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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	father_n	ghost_n	holy_a	5,369	5	5.6194	4	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A96113	A scribe, pharisee, hypocrite; and his letters answered, separates churched, dippers sprinkled: or, A vindication of the church and universities of England, in many orthodox tenets & righteous practices. Whereunto is added a narration of a publick dipping, June 26. 1656. In a pond of much Leighes parish in Essex, with a censure thereupon. By Jeffry Watts B.D. and Rectour of Much-Leighes.	Watts, Geoffrey, d. 1663.	1657 (1657)	Wing W1154; Thomason E921_1; Thomason E921_2; ESTC R207543	280,939	342

approved and practised way of bantizing in the Centuries succeeding For by reason of some scandals in processe of time given or taken at their maked immersions cloathed aspersions as I may so speak or perfusions of water got in took place of it and so the elder served the yonger I mean the elder gave place and both the Trine immersion and the immersion it self was laid aside and the yonger now as being the more worthy guest bidden is set down in that uppermost place I mean aspersion and pouring on of water is now altogether in request and practise especially amongst all the Western Churches of which ours is a part and branch in which the Gospel most flouriseth and the Ordinances of Christ the Word and Sacraments are most reverently and religiously and orderly observed and administred And so thus as I said in our purest and perfectest Western Churches for these five or six hundred years last past I think I am rather within then without my Compass there have bene none dipped or immerged no not in the old once good way of the former times publiquely authoritatively nay scarce presumptuously until those Affricane I will not say Monsters yet were they cruel but new men for Affrica semper aliquid apportat novi who were your Progenitors and Predecessors the first dippers and immergers in the West the very place whence they and you arose is another argument to prove their and your business of dipping a novelty and new thing as coming from Africa originally I say until those Africane new men those Egyptian frogs that love to be padling and dipping in Rivers and Ponds began to spread themselves and skip up and down and to bring forth Rivers and Ponds as the Rivers and Ponds brought forth them or rather to bring their Perverts to Ponds and Rivers to be baptized The which bold and presumptuous attempt against the constant and uniform custom of the Western Church began in the year 1524 and so is not above an hundred and two and thirty years sithence which is time enough and litle enough to make it Novelty in comparison of Antiquity Nay your Brothers dipping and immerging is not so old as theirs for your Ancient Fathers Nicholas Stork or Stock and Thomas Muncer did not dip in your manner nor is it as old as your elder Brothers who about 13 or 14 year ago ran about the Countrey for they did not dip in your manner in their cloathes but naked nor in Ponds but Rivers nor do I think it is elder then your selves were in the day that you and they practised it and begot it in the Parish of Much Leighs upon the bodies of the two Sisters you dipt and immerged in June last past and so is but a brat or brood of yours and theirs not a twelve moneth old yet by a good deal Coroll 2. §. 2. When they were both in use immersion and aspersion the Ancient Fathers their children had not any opinion of the necessity of either as if the one or the other were the onely lawful way of baptizing established by Christ or his Apostles but they ancounted of them as things customs indiffrent in themselves and Adiaphorous and therefore to be left unto the liberty of the Church to use or not upon just cause and occasion as may appear by some of their speeches and practices which I shall here set down though the proof both of this in part and chiefly of the former Corrolary in the whole hath been touched upon and even handled before Gregor lib. 1. Epist Ep. 41. ad Leandrum Episcopum Hispalensem Reprehensible esse nullatenus potest Infantem in baptismate vel ter vel semel immergere It is no way to be found fault worthy to dip and immerge the Infant in baptism either thrice or once Yea he giveth the reasons of both and sheweth cause why he thinketh fitting to have thrice dipping changed into once by reason certain Heretiques made an evil construction of the first custom of thrice dipping for that they divided the Deity into three Gods upon their thrice dipping i. e. in the Name of the Father 2. in the Name of the Son 3. in the Name of the holy Ghost for which cause Haeretici dogmatis usum as also vitandi scisma is scandalum which the Churches of Spain were distracted with some stiffly holding with the Trine immersion and some standing as stoutly for the once or siple immersion the fourth Councel Toletan or of Toledo Can. 5. grounding themselves upon the aforecited words of Gregory decreed for simple immersion and against the Trine immersion for the two reasons answerable to the two abuses 1. Ne videantur qui apud nos tertiò immergunt haeretciorum probare assertionem dum sequuntur morem Lest those that dip thrice should seem to approve the opinion whilst they imitate the fashion of the Heretiques 2. Ne dum partes diversae in baptizandis aliquo cont●ario modo