the light that his deeds might be made manifest that they are wrought in God yet the means and courses by which truth should be tryed which are plain and not puzzling discourses upon the Scripture you smother by all the means and courses you can conveniently devise as for any entire discourses of such as are contrary minded to you though teachers of truth as t is in the word these you cannot away with at any hand nor permit to be used in publique before the people while you have any powar to shut your pulpit doors upon them you bid your people now or then prove all things that they may find out which is good and shun the evil but by your good-evil will they shall hear no more then what you tell them and chuse whether they 'l take that for truth or nothing you bid them cut where they like and yet you 'l be their carvers and force them to feed upon what you offer them or fast and welcome for no more messes must be meddled with though they have never such a mind to cut and try then what is of your dressing that oft is no more then some sugar sopt sententious Academical bespangled hide bound glasse measured spirit stinting stuff which may challenge the name of duncery baldnesse babling and prating more then that sincere milk of the word you commonly call so which hour of divinity when you have bookt down and cond with no little care is many times but Sed and someâ—imes but Red ore when all 's done neither yet oft times you crow couragiously upon your own dunghil you pay it soundly in your own pulpits with convincing and opposing the approach of heresies and argue so substantially against them that you carry the cause and win all but t is because you play there by your selves for if any chance to hear you that hath never so much wherewith to undeceive your deluded people yet they may not receive his interrupted reply to never so little when you in the first place have pleaded your cause the next thing to be done is for all them that hear and have ought against you to hold their peace they must not andere audire alteram partem least they be infected though wise men know there is no other way to be perfected in the knowledge of the truth and freed from that hobnob implicit faith which is wrongly acted when rightly objected then by hearing all that is to be said against it as well as for it yea the heathen herein may be thy Tutor O PPPriest Qui statuit aliquid c. You cry out they are not Orthodox that oppose you and so forbid all audience of them to your people whom you feed with a word and a blow a bit and a knock lest if they be not as well corrected into a refusal of all direction from others as directed by your selues they quickly discern difference between you and them yet you would fain be counted free and forward that all should have liberty according to their duty to try all but the niggard shall never be called liberall nor the churl said to be bountiful for me for he deviseth not the liberal things whereby the liberal shall stand yea the instruments of the churl are evil and he deviseth wicked devices to destry the poor with lying words when the needy spoaketh right things yea his heart works iniquity to practise hypocrisie and to utter error befor the Lord to make empty the soul of the hungry and to cause the drink of the thirsty to fail Isa. 32.5.6.7.8 As for pro and con discourse or disputation you smother that likewise with all your might for as you desire no more of it then needs must so you decline it what you can and disclaim it too as far as you dare for shame be seen in such a service as disputing against disputing is declaiming against it as a dismal thing of some dangerous consequence poison means of infection contentionem scabiem and such like being sensible of your sores you come not to the stake to be questioned in your waies before your blind admirers but when you cannot with credit considering your over shooting your selves sometimes in hasty challenges make a cleanly come off without it though it be to meet with those that are inferiour to your selves save that the Lord is with them for surely you see somewhat further then a mole into a milstone that things are no better with you then they should be why else should there be such loathnesse like that of the Elephant that 's loath to drink in fair waters for fear of seeing a foul face to come to the light as we find there is in the most of you as well as in Dr. Gouge who would at no hand vouchsafe any publique discussion of inâ—ant-sprinkling whether it were of God or man nec per se ne per synodum in his parish with Dr. Chamberlain yet sometimes Euphoniae gratia for reports sake you make some pretty put offs in publike and put on tooth and nail for disputation but alas you curtail it into so narrow a compasse as namely half a day two hours or some odd end of an after-noon when two dayes is too little two weeks scarce enough two years not too much to discusse the truth in witnesse not onely Iude who bids the Saints of the last times saving Tertullian and Sir Henry Wottons dislike out contend for the faith once delivered to the Saints and Paul who for 2 years space disputed dayly in the School of one Tyrannus not such a Tyrant to the truth as you are it seems for if he had he would have admitted not a word out you confine it I say into such a corner of time that as Pilate askt what 's truth and when he had so said went his way without an answer