Baptism in a proportionable time if there be no intercoming excusable impediment like as the same were of Circumcision And now also before I set upon your next Consideration consider with your self whether your Doctrine of baptizing Believers onely and thereupon your not baptizing of Infants of Believers until they come to have actual Faith and to a confession of it doth not rather overthrow the state and nature of Christs visible Church under the Gospel I have largely proved before and that out of Texts you here cite to the contrary Romans 1.7 1 Cor. 1.2 c. That Christs visible Church under the Gospel consisteth and is made up of visible and outward members and professors some of which though unknown unto us are members also of the invisible Church under the Gospel and I have also clearly shewed you that Baptism is a means of entrance and admission into the visible Church whereby Infants who by vertue of Gods Covenant may also belong to the invisible Church as members are reckoned enrolled even made members of the visible Church Nâ—w then whether of us do overthrow the State and Nature of Christs visible Church under the Gospel we who help to uphold and increase it by our ad nitting and initiating of our Infants to be visible members thereof through our baptising of them in their Infancy or you who by your not baptising of them for the space of 15. or 16. years and more and sometimes as much more do all that while with-hold visible members from the Church yea and do all that while leave them to a visible standing and being under the kingdom of darkness though invisibly it may be otherwise which is most opposite to the Church of Christ Let the next Reader judge for you are neither fit nor able to judge herein as who are already prejudiced prejudicated and prepossessed with a Spirit of delusion as to the Nature and State of Christs visible Church under the Gospel 3 You bid me Consider That Infants babtism it overthrows the end for which true babtism was appointed For the Chief one of Christs true babtism of beleevers was to distinguish the true Church from the World Col. 2.12 Compared with Verse 20 Gal. 3.26 and 27 Act. 2.41 But Infant baptism overthroweth this distinction because all are admitted in by it and no distinction made Sir I not think of it until just now or else I should have asked you a Quaere Why you alwayes write it Bahatism when as you are so great an enemy to Babe-baptism I shall be bold to answer it thus because you do so babble about baptism For is not this in present as there hath been much of it before profane and vain babling which the Apostle bids you shun to talk of The end for which baptism is appointed and then to call it a Chief one And then to instance in the distinguishing of the true Church from the world as a chief one which is the inferiour one and lastly to cite holy Scriptures which are too no such purpose is not this prophane and vain babling But I answer to the matter 1. It is an unsound and lame assertion or proposition to say that Infants baptism is to be rejected for ever as you conclude your Considerations with and therefore mean so in every one if it should overthrow one chief end for which true baptism was appointed when as in the mean it upholds five other ends as chief if not chiefer which I have reckoned up to you in my fift warrantable Reason for baptism to which I refer you 2. How will you prove Infants baptism to overthrow the end why true baptism was appointed because it overthroweth the chief one which was to distinguish the true Church from this but how if there be the ends as well as the end why true baptism was appointed how if amongst the ends there be chiefer ones than that chief one you mention how if Infants-baptism do not overthrow those five chiefer ones though supposed onely it should overthrow one chief one Here be now some Quaeres for you But now how prove you also The chief one end of true baptism to be to distinguish the true Church from the world you cite Col. 2 12. and 20. There is mention made of baptism and the world and a spiritual end and effect of baptism that therein the Colossians were buried in Christ and risen with him alluding to the ancient manner of baptising by immersion and emersion to signifie them both they were freed from the Rudiments and Ordinances of the World that is of the Legal oeconomy of the Jewes and what 's all this to the purpose of baptisms being a chief end to distinguish the true Church from the Heathen World which is also but an external end And though the Text speak of grown persons and Heathens converted yet it is true also of all elect and regenerate Infant of which there are many you cannot deny it that they are buried with Christ in baptism and risen with him c. So that you get nothing by this Text against Infants-baptism They rather gain by you hence for their baptism But ther 's nothing at all gained for the distinguishing the true Church from the World by baptism as the chief end thereof So that other Text Galathians 3.26 Is nothing to your purpose yea against your purpose for it speaks onely of the inward and spiritual effects of Baptism and of baptism into Christ that thereby the Galathians had put on Christ and were so incorporated as they were one in Christ so that there was neither Jew nor Gentile bond or free So far is this Text from shewing the distinction of the true Church from the World to be the chief end of baptism that it rather and onely shews the spiritual Union of true Christians with Christ to be one end and a chief one which also all Infants regenerate and baptised into Christ do attain unto as well as these grown Galathians and converted Heathens I professe I never read in all my life time Texts of Scripture more impertinently cited and I had once thought to have let your Citations of the word alone and onely have replyed to your words But that I honor the word and you do dishonor it by citing it for that which is not in it even as Christ said he honored the Father but the Jewes dishonored him by saying he came not from the Father Your last place though it comes some what neerer that the former as to an external addition of the 3000. Souls unto the Church by baptism yet it as far from mentioning any distinction of the true Church from the world and making it the chief end of baptism as the other before 3. Infant baptism doth not overthrow but support that end the distinguishing of the true Church from the World that is from the World out of the Church which is the Pagan and Heathenish World you must mean this or else
than with your manly or rather unmanly pride envy uncharitableness roughness and presumption whereout it is that you so despise and offend the little ones withholding them from their due of Baprism rail and revilethe Churches of God and the Ministers of Jesus Christ These things I tell you grieve the good and mild Spirit of God and send it away sad from such hearts and at last if presevered in will quench its holy fervours And I wonder very much that any people should run after you as they do who leave their Infants and Children under no better a condition or denomination than of Infidels and unbelievers for so you tell them that their condition by nature and their seed is the same which Pagan-Gentiles and till they know God and believe in him open and professed enemies of God whereas upon their and our nature that is natural Generation or Procreation of Seed there is the Covenant of Grace established and set up which you see at large Ephes 2.3 and 4 c. That we were by Nature the Children of wrath as well as others when out of Covenant You profess much Scripture Learn to speak in that Holy Language and to call Children of Christians Christians by Nature and not sinners of the Gentiles or Pagans for so Saint Paul speaketh Gal. 2.15 We who are Jews by Nature and not sinners of the Gentiles How Jewer by Nature because they were the Children of the Prophets and of the Covenant born under it Act. 3.25 So are our Children Christians by Nature how not sinners of the Gentiles because born Jewes had not their sins imputed to them though born in original sin as the Gentiles the Covenant being a remedy appointed against it and a means to bring them into Gods favour again and so are our Children not sinners of the Gentiles You that are Parents and are carefull enough to keep sure your inheritances and joyntures of earthly things to you and your Children suffer not your Children to be wrangled out of their birth-right and joynt inheritance they have with your selves in the Covenant of Grace under the name and notion of unbelievers when as the Scriptures never calleth them so but a holy Seed and God hath made you and you Children joynt-partakers of the Covenant and the Seals thereof I have been the longer in this for that I would lay therein some ground-work for something to follow I will be very short in your next Quaere Section II. Of Baptism making Christians and how YOu ask whether Baptism maketh a man or woman a Christian without Faith and following of Christ in all his Commands and Steps left upon Record for our imitation This is a short Quaere and therefore shall be soon answered as not seeing to what purpose it is for you or against me I shall therefore briefly answer something to it out of Rom. 2.28 and 29. distinguishing of the sorts of Christians and the parts of Baprism as he doth of the sorts of Jews and parts of Circumcision As Circumcision which was outward in the flesh made though I do not here approve of this your word and therefore I will use another shewed or declared the Jew outwardly or the outward Jew so Baptism which is outward in the flesh sheweth or declareth the Christian outwardly or the outward Christian And both may be without Faith and following of Christ in all his Commands c. as in Esau and Simon Magus the one Circumcised the other Baptized Again As Circumcision which is of the heart in the Spirit not in the Letter made for here your word may go a Jew inwardly or the inward Jew So Baptism which is of the heart in the Spirit not in the water onely maketh a Christian inwardly or the inward Christian neither of these can be without Faith which parifieth the heart or the fruits of Faith in following of Christ c. Now as the Apostle saith surther He is not a Jew and that is not Circumcision so may I He is not a Christian and that is not Baptism namely approved of God and avaylable to Salvation which are outward onely and literal and therefore every true Jew or Christian must indevour after Faith and Following Christ to speak as you do and to find and get the inward and spiritual substance and nature of these Sacraments which is to worship God in Spirit to believe and rejoyce in Christ Jesus having no confidence in the flesh Phil. 3.3 to put off the sinsull body of the flesh Col. 2.11 That we may draw neer with a true heart in full affurance of Faith having our hearts sprinckled from an evill Conscience and our bodies washed in pure water Heb. 10.22 and may have the washing of Regeneration and the Sprinkling of the Blood of our Lord Jesus within us as Tit. 3.5 and 1 Pet. 1.2 Again There are Made Christians and there are Born Christians or a Proselytical or Parental Christianity As for such who are of the Pagan and Heathen world by Nature They can no otherwise be made Christians or Members of the Church but by a lawful Baptism upon their accession unto the Church and expression of their Faith so the Proselvtes of old were and did whom Baptism made Christians and outward members of the visible Church upon their Confession of Faith like as their Faith if true made them Saints and inward members of the Invisible Church But for them Infants who are in the Church and within the Covenant descended of Parents and in Covenant these are Born Christians and Church-members visible I mean not as born of Christian Parents but as born in and under the Christian Covenant so that their Baptism doth not so much make them to be Christians but only shew and declare them to be such as I said and seal them as Covenanters And howsoever a Positive expression of Faith explicitely be necessary unto a Heathen Born for his Admission unto his Christianity or Church-membership yet it is not so unto a Christian Born for their Christanity or Church-membership is their Birth-Privilege and Baptism is but their Instalment or inrolment and is but as the Inauguration or unction unto a Prince Born Faith I confess and I mean saving and justifying Faith and so must you seeing you joyn thereto the following of Christ in all his Commands and Steps left upon Record for our Imitation is absolutely requisite unto Born Christians as a Condition to their partaking and enjoyment of the Benefits and Fruits of Baptism but not absolutely required as the condition to their comming and engaging to the Covenant to the which they have a good Title and Right without present actual Faith unless you will affirm that all the Jewes who came to Circumcision had the like and all the whole Congregation of Israel man woman and child who Deut. 29. entred into Covenant with God had a saving and a justifying Faith In a word Baptism without Faith may declare a visible Christian but incompleatly
