 | 32. Mather first publicly answered questions about membership in
Church-Government and Church-Covenant
, 10-23, 30.
|
| 33.
A Platform of Church Discipline
, Chapter 12, 18.
|
| 34. Morgan,
Visible Saints
, 113, 128.
|
| 35.
Church-Government and Church-Covenant
, 20.
|
| 36. A Plea was never published; it may have been commissioned by the Cambridge synod. Part I of the manuscript was an answer to William Rathband's
A Narrative of Church Courses in New England
(London, 1644). The "Preface" of "A Plea" is dated 1om 2d (Dec. 2), 1645. In the "Introduction," Mather says that Rathband wrote the thirty-two questions answered in
Church-Government and Church-Covenant
. Mather expressed uncertainty about baptism in a letter to William Rathband, June 25, 1636 copied into A Plea, Pt. I, 362-70. His change of mind is clear in portions of the manuscript composed before 1645. See Pt. I, 171, Pt. II, 71-73. The manuscript is in the M.H.S.
|
| 37. A Plea, Pt. II, 71; Richard Mather,
A Disputation Concerning Church Members and their Children
(London, 1659), 20-23.
|
| 38. A Plea, Pt. I, 350-51; Pt. II, 64.
|
| 39. Richard Mather to Thomas Shepard, April, 1636, in John A. Albro,
The Life of Thomas Shepard
(Boston, 1870), 219.
|
| Shepard's dissatisfaction is explained in his letter of April 2 1636 in Albro, 212-18.
|
| 40. A Plea, I, 350-51.
|
| 41.
Ibid
. I, 52.
|
| 42.
Ibid
. I, 66.
|
|