A26911:141
The defence of the nonconformists plea for peace, or, An account of the matter…
The defence of the nonconformists plea for peace, or, An account of the matter of their nonconformity against Mr. J. Cheney's answer called The conforming nonconformist, and The nonconforming conformist : to which is added the second part in answer to Mr. Cheney's Five undertakings / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed for Benjamin Alsop, 1680
A DEFENCE OF THE NON-CONFORMIST'S Plea for Peace, AGAINST Mr. J. CH… › Chapter 16
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
XI. Can. 14. All Ministers shall observe the Orders, Rites and Ceremonies prescribed in the Book of Common-Prayer, as well in reading the holy Scriptures, and saying of Prayers, as in administration of the Sacraments, without either diminishing, in regard of Preaching, or in any other respect (note that) or adding any thing in the matter or form thereof.
XII. Can. 29. [No Parent shall be urged to be present, nor be admitted to answer as God-father for his own Child; nor any God-father or God-mother shall be suffered to make any other answer or speech than by the Book of Common-Prayer is prescribed in that behalf.]
If yet the Church have not declared her sense of the Liturgy, but that I may Baptize without Cross or God-fathers, and give the Sacrament to them that sit, rather than refuse them, I can understand ⟨p. 37⟩no mans words. And what can constrain an unwilling person to understand?
XIII. Yet I say again, If I practice on any pretence of mercy, according to your Rule, the Judges will condemn me; the Justices will send me to the common Gaol, among Rogues, to lie six months, and will fine me twenty pound, and forty pound a Sermon, as I have tried; and the Bishops or their Courts will excommunicate me, and prosecute me to lay me in Gaol; as you have tried who fly to escape it. And are not these made Judges of the sense of the Law? and will not all this convince us what it meaneth?