a Seal of the inward washing by his Spirit which is also called the washing or Laver of Regeneration Titus 3.5 Because the inward washing of the Spirit in Regeneration is sealed with the outward washing in Baptism Therefore I find it in the Ecclesiastick Histories That in those ages and places where and when the vilenesse of original pollution was best understood of Parents of Children as most preached of by the Fathers of the Church as in Augustins dayes what running there was od Parents with their Children in their armes to Baptism and why not there being no other visible ordinance appointed of God in the Church but Baptism for the washing away the guilt and filth of that Birthfin and pollution And was it not so of old wherefore did God command the Infants of the Jewes to be circumcised and wherefore were they so circumcised in the fore skin of their flesh but to shew tht the very nature was defiled which they received by carnal generation from their Parents and which they were like to traduce and conveigh to their Children and to testifie what need they had to have such original Corruption and uncircumcision of the flesh to be done away by the clensing and Regeneration Spirit of Christ sealed in their outward Circumcision And that Circumcision in the former as Baptism in the latter dispensation do both poynt at this one and the same thing the Cleming away of the pollution of the natural birth by the Spirit of Christ there is a clear Text Colossians 2.11 12 13. We now are fallen into those days wherein there have been not only shaken but rased many foundations and principles of the Doctrines of Christ especially two of those six in Hebrewes 6.2 Which are Repentance from dead workes a chief of which is original sin and the doctrine of Baptism and wherein a Spirit of Pelagianism hath entred into many and goeth about preaching unto Parents a freedom from original sin pollution in their Infants as derived from Adam and so proclaming a liberty from baptifing of them just as the impostors foretold of by Saint Peter whilest they promise them liberty they themselves are the Servants of Corruption 2 Pet. 2.19 It concerneth us therefore so much the more who are Master-builders in the House of God or but Repairers of the breaches to uphold and maintain these two foundations of the Christians Faith and to teach the people first that as themselves were so their Children are defiled with original sin and pollution by their natural birth and then next that there is no other ordinary way of clensing and washing them but by the regenerating and purifying Spirit and Grace of Christ Signified Sealed and Exhibited in andby the outward washing of Water in Baptism as pleaseth God Again I say not that Baptism doth all this from or by the deed done or work wrought which is their Popish phrase but as our Protestants say either as it is a means to give exhibite Christ with his benefits the which it doth by signification as a particular Certificate assuring forgivenesse of sins or as a token or pledge of the Grace of God confirming it Or as an instrument because in and with the right use of Baptism God confers Grace where and when he pleaseth for it is no Physicall but a Moral Instrument and sets his image or mark of Regeneration upon the party whence Baptisme is called the Laver of Regeneration God is at liberty and may when and how he pleaseth let his Grace accompany his ordinance of Baptism Which way soever God doth work these great things by or in Baptism Methinks it is a potent and invincible reason and warrant for the bringing Infants upon Baptism the onely outward ministerial remedy in the Church for the abating and abolishing the malady of original sin of which even Infants stand guilty born and conceived in it unlesse you would involve Parents in another guilt of neglecting the meanes and cure of that disease which they were instrumental to the bringing their Children into or else that you are of the opinion of the Pelagian Hereticks who held no original sin at all in Infants but actual which they also contracted by Imitation of other wicked whereupon all the Antient and Orthodox Divines urged and pressed them with the Baptism of Infants and made it a foundation and proof of original sin in Infants like as I now go the other way and urge and presse original sin in Infants as a proof and plea or warrant as you call it for the Baptism of Infants as being the only outward ordinary way to begin their cure and Rogeneration more briefly and syllogistically thus take it as I recollect it If Baptism be commanded of God in the Gospel for the washing away the guilt and filth of original and birth sin then all Infants who are Partakers of these are commanded Baptism But Baptism is commanded of God in the Gospel for the washing away the guilt and filth of original and birth-sin Therefore Infants who are Partakers of these are commanded Baptism The first proposition is not questionable the light of Nature and Reason commandeth the use of meanes and medicines to the end and for maladies the sick need the Physician c. Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden c. The second proposition is the matter of the Texts Rom. 6.3 and 4. and Acts 22.16 as hath been declared and so I have reasoned baptism of Infants into a command before I intended it Sirs I speak to you Parents are you willing your little pretty babes should be saved you should be very willing and desirous of it and the rather in that you have been means of conveighing into them a corrupt seed you should labour they might be born again of the incorruptible seed by the Word of God and the Seales thereof one whereof which is fit for them in their Infantile Estate is this Baptism I am speaking of and for If you would have them saved it must be either without or with Regeneration without Regeneration they cannot be saved For Flesh and Blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God That which is born of the Flesh is Flesh a degenerate sinful corrupt thing neither can corruption iherit incorruption Therefore they must be saved with Regeneration for except a man be born again of Water and the Spirit John 3.3.6 He cannot enter into the Kingdom of God That which is born of the Spirit is Spirit a Regenerate sanctified and clean thing If so the Sirs bring forth your Infants and Babes unto the Laver and means of Regeneration present them to the Water of Baptism and wati and pray for the Spirit of God that it would move upon the face of the Waters as it did in the first Generation and so form a spiritual Light out of or in a natural darknesse That the Baptismal Water may be effectual by and through that Spirit of God as Waters of Jordan were
natural hunger and infirmity But if you regard not your Children do you look to your selves and your ends and benefits and amongst these your Honor first Is it not a great honour to you to have a Child counted to some great house and of the Houshould and under the Protection of some Noble-man and is it not a great deal more honour to have a Child counted to the House of God the Church and of the Family and under the safegard of Jesus Christ why then baptise your Child If you stand not so much upon your Honor or theirs yet I am sure you are willing to have comfort of your Child and good hope here is not substance and evidence enough for Faith of its well being whilest it liveth spiritually and after death eternally the way is enter him into the Church of God by Baptism So you hope your Child is preferred and made for ever as you speak when once you had gotten him into some great House and noble Family which are but Cottages to the Church and ignoble to the Family of God Whereas if you with-hold him from Baptism you do leave him to have his visible actual standing abode in the House of darknesse and continue him in an outward case and condition as an alien from the Covenant and a stranger from the Common wealth of Christians what in you lyeth which must needs be both dishonorble and uncomfortable to you the while True indeed you may have comfort from the Covenant only if by some invincible and unvoydable act of Providence intervening your child be prevented and deprived of the Seal thereof which is Baptism full against your will and purpose but if through your default and wilfull detaining of him and Contempt of this Ordinance it so fall out that your Child dye unbaptized He may be saved without the Seal of the Covenant I believe but I dare not promise you herein Salvation or Comfort without Repentance of this your fault and sin against God in his Ordinance And so this shall be my last reason to you Parents for the bringing of your Children to Baptism for that thereby you shall not onely get honour to your selves as I said but give honour to God by your submission unto the Seal also for them to God I say who took order for your Childrens honouring you yea honoured you both by entring into Covenant with both and annexing the Seal of Baptism thereto for your further Comfort and Confirmation When our Saviour offered himself to be Baptized John forbade him saying I have need to be baptised of thee and comest thou to me but Christ took him off saying suffer it to be so now for thus it becommeth us to fulfill all Righteousness Matt. 3.13 14 15. as John the Baptist thought Christ above the Ordinance of Baptism by reason of his great perfection and there be also others as say they are above ordinances in a high conceipt of themselves So some of you Anabaptists think Infants of Christians below the ordinance of Baptism by reason of their great Imperfections Me things our Saviour Christ in this place answereth and resuteth both them and you them by his example who being the Highest in perfection yet stooped down and condescended to the Ordinance of Baptism Therefore none sure not the highest and perfectest amongst men in the Church upon earth are above Ordinances and you by his Doctrine and Exhortation suffer it to be so now for thus it becommeth you to fulfill all Righteousness a part and act whereof is the Seal of the Righteousness of Faith which Baptism is now under the Gospel as Circumcision was under the Law Rom. 4.11 and therefore as the Jewish Parents were diligent to fulfill that Righteousness by putting their Children in Covenant under that Seal of Righteousness Circumcision so ought ye Christian Parents to be carefull to fulfill this Righteonsness ousness and to put your Children in Covenant also under this Seal of Righteousness Baptism Suffer it to be so now suffer little Children to come unto Christ and forbid them not for they have need