[251] [“What if ecclesiastical stories be deficient in telling us the times and places of their church assemblies? Is therefore the word of God deficient, or the church deficient, because human stories are deficient?... Yet sometimes their own inquisitors confess, that the churches of the Waldenses, or men of that way, have been extant a tempore apostolorum.” Cotton’s Answer, p. 69.]
[252] [“My words are misreported: and the contradiction ariseth from his misreport. For God’s people and godly persons are not all one. Any church members may be called God’s people, as being in external covenant with him, and yet they are not always godly persons. God’s people may be so enthralled to anti-christ, as to separate them utterly from Christ, both as head of the visible and invisible church; but godly persons cannot be so enthralled.” Cotton’s Answer, p. 71.]
[253] [“He requireth that we should cut off ourselves from hearing the ministry of the parishes in England, as being the ministry of a national, or parishional church, whereof both the church estate is falsely constituted, and all the ministry, worship, and government thereof false also. If he speak of the national church government, we must confess the truth, there indeed is truth fallen and falsehood hath prevailed much.—All of them are forsaken of Truth, and can challenge no warrant of truth but falsely.” Cotton’s Answer, pp. 77, 84.]
[254] [“If the examiner had been pleased to have read Mr. Brightman on Rev. xviii. 4, he might find I was not the first that interpreted either that place in Isaiah, or this in Revelation, of a local separation.” Cotton’s Answer, p. 87.]
[255] [“The two causes of God’s indignation against England—I would rather say Amen to them, than weaken the weight of them. Only I should so assent to the latter, as not to move for a toleration of all dissenters, dissenters in fundamentals.” Cotton’s Answer, p. 89.]
[256] [“Our joining with the ministers of England in hearing of the word and prayer, doth not argue our church-communion with the parish churches in England, much less with the national church.” Mr. Cotton then proceeds to deny that Mr. Williams was persecuted, or that he admonished them humbly and faithfully. His banishment was no persecution; his statement of his opinions no admonition. Cotton’s Answer, p. 101.]
[257] [“Who seeth not, that in these words I express not mine own reasoning or meaning, but his; and that I expressly say, the true meaning of the text will nothing more reach to his purpose; and so bring in his reason in form of an enthymeme, which he draws from it?” Cotton’s Answer, p. 105.]
[258] [“Sure I am, we look at infants as members of our church, as being federally holy, but I am slow to believe that all of them are regenerate, or truly godly.” Cotton’s Answer, p. 108.]
[259] [“These are palpable mistakes of those words of mine, which I expressed as the sum of his words, which he through haste conceived to be mine.” Ib. p. 108.]
[260] [“We wholly avoid national, provincial, and diocesan government of the churches by episcopal authority; we avoid their prescript liturgies, and communion with open scandalous persons in any church order; ... it is a continual sorrow of heart, and mourning of our souls that there is yet so much of those notorious evils which he nameth ... suffered to thrust themselves into the fellowship of the churches, and to sit down with the saints at the Lord’s table. But yet I count all these but remnants of pollution, when as the substance of the true estate of churches abideth in their congregational assemblies.” Cotton’s Answer, p. 108.]