THE DOCTRINE OF BAPTISMS. The Lord, foreseeing how great an evil it would be in the church, to leave men either to their own or other men’s opinions and judgment in the things of God, did, in the very beginning of the gospel, command and bind all the faithful to hear Christ alone ; saying from Heaven, that we might give absolute credit to his voice, “ This is my beloved Son, in whom 1 am well pleased, hear him:” and the more the faithful have kept to the word of Christ, the more they have been free from errour ; and the more they have left this, and turned aside after the doctrines of men, though men in some measure faithful and holy, the more have they been perverted and seduced ; insomuch that the true church of God, and the very faithful themselves, have received, held, and maintained, divers errours, false doctrines, and opinions, even for many ages and fenerations; yea, and have not been altogether free from some, from the very apostles’ time: and because many, or most godly men, in former ages, held, such and such opinions, therefore the following ages have taken them upon trust from them, and have entertained them as sure and certain, though not at all consulting in those points with the great Doctor and Apostle of the Now Testament, Jesus Christ. And thus have the very elect themselves been drawn into much errour, though they have still had Christ for their foundation, and were built on him so firmly by faith, that the gates of hell could not prevail against them. Now, to free the faithful from the former mistake, and consequently from all errour, there is no other way than this, wholly to forsake the doctrines of men, and to lay by all those opinions that wc have sucked in from our ▼ery cradles, and which are now become even a natural
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