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

§. 2. Answ. To live and die impenitently in so unprofitable a sin (and unpleasing to any but diabolical natures) as is the belying of others, is a very dreadful kind of folly. I would heartily wish that Mr. Danvers and I might meet and help to bring each other to repentance, by a willing impartial examination of each of our guiltinesses herein.

§. 3. I never look to speak to them thus more, nor long to any man on earth, and in this station and with these thoughts I must profess (not thinking it lawful to belie my self) that in the year 1647. or 1648. or both when Anabaptistry began suddenly to be obtruded with more successful fervency than before, I lived near Mr. Tombs in a Country where some were, and within the hearing of their practice in other parts of the land: And that in that beginning the common frame of Ministers and people was, that in divers places some baptized naked and some did not: And that I never to my best remembrance heard man or woman contradict that report till this man did it in this writing: And that no Anabaptist contradicted it to me that I then or since conversed with: And that thereupon in 1659. I wrote against both sorts, those that baptized naked, and those that did not: And after all this when Mr. Tombs answered my book and those very passages, he never denied the truth of the thing (though he did not so baptize himself (unless he have any where else since said any thing of it which I never saw or heard of.) And I appeal to impartial reason, whether he would not then at the time have denied it, had it been deniable: And whether this man now twenty five or six years after be fitter to be believed in a matter of fact, than common consent at the present time? And whether it be lawful for me to take all sorts then living for liars, rather than this one man that hath written us such a book? and who in a negative 25 years after ⟨p. 283⟩cannot possibly be a competent witness, no nor if he had written at that time: For who can say that there was or is no such thing done beyond his knowledge?

§. 3. I never look to speak to them thus more, nor long to any man on earth, and in this station and with these thoughts I must profess (not thinking it lawful to belie my self) that in the year 1647. or 1648. or both when Anabaptistry began suddenly to be obtruded with more successful fervency than before, I lived near Mr. Tombes in a Country where some were, and within the hearing of their practice in other parts of the land: And that in that beginning the common frame of Ministers and people was, that in divers places some baptized naked and some did not: And that I never to my best remembrance heard man or woman contradict that report till this man did it in this writing: And that no Anabaptist contradicted it to me that I then or since conversed with: And that thereupon in 1659. I wrote against both sorts, those that baptized naked, and those that did not: And after all this when Mr. Tombes answered my book and those very passages, he never denied the truth of the thing (though he did not so baptize himself (unless he have any where else since said any thing of it which I never saw or heard of.) And I appeal to impartial reason, whether he would not then at the time have denied it, had it been deniable: And whether this man now twenty five or six years after be fitter to be believed in a matter of fact, than common consent at the present time? And whether it be lawful for me to take all sorts then living for lyars, rather than this one man that hath written us such a book? and who in a negative 25 years after