WHether it be certain by God's Word that Infants Baptized dying before Actual Sin be undoubtedly saved § 1. I expected your Work had been to Convince Men of the good of Conformity But seeing it is to save Men from being seduced by my Directory you may doubt whether you will not rather tempt some impartial Men to read the words And then your work is spoiled when they compare them with your Accusation § 2. I lookt for some plain Text of Scripture to prove this both certain by God's Word and undoubted But finding none such I humbly beseech you hereafter when you have mind to shew your Argumentative strength leave out the abusive pretence of the Word of God Holy things must be holily used § 3. Your first Argument is that A Carnal Christian hath propriety in his Child and therefore may devote him to God as he may his Goods Ans. It had been more piously prudent to hear what could be said to such pretty new Knacks before you had tempted the Church by publishing them 1. Your first Proof is 1 Sam. 26. 26 27 28. and there are but 25 Verses in the Chapter and none to your purpose The next is Lev. 27. 28. Did you ever consider the Text Ainsworth and the Rabbies suppose from the Notation of the word and from the express words ver 29. that it is devoting of Slaves or Malefactors to death that is here spoken of Others better That it includeth both the absolute dedication of acceptable Persons to Service and of odious Persons to Death Therefore all are not saved that are here called holy as devoted Neither the Cursed nor the Levites that by dedication obliged to Service are hereby saved For more than Obligation is necessary to the reward The First-born were specially to be given to God and yet that implied not their certain Salvation 2. A Dissembler may by his Covenant obtain a right with Man that knoweth not his Heart and he may be received into the outward Communion of the Church by God's Approbation who Commissioneth Ministers who know not mens Hearts to receive Men according to their Profession And these are holy to the Lord as the Iews were but not therefore under a promise that they shall be undoubtedly saved Were all the Iews saved because they were a holy Nation 3. Not only his Child but the grossest hypocritical Lyar himself who is Baptized and cometh into the Church in Malice to betray it is yet holy as a Visible Member and hath obliged himself to real Holiness and yet is far from a state of Salvation 4. Nothing is holy and accepted by the Devoters Act alone without God's accepting Act Nor any further or to any other uses than God accepteth it to Some he accepteth unto Visible Membership and Communion and some to the Sacred Ministry and some to Magistracy c. who are not accepted to Salvation 5. Doth Lev. 27. prove that all Nations in the World might devote their Children unto God with the same assurance of acceptation as the Israelites 6. The Jewish Mosaical Law is abrogated and neither bindeth us as such nor secureth us of acceptance for obeying it 7. All Heathens and Infidels have some propriety in their Children and yet if in unbelief they devote them with the Tongue alone to God that will not make their Salvation undoubted 8. Few God-Fathers have propriety in them How then will their devoting prove their Salvation 9. God hath made no promise of his acceptance which you can shew therefore you cannot by his Word be certain of it 10. God saith that the Sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to Him much more when he doth it with an evil mind And he expressly saith Else were your Children unclean if one Parent were not a Believer but now are they holy Therefore when both Parents are Unbelievers the Children are not accepted of God as holy 11. The question is of all Baptized Children For it is Quatenus Baptizati that they are said to be saved and à quatenus ad omne valet consequentia And it 's an Indefinite in re necessariâ But we have too many scorners at Christianity followers of Hobbes Spinosa Pomponatius and Vaninus who for fashion sake will bring their Children to Baptism And certainly such are far worse than Heathens If one believeth not in Christ tell a wilful Lye and say he believeth can any Man think that his Child shall be ever the more saved for his Wickedness and Hypocrisie § 4. You gather Christ's acceptance from Mat. 10. 13. c. It is not said of the Infants of the Godly only is the Kingdom of Heaven Ans. Nor is it said that of all Infants or of all Baptized Infants is the Kingdom of Heaven The Text will prove indeed that the Infant state is capable of Christ's acceptance into the Kingdom of Grace and of Glory But not that nothing is necessary thereto but that they be Infants If all Infants be saved bringing them to Christ was not necessary to their Salvation If all only that were brought to Christ were saved it seems they were very few 2. Is it like that any would bring their Children to Christ to be Blessed who did not believe in him And what reason have we to surmise that they were not sound Believers 3. As Christ healed some blind Men and not all and some Lepers Sick c. so if as a Specimen to shew that Infant state is capable of Grace he took up some Infants of Hypocrites or