I cannot refrain from again expressing my surprise at the frequency and the undoubting positiveness of this assertion in so great a scholar, so profound a Patrician, as Jeremy Taylor was. He appears
bona fide
to have believed the absurd fable of this Creed having been a pic-nic to which each of the twelve Apostles contributed his
symbolum
. Had Jeremy Taylor taken it for granted so completely and at so early an age, that he read without attending to the various passages in the Fathers and ecclesiastical historians, which shew the gradual formation of this Creed? It is certainly possible, and I see no other solution of the problem.
Ib.
s. ix. p. 153.
Judge not, that ye be not judged
. The dread of these words is, I fear, more influential on my spirit than either the duty of charity or my sense of Taylor's high merits, in enabling me to struggle against the strong inclination to pass the sentence of dishonesty on the reasoning in this paragraph. Had I met the passage in Richard Baxter or in Bishop Hall, it would have made no such unfavourable impression. But Taylor was so acute a logician, and had made himself so completely master of the subject, that it is hard to conceive him blind to sophistry so glaring. I am myself friendly to Infant Baptism, but for that reason feel more impatience of any unfairness in its defenders.
Ib.