to come to him and now in his absence to his Ministers to be Baptized For thus it becommeth you as them to fulfill all Righteousness Make not a Nullity of the Seal of Righteousness lest you come at length to make Righteousness it self a Nullity too and now that I am fallen upon this matter of Righteousness I shall turn to you again Sir my Quaerist and ask you if you do not deny Baptism to Infants upon this ground that you think the efficacy of Baptism is seated and founded upon the practical Righteousness of a Professour or Member of the Church manifested in words and deeds Confession and Conversation which if you do as indeed you do and all that stand out against Infant Baptism it is a groundless ground For the Text I just now cited sheweth that it is not so grounded but only upon Covenantal Righteousness and the free grace of God in Christ for so Rom. 4.11 He received the sign of Circumcision à Seal of the Righteousness of Faith which he had being yet uncircumcised that he might be the father of all them that believe c. that Righteousness might be imputed unto them also where you see it or hear it in the very Terms Righteousness of Faith not Life or Works Imputed-Righteousness not inherent or practised which both Abraham had and his Children must have Now though our Christian Infants have no inherent Righteousness or practical manifested unto us by their words or deeds as you require in those you Baptize and therefore put off your Christian Infants untill years of discretion to profess true Faith and years of action to practice good works yet we present and dedicate them in their Infancy by Baptism to Gods mercy and fatherly love in Christ their and our Ruighteousness and Atonement for that we know God hath Righteousness to be imputed unto them by vertue of his Covenant of Grace I come to my seventh and last Warrant which I foresse will bring you to no Justice yet I will serve this also upon you for though now and then in your letter you let fall such a word as Primitive Practice and the good old way yet I know you cannot in your heart abide Antiquity and the Primitive practices of the Church of old for that they are point blank against your blank point of Baptizing onely such believers as can and do make Profession of their Faith in Christ which is but a novel New Light of those Blazings Comets and Meteors that sprung out in Germany some while ago but yesterday in comparison of the Baptisin of the Infants of believers which hath brightly shined out throughout all the Churches in good and full Lustre Sun-like untill the Man in the Moon Muncer his Lunaticks or Moon-Sirs interposed and made some Eclipse thereof in the Churches This therefore is my sixth and last Reason If it hath been an ancient practice
him as the Pharisees did upon our Saviour and have said thou bearest witness of thy self for thy self thy witness is not true they would have given a check or denyal to such a Custom accused it of Novelty or but of Yesterday and so have turned off easily that Argument which of all other lay most heavily upon them the Ancient Churches Custom and Practice in Baptizing Infants But they never did that as who could not deny this And so that other exception against Augustine as if he should utter and urge this in Heat and Passion against Pelagius his Adversary in point of Baptizing of Infants and speak more of the Custom and Practice of the Church than was true falleth of it self For they differed not in that point of Infant-Baptism no nor in the matter of the Custom of the Church herein For so Augustine affirmeth both in his first Book of the Merit and Remission of Sin The Peloagians themselves do grant that little Children are to be Baptized as who cannot come in or stand up against the Authority of the Vniversal Church delivered without doubt or Traditioned by our Lord and his Apostles And again in the eleventh Book against Caelestius and Pelagius He affirms and cites that Caelestius in a Book of his written at Rome acknowledged that Infants in a Book of his wirtten at of sin according to the Rule of the universul Church and according to the sense and meaning of the Gospel and Therefore Pelagius not daring to deny though otherwise impudent enough the General Practice of the Ancient Church in Baptizing Infants as who then and that way might have slipt his neck out of the Collaror Yoke Augustine held him to was feign to shist off that Fathers Argument as well as he could but very poorly and pittifully That the Church Baptized indeed Infants but not for the washing away of original fin which he denyed in Infants but for the better bringing them to the Kingdome of Heaven which Christ said was of such as theirs And truly this makes a great Addition to the Truth of this The Custom and Practice of the Universal Ancient Church in Baptizing lnsants that Pelagius so great a Schollar and Travellour who had seen the Customas and Practices the manners and fasthions of the Affricane and Asiatiqne yea and Europaean Churches being also himself a Brittish born should not as indeed he could not make any denyal or take any exception thereto as who by his own eyes and experience saw found it to be most true and uniform and so I may say our Baptism of Infants is a true Baptism and the Ancient Churches Practice hereof is a true Practice even our enemies themselves being Judges as Deut. 32.31 〈◊〉 why then was not Augustine himself Baptized in his In … y who was such as strong Advocate for the Baptism of Infants the Reason is plain and makes nothing against our Infant Baptism or the General Practice of the Church for neither his Father nor Mother were Christians or Believers when himself was born and they continued so untill a little before their death Augustine himself was not converted from his Manichean Haeresies and other vices untill the 31. year of his age who two years continuing a Catechumen and in the mean time writing somethings to give proof and testimony of the truth of his conversion or of his conversion to the Truth was Baptized himself and his Son Adeodate together like as Ahraham was circumcised with Ismeal his Son on the self-same day These things may be seen in His Confessions I shall need to adde no more for the shewing Infant-Baptism to have been the Custom and Practice of all the former Ancient Churches Augustines Testimony of the same is to me instead of all and as Goliahs Sword to David there is none like that Give it me 1 Sam 21.9 I have taken it and I give it thee not as a single Testimony of one Father for it but as a Quadruple witness of the Universal Church and its Custom and Practice for the point of Paedobaptism being four times expresly deliveced though by one and the same Father Saint Austin Yet I may for more perspicuity sake follow up this General Testimony by one Father unto its Particulars I mean the Covattestations of other particular Fathers in their several ages You have heard what Augustine hath said and written as for that Century For the year 390. 384. and those years wherein he lived Hierom In his Epistle ad Laetam having told her that the good and the evill of little once are imtured much to their Parents he addeth in the middle of that Epistle unless perhaps you think the Sons of Christians is they receive not Baptism They onely are guilty of sin and that the wickedness also thereof is not to be referred or to redound to the Parents who would not give it especially at or in such a time wherein they could not contradict who were to receive it In his Book against the Pelagians towards the end he is for Infant-Baptism and confirms it by allerdging the Authority of Cyprian and his Colleagues In the same third Book against Pelag it is thus Crito i.e. Pelagian saith grant me thus much at lest that they are without sin who cannot sin speaking of Infants To whom Atticus i.e. Hieronimus Answereth I will Grant it if they have been Baptized in Christ and again They are without any Sin through the Grace of God which they have received in Baptism Chrysostom Arch-Bishop of Constantinople For the year 382. in his Homil. to the Neophytes is for the Baptism of Children and in his 40. Homil upon Genes calls Baptism our Circumcision His being not Baptized untill he was 21. years of age doth not prejudice here as whose Father and Mother were not Christians at his birth and who himself was brought up under Libanius an enemy to and a scoffer at Religion but after he was instructed in the Divinity knowledge by Miletus a Bishop and Baptized of him In his Homil ad Neoph having spoken of the Honours and Benefits of Baptism he saith a little from the beginning For this cause we Baptize the little Infants that they may not be defiled with sin that to them may be added Sanctity Righteousness Adoption Inheritance Fraternity of Christ That they may be all his Members and the Habitation of the Spirit In his 40. Homil upon Genes having spoken of Circumcision appointed to the Children of the Jewes and the pain of the Incision he addeth but our Circumcision or the grace of our Baptism brings the medicine without without such dolour and Innumerable benefits with it It hath indeed no definite time set down for it as that hath but it is lawful to receive both in the first and in the middle and in the last age this not made with hands Circumcision in which there is susteined no great pain but the weight of sins are put off and Remission of them is
good to give unto them a full and proportionable answer what pains and time soever it should cost me But that which you propound in your second sheet to me is nothing but certain Considerations of your own against baptism of Infants and about some Texts of Scripture the very froth and barmings of your own head the which if I should let alone unreplied to as once I was resolved would of themselves sink disperse and fall to nothing But lost you should swell and be puffed up in any conceipt of these your considerations as the Bladder is with its own winde I will as briefly as I can with my short breath by reason of my old age blow away your froth and let out your winde that so the hollowness and shallowness of them may appear to the Reader The Title you set over your first Consideration is this More particularly about the Doctrine of Babtism Baptism consider these Arguments proved by clear and plain Scripture Sir this is a false Title to your Tractate for if you would have done here more particularly it should have been and you should have said about the Doctrine of Infant-Baptism for if you bring not Arguments not onely about Baptism as you say but against Infant baptism and these proved by clear and plain Scripture I shall not consider them neither have you considered well of our difference 1. You bid me Consider that the Doctrine of Infants Babtism overthrows the nature of the Covenant of grace and the whoe whole Gospel of Christ why so because the Covenant of grace and Gospel of Christ stands upon the account of faith actual in there one heir own persons as uppears in John 3.36 and John 5.24 But Infants Babtism stand upon the account of the faith in there their Parents or Surtie Sureties although they have none for themselves and so makes faith void and unnesesery unnecessary to the perticipation participation of the Covenant Rom. 4.13 Gal. 3.17 8. But what do I did I not say I would not transcribe your words of your second sheet but I see I must do it for there is so much false-written English in them that I must of necessity do it lest if inscribed to my Answer that may be thought mine But to the matter Baptism of Infants of Believers doth not overthrow but establish the Covenant and Gospel of Grace because it sealeth and executeth it Neither doth the Covenant of Grace and the Gospel stand upon the account of actual Faith in all mens own persons but onely such as being grown in years are converted from Paganism these must make profession of faith before they can come