Infidels or impious Parents which can never be proved it will not follow that all such shall be received and that to Salvation 4. If by verbal profession Parents and their Children are taken into the outward Covenant and Church and by Water Men are born into the Visible Kingdom of God it followeth not they need not to be born of the Spirit for admission into the Invisible and Heavenly Kingdom or that the Spirit always goeth with the Water and that the Parents answer of a good Conscience to God is not necessary to his Child 's Covenant-right to Salvation as well as to his own 5. I deny that any wicked Man much more every one doth yea or can univocally and truly devote his Child to God according to the sense of the Baptismal Covenant Though I grant that the love of his Childs Lust do not hold him so strongly as the love of his own yet he that never so knew God in Christ and so believed in Christ and so believed in him as to perceive him practically to be better for himself than all the World and sinful Pleasures cannot with a true and practical Affiance so take him for his Child 6. And God no where commandeth or accepteth the devoting of our Infants to him primarily or as seperated from our selves but only as Appendices or Conjunct with us that is that we devote our selves and ours And so not without us but with us doth he accept them § 5. Your
and will trusting another with it discharge him 4. We fear being guilty of the Lay-man's Usurpation and the Church-Confusion 5. But worst of all it is people fearing God that the Canon excommunicateth ipso facto and that the Chancellor is to excommunicate Had it been my duty to pronounce you excommunicate because the Chancellor decreed it 6. Where you say If I know the sentence to be void unjust and illegal I am not to publish it Ans. Well set together But if you know it to be unjust and yet legal according to the Canon you must publish it or be a Non-Conformist and may be suspended And are all the Canons Decrees just CHAP. XXII YOU speak next of the Surplice of which I gave you no occasion But we that know that the true meaning of the Liturgy is that all must use it that shall be suffered to officiate 1. Will not believe you if you tell us the contrary hereafter and lay it only on the Canon and think it nothing that you are obliged to consent to and aprove 2. Nor will I yet believe that you will undertake to justifie the ejecting and silencing of all that dare not use the Surplice Or if you will you cannot The 14th and 15th of the Romans cannot be confuted nor the many proofs that I have given that it reacheth our case in my late Book for the Church's Concord And why talk you of the Surplice and omit the main Question Whether we may consent to the Liturgy Preface and Rubrick which impose it as they do You durst not consent to silence two thousand or one that dare not use it CHAP. XXIII § 1. YOur next Section is of the false Rule for finding Easter-Day To this you say If really there be an Error I assent not to it Ans. Nor I Nor will I say I do when I do not And to what purpose then do you write for Conformity when one Lye must not be told to save our Liberty § 2. But you say It is not an Error in Divinity Ans. What then May I Lye about any other things § 3. But you say Some yet continue to affirm it is no Error Ans. And what will not some Men affirm You see how hard it is for a Non-conformist to be justified with some Men when all the Almanacks in England cannot do it in such a point I am too weak to deal with Men that will not take such evidence as this You say That it is questionable whether this be any part of the Book to be assented to Ans. You had some fair pretence to deny the act of Uniformity to be a part though the Contents say it is but if this be questionable you may question as the School-Men so long till you leave us little unquestionable This would increase my Resolution against Conformity when we cannot be sure what it is that we must Assent and Consent to and what not How can you tell us which is or not of the Book if this be not § 4. You say For the time past none will lay it to the charge of the Conformists and for the time to come it will be abated those that shall Subscribe and Conform Ans. How oft have I told you that I am laying nothing to the Charge of others but excusing our selves But I cannot justifie them that will do they know not what Especially it is sad that when such a Convocation which is the Representative Church of England shall all consent to draw up such things to be imposed on a Kingdom and so great a Parliament require assent to it on the Penalties enacted and executed on so many they should have no more honourable a defence than you make for them § 5. And who it is that hath the power to abate us that which the Law so severely requireth we do not yet know unless it be the King whose Mind you know not It is the Bishop that you mean But I doubt the Lawyers that have so lately questioned the Kings Power of Dispensation will contradict you that give that to the Bishop which they deny the King CHAP. XXIV § 1. THe next Section is about our Assenting to Consenting to and approving the many Disorders and Defects in the Liturgy