so you hast to have an end not hearing half the half quarter that is to be said in opposition to your own opinions about that question And during that little while the busines lasts you carry all as much as you can above the reach and beyond the capacity of plain minded men and women that come together for resolution in Scholastick terms and conclave it from their cognizance under the lock and key of your Linsey wolsey Logick which is neither fine enough for the University from which you have a while discontinued nor home-spun enough for the Country which muddy way of mood and figure is neither suitable to the simplicity and plainess of speech in which the Gospel ought to be declared and discussed nor reasonable to reason in with Russet Rabbies that are otherwise reasonable enough to give you such reasons of their faith and practise as you can never rationally resist nor is it much more profitable to our honest hearted people then if you spake wilde Irish. And when you have done then you smother and cloud over all that was more plainly and punctually
in the world meaning not infants but such as are at years of discretion to whom the Gospell comes in any measure are of some or other of these three sorts viz. 1. Either such as neither believe at all nor so much as in words profess so to do Or 2. Such as in words say they believe and indeed do not Or 3. Such as both profess to believe and do indeed believe as they say Now I suppose we all hold the first sort viz. professed prophane ones so living so dying will be damned and unless we will deny the Scriptures we must needs hold the second sort whose professed faith is a dead faith shall not be saved for what doth it profit if a man say he hath faith Jam. 2.14 and have not works c. whereby onely faith is proved to be true indeed as it is professed can that faith save him as for the third sort viz true believers I subdivide them in my thoughts into 2 ranks First such as believing in Christ truly for salvation believe also baptism in its true way of dispensation and not rantism to be Christs will concerning them and these I am certain will submit accordingly and obey him in it for such as say they have faith and live in rebellion to what parts of Christs will they know they ought to obey him in have not faith to salvation what ever they say Or Secondly such as believing in Christ neither see nor believe nor practise baptism in that only true way wherin we dispense it and all this meerly for want of meanes to discover it to them or by means of the invincible ignorance of their times and ages wherein they lived and wherein according to the will of God permitting it so to be the mind of God in that thing hath been hid and as we know it hath in many more things for ages and generations together remained undiscovered which times of ignorance I believe God much winked at in those who sincerely owned truth and obeyed it so far as it then appeared and as they saw it though now he commands all men to return from Babylon in these daies of light wherein men may see but that they will not yea many prophets and righteous ones in the height of Popery have desired to see and hear what we do or may do yet could not the Scriptures lying lockt up as unlawful well-nigh for any to consult with therefore look you to it who say you do not this or that because you see it not for I testify to you that it is a time wherein the true light shineth so cleerly that men need not erre if they love not darkenesse more then light because their deeds are evil And the same measure of light and reformation and truth which might have denominated you reformists had you lived 100 years ago will not serve to denominate you so now since the smoak that darkned the sun and the aire is much more perfectly dispelled then in that twilight in this form I mean of such as could not see not because they would not but because it shone not do I rank all the Martyrs and those honest men whom you doâ—e on as Fathers and all true professors and believers for many hundreds of years together who witnessed to truth and suffered for it too so far as it did appear to them in their times to this sort of men I am more charitable and tender in my censures then you can possibly prove your selves to be and so I am also to infants for all your prate of pleading for them against our cruelties neither doth any doctrine that ever I delivered damn any of these to the pit of hell as your doctrine of so rigid haâ—sh fierce and cruel rejection of all infants from salvation save those of believers doth damn an hundred to one of them that dy in innocent infancy and where it should be that that Gentleman told you I preacht that doctrine That all such as believe and yet are not dipped shall be damned I know not but this I know that I was ever so far from conceiving much more expressing any such thing that where I speak in publique of that point of baptism in prevention of that prejudice and opinion of our harshness which your publike balling at us begeâ—s in your hearers I commonly deliver my self to the contrary But now Sirs as for your selves who so falsely father this doctrine upon me as mine and that with such abhorrency of both it and me for it and with such patheticall expressions of your zeal against it as that you even set your teeth an edge as it were and whet the spirits of all men to abhor us for it if they had nothing in all the