into the Covenant and be sealed But actual faith is not a Condition required as to the Covenant or Seal in Infants Your Text therefore of John 3.36 is not to the purpose as which onely sets everlasting life upon to use your phrase the account of actual faith which I grant and so doth the next Text John 5.24 as appears for that he begins with and speaks of such as do hear the Word of God and beleeve in Christ which is not appliable to Infants but grown men And as to your Inference The baptism of Infants stands upon the account of their being in Covenant together with their Parents and not upon the account of the Faith in their Parents or Sureties but only so far as the Faith of the Parents serves to shew them a seed of the faithful and the Faith of the Sureties undertakes for their education in and profession of Faith afterwards How strangely also do you pervert that Text Romans 4.13 For it is there said the promise was made to Abraham that he should be the heir of the world was not to Abraham and his seed through the Law but through the Righteousnesse of Faith Which he had yet being uncircumcised to whom God upon this account of this faith made the Promise both to himself and his Seed you would have the faith there spoken of to be the faith of the Seed or Infant as holding it necessary to the participation of the Covenant and so falsifie both Covenant and Text which both together with your last Gal. 3.17 do quite overthrow your first overthrowing Consideration for Argumentation here is none More of this you shall have hereafter Your second Consideration because it hath a Narration yea a repetition of what you set down in your first Page about the nature of the state so you speak whereas rather you should say the state of the Nature of Christs true visible Church under the Gospel to the shewing of which you here onely describe Christs true invisible Church and therefore cite the Texts you did before and add some more that speak onely of invisible Members such as you call Saints made so by the immortal Seed new Creatures by the benefit of Regeneration I shall therefore say nothing to that here but refer you and especially the Reader to what I have largely before discoursed about the state and nature for I will correct my self too of the Church both visible and invisible for though you may perhaps have no such care of me I must and will be carefull that I dead not the Reader by any tedious and vain repetitions and Tautologies Yet this I say in anser to it That Infant-Baptism in the Church is so far from overthrowing as you argue the nature and state of Christs true visible Church that it is rather much confirmed and established increased and enlarged thereby because thereby more are admitted in present members visible and are engaged to be for the future visible professors and confessors of Christ yea and the invisible Church also is not overthrown but upheld and augmented by our Baptism of Infants as whereby many Infants are not onely dedicated and consecrated unto Christ but are also by Baptism as a Seal and Means as I have shewed regenerated and so fitted and prepared the better for Heaven and happiness And whereas you add That Infants Baptism is grounded upon the Relation they have to the Church by generation onely or by the meer pro ession of faith and repentance in the Parents and Sureties I see you are corrupted in your Principles and grounds of Divinity Once more I tell you I pray learn it now for I will teach you it no more for the Readers sake that Infants Baptism is grounded and foundationed upon the Covenant of God made with the believing Parents for himself and Infants and that which you call Generation doth but raise up the ground and foundation-Covenant to bring it into some act of visibility in relation to the Church for the Seal thereof And so also Infants have not their relation unto the Church by generation rather by this they have relation to the world nor by the meer faith and repentance of the Parents and Sureties but by the Covenant and the Seal thereof in both which Infants are interessed together with their Parents have they their relation
you say nothing seeing there is a Christian World or a World of Christians even all that professe the Gospel and embrace Jesus Christ for if you mean by Church the elect true beleevers and by the World the Reprobate and false Beleevers within the same neither our Infant-baptism nor your baptism of beleevers as you call it confessing Faith when grown in years can make such a distinction for as amongst our Infants so amongst the grown Beleevers baptised there may be and are undoubtedly many Reprobates Hypocrites and Falsehearted Professors such of both sorts come to Baptism without any distinguishing by us and go from baptism without any distinction of such by it And therefore 4. Is a pittiful reason you add and I pitty you for it that Infant-baptism doth not distinguish the true Church from the World because all are admitted in by it True all of the Church are admitted in by it What need a distinction in the Seal where there is a conjunction in the Covenant and this very admitting all of the Church professing Christ or born of those that professe Christ upon both which termes the Covenant runneth doth evidently prove that we hold strictly and uphold strongly the distnction of the Church from the World of Pagans and Heathens whom we exclude-and keep off from baptism untill they learn and beleeve the Gospel and make profession And now 5. Consider that your Non-baptism of your Infants until they be grown to great years able to profess faith c doth overthrow the end of bapttism and a chief one the distinguishing of the true Church from the World for that none of them are admitted into the true visible Church by it for tell me what 's the distinction and difference betwixo the world-World-Infants I mean the Infants of Pagans and Heathens and the church-Church-Infants the Infants of Christians and Professors but this onely of baptism admitting these into the visible participacion of the Covenant and Communion with the Church of God for want of which the others are kept out as aliens and strangers until they by faith and confession come to claim the same Seal of admittance I say again consider this and lay it closely and seriously to your heart that during the years you detain uyour Infants and Children from baptism which is their birth-privilege and their Covenant-Seal and their distinction-mark you leave them in a Heathenish and Gentile state as Aliens and strangers from the XCommom wealth of ChrisTians and Covenants of Promise Them I say you leave without Hope as being without the Seal of the Promise and your selves in doubt about them The revealed things belong to you and your Children The Promise and the Promise to be sealed belongs to you and your Children to your Children upon their birth as their Privilege and due Let them have it and leave the secret things to God to whom they belong their Salvation by Election for he that elected them to such an end hath elected them to the means And thus you have been thrice overthrowing of Infant Baptism yet have you not given is any fall For though in words you seem to make is the great overthrower as if it overthrew the Covenant and Gospel the visible Church the ends of true baptism yet Infant-baptism and all these stand ver well together each upholding the other and though you would indeed seem as the great Goliah and overth over to little David and so have given these three retches and girds at Infan shaptism it s rather to your own overthrow and of vour own baptism and yet I perceive you have another stroke to come in the 21 of Ezekiel 27. God said of Jerusalem purposeing to destroy it I will overturn overturn overturn and it shall be no more but in your design for the ruine of Infant-baptism you exceed the wrath and indignation and have gon beyond that threefold Ingemination saying I will overthrow overthrow overthrow overthrow the doctrine of Infant-baptism But as curst Cowes have short horns so strong words have most an end weak hands you have done but little yet by your three highly and strongly conceited considerations and I beleeve the fourth will be like the sormer Which because there are so many In and outs and round abouts in it I will reduce it to a short form The baptising of Beleevers or Deciples is onely expresly commanded in Scripture as in Matthew 28.19 Mark 16 15. John 4.12 Acts 2.38 and 41. Acts 8.37 and 38. But Infants baptism overthroweth and prevents that babtism which is onely expressly commanded in Scripture Therefore what you infer nothing lest it should be a Syllogism a Limm of the profane University human Learning but I know your meaning onely mend in your copy at home Deciples and Babtism as you write here and make it Disciples and Baptism lest your friends think you call the baptism of beleevers onely a babism and derive your Disciples from Deciples decipients or deceivers You must pardon me for not turning to your Texts some of them I have already handled shewed they were nothing to your purpose and others I shall meet within in a fitter place I know them without book that none of them all do expresly command the baptising beleevers onely Which they must do if you cite them for your purpose For who ever denyed the baptising of beleevers as I have formerly written Again as these Texts do command some of them expresly the baptising of beleevers as Acts 2.38 So some other doth but condition for and propound Faith unto baptism of grown persons as Acts 8.37 And another mentions faith and baptism as a joynt requisit to Salvation as Mark 16.16 And another hath nothing at all in it either of faith or baptism or command as John 4 12. And for the last place in your paper the first look back where it s largely handled and you shall see you might have seen it in the Text it self there is no expresse command for baptism of beleevers but of Disciples and therefore you did well to add to beleevers or Deciples and are not Children of beleeving Parents Disciples too if not beleevers you shall find if upon your first reading you did not Them also to be commanded there under the Notion of Disciples or a discipled Nation of which they are a portion to be baptised and much more to that purpose And lastly your Texts that do speak of Baptism of Believers mean it of Believers being grown persons and Heathens converted newly not of Believers born and living within the Precincts of the Church But how I pray doth the Baptism of Infants within the Church overthrow the Baptism of believing Heathens and Pagans grown persons they stood up together both in Apostles General and National Commission by which the children of believing and baptized Heathens were to be also baptized and in Apostles domestical and special Dispensation when they baptized whole Housholds of believing Parents and their children It is true
