main impenitent, or that wilfully refuse to come to their
Pastors to be instructed, or to answer such probable accusations; and
to continue such exclusion of them till they have made a credible
profession of repentance, and then to receive them again to the
communion of the Church;--provided there be place for due appeals to
superior power.

Suppose only such men Pastors as are now most improperly, whether as
boast or as sneer, called Evangelical, what an insufferable tyranny
would this introduce! Who would not rather live in Algiers? This alone
would make this minute history of the ecclesiastic factions invaluable,
that it must convince all sober lovers of independence and moral
self-government, how dearly we ought to prize our present Church
Establishment with all its faults.

Ib. p. 272.

Therefore we humbly crave that your Majesty will here declare, that it
is your Majesty's pleasure that none be punished or troubled for not
using the Book of Common Prayer, till it be effectually reformed by
divines of both persuasions equally deputed thereunto.

The dispensing power of the Crown not only acknowledged, but earnestly
invoked! Cruel as the conduct of Laud and that of Sheldon to the
Dissentients was, yet God's justice stands clear towards them; for they
demanded that from others, which they themselves would not grant. They
were to be allowed at their own fancies to denounce the ring in
marriage, and yet impowered to endungeon, through the magistrate, the
honest and peaceable Quaker for rejecting the outward ceremony of water
in Baptism, as seducing men to take it as a substitute for the spiritual
reality;--though the Quakers, no less than themselves, appealed to
Scripture authority--the Baptist's own contrast of Christ's with the
water Baptism.

Ib. p. 273.

We are sure that kneeling in any adoration at all, in any worship, on
any Lord's Day in the year, or any week day between Easter and
Pentecost, was not only disused, but forbidden by General Councils,
&c.--and therefore that kneeling in the act of receiving is a novelty
contrary to the decrees and practice of the Church for many hundred
years after the Apostles.

Was not this because kneeling was the agreed sign of sorrow and personal
contrition, which was not to be introduced into the public worship on
the great day and the solemn seasons of the Church's joy and
thanksgiving? If so, Baxter's appeal to this usage is a gros