world against us in point of doctrine but that not to let their souls intermeddle with our secrets whose rage is so fierce and whose wrath is so cruel what if I go no further then your own Account of the Disputation at Ashford to prove that your selves are the men that hold this doctrine that though persons believe yet if they be not baptized they must be damned and not we are you not then condemned out of your own mouths to perpetual abhorring now therefore Quid rides de te fabula narratur thou O Accountant art the man of whom this tale may be told more truly then of us who hast plotted so well as to plat a whip here for thy own back yea I appeal to the whole world of wise men â—o judge whether I do not bring proof out of your own paper if your true Account be yours and be as true an Account of your judgements as t is pretended to be of your disputation that it is your own judgement and not mine that baptism is so necessary to salvation that even such as believe and yet are denyed to be baptized notwithstanding that very belief of theirs shall be damned go bur back with me therefore to the 7th page of your Pamphlet and compare it with what you say in the third and fourth pages concerning childrens believing and see what an Account you have there given of your own minds in this matter In the fourth you conclude from the like in the children of the Iewes that the children of beliâ—ving parents have faith in the third page you conclude from Mat. 18.6 that little ones do believe now look but in the seventh page and let all the world judge whether you do not there say of these same persons viz. of the infants of believing parents of whom you asserted before they were believers that if they may not be baptized and that 's none of the childrens fault neither as the neglect of baptism is in men it destroies the hope that the parents can have of their salvation for it leaves them in no better condition say you then Turks and Pagans and their children the salvation of whom is with you as hopeless for ought I see as of the Devills which
down to us again who shall descend into the deep to bring Christ to us from the dead who shall go beyond the Sea for us viz. Holland Germany c. and bring the word unto us that we may hear it and do it who shall go into Scotland and brings us a directory and platform of government from them You swear to reform after the example of the best reformed Churches but you mean of Europe not of Asia sure not the congregations you read of in the word but the Nations you dote on in the world viz. Scotland Holland Denmark Swethland Germany c. which all qua Nations excepting such in them as truly fear God and worship him answerably to his will are together with this till they be converted to the faith by the spiritual and the civil sword and then not in nonage baptized not sprinkled in the name of Christ with confession and for remission of sins and then walk in free not forced fellowship in breaking bâ—ead and prayers are as far in sano sensu from the denomination of true Churches and have as much need of reforming as our selves Indeed you talk of Church of Orthodoxnes and reformation as the thing much desired making them the Hereticks and Schismaticks that side not with you see Baxt. p. 151. We prayed for reformation and the progresse of the Gospel we fasted and mourned and cryed to God we waited and longed for it more then for any worldly possession indeed we overvalued it and had too sweet thoughts of it as if it had been our heaven and rest therefore t is just in God to suffer these men meaning the Anabaptists to destroy our hopes and if they root the Gospel quite out of England its just in God but yet we hope they shall be but our scourges and that God is but teaching us the evil of their Schisms c. But Sirs what is that hoped for reformation of yours the pure Gospel you Presbyters so much talk of which those that hinder and hold not with you in are all sentenced for Schismaticks ipso facto for my part I could never find what reformation more in ordinances discipline doctrine and government you Presbyterian Priesthood aimd at then establishment of the Scottish faith and the removal of the Bishops and their superstitious Clergy as they removed the Popish before out of place that themselves might reign as tyrannically in their steads the pulling down of red glass windows and placing of white the knocking down of Fonts and setting up Basons to Rantize in the forcing the fathers to say the same at the Font that the God-fathers did in old time the observation of your own directory instead of the old liturgy giving the supper to none at all for most riged Presbyters have denied that to their whole parishes this seven year instead of giving it promiscuously to all levelling the maintenance of the Nations ministry so that every one may have a competency of an 100d per annum and not some all some none as in old'n time and a few such trivial translations in which the Gospel is no more promoted reformation according to the primitive faith and baptism far lesse furthered then it would be if never a penny might more be paid to the Priests that preach for hire while the world stands such a reformation indeed you have generally overvalued therefore its justice in God to you and mercy to the whole land to suffer his people to prosper in their preachings of the truth to the utter destroying of your hopes which if