The defence of the nonconformists plea for peace, or, An account of the matter…

4. And by all this you determine that of three of us, ⟨p. 175⟩none was Pastor but only that one that had the Presentation; and so you depose all other Curates not presented. And yet the Chapels that have such Curates put in only by the Parsons are true Churches; such are your frequent Contradictions.

4. And by all this you determine that of three of us, ⟨p. 175⟩none was Pastor but only that one that had the Presentation; and so you depose all other Curates not presented. And yet the Chappels that have such Curates put in only by the Parsons are true Churches; such are your frequent Contradictions.

Sect. 16. Next as a meek Questioner, he asked me, Why I will not baptize their Infants, if I take them for Christians and Parishioners? He saith after, [If they make not a tolerable profession of Christianity in the public Assembly, they produce no valid claim, we are not to admit them.] Ans. I suppose there are in the three next Parishes here, 80000 Persons whom the Pastors never had any other account of, as to their knowledge, but by their coming to Church (and half of them that rarely come.) And those of us that have talked with almost all our Parishioners, find that multitudes know not what Christianity or a Sacrament is: A man about 80 years old in Kidderminster said, Christ was the Sun, and the Holy Ghost the Moon: Is standing up at the Creed then, or sitting in the Church a tolerable profession? Hobbes and his followers would do the same. 2. But what obligation is on me to baptize all the Children of those that take me for none of their Pastor? The Parish may have 20000 more than I am able to do the Pastoral Office for: I cannot tell whether they come to Church or not: If they do, they are strangers to me; some come into the Parish and others go out, and many are Lodgers: And he that as a Pastor is to Baptize, is also to do abundance more, to Catechize, visit the Sick, the Poor, &c. Am I bound to impossibilities for every stranger that I never knew? Nor can I know so much as whether he be Christened, or be indeed a Parishioner? Yea, a Church with you is only a present Assembly: What if these persons assemble not, or but twice or thrice a Year? What if Travellers be that day of the Church? Bishop Taylor saith (Pref. of Repen.) No one can give account of those that he knoweth not.