You confess there are such and name many of them And the sum of your Answer is That you Assent and Consent to use the formes though disordered and defective and the Assent and Consent is no otherwise to be understood Ans. Soon said but where 's the proof 1. The words are All things contained in and prescribed by the Book Is the mode and disorder none of the All If I should say I Approve Assent and Consent to something but not all or the Matter but not the Order and Manner doth this answer the common sense of the universal words What if the Book did say the Lord's Prayer or Ten Commandments backward or Baptized in the Name of the Holy Ghost the Son and the Father or began as it ends c. may I declare that I Consent to and approve all things contained in it and prescribed by it § 2. As to your limitation of the sense to the word Use I have told you that the Parliament rejected it and that it is a groundless Fiction and that it makes your Cause no whit the better were it granted CHAP. XXV § 1. THe next is Whether we may assent to the Preface for justifying all that was in the Book before You say that It was not the intent of the Book to bind any Man to approve the Errors of Translators and Printers nor to use the Forms in the Liturgy so as to contradict one another Ans. 1. Printers Errors indeed are not the Convocations nor the Books as made by them Did I instance in any of them But if Translators Errors also be excepted our difficulty of understanding the Imposition still increaseth Then it seems as to the Psalms Epistles and Gospels we Assent and Consent only to the Original Text and so much as we judge well Translated I thought it the Book by ill Translation had grosly contradicted or depraved the Scripture it had been one of the worst sort of Errors I told you where it directly contradicteth the Text. What Heresie may not be brought in by a false Translation We thank God for the worst as a great Mercy to the Church and by them that will not receive a better in the Psalms we are thus commanded to justifie even that which was worst lest they should be thought to have needed any amendment And you make your self their Expositor without their Authority and tell us that the intent of the Book is not to bind us to approve the Errors of Translators And I believe you as the Book is distinguished from the Authors and so hath no intent at all But if the Translaton hath done as Heylin saith the King's Printer did that put Thou shalt commit Adultery for Thou shalt not and I were commanded
sincerely Penitent thy Sin is pardoned and thou hast right to Salvation and mayst come to the Lord's Table Ans. And doth not this imply that else he should not come And is such a Man Unconverted It is too irksome to rake up the rest of your Contradictions and examine your slight words of the Parable of the Tares But that rooting up the Tares forbidden is Excommunicating or denying Sacramental Communion to any Parishioner of your Description who will believe that knoweth 1. What Christ saith Mat. 18. 15. c. and Paul 1 Cor. 5. and 2 Thess. 3. Tit. 3. 10 11 c. 2. Or he that knoweth that the Universal Church of Christ in all Ages hath been of another mind and indeed went at last too far against it having no punishment for Christians but Suspension and Excommunication 3. And that the Christian World at this day is of another mind though the Helvetians are too remiss in the Principles and most in the Practice 4. And that the Canons of this Church requireth the Minister to deny the Sacrament to some such as you describe And in your former Book you pleaded this as for Conformity And are you changed already And shall any Wise Man follow such quick Changes 5. The Church of England forbids us to give the Sacrament to any that are not Confirmed and desire it not or are not ready But such are many of your Description 6. If the power of Excommunicating over a thousand or many hundred Churches be confined to the Bishop and the Chancellor or Officials and so all the Parish Ministers denied it and disabled all these Churches must be Prophaned and Confounded at the will of one Man or because he cannot do an Impossibility And the reasons why Christ would have his Church to be visibly Holy and a Communion of Saints and openly differenced from the notoriously ungodly are so many and so great that I will not here attempt the opening of them having often elsewhere done it QUEST IV. WHether the common sort of ungodly Christians are to be cast out of the Church by Penal Excommunications and used as Excommunicate ones You say I conceive not Ans. Would any one that pretended to confute our Errors no better open the case in question 1. In your sense they are Christians that never professed consent to the Baptismal Covenant but only took the Water in order to Conversion hereafter These are no visible Christians And I suppose by parity of Reason the Council of Nice which decreed the Rebaptizing of the Paulmists would have been for Rebaptizing these 2. Is the Ordinariness the satisfying Character who is not to be Excommunicated In one Country those are ordinary that are extraordinary in others In some places Arrians are ordinary in some Socinians in some Papists in some open Scorners of the Scripture Christianity and Religion In some ignorant Persons that know not the Essentials of Christianity nor will learn or let the Minister instruct them any where but in the Pulpit in many Parishes here not one of many their Neighbours say go to Church about once or twice a Year 1 Cor. 5. 