agunt alii alios non baptizatos esse contendunt least whilst parties divided in baptizing several wayes some thrice dipping and others but once they should say the one of the other they are not rightly baptized and so esteem each other scismaticks And that this liberty was kept and observed about this matter as also about immersion and aspersion in Augustines time is to be seen in his 74 Chapter de Eccles dogm Baptizandus saith he post confessionem vel aspergitur aqua vel intingitur The party to be baptized after confession is either aspersed and sprinkled with or dipped and immerged in the water and so long before him Cyprian lib. 4. Epist Epistola 7. ad Magnum whose words I have set down before sheweth his indifferency for either and rather his defenceof aspersion in baptism yet so as that he leaveth it in the Churches liberty and freedom What need I go farther then the Church of Rome whose Ancient practise was to dip thrice in baptism so their Gregory saith in the Epistle above cited Nos autem tertiò mergimus and that for reasons given before but now it is their maner in baptizing thrice to sprinkle or asperse for what reason they did before for none other they have given us so by their later practice reversing their former though their opinion be still the same that the Trine immersion is a nonscript Tradition of the Apostles having alike force of Piety with the Scriptures and necessary to be observed which if it were so why did they alter from it their own practice in changing of it and using their liberty doth refute their opinion of its necessity or being an Apostolical Tradition Seeing then there is no expresse precept for the one or the other nor Apostolical Tradition for the one more than the other He is not Basil the great and the true but Basil the little and the false or forged who speaks and writes of such a thing seeing also the true Ancient Fathers and Pastors of the Churches

plainly and directly evinced Infants Faith and Salvation by it which is all one Doth not David say and testifie Psal 8.2 out of the mouths of Babes and Sucklings hast thou ordained or founded strength or perfected praise and doth he not Psal 148.12 call upon and exhort old men and children to praise the name of the Lord the which you cannot expound of spiritual children onely as sometimes it may and somewhere for Mat. 21.15 16. they are real and bodily children that cried Hosanna to the Son of David and fulfilled Davids Speech now if these had no Grace Knowledge or Faith in Christ how could they so glorifie and praise Christ and rejoyce and even Triumph in Christ I ask again are any Infants in Christ or ingrafted into Christ or the Children of God if so as you cannot deny it for we are all one in Christ Jesus whether bond or free male or semale old or young Father or Children And God the Father hath given to Christ Infants and Children as well as Parents and Fathers and to those that Christ hath received his Father he gives eternal life But now they are all the Children of God by Faith in Christ Jesus and if they be Christ then are they Abrahams seed and heirs according to the promise Galat. 3.26 28 if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his Rom. 8.9 and he that is none of his Christ Baptizeth not But Christ Baptizeth with the inward Baptism also unto Remision of Sins many Infants these are some of his as who hath taken them into Covenant to be the God of them and them to be the Children of God And surely if Christ should not impart unto some Infants Knowledge and Faith according to their measure Competent to Salvation but only to the Adule and grown persons he might seem to be an Acceptor both of Ages and personages which he is not Deut. 10.17 Rom. 2.11 See John 6.35 and 37. He that commeth to me shall not hunger and he that beleeveth in me shall not thirst immediately Christ addeth whatsoever the Father giveth me shall come unto me or beleeve in me I ask you now and Quaere you hath not the Father in his everlasting Counsel and Bounty given to Christ all his Elect Infants and appointed them to be Christs when Psal 2.8 the Lord said unto him thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee ask of me and I shall give thee the Heathen for thine Inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession if so why then they also Infants being somewhat of that whatsoever given unto Christ shall come and do come continually unto him or beleeve in him whatsoever you say or write to the Contrary that they neither shall or do believe See Galat. 3.22 The Scripture hath shut up all things under sin that the promise by Faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those that believe you hear the disease of sin in Adam is spread over all things that is all men and whatsoever is of and in man even Infants therefore the Remedy of Faith in Christ must be spread over them too that this may be as generall and large as that so Infants who are saved must and do believe in Christ See 17. John 3. This is life everlasting to know thee the onely true God and him whom thou hast sent Jesus Christ Here is a General and universal Rule given by Christ himself the Author of Salvation without any inkling or tinkling of exception for everlasting life to be atteined namely by knowing and believing for that is also included in it as is specified and more enlarged in the 1 John 5.10 11 12 He that hath the Son