The church-membership of children, and their right to baptism according to that holy and…The church-membership of children, and their right to baptisme according to that holy and…

And indeed the Lord (avenging the quarrel of his Covenant, wherein he hath always been exceeding jealous) hath manifested not a little of his anger, and displeasure against those who have troubled these Baptismal waters of the Sanctuary; The awful and tremendous passages of Providence recorded in several histories, concerning the original and progress of Anabaptism: and relating to God's strange, judicial hand against so many of them that have been through-paced therein, in delivering them up to spiritual judgments, to believe lies; and to fall, step by step, into almost all sorts of heresies, and to the commission of the most abhorred impieties, and loathsome wickednesses, and outrages, against the Commands both of the first and second Table, (as Luther, Bullinger, Calvi•• Beza, and others generally and abundantly testify) they are very observable, and not to be passed over slightly; and may make every honest & serious heart to tremble when ever he finds himself inclining to that path: to this purpose, and concerning Anabaptism in this our age (beside many other Authors I might cite) read only Baxter's Plain Scripture proof of Infants Church-membership, Pag. 138, 139, 140 —152. And as in the dawning of the reformation, begun by those Worthies of Christ in the last Century, Anabaptism seem's to be the Tr•j in h•rse whereby so great confusion did befall that Israel, and was such a Remora to that Glorious work then begun in Germany, and other Neighbouring Countries; so now in the further progress of that reformation here in this our Israel▪ should Anabaptism likewise (especially accompanied with Donatism it's wo•ded concubine) brood and become the instrument or medium of our miseries and confusions, possibly then experience (a flow, but many times a sure and severe instructor) may help some at length to see farther into the mystery of this iniquity, then now they do. For in truth it is not improbable, that the Man of sin seeing he could not openly & at once ruin the Reformed Churches in the days of those famous servants of Christ before expressed, did attempt secretly, and gradually to do is this way; viz. by ⟨image 4⟩first sending forth his Emissaries among the Churches, who might fill them with the Smoke of Anabaptism, that so he might the more securely pass to and fro, being undiscerned in such a fog: