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

§ 2. To the first we say, that so much is written on this point by one of us in a Treatise called Disputations of Right to Sacraments, &c. that we think meet to say no more: The Opponents now confess that it must be saving Faith and Consent to the Baptismal Covenant that must be professed: And Papists and Protestants agree with all the Ancient Church, that Baptism putteth the true Consenter into a state of certain pardon and title to life: And God maketh not known lying, a condition of Church-communion: He that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved. It is true, that God hath not made Ministers Arbitrary Judges of mens secret thoughts, but hath limited them in judging to take their tongues that profess Faith and Consent to be the Indices of their minds: But sure the power of the Keys containeth a power of judging according to Christ's Law, who is to be taken into the Church by Baptism, and who not: If only the seeker be made Judge, it will be a new way of Church-Government, and a bad. And then the question is, 1. Whether he that accepts ones profession seemingly serious, of Faith and Consent, and that de praesente, is not bound to hope in charity that such a one doth not lie or dissemble? 2. Whether a baptized person, as such, have no right to our special love which we owe to those that we hope are true Believers, and sanctified; but only to our common love and kindness, which belongeth to those also that are the heirs of Hell? Some friends that are gone from extreme to extreme, and in remembrance of their ancient Schisms, can ⟨p. 302⟩look but one way with impartial sense, and that have made their repentance the passage to a greater error and sin, should better bethink them them what they do. They did well to stand still in the way of Schism, when they saw here a leg, and there a hand, and there an arm in their way; and who but a mad-man indeed would not: But if they have impartially read Church-history, and the works of such Fathers as give us historical notices, and ever since Constantine made a Bishopric a bait to a proud and worldly mind; even such as Nazianzen, Basil, Chrysostom, Isidore Pelusiota, Hilary Pictav. and the over-orthodox disputations of Cyril, and the Epistles of Theodoret rejoicing at his death, and abundance of such like;

§ 2. To the first we say, that so much is written on this point by one of us in a Treatise called Disputations of Right to Sacraments, &c. that we think meet to say no more: The Opponents now confess that it must be saving Faith and Consent to the Baptismal Covenant that must be professed: And Papists and Protestants agree with all the Ancient Church, that Baptism putteth the true Consenter into a state of certain pardon and title to life: And God maketh not known lying, a condition of Church-communion: He that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved. It is true, that God hath not made Ministers Arbitrary Judges of mens secret thoughts, but hath limited them in judging to take their tongues that profess Faith and Consent to be the Indices of their minds: But sure the power of the Keys containeth a power of judging according to Christ's Law, who is to be taken into the Church by Baptism, and who not: If only the seeker be made Judge, it will be a new way of Church-Government, and a bad. And then the question is, 1. Whether he that accepts ones profession seemingly serious, of Faith and Consent, and that de praesente, is not bound to hope in charity that such a one doth not lie or dissemble? 2. Whether a baptized person, as such, have no right to our special love which we owe to those that we hope are true Believers, and sanctified; but only to our common love and kindness, which belongeth to those also that are the heirs of Hell? Some friends that are gone from extream to extream, and in remembrance of their ancient Schisms, can