hath life this life is in the Son and he that believeth hath this witness in himself c. Now I Quaere you again Have any of the Elect Infants the Son of God have they eternall life you cannot deny it and therefore you cannot deny them some spark of Knowledge and Faith See 2 Cor. 5.7 We walk by Faith and not by sight and 1 Cor. 13.12 now we see through a glass darkly but then face to face whence it appeareth there is but one way of joyning us all to Christ and of our enjoying of Christ which is Sight of him in Heaven or Faith in him upon earth to which Sight our Faith now is answerable being of the same nature and quality onely differing in the measure for Faith is nothing else but a sight of him John 12.44 and 4. Now I Quaere you again do not you think but the same way which serveth for all the rest of Gods Elect doth serve for Children also to joyn them to Christ and that there is but one life begun here which is perfected in heaven according to that He that believeth in me hath eternal life John 6.47 Then also must Infants have some light of the mind to see and behold Christ now here as in a looking glase so hereafter face to face See Rom. 4 6. To all Abrahams seed the promise is firm by Faith and his Title is the Father of the Faithfull the Scripture maketh him the Father of us all and all the Children of the promise i.e. The whole number of Gods Elect for of that Primary cause of our Salvation Gods holy Election Saint Paul there disputeth Rom. 9 8. which is observable against the Anabaptists who impute the Salvation of Infants solely to Gods Election which is acknowledged of us to be the Primary cause whereas in that very place he mentioneth a secondary cause of their Salvation that they are the Children of the promise and so reckoned in Abrahams seed because of that Interest they have in that blessed Seed in whom Abraham and all his posterity are partakers of the holy inheritance Now I Quaere you again here do you or dare you exclude Infants from being Abrahams Seed you must then also bar them from having interest and part in Christ if not why do you or dare you to deny them Faith seeing that in the same manner as Abraham obtained the Blessing which was by Faith so must all Nations of the world Jews Gentiles and every particular person all and as many as lay under the curse before even Infants therefore obtain the Blessing by Faith according as it is Gal. 3.8.13 14. What should I run on thus your self will prove as much for me anon and agaiost your self for in your confutation or rather consideration following upon Acts 2.39 there you say That nothing but Faith answereth the promise and I shall tell you that Faith answereth it as the condition If then there be no other way or means for Infants to come by Righteousness or Salvation but by Faith or believing the condition of the Covenant of Grace and the Gospel as works and doing was of the Covenant of Nature and the Law you must either grant some Infants to believe and have Faith or else

marriage of the Parents then why was not were not all the sons and daughters of Solomon Rehoboam Jeroboam Nadab and others of the kings of Israel and Judah saved seeing they were all lawfully married according to there their Laws and Customs and why are not drunkard drunkards swarers swearers and other prophane persons saved whyle while they so lived and so died seeing they are in our experience of tymes times the children of lawfull married people according to the laws of the land and why was Jeptah Jephthah saved seeing he was a bastard How now Sir is all the ado for this I looked for Grapes from your mouth and you bring forth wilde grapes I looked for judgement and behold oppression or a scab and for righteousness and behold a cry or a lye In a word I looked for an answer and behold more questions and nothing but questions and those nothing to the purpose for 1. whereas you said before Some will affirm that sanctification of holiness in children such as is the way to heaven and salvation is here spoken of do you affirm if you can of some that say or ever said that it came from the lawfulness of the marriage of the Parents Here you are like Don Quixot who imagined wind-mills in the air before him and ran a tilt at them so you set up images and imaginations in your way to question them thereby to keep your self in breath and your pen on paper 2. Suppose some had affirmed it that childrens sanctification of holiness for as long as I am about your work I shall use your words and when I have done that I shall leave there for I like them not cometh from the lawfulness of the marriage of their Parents doth or may then rationally or religiously follow thereupon such a question as Why then were not all the children of all married Parents in the Church for I pass by your great reading in the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel and Judah and their Genealogies so impertinent here and why not drunkards and swearers which are in your experience of times the children of lawfull married people you seem to be a man of great experience of times and a diligent observer of childrens births and their Parents marriages and are a fit man to be the Register of your Parish and to keep the Book why say you were they not all saved and why was Jephthah saved seeing he was a bastard and not the child of lawfully married Parents what a consequence or rather as I said before