Ib. p. 136.

And therefore having myself now written this history of myself, notwithstanding my protestation that I have not in anything wilfully gone against the truth, I expect no more credit from the reader than the self-evidencing light of the matter, with concurrent rational advantages from persons, and things, and other witnesses, shall constrain him to.

I may not unfrequently doubt Baxter’s memory, or even his competence, in consequence of his particular modes of thinking; but I could almost as soon doubt the Gospel verity as his veracity.

Book I. Part II. p.139.

The following Book of this Work is interesting and most instructive as an instance of Syncretism, and its Epicurean ‘clinamen’, even when it has been undertaken from the purest and most laudable motives, and from impulses the most Christian, and yet its utter failure in its object, that of tending to a common centre.  The experience of eighteen centuries seems to prove that there is no practicable ‘medium’ between a Church comprehensive (which is the only meaning of a Catholic Church visible) in which A. in the North or East is allowed to advance officially no doctrine different from what is allowed to B. in the South or West;—­and a co-existence of independent Churches, in none of which any further unity is required but that between the minister and his congregation, while this again is secured by the election and continuance of the former depending wholly on the will of the latter.

Perhaps the best state possible, though not the best possible state, is where both are found, the one established by maintenance, the other by permission; in short that which we now enjoy.  In such a state no minister of the former can have a right to complain, for it was at his own option to have taken the latter; ‘et volenti nulla fit injuria’.  For an individual to demand the freedom of the independent single Church when he receives L500 a year for submitting to the necessary restrictions of the Church General, is impudence and Mammonolatry to boot.

Ib. p. 141.

They (the Erastians) misunderstood and injured their brethren, supposing and affirming them to claim as from God a coercive power over the bodies or purses of men, and so setting up ’imperium in imperio’; whereas all temperate Christians (at least except Papists) confess that the Church hath no power of force, but only to manage God’s word unto men’s consciences.

But are not the receivers as bad as the thief?  Is it not a poor evasion to say:—­“It is true I send you to a dungeon there to rot, because you do not think as I do concerning some point of faith;—­but this only as a civil officer.  As a divine I only tenderly entreat and persuade you!” Can there be fouler hypocrisy in the Spanish Inquisition than this?

Ib. p. 142.