Of Nonconformists, Thorndike speaks in distinct and decided terms. Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists, are guilty of schism. This he asserts over and over again; and of his opinion respecting schism, he leaves us in no doubt. Schism may, indeed, be unjust on both sides,--a favourite idea with Thorndike;--and it may be such as that salvation may be had on both sides; but this lenient view of the subject, he expresses only in relation to the differences between the Eastern and the Western Churches, between the Church of England and the Church of Rome. Schism, as committed by Nonconformists, he ever represents in the darkest colours. Presbyterian baptism, he affirms, to be no baptism. Their service is an imposture; in opposing Episcopacy, and setting up their synods, they erect altar against altar. It is mere equivocation to call their congregations Churches, and their ordinances sacraments. It was unwarrantable, he maintains, under the Commonwealth, to communicate with Presbyterians and Independents; although the moral impossibility of communing with them could not justify communing with Papists. The theory of the Independents he holds to be more suitable to Christianity than that of the Presbyterians, but he says it is impracticable, without Scriptural authority, and not less free from schism.[445] He counts the doctrine of justification, as he supposed it to be held by some Nonconformists, no other than a dreadful heresy, worse even than the Romanist doctrine of justification. Yet we find, in one place, this cold gleam of charity:--“I confess, as afore I allowed the Church of Rome some excuse from the unreasonableness of their adversaries; so here, considering the horrible scandals given by that communion in standing so rigorously upon laws so visibly ruinous to the service of God, and the advancement of Christianity, and the difficulty of finding that mean in which the truth stands between the extremes (as our Lord Christ between the thieves, saith Tertullian), I do not proceed to give the salvation of poor souls for lost, that are carried away with the pretence of reformation in the change that is made, even to hate, and persecute, by word or by deed, those who cannot allow it.” The book in which this passage occurs was published in 1659. Anabaptists, Thorndike pronounces to be schismatics, if not heretics:--“As for the ground of that opinion, which moves them to break up the seal of God, marked upon those that are baptized unto the hope of salvation upon the obligation of Christianity, by baptizing them anew, to the hope of salvation, without the obligation of Christianity; whether they are to be counted heretics therefore or not, let who will dispute. This, I may justly infer, they take as sure a course to murder the souls of those whom they baptize again, as of those whom they let go out of the world unbaptized.”[446]