partakers of the Covenant that other way by obedience to the Law if it could it should have been done that way Adam though made perfectly Righteous and able did not answer it and if God had tryed Adam the second time he would not have answered in obedience to it but would have broken it again and so should we Therefore it must needs be by Faith embracing the promises and so amswering them that the Covenant of Grace must be made sure unto us which otherwise could never have been done But all this maketh nothing against the exposition of the Text above of Infants being in Covenant with their faithfull Parents and included yea they are expressed in the promise for God looked upon the Faith of Abraham when he entred into Covenant with him and his Children and made the promise to be the God of him and his seed and hereupon himself was Circumcised and his seed And where God pleaseth and when he pleaseth as he doth give sanctity the Spirit and other Graces to Infants as to the Innocents Jeremy John the Bap. so the habit of Faith infused it being the Condition on mans part yet wrought in every Elect Infant by God whereby they answer the promise as to the good and benefit of the Covenant if they dye before or soon after the Sealing thereof by Baptism besides that Infants being born of Parents in Covenant and themselves also in Covenant with God and others as sureties and sponsors in the name of the Infants answering for their Faith and promising for their education in the Faith and the Churches charitable opinion or judging them to have Faith are sufficient to answer the promise as for the outward visible seal which is Baptism to be conferred upon them But you make an answer to an objection which will make also an answer to the promise If any will say say you that the Parents may believe for their Children and so their Faith will answer the promise I answer 1. That the Text doth not say the promise is made to you in the behalf of your Children but to you and to your Children and therefore you must believe for your selves and they for themselves or else neither you nor they do answer the promise Somewhat of this before Sir whilest you are about this promise I wish you would observe the precept of using no vain repetitions as here you do so that I must either wholly omit or repeat vainly with you 1. Though the Text saith not so much in so many words yet it meaneth so much The Promise is made to you in the behalf of your Children also that word added it is the same with The Promise is made to you and your Children both together and joyntly the one being in promise as well and as soon as the other and thus the Text neither saith or denyeth your objection nor your answer For the promise may be truly made and is to believing Parents and their Children whether the Parents do believe for their Children also or the Children for themselves 2. Whereas you say Parents must believe for themselves and children for themselves or neither answer the promise it is truly meant according to the inward and spiritual part thereof so as to partake of Remission of sin Justification and Salvation But yet the Faith of Parents in Covenant may be and is so far beneficial to their born Children that thereby they are declared to be also in Covenant with themselves and to have a Right and Title unto the Seal of the Promise and the external Ordinances and outward Privileges of the Church and in respect of these may be said to answer the promise For the promise is the whole Covenant and the dispensations of it in outward Ordinances as well as saving Graces and it s your constant errour and mistake never to speak distinctly of this promise but usually and onely strictly of the saving Graces thereof belonging to the Elect whereas there is an answering of this promise also by visible profession and external Church-membership and privileges which is done both by the Parents and Children whether the inward Graces thereof be known or not Concerning Infants Faith and their inward Graces whereby you will have them also and they may be answerable to the inward promise I refer you to what I have said before 3. You Sir must own the Child above and it must be laid at your doors I mean the objection there made That Parents may believe for their Children and so answer the Promise I do not believe you can find out a Father for it nor did I ever reade the words as I remember it is true as I have related before that Parents did answer for the Faith of their Children presented to Baptism when the Child was asked dost thou believe the Parent in the Name and place of his Child answered I believe but this is far off from your Parents believing for their Children for it was onely Parents professing of their Childrens Faith or the Childrens professing their Faith by or in the mouth of their Parents as I have largely shewed And as for those Divines who though contesting for Infant-Baptism because they could not be perswaded of Infants-Faith made their refuge to Parents-Faith yet they did it not in such words as Parents believing for their Children nor to such purpose that their Faith might answer the promise but to shew that the Parents Faith gave unto their Children a proof of being born under the Christian Covenant and a Plea for the Seal of Baptism notwithstanding the supposed privation of Faith in Children Though therefore Infants as to their inward state before God of Justification and Salvation are not relieved and helped forward either by profession of Sponsors and Parents or by the acts and habits of their Faith because as I said the just shall live by his Faith and as you say the Parents must believe for themselves and as the Errors and Heresies of the Parents do not hurt the Children no more do their Faith and Truth help them as giving nothing from themselves unto their inward and eternal condition Yet are they beneficial to their Children otherwayes 1. It s from their Faith that the Children are brought out to Christ and offered and dedicated to him in Baptism Psal 206.37 whereas the Infidels offered their Sons and Daughters unto Devils 2. And as in their dedication so by their supplication the Faith of the Parent is helpful towards the obtaining of their Childrens regeneration and many graces of the Spirit God being ready to hear and do accordingly 3. If original sin did hurt Infants which without any fault of theirs they drew according to the flesh from their Parents why may not the Faith of the Parents profit the Children so as that sin be not imputed to them for Christs sake to whom they are offered and dedicated purposely and willingly by their Parents seeing grace is more abundant than Condemnation and the
OF BAPTISME Your Quaeres about Baptism are three and these 1. What warrant you have from the words of Christ for your baptising of Infants before they do actually believe 2. Whether Baptism maketh a Man or Woman a Christian without Faith and following of Christ in all his Commands and steps left upon Record for our Imitation 3. Whether the baptising of Beleevers is not the Command of Christ practised by the Apostles yea or no and left upon Record for us to follow and Imitate till his second comming I Will begin with this your Last Quaere For I perceive that the baptising of Beleevers doth keep such a buzzing in your ears that till it be granted you nothing will be heard Sir for quietnesse and brevity sake I grant it and this is all my answer to this your Quaere Yea I granted as much to you in the beginning if you remember and so thus also briefly and quietly I have answered almost a side of your second sheet wherein are four Considerations brought to prove the lawfulnesse the usefulnesse the necessity of this practise of Baptising Beleevers with these solemn words at the end of every consideration four times repeated Judge ye and Judge Righteous Judgement for God will Section I. Of Baptisme of Infants I hope you will think me to judge Righteous Judgement if I Judge according to your Judgement That the Word of God doth allow and authorize baptising of Beleevers but then I must differ from your judgement in another That the Baptising of Beleevers doth not disallow or exauthorate the Baptising the Infants of Beleevers and that the one leadeth in the other as it were by the Hand if you had no more to say and dispute against the Baptising of Infants of beleeving Parents than against the baptising of beleevers the difference betwixt us had never begun If I speak Parables unto you it is because you know not the Scriptures not the very Scriptures your self doth here quote Matth 28.19 Acts 238. Acts 8.38 Acts 10 47. Acts 22.16 c. What do they all import but that Those Jewes or Heathens who were grown persons aliens from the Covenant had embraced the Gospel and became beleevers were presently baptised or became baptiseable And now that this is no barr or contradiction to the Baptising of Infants appears for that the Infants of those beleevers baptised and entred into Covenant if they had any had likewise a right unto baptisme being in the same Covenant with their beleeving Parents and either were in present baptised or were of right baptiseable So that the baptisme of beleevers makes way and gives ground for the baptisme of their Infants whence in other texts such and such beleevers were baptised they and all their House which is according to the Tenor of the Cov nane in which God is the God of the beleever and his seed so that the one hath as good right to the Seal thereof as the other by vertue of the Covenant God having Covenanted with both together I have formerly suggested unto you the only word that must help you here to make the baptisme of beleevers strong against the baptisme of Infants and it is the Word only for if there were such a precept or practice to be found in Scripture of Baptising Beleevers only then you would write something near the matter but yet should not so carry it away to the overthrowing of the baptising of the Infants of beleevers the Scripture no where calling them unbeleevers But none of the Scriptures you cite none of your considerations you mention do so much as mention much lesse infer the baptising of Beleevers onely Therefore now Judge you but Judge Righteous Judgement even as Good doth you see in your own Texts Or do you mean another matter as I ghesse it That Infants of beleevers born within the Church and Covenant and baptised in their minority when afterwards they attain to some ripenesse of knowledge and profession of faith of Christ should then as beleevers themselves be baptised again Then I must tell you that which you call the first and great Ordinance of the New Testament is neither great nor first nor Ordinance namely such Baptising of Beleevers Nay then I must tell you such baptising of beleevers is not only to be neglected and omitted but slighted and rejected yea preached against and confuted as now in present it shal be For what is this your baptising of beleevers but a rebaptising of them who were baptised before rightly and for any thing you know beleevers also For first God having given the Infants of beleeving Parents Right unto the Sacrament of Baptisme by speciall priviledge of their Birth within the bosome of the holy Church and the Minister having administred the Sacrament of Baptisme unto such in the true Element of Water with the Evangelical words In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost according to Christs institution Containing in them the matter form and so the very essence of outward baptism such baptism is good sufficient effectual and avayleable to Gods Children and they ought not to be rebaptised especially there being the devout invocation made to God for his blessing also a serious application of both the Element and Word unto the party who receiveth both and that secret reference which this action hath to life and remision of sins by vertue of Christs own compact made solemnly with his Church there is not any thing more required to the mysticall perfection of baptisme outwardly within the Church of God constituted and planted Now that such Baptisme is not to be reiterated that Infants thus baptised are not to be rebaptised I shall prove unto you both by the Word of God and some reasons thence deduced Eph. 4.5 There is one Lord one Faith one Baptisme one Baptisme not onely 1. Because it hath every where one and the same substance consisting in one and the same matter one and the same form for we are not to use any other Elemental matter but Water if it may be had nor any other verbal form but this I baptise thee in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost not onely 2. Because it offreth unto all men one and the same grace even one saith of one Lord into which we are baptised but One also for that it ought not to be received of any one man above once even as we serve that Lord which is but one because no other can be joyned with him imbrace that faithwhich is but one because it admiteth no inovation so we receive haptism which is but one because it cannot and must not be received often Thus all the Pious Learned and Primitive Professors have interpreted this Text and conceived of this matter the Iteration of Baptisme once given to be a manifest contempt and violation of this Apostolical axiom and Aphorisme insomuch that though the baptising minister were a Scismatick or Heretick or a
