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A27008 Rich. Baxter's review of the state of Christian's infants whether they should be entered in covenant with God by baptism ... or whether Christ, the Saviour of the world, hath shut all mankind out of his visible kingdom ... 'till they come of age? : occasioned by the importunity of Mr. E. Hutchinson (and of Mr. Danvers and Mr. Tombes) who called him to this review in order to his retractation [sic] ...; Review of the state of Christian's infants Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691. 1676 (1676) Wing B1372; ESTC R18045 43,710 73

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now they are holy Nor in that one text to expound Sanctifying for Lawful Marriage and Holyness for Legitimation when the words are never so taken else in the Bible and ma-many hundred times in another sense nor to say that all Pagans Children are holy if they be not Bastards I am satisfied that man must not teach God how to speak but carefully enquire what he hath spoken And if but one Text of Scripture acquaint us directly or consequentially of his mind we must be faithful in observing it I believe that these are your thoughts as well as mine and that you verily think that you hold close to the Scripture and that I depart from it But as I am as willing to understand it as you are and at as hard a rate of cost or labour so I well know that one mistake once deeply received doth let in abundance more and fights against all the light that would detect and shame it And he that once accounteth Falshood to be Truth will account the Defenders of Truth to be its Enemies Otherwise how could you and such others bring your Consciences to wrest and wrangle against such abundance of plain Scripture Texts Were it but this one what could be plainer What is wresting Scripture if this be not to force a sense of Holyness and Sanctification upon one Text which is never found else in any Text and the contary or different sense neer six hundred times is this impartial dealing with Gods word And do you think that Paul mentioneth that as a great and comfortable priviledge of Believers which belongs to Heathens equally with them Why do you not your selves still use that language then and say that the Children of Infidels are holy when too many will scarce allow the title to any Adult Christians that are not of your Sect much less to the Children of Christians though dedicated by Baptism to God But being called by you to a Review I am again remembred that our Saviour himself was a Church member in his Infancy even the chiefest that is the Head Mr. Tombes confesseth it Let not your opinions interest draw you to deny it nor to call my assertion rotten dictating If you should I would ask of you at what age Christ began to be Christ and the Churches Head as we ask the Socinians At what age he began to be God And if an Infant was capable of being the Head King Priest and Prophet Relatively though yet he had never Ruled Sacrificed or Taught then there is nothing in the Infant Age which maketh it uncapable of being Members Subjects and Disciples of Christ And it is like that Irenaeus was not deceived who saith that he Sanctified the state of Infancy by being an Infant and we have reason to judge that he did thereby give us notice that the Infant Age is not unacceptable to him nor uncapable of Church Relation Truly Sir the serious thought of Christs Infant Relation is a very great confirmation of me against those that exclude all mankind in their Infancy from the Covenant and Church even as Christs ordinary Communion in the Synagogues and Temple is an insuperable argument with me against unlawful Separations And God himself calling Infants his Servants who do no actual service Levit. 25. 41 42. yea and calling them Disciples Acts 15. 10. prevaileth more with me than the words of any one that shall say They are uncapable of being Servants or Disciples If the Infant-age did not render them uncapable of being Subjects of Christs Kingdom and Members of his Church Universal and Particular before Christs Incarnation it maketh them not since uncapable of the like or same Relations And why should I suspect such incapacity are not Infants members of other Societies are they not members of Families and may not a Family be Sanctified by dedication to God are they not members of all the Kingdoms in the world and is it not the common light of Nature which teacheth all men so to esteem them are not Infants the Kings Subjects and why may they not as well be Christs Subjects as the Kings Have they not Right of Inheritance and Honour even of Crowns Lordships and Lands Do any Nations under Heaven level all Children as if the Parents communicated neither good or evil to them What reason then to suppose that Christ obliterateth even Natures Laws And if you deny not Original Sin why should you think that God is so unproportionably prone to punish and damn more than to pardon and save as that while all Infants are made sinful and miserable by their Parents yet not one in the world shall have so much as a part in Christs meritorious Righteousness and the free grace and pardon of his Covenant upon the Parents dedication of him to God and entering him by consent into his Covenant Doth sin abound so much more than Grace as that Condemnation is passed upon all Infants for and by their Parents sin and the free Covenant gift doth not pardon any sin to any one Infant in the world upon any condition which the Parent can perform nor any other You never yet by all your words for all words are not Light and Proof did convince me that it was no Benefit