The nonconformists plea for peace, or, An account of their judgment in certain things…

XXIV. 22. If any will confine the Power or Exercise of the Church Keys into so few hands as shall make the Exercise of Christs Discipline impossible (as by laying that work on one, which multitudes are too few to do;) or shall make Churches so great, and Pastors so few, as that the most of the people must needs be without true Pastoral oversight, teaching and public worship, and then will forbid those people to Commit the Care of their souls to any others that will be Pastors indeed, and so would compel them to be without Christs ordinances, true Church Communion and Pastoral help, This would be Schismatical, and much worse.

XXIV. 22. If any will confine the Power or Exercise of the Church Keyes into so few hands as shall make the Exercise of Christs Discipline impossible (as by laying that work on one, which multitudes are too few to do;) or shall make Churches so great, and Pastors so few, as that the most of the people must needs be without true Pastoral oversight, teaching and publick worship, and then will forbid those people to Commit the Care of their souls to any others that will be Pastors indeed, and so would compel them to be without Christs ordinances, true Church Communion and Pastoral help, This would be Schismatical, and much worse.

XXV. 23. If any Pastors will deny Baptism, which is their investiture in the Christian Church, to the Adult that refuse to receive the ⟨p. 45⟩transient Image of the Crucifix (or any thing equal to it) as a Dedicating means to consecrate them to God, and to signify their Covenant Engagement to Christ, and as a badge and symbol of the Christian Religion, it seemeth to us to be Schismatical, when Christ himself instituted Baptism without such a Covenanting Image, to be the test and bond of his Churches unity: But if those Pastors hold Baptism necessary also to salvation, and yet will so deny it to such, this seemeth a great aggravation. The same we say of such Pastors as reject from Baptism and the Church, the Infants of true Christians on the aforesaid account: As also of those that reject them from Baptism, because the Parents will not offer them to it, unless they may themselves be the Covenanters in their own Children's names, and the Express dedicaters of them to God, and because they either cannot get credible Godfathers, or will not put others to promise the Christian Education of their children, who they have no reason to believe do at all intend it, or will ever do it, we can excuse no such rejection of Christian Infants from Christs Church, from Schism.