leave them destitute of the ordinary way and means or shew from Scripture some other of their Righteousness and Salvation Yea if Infants be saved without Faith they must then be saved without Christ for as there is none other name or person under Heaven given amongst â—â—en whereby we must be saved than the Lord Jesus Act. 4.12 So there is none other means or grace under Heaven given amongst men whereby we may apprehend the Lord Jesus save Faith Matth. 3.16 and Heb. 11.6 Remember your own words nothing but Faith answereth the Promise If Infants have no Faith to answer the promise nor works to answer the precept how shall they do for the answer of a good conscience towards God or a saving Baptism 1 Pet. 3.21 Or what shall they do when God riseth up and when he visiteth what shall they answer him Job 31.14 If he will contend with them they cannot answer him one of a thousand Job 9.3 unless in Christ by Faith they be and then all is answered I could wish some others of a more vigorous body and brain would prosecute these and many other Scriptures to the proof of Faith in Infants Elect and saved the which as I take it would best stop the mouthes of the gainsayers of Infant-Baptism who now not satisfied with their being in Covenant with God also or his giving of spiritual grace to them never leave calling for Faith Faith in Infants so would it set opener and wider the way of Infants to their Baptism even in the opinion of the adversaries thereof If you question how such could believe in Christ Christ who tells you so gave them to do so and so may give to others Is thine eye evill because he is good may he not do with his own as him pleaseth Take that thine is and go thy way it may be he will give unto this least even as to thee Though Intants want the outward Means of Faith which they are not capable of as the Hearing of the Word by which Faith ordinarily is gotten yet there are other besides what you will say extraordinary and so you will fly now your self to extraordinaries who have taxed us of extraordinaries no such matter for besides the ordinary outward Menas of Faith in the Church which an Infant wanteth and is not capable of there are ordinary inward Means of the same Faith which it may find and of which it is capable namely Christ the Author of Faith and the Spirit of Faith both these are internal but ordinary Means of Faith in the Church and avaylable when the outward are wanting and the outward unavay leable where those inward are wanting But you can discern no such matter of Faith in Infants these shew no such thing as Faith what then what evidence of expression do you see or they shew of a reasonable soul in them by this reason you may conclude them unreasonable as well as unbelievers Even Childrens souls are equal and like as yours and mine are in the essentials which are as large and ample to all intents and purposes though pent up for want of room as our souls are and are capable of Grace They are Rational Creatures Seminally and in the inward Principle of human Nature which is a reasonable Nature though through defect of age they are not Rational Productively and in the fruits or external proceedings or operations of reason and so they may be Believers as to the Root and Fountain of Faith the Spirit of God in the first act though they may want the second act thereof which is the increase of it in themselves and the deriving the knowledge of it to others So then Infants in the Church may have Faith and all the Elect of them have fot it is called the Faith of Gods Elect Tit. 1.1 and you as you cannot descry it in them so you cannot decry it Therefore by your own Tenet and Rule they going for Believers and Elect may be Baptized yea all ought to go so out of a charitable perswasion and opinion that ought to be in us and you howsoever it goeth with them as to the Truth and Reality and therefore all should be Baptized for by the same reason you Baptize any of those you call Believers we Baptize all Infants of Believers and unless it were so none at all were to be Baptized Those that come to you one by one in a profession of Faith you have but a good and charitable opinion of his Faith and Election you can have no sure and certain knowledge of the same For this and that Person may be an Hypocrite and Reprobate yet you Baptize him and him Now therefore may not we do the like there comes presented to us this and that Child one and another in the evidence of Gods Covenant engraven as it were upon them by their birth of Parents in Covenant we have also a charitable perswasion of their Faith and Election and can have no more for there are also Infants born in the Church that are Reprobates and so we Baptize them But if onely the true Beleevers and Elect were to be Baptized then you and we must have a certain knowledge of every Infants and every mans Faith and Election as the ground of our and your Baptizing them the which because neither we nor you can have in any ordinary way neither of us by this Rule must Baptize any at all You hope the best of all and so do we your old Limitation may do well here so far as man can judge which in this case is just nothing and that 's all can be said on both sides but still I must prompt you that it is not knowledge of the Infants being in Election and the signs of it or being in the Faith and the prosession of it but the being in the Covenant and a relation to it that is and ought to be the ground of Baptism in the Church of God now because we find and know all Infants born of Christian Parents within this Covenant Relation know not which of them is Elect or not for if we knew who were Reprobates we neither would nor ought to Baptize them we do therefore Baptize all of them lest otherwise we should and might deny the Seal of the Covenant to some of the Elect Children of God Me thinks you who assume so much of the Spirit to your selves Take heed you do not presume too much of your selves therein there be they who separate themselves having not the Spirit Jude 19. should not be so Covetous or Envious and it may be refistous and then it is blasphemous as to deny some degrees of the Spirit and the graces thereof to Infants when as the Spirit bloweth where it listeth and thou canst not tell whither it goeth when as also the Dove-like Spirit of God hath a neer compliance with and a great complacency in Child-like meekness mildness humility patience of which graces he is pleased to stile himself the Spirit more
as without Faith Faith without Baptism may make an invisible Christian but incompleatly as without Baptism Faith and Baptism together both make a Christian compleatly and that both Visible and Invisible Are not Children of the Heathens born Heathens and why then are not Children of Christians born Christians I mean it is theiri Birthright to be so esteemed or they are to be esteemed such by their Birth-right to be reputed within the Covenant of Grace or members of the visible Church Is the condition of a Christians Child worse now under the Gospel than a Jewes Child was under the Law the Children of the Jewes were born Jewes and it was their Birth-right to be Israelites visible members of the Church of Israel whereupon the Apostle calleth them Jews by Nature Gal. 5.15 As before I have said and Rom. 11.24 He calls the whole Nation of the Jewes the Natural branches of the Olive-tree in that they were the vifible Church of God so the 1 Cor. 7. Those that are born of holy Parents are called holy yet sinners but in divers respects by Nature and as generated of their Parents so sinners for Parents do not generate by Grace but Nature but by Grace and as received by God into Covenant so Holy for God said I will be thy God and the God of thy seed and if the root be holy then are the brancher no repugnancy here like as the Circumcised generateth an Infant with a fore-skin and as wheat dressed and clean bringeth forh wheat with chaffe upon it so a Christian bringeth forth one that is not a Christian who is therefore Baptized that he may be made Christian which is when he is Ingrafted into the body of Christ And whereas the Apostle saith Eph. 2.3 That we were by Nature the Children of wrath as well as others it doth not contradict we may be such and yet born Christians too and Holy in an externall Covenant being born of believing Parents if you would but remember the ordinary distinctions that are given they would disperse this mist before your eyes and cleer them matter to you I will give them you as thus as there is a Jew so there is a Christian without and in open view of the Church and as Jew so a Christian within and in secret before the face of God as none were born Jewes so none are born Christians in this second and later senss thus we must be made Christians neither could or can we claim it by Birth-right but in the first sens which is that whereof the Assertion is we may even all that have a visible Birth and standing under the Covenant of Grace are Christians and Holy in the face of the visible Church though perhaps not so in the face of God but many for all this may be Children of wrath Your mind as your words runneth onely upon the Internal part of the Covenant which are inward saving graces which belong only to the Elect and because we know not what these Infants are born with we say not that thus they are born Christians where you should take notice of an external part of the Covenant which is a true visible membership and Birth-Holiness which known to us and appearing to all we call them born Christians as who from their Birth are to be accounted and reputed visible members and patts of the Church For the Covenant of Grace is largely to be understood and Taken for the whole dispensation of it in-outward Ordinances and under the Notion of its external Privileges as well as in inward Graces and under the notion of its internal powers You most an end and in this Quaere especially use the Covenant as Hanun did the servants of David sent to comfort Hanun and to honour his deceased Father who shaved off the one half of their Beards and cut off the half of their Garments and so sent them away 2 Sam. 10.4 So do you and yours you leave out in your writing and discourses the one half of the Covenant and still restrain it to the inward and spiritual part thereof whereas it was sent whole and entire of God with an outward and external part also for the further Honour and Comfort of the believing Parents and their Children But I come to the last your first Queare of the three about Baptism as you propound them but my last of the three as I handle your matters and this it is Sect. III. Of Baptizing of Infants WHat warrant you have from the words of Christ for your Baptizing of Infants before they do actually believe What warrant I thank you for this word a gentle and general word I looked for no less than what command or precept have you such a severe and special word as a command to be demanded of me Did you keep such a blustring in seven whole Quaeres together about the commands and precepts of Christ his Apostles and their examples which I took as your preparative and Preface unto this your particular Quaere of Infant-Baptism and doth the wind go down in this soft and still voyce What warrant have you for it After all your former Thundrings out the Commands of God against us as if we of the Church of England had broken them all and had pieced them up with our Human Inventions and additions as Infant-Baptism and the rest is this your only Thunderbolt you have to strike us down with what warrant have you for it out of the word Your friends and fellowes lowes will give you no thanks for this word if it were not they that gave it you word and work and all who as the Jewes cryed The Temple of the Lord the Temple of the Lord so they go up and down and cry a Precept of the word a Precept of the word for your Infant-Baptism and do you come after them and behind and so softly speak for fear they should hear you a Warrant out of the word a Warrant out of the word for the same This made me look back over your other Quaeres about our Ministery our maintenance and I find upon such Review that this word Warrant is used and prefixed before them all and not a word of a Precept or Command I see I have been much mistaken who when I might have put off you and all your Quaeres with a Warrant according to your demand have put my self to such trouble as to search the Scriptures and send you Precepts and Commands out of the same for every particular You are beholding to me for I have gratified you herein in giving you more than you required and in spending more upon you than you desired I will not say deserved I hope you will make good use of my Indulgence herein and not expect for time to come that I shall do the like still No you will now give me Leave to take and make my advantage of the word which I have lost hitherto and you have gained hereby For I take it there