to Infants before Christs Incarnation to be Covenant-members of his Church particular and Universal Nor that Christ came to deprive them all of that benefit Mr. Tombes his pretenses that it is a Benefit to Christians to have all their Infants put or kept out of the Church State and Mercies is so absurd against Nature that I am asham'd to say any more against it If it be our Benefit to have no Covenant-gift of Christ Pardon and Life to our Children may you not next say It is our Benefit to have them damn'd And if it were so Nature teacheth us to be loath to receive our Benefits by such means as one would be loath that a Physitian should cure his Sickness by a draught of the heart blood of all his Children Sir I could the easilyer bear with your delay of external Baptism if you did not deny all Infants their part in the Covenant of Life But when you dare not only do that but reproach our assertion of Gods Covenant-Grace to them as Absurd and Heretical it is no Fieryness to say that I will not follow you Where there is no Covenant or Promise there is no Hope which we can call Divine and if we have no Hope of the Pardon or Salvation of our Children upon any Promise of God it is no Promise of Mans that can keep us from Despair We may not then say as David I shall go to it any farther than to the Grave Nay do you not do worse than deprive us of our hopes even lay such grounds as destroy and exclude them by a sentence of damnation For God addeth to the Church such as shall be saved And if Infants be not added to the Church are they not excluded from Salvation For
on supposition of the Parents fidelity it had done though still at age they may be accepted upon Repentance and personal Belief Of which Mr. Whiston hath written more judiciously than any on that point that I remember Also I have been hereby made thankful that God kept me from the snare of Anabaptistry for though I lay not so much as some do on the meer outward act or water of Baptism believing that our heart consent and dedication qualifieth Infants for a Covenant Right before actual Baptism which yet is Christs regular solemnization and investiture yet I make a great matter of the main Controversie notwithstanding that I hereticate not the Anabaptists for the bare opinion sake nor would have them persecuted for now I better see than ever what God hath thus preserved me from 1. How much else might I have been led to that tendeth towards the denying the Kingdom of Christ and denying him to be the Saviour of the world yea how neer might I have been led towards the making him to be the Destroyer or Abaddon as comeing into the World to condemn the world and to take from them the Promises and Hopes of Salvation For 1. I find that all are lost in Adam and that God made an Vniversal Covenant of Grace with fallen mankind in Adam after his fall and renewed it with Noah I find that it is but a small part of the world that had the Law of Moses the Jews being to the earth but as one Village to England and to be King but of a Village is not to be King of England I find that the making of Abraham's or Moses his Covenant was no repeal of the Vniversal Law of Grace nor put them into a worse condition than he found them in And I find that past all doubt Infants were Church-members and in the Covenant before Christs Incarnation not only the Circumcised but the Uncircumcised Females and all the Uncircumcised Males in the Wilderness yea and out of the Jewish Nation as well as in it though the Covenant of Peculiarity was proper to them And yet notwithstanding all this I find 1. that many now do exclude all the world out of Christs Kingdom before his Incarnation except the Jews or at least a few rare individuals more when Abraham hoped there had been fifty Righteous in Sodome 2. That the same men suppose that since Christs Incarnation the old Law of Grace made to mankind in Adam and Noah is repealed and they that cannot have the Gospel are left under the meer Law of Innocency or none 3. And that all mankind in their Infant state is put or left out of the Church of Christ and the Covenant of Life And had I been seduced into all this 1. To hold that for 4000 years Christ had a Kingdom no bigger than England 2. That he came to deprive all the world that have not his Gospel of the former Law of Grace that was made to them 3. And that he came to cast out of their Church-state or Covenant-mercies all mankind while they are Infants and to leave us no hope that is grounded on his Covenant or Promise of any Infants Salvation or any description or condition whatsoever Alas what should I have been led to and what guilt against Christ and of furthering Infidelity should I have incurred under the pretense of promoting the purity of his Kingdom II. And if God had thus left me I had been likely as I see by others to have gone yet farther and narrowed the Gospel Church it self so much as to have confined it to the Anabaptists or to have thought all the rest of the Christian world uncapable of Church Communion I might have come to revile the Doctrine of Gods gracious Promise or Covenant to our Children as Absurd and Heretical and when Gratitude is the complexion of Gospel obedience this Ingratitude might have been mine III. And then I should likely have been left to a proud over-valuing of my own Opinion and the singularity of my Wisdom and Integrity as quite beyond all the Christian worlds that differ from me And out of a selfish unobserved adherence to my own conceits to have magnified the Sect that was of my own mind above all others IV. And then I might have been seduced to have had a hand in all the Turnings and