114 LIFE OF RICHARD BAXTER. people, and differed fromothers but in the point of infant baptism, or at most in the points of predestination and free-will andperse veranee, as the Lutherans from the Calvinists, and the krminians from the Contra--rernonstrants. And I found in all antiquity, that though infant baptism was held lawful by the church, yet some, with Tertullian and Nazienzen, thought it most convenient to make no haste, and the rest left the timeof baptism to every one's liber- ty." " So that, in the primitive church, some were baptized in in- fancy, and some a little before their death, and none were forced, but all left free." " As to doctrinal differences also, I soon perceived that it was hard to find a man that discerned the true state of the several con- troversies ; and that when unrevealed points, uncertain to all, were laid aside, and the controversies about words were justly separated from the controversies about things, the differences about things, which remained, were fewer and smaller than most of the contend- ers perceived or would believe." " What I began to write about any of these doctrinal differences, I will now pass by; because it is not such differences that I am now to speak of. "I perceived, then, that every party before mentioned, having some truth or good in 'which h was more eminent than the rest, it was no impossible thing to separate all that from the error and the evil; andthat, amongall thetruths which theyheld, either in common or in controversy, there was no contradiction ; and therefore he that would promote the welfare ofthe church must do his4est to pro- mote all the truth and good which was held by every part, and to leave out all their errors and their evil, and not to take up all that any party had espousedas their own. "The things which I disliked as erroneous or evil in each party were these : " In the.Erastians, I disliked, 1. That theymade too light ofthe power of the ministry and church, andof excommunication." "2. That they make the articles of the holy catholic church' and the communionof saints' too insignificant, bymaking church com- munion more common to the impenitent' than Christwould have it, and so dishonored Christ by dishonoring his church." " 3. That they misunderstood and injured their brethren, supposing and af- firming them to claim as from God a coercive power over the bodies and purses of men, and so setting up imperium in imperio; whereas all temperate Christians confess that the church hath no power of force, but only to manage God's word unto men's con- sciences. "In the Diocesan party I utterly disliked, " 1. Their extirpation of the true disciplineof Christ. as we con-
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