their being in Covenant must needs be the ground of Gods commanding the Seal of Circumision It is acknowledged there was a special Commandement for circumcising in the time of Infancy but do not you blame God for his such Command by the same reason you blame us for our practice Infants of Jewes were as much in the state of Nature as ignorance blindness and under the same defects that Infants of Christians are and why do ye not charge the wisdom of God with folly for Commanding the Infants of Jewes to be circumcised or excuse us who being under the same Covenant do Baptize the Infants of Christians In imitation of God Commanding Circumcision and also in obedience of God and that Command which was in part also Evangelical For That Commandement was for the Circumcising of such Infants in their Infancy whose Parents were under Gods seal but there is no such command for Infants whose Parents were not for these Profession of Faith was needful Abraham in whom the Church of the Jews began therefore had Faith before hee took the Seal but no such thing was afterward required of Abrahams Seed but the contraty Commanded namely that their Seed should be circumcised in their Infancy And so I deny not but God Commanded Circumcision but this that by vertue of Gods Commandement onely they were Circumcised I deny for it was also and chiefly because of the foregoing Covenant in the 7. and 8. verses to which the words refer saying Thou shalt keep my Covenant Therefore what Covenant vers 10. Circumcision is so named He doth not barely Command it but with an Inference or reference therefore to shew that they being in Covenant were therefore to have the Seal thereof Circumcision which did but put the Covenant under Seal in which Covenant those Children were before by Birth being born of Parents with whom God had stricken Covenant But I shall go neer to make use of it anon for the Baptizing of our Children like as they and you do now for the circumcising of the Jewes Chrildren Though the Truth is that was nothing but Gods word of Institution whose incommunicable property it is to appoint Sacramental Signs The Covenant then especially was the ground of Circumcising the Seed of the Jewes and the same is the ground of Baptizing the Infants of Christians and so Christian Parents being in Covenant their infants are in Covenant with God and therefore Baptizable for Gods Covenant written upon Children of Parents in Covenant is no Blank to seal too but a just Title or writ as I may so say for the Seal and a very Commission given out by the Holy Spirit for the Baptizing Infants of Christians in their lofarcy and so these things appearing to the Churches of God That Infants of Christians are entred in Covenant with God They ought to put the same under the Seal of Baptism as the Infants Due and the Churches Duty More briefly and Syllogistically thus take it as I recollect it All persons within and under the Covenant of Gods Grace are Commanded of God to have the Seal of Covenant put upon them which in the Gospel-administration thereof is Baptism But all Infants of Christians are within the Covenant of Gods grace Therefore all Infants of Christians are Commanded of God to have the Seal of the Covenant put upon them which in the Gospel-Administration thereof is Baptism The first Proposition is clear from Gen. 17. and God Commanding all Jews in Covenant to be Circumcised and from Matth. 28. and Christ Commanding all Gentiles or Nations in Covenant to be Baptized The second Proposition is the very Tenour of the Covenant I will be thy God and the God of thy Seed and so I have reasoned the Baptism of Infants and Terms into a Command of God before I intended it A third Warrant is this Reason If the Infants of Jewish Parents were capable of Circumcision the initial Seal of the Covenant which was Circumcision and were Circumcised though they could shew no Right they had unto it but their Birth of Parents in Covenant Then also may and must the Infants of Christian Parents be Baptized and receive Baptism the initial Seal though they can shew no other Right to it but their Birth of Parents in Covenant This Warrant is Reasoned out or this Reason is warranted out of Heb. 13.9 Jesus Christ the same yesterday to day and for ever Jesus Christ ministred is the Covenant which is as I said the same for ever in sabstance and in relation to theeternal welfare of souls Though the ministrations of him be different of him as to be exhibited and to come unto the Jewes and of him as come and exhibited unto Christians And though some Ceremonial and Circumstantial matters be changed yet the substantial and that which was purely a Covenantall or Sacramental Part abides as being an everlasting Covenant made with Abrahams Seed all true beleevers they differ not the Two Sacraments in any substantial thing or in any spiritual effect necessary to salvation or in any use to confirm the Covenant of Grace and further a man in the way to Heaven and so as an Initial Seal of the Covenant they differ not nor as a Sacrament of entrance into the Church and so Circumcision was a Seal of the same Righteousness by Faith as Baptism is to us Rom. 4.11 and Circumcision signified the mortification of the flesh and the renewing of the mind and did bind over the Jewes unto the obedience of Gods will Rom. 2.28 c. Gal. 3.21 and so doth Baptism the same to us now as Rom. 6.3 and 11. 1 Pet. 3.21 Insomuch that Baptized Christians are called circumcised Christians and Baptism is called by the name of Circumcision Col. 2 11. and 14 4. Though we Christians are not to follow the Jews in things peculiar to his own dispensation which was Legal and Ceremonial yet those actions that were done by them upon such grounds that are of moral perpetual and common concernment to one person as well as another in one Church as well as another for one age as well as another none can deny such actions to be binding and obligatory to all as a standing Rule for after Generations by which may be answered that which is usually objected by those that except to our Analogy of Baptism with Circumcision as why do ye not plead a Baptism of Males onely and that particular of the eight day and so carry on the whole Analogy together and in order why because these were but circumstantial things the two Sacraments may be one in substance for all these besides they were not of common but peculiar use to the Jews that Church those ages as for the eighth day it was both a Ceremonial and Physical reason as to life and health of the infant that thefore skin was not cut off till then and for the Females not Circumcised it is enough against you and your opinion if the proportion betwixt Circumcision and Baptism
Reason If Baptism be a means and Remedy to free christian-Christian-Infants from originall sin as to guilt and punishment and the dominion thereof in them that are Eâ—ect and Beleevers Then such are and ought to be baptised The Church or Minister of it knowing nothing of this and that particular Infant but he or she may be such This Warant is reasoned out of Gods Word or this Reason is Warranted out of Gods Word Romans 6.3.4 5 6. verses We as many of us as were baptised into Christ were baptised into his death therefore we are buried with him by baptism into his death that like as Christ was raised up from the dead so we should walk in newnesse of life c. Knowing this that our old man is crucified with him that the body of sin might be destroyed that henceforth we should not serve sin I must here add a little explication lest there may be a misconstruction construction of some Popery The Popery in this poynt is this That baptism taketh away original sin that it ceaseth after baptism to be a sin properly and is nothing but a defect or weaknesse which maketh the heart fit and ready to conceive sin like Tinder which is not Fire but is apt to conceive Fire This I abandon as Popery and an Error But this I aver as Truth and Protestancy 1. That after baptism in the Elect Infants original sin is taken away as to the punishment of it for there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Rom. 8.1 2. As to the guiltinesse of the person there being nothing to bind them to punishment if no such condemnation 3. As to the dominion of it it shall not reign in their mortal bodies nor they serve it 4. As to the Imputation of it it shall not be imputed to them but be pardoned and in that respect be as if not But for all this original sin or concupisence remaines in the Elect Infants even after baptism and ever after and is still sin and properly sin some limbs and portions of the old man and the body of sin remain even where he is said to be crucified and destroyed in the manner above and there are and will be defilements in them that are washed I must enlarge no farether here However this may be a comfort to Beleevers that in Christ the promised seed who should and did break the Serpents head which in some good sense I may call original sin there is pardon of this sin to their natural seed and therefore Christ was also born not in the ordinary way as others of Mankind but of a Virgin as conceived by the Holy Ghost that so being free himself from original all sin He might procure the pardon of the same and be a plea against it Yea though Infants in present have no actual sins yet their baptism extends its vertue to the taking away also of the guilt punishment dominion and imputation of sins to come so the party baptised stand to the order terms of Baptism which is to turn to God beleeve actually in Christ and continually renew repentance as the place above mentioned imports Romans 6.4 and thus baptism saveth 1 Peter 3.21 So doth baptism seal the Pardon as of original so also of actual sin Acts 22.16 Ananias said to Paul Arise and be baptised and wash away thy sins calling upon the name of the Lord. Oh but we commit sins dayly after baptism that after justification will the Lord continue to pardon such sins yes if we continue to repent of and purge away sich sins So 1 John 1.7 8. If we confesse our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us how faithful and just to forgive sin it implyeth that he hath somewhere bound himself by promise to do it and where and when but in baptism and to whom but the party baptised so far as sin is repented of when the Conscience makes any question whether God will continue to pardon sin the washing of Baptism doth seal the assurance thereof the person