Certain disputations of right to sacraments, and the true nature of visible Christianity defending…

Proposition 6. If the Parents do either produce no Title to the baptizing of their child, that is, do not seem Christians or Godly; Or if they give us grounds of a violent presumption that their profession is false and counterfeit, in either of these cases, as we are to exclude them from Christian communion, so are we to refuse the baptizing of their children, that is, to suspend both, till such a Title be showed, or till the grounds of that strong presumption be removed: Although we may not declare such persons to be no members of the universal Church, nor absolutely deny their children to have any Right in the Covenant, or fundamentally and remotely to Baptism; as not being certain, that their Parents are in a Graceless ungodly state.

Proposition 6. If the Parents do either produce no Title to the baptizing of their child, that is, do not seem Christians or Godly; Or if they give us grounds of a violent presumption that their profession is false and counterfeit, in either of these cases, as we are to exclude them from Christian communion, so are we to refuse the baptizing of their children, that is, to suspend both, till such a Title be shewed, or till the grounds of that strong presumption be removed: Although we may not declare such persons to be no members of the universal Church, nor absolutely deny their children to have any Right in the Covenant, or fundamentally and remotely to Baptism; as not being certain, that their Parents are in a Graceless ungodly state.

This last Proposition is it that I am now to give my Reasons of. For indeed it is a matter of such exceeding difficulty, to conclude another man to be certainly graceless, that it is not one of multitudes, nay, it is but few of the commonly scandalous gross sinners that we should be able to prove it by (which I desire the Censorious well to consider of.) But yet a strong presumption we may have of more that they are graceless, and ⟨p. 341⟩thereupon may suspend them and their Children, as is said before.

This last Proposition is it that I am now to give my Reasons of. For indeed it is a matter of such exceeding difficulty, to conclude another man to be certainly graceless, that it is not one of multitudes, nay, it is but few of the commonly scandalous gross sinners that we should be able to prove it by (which I desire the Cesorious well to consider of.) But yet a strong presumption we may have of more that they are graceless, and