a non-sequence of a question is here from a supposition like unto this the qualification of coldness in the water cometh from the confluence of showers into the pond why then are not all the drops and handfuls fetched thence sweet and distilled Sanctification of holiness in the children cometh from the lawfull marriage of their Parents why then are not all their children and issues saved Sirs can you forbear smiling They say when one Almanack-maker looketh upon another they smile both to think how they delude simple people with their vain and false Prognostications certes when you Sectaries see one another you cannot but laugh out to remember how you deceive silly people with your irrational and inconsequent argumentations offer it now unto thy Governour thy God will he be pleased with thee and thy Question Why not all saved he will tell thee that thy and their destruction is from themselves but thy and their help or salvation is in me saith God not in or from any other Parent or not Parent married or not married lawfully or not lawfully you and they are saved by the free grace of God and not by the sanctification of holiness in the one or other Yea do you not answer your self why drunkards and swearers who were children of lawfull married Parents are not saved Why they so lived and so died drunkards and swearers how could they But what is all this to our business which is not of salvation but sanctification Here is another of your absurd and inconsequent questions sanctification of holiness in children if it come from the lawful marriage of the Parents why then are not all sanctified so you should have said would if you could have told how to keep to the Question then you might have answered your self or needed not have made such a question seeing even the wicked children born of lawful married Parents in the Church are in a way which I shall anon shew you sanctified and this their sanctification is a way also unto Heaven and Salvation and all those whom you name were in this way and I suppose you know I shall not need to tell you what fell out in the way that they were not all or any of them saved It is one of your grosse mistakes and Reasonings from every kinde of sanctification of holiness to conclude the salvation of souls when as to go no farther the unbeliever is here said to be sanctified in and by the believing and their children are said to be holy from whence who can infer their salvation these arguings are rattles for boyes to play with not Reasons for men to bring forth But what 's the business why Jephthah is here named It is confessed He was saved because the Scripture beareth witness of it in Heb. 11.32 and also that he was a bastard Judges 11.1 But seeing he was a bastard you ask why he was saved why to teach you that base birth is no obstacle to free Grace nor hindreth the salvation of any believer no more than lawful marriage of Parents so much talked of or rather as you should have spoken the legitimate birth of children doth further the salvation of an unbeliever But in the mean time this Example named by you and produced doth accuse you of inconsiderateness in your Consideration for we are both considering as you will have it of the sanctification of holiness in children whose Parents are one of them an Infidel or unbeliever and you come in with your Jephthah neither of whose Parents were unbelievers though sinful in that act and so its impertinent as not comming within the compasse of the Corinthians doubt and Quaere or the Apostles answer and Argument and so you are besides the Matter and out of the Cause and Case here questioned in all your Questions being nothing to the purpose But now lastly tell me one thing did you not once but a while ago hold the Apostles meaning here of childrens being holy to be noching else but a legitimation of their birth from Parents in lawful Wedlock or Matrimonial holiness or chastity which you also or yours make to be the very sanctification of the unbeliever to or by the believer How then can you and with what constancy can you now here argue against the sanctification of holiness in children as comming from the lawfulness of the marriage of the Parents who before make legitimation of their birth and nothing else to be their

or testified by others to Asperse or sprinkle In the Name of the Father of the Son and of the holy Ghost a little water upon the face fore-head of your child in the bed gently washing therewith by the moving of his hands with prayer and supplication before and after Thus doing both dangers may be prevented and this was that I with the Ancients even now called Baptismus Clinicorum How long halt ye betwixt two opinions and thoughts if the sprinkling or aspersion be baptism follow it but if dipping and immersion then follow it And the people with their Dipper answered me not a word I will but add one Testimony more and that is of Walafridus Strabo de rebus Ecl. cap 26. Notandum non solùm mergendo sed etiàm de super fundendo multos baptizato fuisse adhuc p●sse baptizari It is a thing to be noted as it is notable that many have bin formerly and may still be baptized not onely bydipping and immerging but also by sprinkling and pouring water upon them and so he also maketh mention of the baptizing of St. Laurence out of a Pitcher or Pot of water which was by aspersion or perfusion and 〈◊〉 was often as he saith when as the bigness