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

§. 2. 1. That the souls of poor Christians should be under the Temptations of such writings and teaching as here we find: Where such untruths in matter of fact are still justified with such a face of confidence, and divulged as for God, and for the souls of men, that most ignorant persons may be tempted to think that Modesty and Charity require them to believe, that they are real truths, it being a harsh unmanly thing to judge that such a person can possibly be so hardened, as to stand so boldly to all these things, which have such public historical evidence, if they were all downright falsehoods.

§. 2. 1. That the souls of poor Christians should be under the Temptations of such writings and teaching as here we find: Where such untruths in matter of fact are still justified with such a face of confidence, and divulged as for God, and for the souls of men, that most ignorant persons may be tempted to think that Modesty and Charity require them to believe, that they are real truths, it being a harsh unmanly thing to judge that such a person can possibly be so hardened, as to stand so boldly to all these things, which have such publick historical evidence, if they were all downright falshoods.

And it is a hard task for a writer to be put to answer a Christian and a Gentleman as Mr. Danvers doth Mr. Wills, Repl. pag. 120. [Know that hence you have a further discovery of the great unfaithfulness and want of conscience in the Author, for daring thus to abuse the world with a Cheat, and that which he knoweth to be a mere forgery of his own] And pag. 122. [Let it be judged whether he hath not injuriously belied Osiander, belied Cluniacensis, belied Peter Bruis, belied the truth, which by this forgery he would cover and hide; abused the world, belied and abused me—But much more fear his own conscience by this piece of folly and falsehood.] To be thus at [Thou liest] and [Thou liest] is an unsavoury work; ⟨p. 347⟩Yea in so few lines to give the Lie five times at least. But for an ignorant Reader to believe what this Author hath done till he needs must, is yet far harder. Though we say, He that will swear, will lie, and therefore we hardly believe a swearer; yet if a man with many hundred bloody oaths should assert many particulars of public cognisance, we are ready to think it inhumane to suspect that the man is so inhumane as thus to swear if some of them were not true. Alas for the poor Church of Christ, that must have such sore temptations! How shall they be withstood!