More proofs of infants church-membership and consequently their right to baptism, or, A second…

§. 3. 1. Did not Pride cause men much to overvalue their own parts and worth, Controversy would have shrunk into a narrower compass before this day: Men would have come to one another as friends to be informed of what they know not, by enquiry and gentle conferences, if not as children to School, to learn: And if grace by hard studies had given one man more insight into any matters than another, humility would readily have acknowledged Gods gifts, and desired to have the benefit of a friendly communication; and wherever God had set up a light, the Children of his family would have been ready to work by it: It would not have been so hard as now it is for an Ignorant man to know his Ignorance, nor to discern when another knoweth more than he.

§. 3. 1. Did not Pride cause men much to overvalue their own parts and worth, Controversie would have shrunk into a narrower compass before this day: Men would have come to one another as friends to be informed of what they know not, by enquiry and gentle conferences, if not as children to School, to learn: And if grace by hard studies had given one man more insight into any matters than another, humility would readily have acknowledged Gods gifts, and desired to have the benefit of a friendly communication; and whereever God had set up a light, the Children of his family would have been ready to work by it: It would not have been so hard as now it is for an Ignorant man to know his Ignorance, nor to discern when another knoweth more than he.

§. 4. But now, alas, a multitude that understand not half their Catechism hear their Teachers as Masters hear their Scholars, to know whether they say their lesson well or not: And the Preacher that saith as they would have him, may pass for orthodox at least, if not for a very wise man, because he is, so far, as wise as they: But if he will presume to teach them more than they know, they suspect him of heresy, and the repetition of his Sermon which they make, is to mangle some sentences which they had not wit enough to understand, and thence to proclaim (or whisper abroad at least) that the Preacher hath some dangerous errors, (and doth not know so much as they;) unless it be some luscious unwholesome