of the bodies of grown persons converted would not suffer them to be immerged and dipped in the Vessel their Baptisteries and Fonts being too little for them And so I have done my Task which was to be a Task-master unto some of the Egyptians who have bin and would be still Task-masters over the Israel and churches of God and give out their commands for the dipping and immerging of our children in Ponds or Rivers when and then onely they shall be of years of discretion and confession as to their faith and I have drawn up this my censure of it as an Ark you will presently say I know of Bulrushes and therefore I say so in present myself afore-hand to prevent you The which how weak and mean a thing soever you may think it through Gods providence may be a means to preserve a Moses and more children of Israel from your immergings and plun gings of them for the time little else then drownings especially the Ark being daubed with slime and pitch cemented and closed together with Scriptures Reasons and Antiquity moreover More plainly I have passed my censure upon your late dipping and immerging in my Parish for a new business as I called it once and ever shall and if I could stand so long about it and the Reader would stay the while as to gather them up together or take a review of the evidences I have brought in against it for a new business I do think there would be a full Jury and a grand Jury of them the which propounded and given up to any indifferent Judge besides your self he would not onely passe a censure of novelty upon it as I hove done but might crie once and again Novitas novitatum omnia novitas Yea and he would give out a Sentence of vanity also upon the same and say vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas The Person dipping and baptizing an ordinary man no ordained Minister the Persons dipped and baptized Christians born and baptized before The manner the dipping and baptizing them in their cloathes the circumstances or ceremonies I omitted because they were not onely new and vain but foolish and immodest and the action of dipping the whole body over head and ears in the cloathes and lastly the place a common Horse-pond and weyr Novelty of novelties all is novelty yea Vanity of vanities all is vanity I will say no more of it though more might be said of it then that it was a new and a vain busines yea a taking of the Name of God Father Son and holy Ghost in vain I will now onely add a Corollary or two touching the whole business betwixt us and so I shall give a Vale or Fare-well to it and to your Letter and my answer or censure rather for so I must call it to the end who so stiled it in the beginning Coroll 1. §. 1 Immersion and dipping in baptism especially thrice as also Aspersion and sprinkling or rather perfusion and pouring on of water though but once were both the good old way in the manner as they were done and administred by the primitive Doctors and ancient Fathers of the Church And to do the cause and the truth right their immersion was the older way I say not the better way and is some years older then their aspersion as many years as Tertullian lived before Cyprian which by computation is not above two or three and fifty years difference or distance betwixt their times Yea but I will recal that Verdict and do reverse that saying as whereby I do immersion and dipping too much right and aspersion and sprinkling too much wrong as to their Births Right and Originals for I do remember a testimony before cited by me out of Tertullian lib de poenit cap. 6. in these words which may be repeated here again without any Tautollogy being to several and different purposes and proofs Neque ego renuo divinum beneficium i. e. abolitionem peccatorum inituris aquam omnimodo salvum esse sed ut eò pervenire contingat elaborandum est Quis enim tibi tam infidae poenitentiae viro asperginem unam cujuslibet aquae commodabit where you read and see in plain and evident words that aspersion of the adult and grown persons was in Tertullians dayes also and I might also now passe the Verdict the other way and say that immersion and dipping is the yonger way some years yonger then aspersion and sprinkling as many years as Cyprian is yonger then Tertullian about fifty two or three The truth then is They were both of them as twins as Esau and Jacob in the womb of Rebecca Gen. 25.24 as two manners of baptizing in the Church of God born much about the same time and as also Esau and Jacob did they lived and walked together a while and sometimes lived apart and assunder and the one was used in one place and the other practised in another place according to the diversities of the Churches and difference of the ages and variety of customs in and amongst them and so it continued for an eight or nine hundred years But what and if as it may be immersion like Esau being indeed the more hairy rougher and harder manner and way of baptizing might get out first and come forth into the Churches practise it was but a very little while before for aspersion like Jacob being indeed the plainer and smoother and easier way and manner of baptizing soon followed after and at the heels Yea as Jacobs hand took hold on Esâus heel and after supplanted him of the blessing of his Birth-right so aspersion if behind overtook immersion and wholy supplanted it of its primogeniture and so got away the blessing from it to be the onely