they were not more after worldly possessions in many of you that settled your selves in 100ds per annum by the shift then after that which is truth indeed t will be the better for you another time but I testifie it to the faces of you that for all your prayings and fastings and mournings and cryings to God and waitings and longings for Reformation you are the fiercest opposers of the primitive practise under heaven T is true you CCClergy are some more reformed then some you differ each from other as Papal Prelatick Presbyterian facing each other a squint as the three corners in a Triangle falling out and contending bitterly with one another about your own false wayes yet canina utentes facundia concurring to bark altogether against the true yea even you Protestant Priests yea you Presbyters that pretend more strictly and peculiarly to the title of Preachers and Presbyters of the truth and more serious searchers after it in prayer and supplication are together with the flat Popish Priests grosse hiders of the truth as it is in Jesus for the revealing of which to your selves you seem and that sometimes with fasting earnestly to pray to God and for the revealing of which to them in preaching you seem and that sometimes Iure divino to take pay from men You cry mightily indeed after knowledge and lift up your voices for understanding saying Lord direct us more and more into the way of truth for we are blind and ignorant and in the dark neither know we what to do but our eyes are to thee give us pure ordinances shew us the right way c. but if in any of your publique places never so soon after your prayers the Lord stirre up the spirits of any of the messengers of his Churches that go forth in power and plainness of speech to make offer of any question or further information you are so far from that candor which the Rulers of the Jewish Synagogues used in this case Act. 13. and from saying men and brethren if you have any word of exhortation to the people say on that you rather rate them as dogs out of doors with what make you here to disturb us we must have an order taken with you to make you hold your peace and such like rough repulses as 100ds of people know are used by more then one of you Querists after truth and yet you tell us of running into corners as refusing and unwilling to be be openly examined and tell your people that veritas non quaerit Angulos see Featley p. 167 and that we creep into houses as if we were ashamed to come out into your publique assemblies though we tell you ore and ore again that as t is more for want of your leave then our love so to do that we do not tell the truth there before your faces so our meetings when in private houses are more publique then yours when in publique places by how much where ere we are and what ere we say we submit not onely to your accesse but your exception also as you though in publique do not to ours You professe your selves desirous to have all things come to light before all that all things may be proved by your people and indeed though he that doth evil hateth the light neither â—ometh to the light lest his deeds should be reproved John 3.21.22 yet he that doth truth cometh to
carry captive to the law of sin mortifying the deeds of the body teaching all things leading into all truth guiding and gifting persons for the Churches service severally as he will bringing all things to remembrance which Christ spake which are subject to be forgotten manifesting the Father the Son and many more things to them that love Christ and keep his commandements which he will not manifest to the world nor to any of those in it that do not and other such like precious performances in all which he officiates peculiarly towards the Saints onely that submit to him not wicked resisters of him to which Saints or true Disciples of the Lord Jesus he was promised to be given under the Gospel in a fuller measure then in former daies and sent to be their comforter whilst to such as entertain him not but a bare convincer in which respect he is call'd the spirit of promise as being promised in this sense to all those that obey Christ that believe repent and are baptized into his name for remission of sins and ask the father for him and to be set as by office to minister in way of succor to the mournful spouse in the bride-grooms absence to help poor soules that give up themselves to be lead by him and accordingly was is and ever shall be given to those that do not grieve resist and quench him and that are found observing all things that ever Christ commanded non-observation of which disingages Christ of his promise so that it failes not though he be not with men that name themselves his Church for ages and generations together In which senses he is not at all in infants in their infancy neither doth he at all guid or provoke them how far forth soever he may guard and protect them till they come to such capacity as to have good or evil fasten'd on them by perswasion nor doth he any of the aforenamed good offices for infants in whom there 's yet no need they should be done nor doth he delight ordinarily to be where either he must be idle as he must in infants of one two or three daies old or unless he work miraculously imployed altogether to no purpose As to that of Iohn concerning whom 't was promised he should be filled with the holy spirit from the womb besides the singularness and extraordinariness of the case which renders it unfit for you to argue from who deny that such examples are to be drawn in as an ordinary rule to judge by and confess that ex particulari non est Syllogizari I add moreover that there 's no necessity for such an imâ—mediate acceptation of that word from the womb as to make the sense of it thus viz. in the very moment of his birth for it may well be taken as elswhere the same phrase must be viz so soon as ever he should be capable to receive it and be assisted and guided by it which might be in his tender years but was not I believe in such meer non-age as you wot off thus the wicked are said Psal. 58. 