A26959:605
More proofs of infants church-membership and consequently their right to baptism, or, A second…
More proofs of infants church-membership and consequently their right to baptism, or, A second defence of our infant rights and mercies in three parts ... / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed for N. Simmons and J. Robinson, 1675
Chapter 2: More of my Judgement of the Anabaptists and their Cause, with a motion to them for peace.
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.
§. 9. I know that in the Ancient Churches men were left at liberty, both when they would be baptized themselves, and when their Children should be baptized: And though Infant-baptism was without any known original, since the Apostles, yet it was not a forced thing.
§. 10. And were it in my power it should be so still: I would not deny Christian Love, nor Church-Communion, nor public encouragements, to any pious peaceable man for being an Anabaptist: If he would not separate for it from the Churches, if he would live peaceably with me, I would live peaceably with him, and should be ⟨p. 221⟩loth to be behind with him in love and peace.
§. 10. And were it in my power it should be so still: I would not deny Christian Love, nor Church-Communion, nor publick encouragements, to any pious peaceable man for being an Anabaptist: If he would not separate for it from the Churches, if he would live peaceably with me, I would live peaceably with him, and should be ⟨p. 221⟩loth to be behind with him in love and peace.
§. 11. It is not (I say) Anabaptistry, Independency, nor any such opinion which I impute our calamities to directly: But it is (next to Church Tyranny) the spirit of separation; I mean, when men cannot so far differ in judgement from others, but a perverse zeal for their opinion as some excellent truth of God, doth instigate them to run away from those that are against it, as if they were the enemies of the truth and God, and unworthy of the Communion of such as they: which is nothing but a conjunction of Pride, Ignorance and Uncharitableness (or Malice.)