A Forerunner to a Large Review of the Dispute Concerning Infant Baptism, Treatise · Section 4
SECT. IV. Mr. Bs. citations from my writings advantage him not.
AFter the speech of Tertullian he filles a whole page and more with passages out of sundry of my writings, and in the beginning gives this terrible title to them [Mr. Tombes self condemnation] and [ad hominem] as if he had an argument from my self against me. The first passage is out of my treatise of scandals pag. 323. where I reckon Anabaptists among Hereticks and grievous wolves. To which I answer, 1. Mr. B. knowes I deny my self to be an Anabaptist, though not my own baptisme after believing or baptizing of believers, which Christ injoyned me, Mat. 28. 19. Mark 16. 16. with preaching the Gospel: Nor doth Mr. B. or ever will prove that for this I am to be termed an Anabaptist, or that the pretended baptism of Infants is a discharge of that duty Christ requires of being baptized into his name common to all Christians, Ephes. 4. 5. 2. Mr. B. himself pag. 10. yields me an absolution in these words [on the one side some think it no lesse then heresie to deny infant-baptism, and to require rebaptizing; not that the generality of Sober Divines (among which I hope Mr. B. reckons me) do so, but for the rest of the errors, which almost ever do accompany it] which Mr. B. might have imagined to have been my mind in the passage he cites, having been my answer in a Sermon at Bewdley to this very objection of the Parson there in the pulpit, of which I can hardly think Mr. B. to have been ignorant. Other considerations of the time of printing that book might have occasioned M. B. to have put that construction on my words, were he or any of my Antagonists willing to give my words or actions their due interpretation. The other passages condemne me not till I be proved an agent for separation, seedesman of tares: which Mr. B. cannot prove, though he tells me pag. 188. he hath as good evidence that I am a Sect-Master as that I am a Christian, because I preach, dispute, talke, and endeavor as zealously to promote my opinion as I do for the Christian Faith. To which I answer, my opinion is no other then the command of Christ, and if we speak according to scripture, to preach for baptisme of believers is to preach for Christian faith. 2. Yet I deny that I preach with a like zeal for that particular point as for greater points of repentance from dead works, & faith towards God in Christ incarnate, dead, risen, ascended, to come again, &c. my Bewdley auditors besides others will I doubt not witnesse against this calumny. 3. But were it true that I did preach so zealously for my opinion, yet sith my actions tend not to make a party to follow me, but only endeavour to reform a corruption like those our Saviour opposeth Mat. 23. Mark 7. there is no shew of making a sect in my actions, though I were mistaken in them. The passage from the same treatise pa. 103. concerning an Hypocrites falling foully, doth not justify his exposition of Mat. 7. 16. It proves we oft know an hypocrite by his actions, it is nothing at all to prove a false prophet by his evil manners. The other two passages yield him no advantage for his proving infants disciples from Acts 15. 10. but are against him. For his prooflies on this, That the yokew as put on Infants, and nothing was put on them but circumcision: but those passages speak of the ordinances of the Jewes, and with circumcision all the legal ceremonies. If Mr. B. mean more by the yoke, Acts 15. 10. as the doctrines and commands, sure the Teachers did not put that on them till they taught them, which was not in infancy. And therefore my words will not help him as will appear in the examining his first argument. All hitherto produced by him, though by his placing it in the forefront he seems to have made account of it, is but paper-shot, brutum fulmen, a crack without force. I go on to the Epistles.