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

V. The Rubric after Confirmation saith [There shall none be admitted to the holy Communion, till such time as he be confirmed, or be Ready and Desirous to be confirmed. So that desire of Confirmation in the English way, is made a necessary Condition of Communion.

V. The Rubrick after Confirmation saith [There shall none be admitted to the holy Communion, till such time as he be confirmed, or be Ready and Desirous to be confirmed. So that desire of Confirmation in the English way, is made a necessary Condition of Communion.

2. The public owning of the Baptismal Covenant, is that which the Nonconformists are so far from being against, that they take it with a serious Confirmation thereupon to be the meet way of transition from the Infant state of Church-membership, into that of the Adult: and the most Congruous means of uniting dissenters about Church discipline, and of preventing Anabaptistry that can be found out. But many sober Christians are unsatisfied with the English ⟨p. 153⟩way of Confirmation, 1. Because they find it so like to that Confirmation which the Papists have made a Sacrament, and which very many beyond-Sea Protestants have written against: vide Dallaeum de confirmat. 2▪ Because it is made the proper work of a Diocesan, and wholly denied to the Parochial Pastors; And because those Diocesans know not ordinarily whether the persons be meet or unmeet to be confirmed, being strangers to them; for how can they know all the persons, men, women and such Children of so many Parishes as a Diocese doth contain: (some Dioceses having above a thousand Parishes others many hundred: One above 100 miles in Length, and others, very great)? Its true, that the Minister of the Parish is bid to Catechise them, and to bring or send in writing the names of such as he thinks fit for Confirmation. But 1. This is not ordinarily done: but Children in our time have used to run together to a bishop when he came into the Country on that work, without the Ministers Certificate or Godfathers; and none, that ever we knew of, that came for Confirmation in this manner, was refused: And as the Bishop never saw or knew one of the multitude whom he Confirmeth, so he taketh not time so far to examine them as to give him rational satisfaction of their fitness: Nor indeed can he possibly do it for one of a multitude of so large Dioceses, when most great Parishes are too big for a present Minister who is acquainted with them better than a strange Diocesan can be: How can a man that hath so many other employments as Diocesans have find leisure, were he never so willing, to examine