Ib. p. 272.
Therefore we humbly crave that your Majesty will here declare, that it is your Majesty's pleasure that none be punished or troubled for not using the Book of Common Prayer, till it be effectually reformed by divines of both persuasions equally deputed thereunto.
The dispensing power of the Crown not only acknowledged, but earnestly invoked! Cruel as the conduct of Laud and that of Sheldon to the Dissentients was, yet God's justice stands clear towards them; for they demanded that from others, which they themselves would not grant. They were to be allowed at their own fancies to denounce the ring in marriage, and yet impowered to endungeon, through the magistrate, the honest and peaceable Quaker for rejecting the outward ceremony of water in Baptism, as seducing men to take it as a substitute for the spiritual reality;—though the Quakers, no less than themselves, appealed to Scripture authority—the Baptist's own contrast of Christ's with the water Baptism.
Ib. p. 273.
We are sure that kneeling in any adoration at all, in any worship, on any Lord's Day in the year, or any week day between Easter and Pentecost, was not only disused, but forbidden by General Councils, &c.—and therefore that kneeling in the act of receiving is a novelty contrary to the decrees and practice of the Church for many hundred years after the Apostles.
Was not this because kneeling was the agreed sign of sorrow and personal contrition, which was not to be introduced into the public worship on the great day and the solemn seasons of the Church's joy and thanksgiving? If so, Baxter's appeal to this usage is a gross sophism, a mere pun.
Ib. p. 308.
Baxter's Exceptions to the Common Prayer Book.
- Order requireth that we begin with reverent prayer to God for his acceptance and assistance, which is not done.