13. Put away from among you that wicked Person ver 11. If any Man that is called a Brother be a Fornicator or Covetous or on Idolater or a Railer or a Drunkard or an Extortioner with such a one no not to eat Do not ye judg them that are within 2 Thess. 3. It is the idle and disorderly And these are ordinary in some places But we easily grant that Excommunications are not to be used Tyranically or when they do more hurt than good And if the Body of a Church turn e. g. Socinians or professedly ungodly and will not be Reformed the Excommunication which we plead for is but withdrawing from them and renouncing their Communion declaredly § 2. I have oft said that Perfidious Covenant-breakers who live in gross Sin and still tell the Minister they repent and will not be persuaded to leave their Sin e. g. Whoredom Drunkenness Stealing Perjury Blasphemy have so far forfeited the credit of their bare word that the Pastor should see their actual amendment before he Absolve them And now your Hand is in the World must be saved from this Doctrine too But because it is a common principle in Nature and in all Church Canons and the common judgment of Divines I will not stay to dispute it with you But when you are a Master of a Family if you think Family Discipline a Duty Experience will cure your credulity If your Servant or Son beat you or spit in your Face or Rob you once a Day or Week but for one Year together and say still after it I repent But what will not Men talk for QUEST V. WHether Mr. Baxter's Doctrine and Principles concerning particular Churches be sound and good And you confute them Ans. 1. Those that read them are in no danger by them And those that do may be confirmed by so slight a confutation as I said 2. As for my Book of Universal Concord of all Christian Churches I know that the Devil hateth it so much that I expect some far more subtile Assault than yours or else I shall think that the Devil wanteth wit or power more than is commonly believed But I am sorry that he hath drawn so good a Man to be his instrument § 1. My first mentioned Error is That a particular Church is a regular part of the Universal Church as a City is of a Kingdom The confutation is In this I conceive he is out A particular Church is to the Church Universal with a single Town consisting of a Magistrate Governing and People governed according to the general Rules and Principles of Society is to all the World Ans. The proof is I conceive he is out and an Assertion in other words of the same that is denied and so we are out both or neither 1. I used the Name and he the Definition It may be he thought that by City I had meant only such Towns as are so called in England But methinks he should know that the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifieth all such Towns as he defineth and that it is the common definition of Civitas which he giveth us as all Politicks speak de Civitate It is therefore the same subject in the Similitude which we both speak of 2. The difference then must be between the words Kingdom and World I say A Church is such a part of the Universal as a City is of a Kingdom He saith no but as a City is of the World What a dangerous Error hath he detected But All the World is God's Kingdom And as it hath but one King so I thought I might liken it to a Kingdom that hath one King but a multitude of Corporations without stretching the Similitude to intend that This Kingdom is not a part of the World § 2. My second Error is He that will be a Member of a particular Church must
but Consent competently expressed which I require those that know not your Honesty as I do I doubt will judge it to savour of some worse Cause than I am willing to name If Consent be not expressed how shall it be known And I still say Caeteris paribus the plainest Expressions are fittest to attain their End as the plainest Language is counted the best for Communication Oh! how much did Cyprian and all the old Churches differ from you about consent § 8. Another of my Errors is to say He is an Invader that without consent intrudeth into their Priviledges Ans. 1. But it is not he that transiently cometh into the Temple 2. But he that will make himself one of my special Charge and oblige me to all the duty which I owe to my Charge and cannot pay to all Men and he that will claim a Vote in choosing the Bishop c. And if of old one of your mind had said That every Traveller or Stranger that cometh within the Room may claim the Sacrament without any Literae Communicatoriae upon his bare word the Bishops or Churches would not have believed you so singular are you in all this You tell us God hath made no such Corporations and every Christian is a Freeman c. Ans. But how shall I know whether every Stranger that cometh in be a Christian or was ever Baptized Or be not a Heretick Excommunicate by other Churches Or if I am able to