The divine right of infant-baptism asserted and proved from Scripture and antiquity. By Increase…The divine right of infant-baptisme asserted and proved from Scripture and antiquity. By Increase…

Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto.

This Error is oftentimes the first step of the Lords dereliction; yea departure from God begins here. Many an Apostate Professor of Religion, that here he began first to decline from God. Blessed Dr. Winter (once my special friend, whom for honours sake I mention) in his Sermons of Infant-baptism, saith, that some have confessed that when they were inclining to the Anabaptists, they found their hearts sitting loose from all former owned principles of Truth, & as the first matter ready to receive any form, Impression or error whatsoever. And the same Author observeth, that an Anabaptist who was executed for a Capital crime at London, confessed, that from the Time of his going under water, he sensibly found God departing from him, How few of that persuasion at this day, but that which is worse then merely through a weak and scrupulous Conscience to question the lawfulness of Infant baptism, is too truly to be affirmed of them? Are they not generally of a bad Spirit? Bitter Enemies to the Lords most eminent Servants? yea, to his faithful Ambassadors, spitting the cruel venom of Asps against them. A black mark! It was formerly good Divinity among those blessed Souls, the old Puritans, that lived in the days of our Fathers, that Love to the Ministers of God as such, is a sign of grace; what then shall be thought of those that hate the Ministry? To snarl at the Shepherds is no sign of a sheep. And as for other Errors, hath not Anabaptism been the Trojan Horse out of which an Iliad of them hath issued forth? Mr. Baxter hath said enough on that Argument, showing how Anabaptistry hath been the ordinary inlet to the most horrid opinions, and he professeth that of the multitudes of Anabaptists that he was acquainted with, he could not call to mind one that stopped there. Alstedius writeth of fourteen ⟨p. 22⟩several Sects of Anabaptists, & all of them tainted with other most vile opinions. The Anabaptists in Holland formerly were for the most part Arminians; And many of them Socinians. Whence a late learned Professor saith, Anabaptist a est indectus Socinianus. Servetus (that blasphemous Arian) was an Anabaptist, being wont to call the Baptism of Infants, an horrible Abomination.