Overturnings setting up and pulling down Praying and Unpraying Owning and Disowning Bloody dayes and Thanksgivings for them that were since Triplo Heaths-Parliament till 1660. and more than so to have justified them in others yea and that after Gods most remarkable disowning them yea and to have abhorred and derided the very name and motion of Repentance for them and to have despised the Religious Retreat of Nath. Ward a wise though jocular Interpendent though Repentance be the only Plank after Shipwrack and the great and merciful concession of the Gospel V. I might have been drawn hereby to divide Christs Kingdom and to set up Antichurches whose employment should be to cry down others and draw men into odious thoughts of one another and to destroy Christian Love and Concord in the world VI. And hereby I might have been one that prepared Professors to turn Quakers Seekers or Ranters to have finished the work that I began VII I might have been tempted to do all this as in the Name of Christ and for his Truth Word and Church and so to have entitled God to all and put his holy Name to these works of Darkness and pretended his own Commission for my opposing him VIII I might have been tempted hereby to write Letters as long and vehement as yours in as or●●●cal and pious a strain which should have been b●●… birth of my ignorance and self-conceit and made ●… of Hypocrisie all along pretending that I am offended with my Adversary for want of an Answer or proof when indeed it were the success of his Answers Cogent Proofs prevailing with multitudes against my Opinion that was the true cause of my anger and when partiality had filled my heart with bitterness against my Brother for such success I might have been drawn to cover all from my self and others by accusing him of fieryness or folly in generals and by summoning him to Repentance and Recantation as the Quakers do by the dreadful Tribunal of God when I cannot resist the Scripture evidence which he bringeth IX And I might have been tempted when once Prepossession Prejudice Interest of Reputation had engaged me to so bad a cause to have studyed all that I can rake together to maintain it and to have stretch'd all my wits to have opposed all that is brought against it and to have made it the chief work and Religion of my life in which my thoughts affections time and industry should be laid out to carry on this mistaken and destructive cause and to keep the Churches of Christ from Loving-Unity Communion and Peace till they will all unite against Infants Church-membership and Baptism
Rich. BAXTER'S REVIEW OF THE STATE OF Christian's Infants Whether they should be entered in COVENANT With God by BAPTISM and be Visible Members of His CHVRCH and have any Covenant-Right to Pardon and Salvation Or whether CHRIST the Saviour of the World hath shut all Mankind out of his Visible Kingdom and Covenant-Rights and Hopes 'till they come to Age And whether he did so from the beginning of the world or after his Incarnation Occasioned by the Importunity of Mr. E. Hutchinson and of Mr. Danvers and Mr. Tombes who called him to this REVIEW in order to his RETRACTATION An Impartial Reading is humbly requested of those Dissenters who would not be found Despisers of holy Truth nor such as judge before they hear London Printed for Nevil Simons at the Princes Arms in Pauls Churchyard 1676. READER I Once more stew the World that is is in the power of other men if God permit them to hinder us from greater service to the Church by making things far less in themselves to become accidentally at that time more necessary By which kind of Impediments in Contentious times Satan frustrateth the better desires and designs of many of the Servants of Christ who would fain be better employed yea and useth herein the service of such men as in other respects are none of his Servants And thus though Scriptures be our General Rule the Providence of God and the great Ends of all our life are the Determiners of the Circumstances of our Duties The Cause of this REVIEW is a Letter of one Mr. E. Hutchinson sent me very large in considerable Oratory to let me know his Contempt of my last and former Book of Baptism and to humble me for the great sin of abusing the world with such frivolous writings which seem to do something but prove nothing and leave Mr. Danvers c. unanswered so that it is an Answer that he would have And he vehemently urgeth me to Repentance and Retraction of what I have written for Infants Church-membership Covenant and Baptism as did Mr. Tombes more than once before him Should I Print his Letter without his consent perhaps he might take it for an injury and if he would have it done it 's like he will do it himself But because it refereth to a Printed Paper of Mr. Danvers against me called his Third Reply which I never saw till his Letter informed me of it I thought that it was more than himself whom he importuned me to satisfie I have told him here truly how little the meer difference about the outward Baptism of Infants doth abate my esteem and love of any Godly Peaceable men Two sorts of Persons called Anabaptists I can live in as friendly concord with as with most I hold Communion with First those that deny not the Covenant-Rights and Church-Relation of the Infants of Believers confessing them to be Holy but only think that their Baptism being but the solemnization of their foregoing Covenant and the publick Investiture of them in their Relation may as the Coronation of an Infant King be deferred till they come to some understanding of which minde were Tertullian and Nazianzene Secondly those that being in doubt only of the