Ib. p. 188.

  Or if they would not yield to this at all, we might have communion
  with them as Christians, without acknowledging them for Pastors.

Observe the inconsistency of Baxter.  No Pastor, no Church; no Church, no Christ; and yet he will receive them as Christians:  much to his honor as a Christian, but not much to his credit as a logician.

Ib. p. 189.

We are agreed that as some discovery of consent on both parts (the pastors and people) is necessary to the being of the members of a political particular Church:  so that the most express declaration of that consent is the most plain and satisfactory dealing, and most obliging, and likest to attain the ends.

In our Churches, especially in good livings, there is such an overflowing fullness of consent on the part of the Pastor as supplies that of the people altogether; nay, to nullify their declared dissent.

Ib. p. 194.

By the establishment of what is contained in these twelve propositions or articles following, the Churches in these nations may have a holy communion, peace and concord, without any wrong to the consciences or liberties of Presbyterians, Congregational, Episcopal, or any other Christians.

Painfully instructive are these proposals from so wise and peaceable a divine as Baxter.  How mighty must be the force of an old prejudice when so generally acute a logician was blinded by it to such palpable inconsistencies!  On what ground of right could a magistrate inflict a penalty, whereby to compel a man to hear what he might believe dangerous to his soul, on which the right of burning the refractory individual might not be defended as well?

Ib. p. 198.

To which ends * * I think that this is all that should be required of any Church or member ordinarily to be professed:  In general I do believe all that is contained in the sacred canonical Scriptures, and particularly I believe all explicitly contained in the ancient Creed, &c.

To a man of sense, but unstudied in the context of human nature, and from having confined his reading to the writers of the present and the last generation unused to live in former ages, it must seem strange that Baxter should not have seen that this test is either all or nothing.  And the Creed!  Is it certain that the so called Apostles’ Creed was more than the mere catechism of the Catechumens?  Was it the Baptismal Creed of the Eastern or Western Church, especially the former?  The only test really necessary, in my opinion, is an established Liturgy.

Ib. p. 201.

As reverend Bishop Ussher hath manifested that the Western Creed, now called the Apostles’ (wanting two or three clauses that now are in it) was not only before the Nicene Creed, but of much further antiquity, that no beginning of it below the Apostles’ days can be found.

Remove these two or three clauses, and doubtless the