A26975:447
Of national churches their description, institution, use, preservation, danger, maladies and cure, partly applied…
Of national churches their description, institution, use, preservation, danger, maladies and cure, partly applied to England / written by Richard Baxter for promoting peace ... and for the fuller explication of the Treaty for Concord in 1660 and 1661, and of the Kings gracious declaration about ecclesiastical affairs ... and for further explication of his treatise of episcopacy ...
London: printed by T. Snowden for Thomas Parkhurst, 1691
Chapter 14: Whether the National Church of England be at the present of a sound Constitution. And w…
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
None of this therefore needeth a Reformation. But what then doth?
§ 19. Ans. All these things following. I. The entrance into the Church by Baptism of Infants, is done so lightly and rashly while the Parents are forbidden to speak a word there, as Dedicating their Children to God or Covenanting for them, but all ⟨p. 61⟩is laid on such Godfathers as never own the Children, nor ever intend to do what they Vow. And Baptism is refused if Crossing be refused.
II. The Bishop only being to Confirm all in many hundred or score Parishes, where one of many hundred is not known to him, much less examined by him; Confirmation is commonly made a deceiving Ceremony, and the Transition from the State of Infant Members into the State of Adult Communicants is made so wide, that the Church too little differeth from Catechumens, that I say not from those without.