Sufficiency or Lawfulness of Infant-Baptism do receive a second or a third Administration as some Marryed by Justices lately were marryed again by Ministers and as Mr. Humphrey pleads for a second Ordination especially if Hypothetically done to satisfie their doubting Consciences and then live in peace and orderly Communion afterwards with other Christians as knowing that in Christ Jesus neither Circumcision availeth nor Uncircumsion but a new Creature I say none of these shall be more willing of loving Communion with others than I shall be with them But 1. If men will deny and scorn our Infant-Right in the Covenant of Grace and in Christ Pardon and Salvation and Visible Church-Relation and will so far deny the Kingdom and Grace of Christ as to maintain that he excludeth all mankind from any Visible Right or Hope of Salvation till Adult and hath given such Right no more to Christian 's Children than to Heathens And if they will make this Opinion the measure of their Communion and will divide the Church and Unchristen or Unchurch all that are not as unthankful and injurious to Christ and to the Holy Seed as themselves it is not I that separate from these men but they from me and all sober Christians And I will here add but these two or three Notes to the Reader 1. If he will peruse two short Disputations which I have lately published of ORIGINAL SIN the Primary and Secondary he will see it fully proved that both Naturally and by Supernatural Revelation God hath declared such an Interest of Parents and Children in each other as is much of the Reason of all that I here plead for And he that will accurately observe the whole current of the Scripture herein shall find this Conjunct-Interest asserted from end to end 2. I am past doubt that it is a principal design of Satan to mortifie our Christendom it self by keeping Parents from that intelligent and serious Covenanting with God in their solemn dedication of their Children to him which the greatness of the work and case requireth and to turn our very Christening into a Ceremony or lifeless Formality And it is not the least part of my Non-conformity that I dare not deliberately profess my Assent and Consent that no Parent shall be suffered in the Church to enter his own Child into the Covenant of God nor to speak one Covenanting Promising Undertaking nor Dedicating word nor must be urged to be so much as present But that Godfathers and Godmothers who never give us any cause to believe that one of many thousands of them take the Child for their own nor ever purpose to Educate him or do what there they Vow and Covenant to do must be the only Covenanting Undertakers and so that so much notorious false Vowing to God or Perfidiousness must defile our Baptism And now come these Anabaptists and instead of calling the Parents to Seriousness and Holy Fidelity in so great a work they tell them that it is none of their Duty at all 3. And how light soever some make of Unity I know that it 's even Essential to the Church As the Union of the Stones and Timber is to the House and of King and Subjects to the Kingdom and of the several parts to a Clock or Watch For the Form is Relative And do you think then that they befriend Christ or his Church who turn the Sacrament of our Union into the occasion of our great Division yea and Unchristen and Unchurch all the Christian World in Infancy yea and a thousand parts to one of the Christian Church of the Adult because they are not Re-baptised at Age. Passion and Prejudice and Partiality when men have espoused the Interest of a Cause as the best and holyest in their eyes may make men
Christ washeth and sanctifieth his Church he is the Saviour of his Body only And if they are not of his Church or Body he washeth them not nor is their Saviour effectively The same Text that saith He that believeth shall be saved saith He that believeth not shall be damned And He that believeth not is condemned already If therefore you allow them no participation in their Parents Faith but require personal Belief of them as necessary to their Salvation according to the Promise you must also require the same of them to save them from Damnation by the Threatning Did you but leave Christians no more hope than you do Pagans and Turks of their Childrens Pardon and Salvation I would not be ambitious of the Joy of your opinion much less if you positively condemn them And what do you less if finding them condemned by the violated Covenant of Innocency you totally exclude them from the Remedying Pardoning and Saving Covenant and from Christs Body which he doth save If you say that they may be of his invisible Church which is the saved Body I answer 1. What they may be tells us not what they are If they be not so much as visible Members who can say that they are invisible ones 2. They are by Nature visible Members of the Kingdom of Satan and Children of wrath and visibly under the Laws Condemnation Therefore 'till we can prove them visibly by grace translated out of this state of nature their visible Condemnation cannot be denyed And what a jumble make you if you make a great part of Mankind to be at once condemned visible members of the Kingdom of the Devil and invisible saved members of Christ Men may be visibly Christians Hypocrites and yet invisibly wicked but to be visibly condemned members of the Kingdome of Darkness and yet invisible members of Christ is strange to me especially considering that Hypocrites are visibly what they are not really and invisibly because they falsely profess what they have not But a condemned Infant doth not deceive men by dissembling but we actually know that as a child of Adam he is a child of sin and death It is truly so Therefore we must conclude that as Gods Word is true he continueth so till he be delivered by Grace And the Covenant of Grace is the Conveyance of and title to our gracious priviledges as the threatning is of wrath Shall not all that are judged be judged by Gods Law the Law which they were under And what Law shall Infants then be judged by If they are under no Covenant of Promise that giveth them title to life how can they have title by it or be judged by it Are they Justified or not Justified If not Justified they are condemned certainly and shall not be glorified for it is the Justified that are glorified Rom. 8. 30. But if they are Justified either it is by some Justifying Promise and Covenant or without If without 1. Do you not give hope also to all Heathens and Wicked men that though they are condemned by the Law of Innocency and not justified by any Covenant of Grace yet they may be justified without 2. And by what means is it by any or none If by any by what If by none how know you it But if it be by any Covenant-Grant that they are justified it must be by that of Grace which I am pleading for or none For we will not now receive another Gospel To talk therefore of meer Election is nothing to any of this that I have said Election Justifieth not nor dissolveth the condemning Sentence of the Law God judgeth not men meerly on the grounds of his unreveled Election but by his Word which is the Rule And were it otherwise if unrevealed none can prove it and therefore must not affirm it And were it reveled that God will save some that he promiseth not to save nor giveth them any antecedent right to it yet 1. No man could know by this whether any one in England or Europe or in the World in his age shall so be saved nor whether it be many or few or more than a dozen in the world 2. And no one can know who any of these be and so can have no notice of comfort for any of his own 3. Nor that Christians Infants shall be saved any more than the Heathens These things Sir are not to be submitted to by all Christians for fear lest you else revile them or lest Mr. T. sayes Their blood be on their own heads Austin is called Durus Pater Infantum for too sharp a censure on the unbaptized though many mistake him But we should be harder did we leave all visibly condemned without a pardoning word or any visible remedy and hope And truly me thinks you too much honour the Kingdome of the Devil if you make it visibly contain all the Seed of the Woman even of the Faithful till they come to age It is too great I will not feign it to be greater Were all the Circumcised Israelites and all the holy seed till Christ at once both in the Church and in Satans Kingdom If not sure it is not so now Sure I am that the Scripture tells us of a larger Church and a better Covenant and Promises and greater Salvation under the Gospel and do you bring it down to this to give us all up to the Devils visible Kingdom without any visible Remedy till we come to age And he is scarce so like to prove a member of Christ at age who is trained up in the Kingdom of the Devil till then as he is that is educated in the Houshold of God There is more of Gods blessing to be expected in his own Family than in the Devils Either it is a Mercy or no Mercy to be in Christs Family or Church if none why do you value it if it be why should we think that the Saviour of the world procureth it to no Infants nay that he came to leave them out Would you not take it for a Mercy if you believed that God in Scripture gave it to all the Seed of the Faithful dedicated to him I think you would For my part I believe that the Seed of the Righteous is blessed Psal 37. 26. and that the Children of Satan and the condemned unjustified seed are not blessed That blessed are they whose sins and iniquities are forgiven and covered and to whom the Lord imputeth not sin and that this blessing cometh even on the uncircumcised But not on them who are unpardoned and condemned already I hear many sad Mothers lamenting their dead Children for fear lest they are damned And though I never was a Father I can perceive what the concerns and bowels of Parents are But what would they do if they were taught to believe that no Infant ever in the world had any justifying pardoning Promise nor visible Remedy but all till age are under condemnation by the undissolved Obligation of the Law
Scripture Presedent or fuller proof 1. I also require them to give me any one Scripture Presedent where ever any one that was the Child of a Christian and not at age when the Parents were made Christians was afterward Baptized when he came to age Prove that and you will prove something 2. I ask them whether many points in Divinity be not now taken as necessary or sure for which not the fourth part so much is produced out of Scripture as I have done for the Church-membership of Infants And seeing you have so importunately called me to a Review I will add these few things more I. What Benefits I perceive cometh by Infant-Baptism II. What hurt would come if you could prevail against it III. What sin you would draw men to by rejecting it IV. And I will tell you what thanks therefore I owe to God for preserving me from your mistakes and way I. And I cannot but think that all these following are Mercies not to be despised 1. To be Gods Children and God to be their God and Father 2. To be Christs Members and Christ to be their Head and Saviour 3. To have the Holy Ghost in Covenant with them to give them his Grace and help as shall be necessary to them upon the further terms on which it is by degrees to