A26959:677
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 4: Of Mr. Danvers's his Witnesses against Infant-Baptism.
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.
§. 22. He addeth, pag. 223. Ed. 2. the saying of Osiander, Fuller, Bullinger, that the Donatists and the Anabaptists held the same opinions?
Answ. 1. In what? In all things or some? that is, in the point of Rebaptizing persons before baptized (do you own that indeed?) But not as being against Infant-baptism. 2. So, many Prelatists have called the Puritans Donatists; and abundance of Protestants say that the Papists succeed the Donatists in appropriating the Church to their party. Do not write next that they say the Papists are against Infant-baptism, lest you make your selves Antichristian also.
§. 23. Reader, the Donatists were so great a party of men and had so great a number of Bishops, and so many wrote against them whose works are yet extant, and their cause had so many public examinations, that I leave it to thee if thou have the brains of a man, to judge whether if they had been against Infant-baptism in a time when Austin said no Christian denied it, neither Optatus, nor Austin, nor any other of their most copious opposers would ever have charged them with such an opinion, nor any examiners, Councils or Historians of their ages; even when the Catalogues of heretics unhappily took in so many little matters as they did, and made heretics some more and worse than ⟨p. 252⟩they were? And now if John Becold will say they were of his side, we must believe him.
§. 23. Reader, the Donatists were so great a party of men and had so great a number of Bishops, and so many wrote against them whose works are yet extant, and their cause had so many publick examinations, that I leave it to thee if thou have the brains of a man, to judge whether if they had been against Infant-baptism in a time when Austin said no Christian denied it, neither Optatus, nor Austin, nor any other of their most copious opposers would ever have charged them with such an opinion, nor any examiners, Councils or Historians of their ages; even when the Catalogues of hereticks unhappily took in so many little matters as they did, and made hereticks some more and worse than