N00149:29
A discourse concerning the subject of baptism wherein the present controversies, that are agitated…A discourse concerning the subject of baptisme wherein the present controversies, that are agitated…
A discourse concerning the subject of baptism wherein the present controversies, that are agitated in the New English churches are from Scripture and reason modestly enquired into / by Increase Mather, teacher of a church in Boston in New-England. ; [Sixteen lines of quotations]A discourse concerning the subject of baptisme wherein the present controversies, that are agitated in the New English churches are from Scripture and reason modestly enquired into / by Increase Mather, teacher of a church in Boston in New-England. ; [Sixteen lines of quotations]
printed by Samuel Green, 1675
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.
3. Either such persons as these are to be owned as belonging to the visible Church, or else we shall exclude all persons except those of our way out of the Church visible▪ If we say, that none belong to the visible Church but such as do first make a Relation of the work of grace (a practice holy and good and far be it from me to reflect thereon, as if it▪ were Superstitious or needless. Albeit I Confess the rigid Imposition of this, or that Mode, or Formality In this matter not determined in the Scripture, is not to be excused) and so join themselves to particular Churches, this would be at once to unchurch all men but our selves. But to appropriate membership in the Catholic Church to our selves alone is such rigid, Censorious, arrogant, self-assuming, as better becometh Papists then men of modest and Congregational Principles.
3. Either such persons as these are to be owned as belonging to the visible Church, or else we shall exclude all persons except those of our way out of the Church visible▪ If we say, that none belong to the visible Church but such as do first make a Relation of the work of grace (a practice holy and good and far be it from me to reflect thereon, as if it▪ were Superstitious or needless. Albeit I Confess the rigid Imposition of this, or that Mode, or Formality In this matter not determined in the Scripture, is not to be excused) and so joyne themselves to particular Churches, this would be at once to unchurch all men but our selves. But to appropriate membership in the Catholick Church to our selves alone is such rigid, Censorious, arrogant, self-assuming, as better becometh Papists then men of modest and Congregational Principles.
4. To be wholly excluded the visible Church is a most dreadful thing, and therefore to affirm it concerning all those persons, whom the Proposition refers unto it that which (for my part) I dare not do. Judicious Interpreters conceive (and that not without Reason) that, that Book of the Living which some in Scripture are said to have their Names blotted out of, is meant concerning the