be communicated of which more anon 4. To have the pardon of all Original sin as to the damning punishment and so to have the Laws Condemnation disabled 5. To be members of so holy safe and honourable a Society as the Church 6. To have their Love and Prayers as Members 7. To have Parents obliged solemnly to endeavour to educate and use their Children as members of Christ fellow Citizens with the Saints and of the Houshold of God 8. To have right to Heaven so dying by Gods gift 9. For Parents and Friends to have comfortable notice of all this 10. And that they are not under the power and Kingdom of the Devil as those that are Rebels against the Covenant or that are without II. Should your perswasions prevail against Infant-Baptism these evils I think would follow And whereas you say that your Think is as good as my Think pardon my modesty and while you follow your own Think give me and others leave to judge of mine by the evidence at least of probability which I bring 1. I think that Christian Parents would want one of their Motives to live in Thankfulness to God and to magnifie the Grace of the Redeemer if they did beleve that all Infants are in the visible Kingdom of the Devil and have no Promise or Covenant-Grant of Pardon Remedy or Life 2. The want of this Demonstration of Divine Love would be a disadvantage to their Love to God For where much is forgiven there will be much Love 3. It would deprive Christian Parents of all the forementioned Comforts for their Childrens good and leave them to mourn for the dead as those that have no hopes which any Promise of God alloweth them 4. Parents would be more negligent in the pious education of their Children than they are for their solemn Vow and Promise is a great additional Obligation 5. Young Persons would be more bold in sin when they know that they are under no Covenant Vow or Promise to the contrary And they would usually delay their Repentance and Baptism as Constantine and many in those times did as thinking that all sin is done away when I Repent and am Baptized but it is more dangerous to sin after Baptism than before And so most would think it best to live out of the Church and to die in it to live as Infidels and die as Christians to live after the flesh as do the wicked and to be regenerate before death and to die the death of the Righteous 6. These delayes would do as delay of Repentance now doth to many even drive away Gods Spirit forfeit grace harden the heart so that few delayers would be converted 7. By these delayings of Repentance and liberty of sins wickedness would more abound and so Gods judgments against the land be more increased 8. Pagans and Infidels would be hardened and encouraged by the multitudes of the unbaptized and the paucity of Christians 9. For Christians would be but few in comparison of the multitude just as Mr. Tombes thinks Christ would have it here one and there one 10. And while some delayed their Baptism in scruple as many now do the Lords Supper and others to take the liberty of sinning which were like to be the common case of youth and others in senseless negligence the Baptized and Unbaptized would grow like our Non-conformists and Conformists into distinct Parties upon distinct Interest in point of Reputation and so the unbaptized become the Adversaries for the most part of the Baptized 11. And the Rich and the Multitude being usually the Unbaptized party they would be still the strongest and the Governours of the rest and the Laws and Government would be such as the Governours 12. And hereupon the Church would be as before the dayes of Constantine ordinarily under Persecution 13. This Persecution would detein the most from looking towards Christianity and so hinder multitudes from comeing in to Christ and woe to them that so offend or hinder such little ones It were better a milstone were hanged about their necks and they were cast into the depth of the Sea 14. There would then be no sanctified Families dedicated to God except those few that had no Children 15. Much less would any Nation be Discipled or any one Kingdom be the Kingdom of the Lord and of his Christ This is not the Condition that I desire and pray for If you doubt of all or any of this look to the Easterni parts of the world and be not worse than those that will learn by nothing but experience Judge whether under the Turkish Government the Greek Church be grown better and whether the Christians are more and holyer than heretofore And yet the Turks give Liberty of Religion which most Unbaptized Princes do not O dreadful Case That ever Religious persons should Study Preach Pray and fervently Dispute and Write to bring the Christian world to this as for the advancement of Religion III. To tell you of sinning I suppose will be taken for fiery fury or a Reproach of the Godly But I may tell you why I am not of your mind and what sin I think I should be guilty of if I were 1. God made it a duty for Parents solemnly to enter their Children by Dedication into the Covenant of God as is oft proved And how will men answer the non-performance hereof any more than their not Praying for them or not feeding or Cloathing them 2. What a sin is it to rob Christ of so great a part of his Church 3. What a sin so to deny the Gospel Grace and Promise and to hide so much of the Love of God 4. What a sin
Christians in this and former ages in such things I will have no Communion with you The Fathers likened Re-ordaining and Re-baptizing If any would satisfie his own Conscience with being ordained again for surety not Unchurching Degrading Avoiding Reproaching Persecuting those that are not of his mind I would break no peace with such a Re-ordained Person But if the Re-ordaining Sectaries will say as you Our way only is right we only are the true Ministers and Churches and turn like to Donatists I am not of their mind And I here profess that while I tell you of my dissent from your Extream it implyeth no liking of the contrary extream of those that would confound the Christians the Heathens so far as equally to Baptise all their Children if any Baptized person will but perfidiously promise that for them which they never made any intelligent man believe that ever they intended to perform Nor can I love the Hypocritical Religion of the Pharisees which turneth almost all into Ceremony as if they had to do with none but Children nor the turning of Catechising and Confirmation into a lifeless Formality to be instead of a serious Profession at age of the Christian Covenant and a solemn intelligent transition to the Church Priviledges of the Adult I know that it is Satans game first to draw Hypocrites to mortifie Gods Ordinances and turn Religion into an Image or a Carkass and thence to stir up others in several Sects instead of Reviving them to Loath and Bury them Woe to the World because of Offences and Woe to them by whom they come Before I come to my Fourth Part which is my Application to my self I must take notice of some more of your Applicatory Letter in the way And if I disorderly repeat some things in following so disordered a Leader you at least whatever others do must take it patiently it being far short of the tedious work which you seem to call for You would have Mr. Danvers his Letter Answered and you would have better Proof for Infant Baptism It is not in my power to believe the Reasons of my two Books which you generally take for none to be no sound Reasons nor to believe Mr. Danvers his Books not to be such a bundle of most gross mistakes and Vutruths as I scarce ever before met with from a professed Christian If I mistake it is not in my power to do otherwise were I to die this hour And if I have offended the Anabaptists by a faithful perswading them to Repent of the doleful work which they have made in England my Conscience more accuseth me for doing it no more than for doing so much If you take all men for as bad as you describe me that wish your Repentance for such works and also for our woful Church Divisions and differ from you about Infant-Baptism and that yet beg for mutual forbearance and peaceable Communion with you I am not of your spirit or mind and hope neither to live nor die in so narrow a Communion As for any more Answering any of you those that I converse with tell me it is needless I repent that I have been drawn by Contenders so often to interrupt more useful work If more be needful let them do it that have leisure and longer life You say that It is now a common question whether ever I will die a Martyr I am sorry that your Acquaintance are hardened and used to questions that so little concern them and that are so unmeet for their Determination If Suffering be the best State how happy hath this Kingdom been made by the OVERTURNERS Do you mean that you doubt whether ever the Anabaptists will have Power enough to effect it they attempting what they did against me too late just when they and their Co-partners were a pulling down themselves and others Or do you mean that till we are Martyred we are not capable of your good Opinion And are all the Anabaptists Graceless that are yet Unmartyred Or have more Anabaptists than Poedobaptists been Martyred in our times Or is it only your Prognostick on supposition of my Tryal I have more cause to distrust my self and beg Gods strengthning Grace than boastingly to foretel Though all men deny thee yet I will not But your talk of my flight and others suffering by proxie for me doth but shew that you have not that care of avoiding Falshoods in matter of Fact which might invite us to think that you are liker than others to be sound in Doctrine But had you not mistaken yet I might have admonished you not to have condemned every Anabaptist that hath taken a grosser flight than a sick mans going for his health into the Countrey when he had neither any Flock nor Vndertaking nor Call to hinder him At least that you mock not at Paul for being let down by the wall in a Basket nor at Christ for his flight into Aegypt or withdrawing into the Wilderness and into Gallilee c. nor for saying When they persecute you in one City flee to another or at least pass no hard sentence on your self for being yet alive no nor on Mr. Tombes for Writing against Separation and for Communion with the Parish Churches But in the end you Beseech me in the Bowels of Jesus Christ and as I will shortly answer at the great and dreadful Tribunal that among my other Errata I would repent of that absurd and Heretical position of a Baptismal Covenant of Grace running in a Fleshly Line Answ But 1. Just thus the Quakers dreadfully adj●re me to repent of all that 's against their way and must I therefore do it And yet Mr. Hicks Ives and other Anabaptists treat them far more sharply than cover I did the Anabaptists 2. I have so many years looked for my appearing at the Tribunal of Christ that if I should not be true to that Light which doth appear to me I were more unexcusable than yet you think me But will your word at that Tribunal pass for Law or for my Justification if I should contradict the Grace and Covenant of God and his Church Laws and state from the dayes of Adam to this day How shall I be sure that it is the Bowels of Christ and not Self-conceitedness and the Zeal of a dividing Sect in which you make this carnest sute to me 3. Especially when you so unintelligibly recite my supposed Errour and give me not a word of Answer against that abundance of Scripture proof which I have brought This is too unsatisfactory an answering of Books to Beseech us to repent of them 4. The Wisdom from above is Pure Peaceable and without Partiality Is yours so Ask any Impartial man whether you write like one that knoweth himself You here call us to Repent of a Position as Absurd and Heretical Did I ever call your Opinion Heretical Not that I remember Such writing as this of mine is fiery but your large Invectives without one word of
