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

Perhaps some better minded person will say, It casteth poor Christians into perplexity to hear such doubts about the Scripture readings and translations, were they not better concealed? Answ. They are not to be talked of unseasonably to uncapable persons: They are not to be told the ignorant instead of a Catechism: But they are all publicly known to the learned world long ago, and told the ignorant people by the Papists to ill ends: And if any one will persuade you to hold the contrary, and make you believe that all or any of these absurdities and falsehoods are the true Protestant Religion, or any part of it, and that they that hold the contrary are Popish, it is time to vindicate the Protestant Religion and all sober godly Protestants, from the scorn of such imputed dotages.

Perhaps some better minded person will say, It casteth poor Christians into perplexity to hear such doubts about the Scripture readings and translations, were they not better concealed? Answ. They are not to be talkt of unseasonably to uncapable persons: They are not to be told the ignorant instead of a Catechism: But they are all publickly known to the learned world long ago, and told the ignorant people by the Papists to ill ends: And if any one will perswade you to hold the contrary, and make you believe that all or any of these absurdities and falshoods are the true Protestant Religion, or any part of it, and that they that hold the contrary are Popish, it is time to vindicate the Protestant Religion and all sober godly Protestants, from the scorn of such imputed dotages.

But this is the unhappy fruit of overdoing: There are some men among us, so overwise and overrighteous in defending the sufficiency of the Scriptures, that they would persuade us, that it is sufficient to expound it self without a teaching Expositor, and to preach it self without a Preacher, and (by consequence from their generals) to Write and Print it self without a Writer or Printer, and to bring it self down from the Apostles to every man without the hand or tongue of man, and to preserve it self from corruption without the care of man, and to translate it self without a Translator; And that all Printed Sermons, or books of Divinity, all Catechisms, all Sermon notes for memory, all forms of Prayer, yea the dividing the Bible into Chapters and Verses, and Printing Contents, and Citations or References (much more the Geneva Notes and Pictures) are all sinful additions to the Word of God. As if the sufficiency of the Statutes of the Land lay in Keeping, Printing, Transcribing, Pleading and Expounding themselves, without the use of Scribes, Clerks, Lawyers, Law-books or Judges.