3. ab alinare se ab utero to estrange themselves from God from the womb to go astray as soon as they be born speaking lies stopping their ears not hark-ring to the voice of the Charmer which terms do all denote actuall sinne by which your selves confess infants cannot bar themselves p. 5. or deserve exemption it must therefore be understood thus viz. so soon as ever they are capable to do this or that to take the right away or the wrong or to know and act either good or evil I assert therefore once again that the spirit in this second sense is not in infants in their infancy nor know I in what sense they can be said to have him as to have right thereby to baptism unless you can assign me some more senses out of Scripture which if you can do I shall tell you what to say to them and as I cannot find they have the holy spirit in them so neither find I any promise of the holy spirit in such non-age as you wot of if by the spirit you mean the spirit of promise as you must if you plead a right to baptism there from and if you should refer me to Act. 2. I find there no more made to any then to all indeed it s said the promise is to you and your children but I advise you to consider first that t is not said to you and your infants neither are children and infants all one in signification the one expressing the age or rather non-age the other the Relation to the parents of whom they are born all infants are children of some parents or other but all children are not infants Infants are at least such younglings as cannot speak but children may be children in respect of their parents though the parents be eighty years old and the children sixty so that the promise of the spirit might be to them and their children too i. e. their posterity as well as to the Gentiles that were yet far off in both time and place and their posterity to all succeeding generations and be made good too on the same terms upon which and the same time in which it s made good to the parents themselves viz. the terms of faith and the time of their believing and yet all this while not be made to them and their infants as in their infancy moreover it appears most evidently that these parents were yet in unbelief and bare inquiry after what they should do having acted neither faith nor repentance as yet when Peter said thus to them repent and be baptized and ye shall receive the holy spirit for the promise is to you and your children therefore it may seem rather to be to unbeleevers children by that place then unto belieuers children but in very deed t is to all men and their children throughout the world as they and their children should believe repent receive the word gladly come to God at his call and that in all ages and places to the worlds end and as children of unbelievers have as much promise of the holy spirit so as much manifestation of it as the other and that is just none at all But say you these appear to have it first by their faith i. e. as other mens infants do not by their faith Sirs this is no demonstrative Argument I am sure that they have the Spirit for demonstratio est ex notioribus conclusione but this is Ignotum per ignotius or at least per aeque ignotum for now you have much more ado by something else hoc aliquid nihil est to demonstrate to us that they have faith then before you had to demonstrate them to have the spirits yea this will puzzle you the more by how much the last error is worse than the first and more confuted in other places by your selves however we will consider your Argument
the power and purity of Christs ordinances are a 1000 fold more strictly stickled for according to the Covenant by us then by all those Orthodox ones he talks of who the more shame for them do so zealously and constantly oppose us we therefore cannot rationally be denominated Hereticks and Schismaticks in separating from and practising contrary to you in the point of baptism so long as we keep close to the primitive truth gladly both preaching and receiving the word as t is preacht by Peter Act. 2. saying repent and be baptized every one of you repenting and being baptized accordingly and after that continuing in the rest of the Apostles doctrine and fellowship in breaking of bread and prayers and though we draw never so many disciples from you after us yet the man is out of his Christian wits that deputes and declares this to be Heresie and Schism sith so far are we herein from rending from and refusing to be reduced to the Church that we indeed earnestly endeavour to reduce them to the true Church to the true head Christ the true constitution the true Baptism and Gospel order from which they are rent and run astray wondring after a false Church a false head viz. a Lording Priesthood and Parochial