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

§. 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 ⟨p. 187⟩notions that he offereth them, or be a militant wrangler and would list them under him as his troop, to serve him in some new raised war, and then corrupt nature can magnify novelties as if they were new revelations from Heaven.

§. 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 heresie, 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 unwholesom ⟨p. 187⟩notions that he offereth them, or be a militant wrangler and would list them under him as his troop, to serve him in some new raised war, and then corrupt nature can magnifie novelties as if they were new revelations from Heaven.

§. 5. And O that the Teachers wanted not the sense of their intellectual imperfections, as well as the people! But too many think that when they are all ordained into the same office, the honour of the same office is equally due to them all, and consequently all that honour of Knowledge, Parts and Piety, without which the honour of the office cannot be well kept up. And so when they all walk in the same robes and are called by the same titles, matters which they never understood, must pass according to the major vote, or at least, they must not be contradicted, nor their ignorance made known: And therefore when they have owned or uttered a Doctrine or Sentence, their honour is engaged to make it good; And they find a far easier way to make ostentation of the Knowledge which they have not, by robes, titles and big words, than to macerate their bodies by employing their minds in serious long unwearied studies, till they have received into their minds the well digested frame of sacred truths.