to me when they call me Hireling But Sir I am not so much as a Hireling much less the owner of the Sheep I would I knew which of these two you judge your selves to be for my part I am neither Christ is the Owner I am not so much as the Pastor of any Flock And that I may not discourage your contempt I add nor ever that I remember called to be such these 13 or 14 years Nor have I so long taken any Hire And did Paul flee like a Hireling when he went from places of less liberty to other more commodious places to Preach Did not Pain Weakness and want of Money for so chargeable a work disable me my Conscience would command me by the motive of Experience to go about Preaching from place to place though every d●g in the streets where I pass should bark nothing but Hireling Hireling The last Text is against Separation The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses his seat all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe that observe and do but do not ye after their works for they say and de not for they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne c. And what from hence Ergo I should not Preach in the Parish Churches Or is it Ergo I should have bound heavy burdens for my self Or is it that I should not ●ave made such for others This is the likest sense f●r the best way of expounding Authors is by similar passages And were not this an untruth it would be non-conformable to the rest aforesaid But saith he is not this a strange Paradoxe that he should suffer at the rate for a Non-conformist at London and yet act the part of a Conformist to so high a degree in the Countrey Answ This is very conformable to the rest To Preach in the Parish Churches for his story of Reading the Common Prayer is like his Books is the high degree of Conformity This is expository I now perceive what it is in me to be for Conformity and against it for Popery and against it for Arminianism and against it as he saith The equivocation maketh all true I am for the Conformity and the Popery and the Arminianism of Preaching Christs Gospel in Parish Churches which the Papists say they sometime said Mass in and for the Conformity and Popery of Infants part in the Covenant of God for their Baptism and for the reading of Gods Word for the Creed the Lords Prayer and the ten Commandments and for the Love of Brethren and the Unity Peace and Concord of Christs Church however I be against that which the world commonly knoweth by the name of Conformity and Popery O what a high degree of Conformity did the old Non-conformists exercise in this mans sense I have lived long to little purpose it such a man by the bare names of Conformity Popery or Arminianism can frighten me out of my Christianity my Honesty my Charity my Min●stry and my Wits Next relating my story with more caution than usual with an If I be not misinformed O that this sentence had been twice or thrice in every page of his Books with some truth some mistake and more omission he subjoyneth that by Proxie that 's his fiction I suffer Imprisonment for a Non-conformist in London and in person out doe all the Non-conformists by his publick Preaching in the Countrey as a Conformist Answ 1. Reader by this you may see at what rates we Ministers must do our Masters work Woe to us if we Preach not And if we do one sort Imprison us and seek our Ruine and the other Revile us as if our greatest Duty were our greatest sin 2. You see what abundance of Enemies the Preaching of the Gospel hath when Satan can stir up such men of Zeal to take it for a Crime Paul might Preach even in the Jews Synagogue I must not in a Parish Church 3. You see how certain it is that the two Extreams are much of the same Spirit and that they that most cry out against Persecution are oft of a persecuting mind when such men as this would silence us or have us give over Preaching to the multitude that most need it as well as others And so would the Quakers 4. You see what they mean that cry down a Comprehension They would not have us Preach in the Parish Churches to the needy multitude unless they may have all first altered according to their desire Thus W Pen called me cruel for desirng a Comprehension as leaving the Quakers to the Dogs so that they would have us all silenced even by those Impositions which they themselves account sinful till they and all such have their will 5 You see here what a Reproach these men would bring on Non-conformity and what strong Invitations they give men to Conform by making Conformity to be Preaching in Parish Churches 6. Or you see what need you have instead of disputing longer with such men to pray God to give them tenderer Cnnsciences that may fear to multiply Untruths which thousands of Witnesses of whom some were Anabaptists and of other Sects are ready to confute Especially to Pray that the Churches and the peoples souls may be delivered from such as would not only Unchurch all mankind till they come to age but make it a sinful Conformity than to Preach the Gospel in the Parish Churches FINIS