posture both which derive all their being from Dioâ—rephes i. e. his prating Preheminence the Pope But now as for your selves the PPPriesthood of the Nations who mostly deny not but that the primitive baptism was of believers and dispenst in Rivers or places of much water which was needlesse if sprinkling was then the way you have a thing among you indeed which you call Baptism but t is not that one Baptism that old Baptism then urged and used but another a new Baptism and yet to say the truth neither another nor A new Baptism but A-no-Baptism Rantism Babism a toy of your own taking up by tradition from your forefathers but not the first fathers that were the founders of the Christian Church for you find it not there but fetch it further from thence by such consequence as besides the remotnesse of it is too weak and rotten to carry it downwards to these times you are they that dissent and rend from the truth in this point of baptism and draw all the world to Sectarize and erre after you by a law by your subpaena directories yea you pretendedly reforming Presbyters who peculiarize the term oâ— Orthodox to your selves even you as to the right administration of the outward right of baptism are not a whit lesse Erratical Heretical Schismatical and Heterodox then the Pope for as he hath another baptism then that which was in the primitive times viz. infant â—antism which by the mouth of his cardinal Bellarmine he confesses to be but a tradition of the Church so you have no other then the same yea you own that for good baptism which is done at Rome or else how to prove the Popish Bishops to be baptized themselves that baptized and ordained you Presbyters you plainly know not yet you falsely father it upon Christ and fain it to be an ordinance of his then which nothing is more clear then that it is not And as in point of baptism you all erre not knowing or at least not doing according to the Scriptures all means used to reduce you thereunto notwithstanding so in th supper and many more matters pertaining to that visible Church order that was in those times as namely impropriating to your selves sole power of speaking in your Churches i. e. steeple-houses so that your members may well say men mutire nefas it is not for them to open their mouthes there unlesse to answer when you catechise them whereas then all the Church were to covet to prophesie i. e. to speak mutually to the exhortation edification and comfort each of other and being gifted might all women onely excepted prophesie one by one and every one minister as of the ability God gave them great or small that God in all things might be glorified and all judge of the doctrine delivered but with you what doctrine ere ye deliver men may try it if they will but must take it whether they will or no the mouths of all must be muzzled up save such as in your sense are ministers i. e. have some Parchment Preachment orders to shew from such as can shew their orders from his Highnesse the head of the Church not Christ but his Holinesse the Pope who had his from the beast Rev. 17. who had his from the devill Rev. 13. yea verily as to the external face and fashion of the first Churches you have altogether altered it from what it was and brought in a businesse of your own heads being all gone aside and altogether become vain in your wayes as to your administrations of Gospel ordinances so that there is none of you that are in the right way of the primitive Churches no not one yea ye are separated from and make a head against the true head of the Church Christ Jesus and take upon you to head the Church your selves for this is not the fault of P the Pope onely but of PP i. e. you Prelates and Presbyters too who howbeit you seem to throw off that supremacy or headship which the Pope had once and laies claim to still in the protestant part of Christ'ndom yet in your several Christ'ndoms you have been not nominally but really as supreme in Church work as he and that not over the people onely but civil powers also to whom in all cases Ecclesiasticall and civill though you say you grant the headship or Supreame Government under Christ yet how doth that appear sith they only Corrective but you Directive till of late have done all for the Bishops and Sinods and General Convocations of the Clergy and assemblies of the Kirk seeundum te must determine what is to be done by Magistrates in Church affairs and they do it accordingly The Priests must give out the word and sentence what is the worship the way the faith the truth what Heresy and Schism who are Hereticks and Schismaticks and then the Princes in all their Dominions establish the one and root out the other as Rogues at their appointment in which cases saving the bare name of supremacy over the Churches which hath been allowed it is difficult to me to discern whether Christian Kings have not been as of old under the Popedome so more lately under the very Protestant Clergy as the Bosholder under the Constable at his discretion direction to whip the beggars and though you may say and so saies the Pope too that you claim to head and order the Church directive no otherwise then under Christ yet in very deed as he for all his saying so you have presumed to set your selves above Christ the only head Counseller Lord and Lawgiver to his Church for as the Pope hath done no more then broken his lawes changed his ordinances trampled his truth