do the Office of a Pastor but for 500 and thousands more will come and claim it § 9. Another of my Errors is that Parish Chappels and Oratories are no true Churches Ans. You should not thus become an Incendiary by pretending things that you will not first understand Where do I say what you affirm I say That there may be several Chappels that are but parts of one Church 2. And I say That if a Bishop be Essential to a Church then none below a Diocess is a Church and therefore that they that so affirm do put down all Parish Churches and turn them into meer Chappels and Oratories which are but parts of a Church 3. I never said That if a place called in English a Chappel yea if a Barn or Field or Ship have such a Pastor and People meeting as a Church must be Constituted of that they are no true Church 4. But if such Pastors and People related as one Church are by Persecution forced to meet in several Houses or the Sick Weak or Distant to meet sometime at a Chappel or without a true Pastor if a Deacon pray with some of them in a House or Oratory this maketh not a Church Political in the sense that I told you I used that word in but in another Equivocal sense it may be called a Church and so a Family may be If this be false you should have confuted it and not wrangle in the Dark § 10. You say that I blame the Bishops for putting down all the Parish Bishops and Churches when I my self do no less by putting down all the Chapple Ministers Chappel Meetings and Oratories and denying them to be proper Pastors and Churches Ans. All false or a meer Game at Equivocal words The word Chappel usually signifieth a place for the Assembling of some small part of a Church with a Curate or Houshold Chaplain who hath only power to Preach and Pray and sometimes to give the Sacrament but not to Govern Sometime a Chappel may have a Governing Pastor and People subject to him in that relation and differeth but in name from the Parish Church It is a meer Chappel or Oratory in the common sense which I say is not a Political Church The falshood of your pretended parity of the Cases I prove Those Congregations which are Constituted of Ministers of different Species are not of the same Species and Definition But meer Oratories or Chappels which have no Pastors that have the power of the Keys for Government and Parish Churches which have such Pastors according to the Divine Institution are constituted of Ministers of different Species Ergo They are not of the same Species and Definition as you affirm 2. Those Assemblies which intentionally meet but as parts of the lowest Political Church and those that intentionally meet as the whole or main Body of that Political Church are not of the same Species and Definition No more than a Squadron and a Captain 's Company or Troop or a Family and a Village or Town But c. If Bishops deny all the Lord's Chaplains to have the governing power of the Keys and their Family-Chappels to be true Political Churches of the same Species and Definition with a Diocesan Church or a Parochial do you confute them if you can I cannot But if I prove that every Parochial or other proper Political Church infimae Speciei should by Divine Order have a Pastor that hath the governing power of the Keys and the Bishops deny them any such and will have but one such in a Diocess do you defend them if you can I cannot Nor are these Cases the same § 11. My next Error He cannot tell whether I hold or no But it seems I do against compelling Men to take whom the Magistrate please for their Pastors For I make Covenanting Essential as between a Husband and Wife likening the Church Universal to a Kingdom and particular Churches to Cities and Corporations And here he talks of the Corporation Oath and exclaimeth Is this the way of curing Church Divisions And is this the true and only way of Concord Ans. Had you published and proved to us a better way I hope we should have been thankful and so will I if you will truly shew me the Errors of the way that I commended 1. He that hath read my Books which plead for no Oaths nor for any Covenanting but exprest consent to the Relations and Offices will perhaps think that here you were tempted to Injustice at the least 2. Is not the Church Universal Christ's Kingdom I rather liken it to a Kingdom than to the World because whatever you think I think it is not by Christ subdivided into many particular Kingdoms as the World is but only into many particular Churches keeping necessary Concord and Obedience to Magistrates It is not one sort only that militate against the Cure of Divisions by true Concord but I am sorry that you are become one Let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall § 12. He saith It is Qualification that maketh Christians Ans. No Qualifications without Consent and Covenanting with Christ. And It is Qualification and just Ordination which makes Christian Pastors and Ministers at large Ans. Do you confute me by repeating my one words And saith he It is their being placed by the Magistrate in the several Parishes which makes them Pastors by Office and relation to all the Christian Souls in the Parishes respectively If Iesus Christ shall by the Hand of the Magistrate