest in his sight that knoweth my heart that if I knew or by study could find out that Papists Conformists Separatists Anabaptists or Quakers were in the right I would quickly and joyfully declare my consent be glad before I die to joyn with them and recant what I have held or said or done against them But the Reasons which I have given in my two Books and which Mr. Jos Whiston above most others hath lately given seem to me unanswerable And yet I doubt not but Mr. Danvers or you can answer them all there being few Causes so clear that a man may not talk against as long as his talking faculty holds out But do not expect that I should offend you by Replying to words which I think need no Reply unless the necessities of such as are deceived by you do require it Blessed be that Mercy that will shortly Reconcile his dark mistaken wrangling Children in the World of Reconciling Light and Love in the perfect Vnity which Grace is now preparing us for and they that live in Faith and Love are breathing after And woe to them who by dead Formalities elude and hinder mens solemn intelligent owning of their Baptismal Covenant at age and thereby make Anabaptists and make Infant-baptism seem a Crime London Decemb. 31. 1675. Rich. Baxter Mr. Danvers his Third Reply Considered at Mr. Hutchinson's Invitation BEfore the Receipt of Mr. Hutchinsons Letter I knew nothing of Mr. Danvers his Third Reply which I have now perused Though by his Conclusion one would think that he took open Rebuke for a tolerable yea acceptable friendly office yet finding how impatiently he receiveth it and that the detection of his Voluminous Untruths doth but occasion him to defend them and to stir up all his Forces to render the Reprover odious and so doth but exasperate his Disease I thought my self disobliged from any farther attempts to bring him to Repentance And those that yet need more to save them from the belief of his Historicall Misreports are persons that I have not leisure enough to satisfie I again profess that the experience of these last fifteen years of the strange incredibility of some men on both extreams the Violent and the Dividing about notorious matters of Fact hath done more to bring me to great unbelief of all mankind so far as I find them pre-engaged by Contention and by a Carnal or a sideing factious Interest than all that ever I before had read or heard or seen I should once have thought that I had
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
Religious a City as this to be to so great a number without any publick worship of God while Mahometans are not quite without Therefore to my great cost I preached neer a year over the Market-house at St. James's And when the Informers began with me and accused me to the Justices of meeting contrary to the Act against Conventicles I gave my Reasons to some Justices and others in word and writing to prove that neither I nor such others might be judged breakers of that Act because we did not meet to worship God with any other manner of Worship than what is according to the Liturgy and Practice of the Church of England For though we did not so much as they we did nothing but what they do For we did but Read the Scriptures Pray freely in the Pulpit and Preach the Christian Doctrine and all this the Church of England doth And though I did not read my self but another did it it was because I was not able which if I were I would do it And expecting quickly to have the Cause come to a Tryal I wrote the sum of this in a Paper and read it openly and then gave it the Clerk that none might misreport me And though some able and pious Lawyers that perused my large Reasons thought that they were very useful for others as well as me yet the noise and murmuring of some Women first and such as Mr. Danvers after sent abroad my Reproaches for it through City and Countrey with so many false additions and so much displeasure as added somewhat to my former knowledge of the difference between Sectarian and Christian Zeal Surely these men do think themselves very grear haters of sin who would render that man odious as a heynous sinner who doth but speak those words to vindicate himself and others from the accusation of Informers which he verily believeth to be true and useful when a man hath for about fourteen years not only preached without pay but at many score pounds a year charges when he hath never taken away one of their Communicants from any Parochial or Non-conformists Church nor meddled with either Sacrament nor ever set up his own preaching against theirs but desired to preach to a few of those many thousands that have none at all nor have any publick worship of God no not so much as the reading of the Liturgy and when for endeavouring this in languishing and pains by great charge and labour his utter ruine if not death shall be unreconcileably endeavoured by one party and for not hateing that which is good in the Liturgy as much as they or upon every surmise of a diseased brain shall become the common obloquy of another the Sectarians and the Women that are infected by their disease Reader judge whether the true belief of Gods acceptance and better than the Hypocrites reward be not necessary to keep such a one from imitating Jonas and quietly leaving men to their beloved ignorance and sin and whether if we had not many soberer men between them that are for neither of the extreams it would not be harder preaching in England than in America Yet with most hearty thanks to God I must say that notwithstanding the opposition of both these extreams God hath abundantly sweetned his service to me by the ready reception and profit of such people as men so much labour to keep in darkness I speak all this with reference to Mr. Danvers his following words also of my preaching in the Parish Churches The foresaid paper of mine he published in his last Book as matter of Accusation and did it according to his custome falsely I briefly mentioned his falsification He now Printeth that Copy as received from his Bookseller in one Column and on the other another called The Copy obtained from the Original to shew that there is but two words difference that is His Copy spake of my Reading the Liturgy and mine spake of my own Reading what my Assistant read the Scripture But 1. If this be all one with him are we not so to judge of his other Expositions I know one whose oversight in writing usually lyeth in leaving out not and un and what is one Syllable The Kings Printer who as Dr. Heylin saith was Fined in the Star-chamber for Printing Thou shalt commit Adultery left out but one poor syllable But he did not justifie it as Mr. Danvers doth 2. If it be his excuse to lay the Copy on his Bookseller may we not take it also for his answer that all the untruths that he hath said of the Novations Donatists Brittains Augustine c. he had them from some body of as great authority as his Bookseller and then all 's well 3. But Reader dost thou not expect that at least he should now say true after so much warning and that this should be a true Copy which he saith without exception is obtained from the Original I assure thee on the word of a Christian it is yet so far from being true that divers lines even a considerable part of the writing is left out Take heed therefore to thy belief hereafter Believe not every Spirit nor every man that raileth at others as less wise or spiritual than he what wonder if he untruly tell us of the opinion of whole parties Novatians Donatists c. and tell us of whole Books that have not one word of what he affirmeth but somewhat for the contrary when he will not only falsifie my own writing even a few lines but defend his so doing against my self that have the Copy by me and that by a greater falshood than the first Are this mans Citations to be credited Yet he goeth on and averteth that there is not another Syllable different And he will prove moreover that If I meet not on pretense of any Religious exercise in other manner c. I must accordingly read the Common-prayer my self Answer So said the Informers but were I at the Sessions upon my Appeal I would be bold to deny it and to say that he that saith but the Lords Prayer doth not use another manner of Worship than the Church and that to do less is not to do that which is of another manner But if I mistake in so thinking it followeth not that I prevaricate or mean dishonestly as he insinuateth But if he want more matter of Reproach or any such as he I will voluntarily give him more so careless am I of such Censures I do therefore tell him that I am no greater an Adversary to the Liturgy than were the old Non-conformists Mr. Hildersham who perswadeth men to come to the beginning of it Mr. Knewstubs that constantly read much of it Mr. Ball that wrote the Tryal of Separation Mr. Bradshaw Mr. Paget Mr. Gifford and such others that did the like And that as before the Wars when I was accounted a Non-conformist I did at Bridgnorth usually read most of the Lords dayes part of the Liturgy and as in