baptised may say I am assured of it I have it sealed to me so many years ago at the time of my Baptism It is also a popish device who tell you that Baptism onely serveth for Remission of sins done before and therefore for sins does after they must have a Sacrament of Penance distinct from Baptism appointed for a remedy For the Sacramental force of Baptism doth extend it self to the whole life that is to be a Seal unto them of Remission of sin in the blood of Christ And the confession of sin is but a more effectual application of the force of Baptism like as the people who were baptised of John confessed also their sins And therefore there needs no Sacrament of Repentance or Penance to be set up for this purpose after Baptism to be a second Table for Refuge after sins actually committed like as they say making Baptism but the first Table for Refuge after original sin contracted For Baptism it self is the Baptism of Repentance for the Remission of sins Mark 1.4 Christs baptism being not different from Johns Baptism as is shewed as which teacheth and ingageth us to dye unto sin and rise unto newnesse of lie Romans 6.4 Which is nothing but Repentance which is called Repentance from dead workes and so a rising from them Heb. 6.1 It would therefore much promote the good cause of Infant-Baptism if the Doctrin of original sin especially also actual were pressed and urged upon People and Parents especially a little more and they heard oftener how all Men and Women and Children born in the ordinary way sin Adams fall are born in the guilt of original sin and have a sinfull and polluted being whosoever have any being and may and must every one confesse with David I was born in sin and in iniquity hath my Mother conceived me it is plain that he confesseth not his Parents but his own sin this being the scope of the whole Psalm so with Job Who can bring that which is clean not of that which is unclean that which is born of the flesh is felesh flesh and blood cannot inherit eternal life and that by Nature we are the Children of wrath and all Infants as that in Ezekiel 16. polluted in their bloods their Fathers are Adamites their Mothers are Hevites c. This if preached and pressed would shew to Parents what great need there is of a New-Birth for their Children and so would lead and drive them to procure for them the outward washing in Baptism as a Seal of the inward washing away of that natural pollution of sin by the Spirit Thus our Saviour Christ inforces it unto Nicodemus John 3.5 and that not so immediately in reference to actual sin as original or Birth sin the natural pollution in which Infants are born and I can see no good reason to the contrary but that the outward Elementary Baptism of Water is here intended as
these in persons baptised they must be limited to such as were Adults grown in years converts from Heathenism such as Cornelius and the Eunuch for therefore doth the Scripture name them to shew the same when it mentioneth their Baptism and the conjoyned duties as required in such which is nothing against Baptism 3. Or if Infants should be meant it sufficeth that these have them Mortification c. not in the Act exercising and manifesting themselves in any deed or word professing the same but onely in Habit included and lying in the principle of Grace the Holy Spirit and why because infants are sinners not by any proper Act of their own but onely by an Hereditary Habit. Now who amongst you can or will say that infants have not thus the Spirit of God which bloweth where it listeth and hath listed to blow in some of them we know of and thousands more where it listeth that we know not of effecting and producing in them this habitual principle of Grace Of this see more before 4. Nor is it necessary that Baptism in that very moment it is received should effect all things it figureth out and doth signifie no more was it that Circumcision should do the like but it may fall to working them afterwards wherein present there is an impediment and hindrance that letteth actual fact mortification Repentance c. as in infants the want of reason doth Those Actuals are not for the present required in infants to be baptised who yet are required to be in present actualy baptised for they are required to be partakers of the death and burial of Christ that is the merit and power thereof to the killing and burying of sin and natural corruption of which Baptism is the sign and means More briefly and syllogistically thus take it as I recollect it If Baptism do succeed and is substituted of Christ now instead of Circumcision in the Church of the Gentiles then as infants were commanded to be circumcised then in the Church of the Jewes so are Infants commanded to be baptized in the Church of the Gentiles But the Antecedent is true being the very matter and substance of the Text above Therefore also the Consequent is such and so I have reasoned Infant-Baptism into another Command before I intended this as reserved for the latter argument But I serve too large warrants upon you Sir to whom I now return I have another or two brief ones yet to serve A sixt warrant therefore is this Reason If infants of Christian Parents be capable of all the good ends effects and benefis that Baptism bringeth with it and worketh or offereth them then surely they are both capable of Baptism and their Baptism is warrantable and justificable This warrant may be reasoned out of the Word or this reason warranted out of the Word 1 Gor. 4.15 1 Cor. 9.1 The Apostle warrants and reasons his Apostleship and the Gospel he preached to be true and right from the good ends effects and benefits that came thereby to the Gorinthians and they received That he had begotten them through his Gospel they were his work in the Lord and the Seal of his Apostleship were they in the Lord. So may I hence warrant and justifie our ministery and even the Baptism which we minister to the infants of Christian Parents to be good had true from the many good ends effects and benefits thereof of which Infants are capable and receptive and which are wrought and sealed in them thereby Our Ministery of the Seal of Baptism with such effects and successe may be also the Seal of our Ministery Now the ends effects and benefits of Baptism are these for which it was appointed 1. To be a means of entrance and admission into the visible Church and a kind of engrafting the party baptised into the body of Christ and an enrolling of him amongst the houshold of God as Members and Servants of Christ Acts 2.37 2. To be instead of Circumcision an annexed Seal and assurance yea conveiance of the good and grace of Christs word and promise covenanted the sum whereof is this of being the Parents God and God of their seed Rom. 4.11 3. To be a representation and Collation of the washing and clensing of the Blood and Spirit of Christ and of the Regeneration and New Birth Titus 3.5 1 Peter 3.21 4. To be a Tye or Obligation of the baptised to stricter Obedience of God and his Truth to make the parties more diligent to serve God and careful to abandon sin Rom. 6.1 to the 9. 1 Cor. 1.13 5. To be a means of Union with Christ and of Unity amongst themselves knitting them faster and bringing them nearer unto Christ 1 Cor. 12.13 Eph. 4.5 6. To be a badge of Christianity and for distinction of Christians from Unbelieving Jewes and Gentiles as the stamp and Character whereby they are known to belong to Christ being a kind of partition-wall betwixt Christians and Jewes and Heathens Ephes 2.14 Now Sir tell me which of all these our infants are incapable of that you should thereupon deny them Baptism in the mean time I tell you they are capable to them all and therefore are not to be denyed The promises of the Covenant the washing away of sin by Christs Blood and Spirit the admittance into the body of Christ c. may be sealed unto them as wherein they are but Passive and if you say so are they capable of the Graces signed in the Lords Supper and therefore may communicate I say how know you that you have no rule for that no glimpse of light from the Word for that whereas I have given you evidence enough of light for the other if you will see there is a Scriptural light that infants are capable of the Graces signed and sealed in Baptism we may be sure of it and therefore may admit them to Baptism there is but your supposal light which is below Traditional you so much write against that they are capable of the Grace signed and sealed in the Lords Supper are you sure of it and will you thereupon admit them thereto The Lords Supper is no initial Seal and for Reception into Covenant which I onely plead for for infants yet this Seal which is Baptism it servesto confirm all the benefits of the Covenant as the baptised grow capable of them and are made partakers of them and so is a good preparative unto the Christians Passeover or the Lords Supper afterwards in due time and order The Lords Supper is a Seal of Augmentation appointed for the nourishment and growth of those Graces which the Covenant promiseth and requireth particularly and expresly of all partakers of it That they must discern the Lords Body and try and examin themselves and therefore Infants are not capable of the Graces of the Lords Supper like as they are of them of Baptism for that they must be Active in that whereas they may be but Passive in this Those that are capable
and constant custom of the Primitive and the succeeding Churches throughout the several ages to Baptize the Children of believing Parents in their Infancy then it ought to be so still continued accustomed and practised This Warrant may be Reasoned out of the word or the Reason warranted out of Matth. 19.4.9 where Christ in case of a point of difference about divorce himself argueth and reasoneth from the Ancient times and the beginning of the Church of God So out of 1 Cor. 11.16 if any man seem to be Contentious we have no such Custom neither the Churches of God Where you and I may see the case there and here to be much alike The Corinthians had got up a fashion of their mens praying covered in their long Hair and their women praying uncovered in their shorn Hair you likewise have taken up a practice of baptizing onely believers when grown persons they make profession and have shut out Infants from their right to the Seal of Baptism being Covenanters with their Parents Saint Paul refuteth that their fashion by divers arguments drawn from the headship of man over the woman from the dishonouring of the head from the shamesulness and the uncomeliness of it from the Presence of the Angels from the light of nature five good and sound arguments and when he perceived for all those that they were contentious and quarrelsome with him about and for their fashion He clappeth upon them as his last argument this taken from the Churches of God that have been before us In like manner I have refelled your Practice by sundry Warrants and Reasons raysed out of the word from such Infants some of them having the spirit and faith in some degrees from their being in the same Holy Covenant of Grace with their Parents from the proportion and succession of Baptism unto Circumcision from Baptisme's being a remedy against Original sin especially from Infants capableness of the ends effects and benefits of Baptism five good and warrantable reasons out of the word and supposing for all this you will not be conquered though overcome but will still strive and contend contrary to 2 Tim. 2.24 Now I urge upon you in the last place this Reason which is the Custom of the Church both Modern we have such a Custom of Baptizing Infants of Believing Patents and we have no Custom approved or General of Baptizing onely Grown Believers As also Ancient Neither the Churches of God have had any such For so though Saint Paul argue N gatively onely the Reason is of as much force and weight affirmatively and the Custom of the Ancient and Modern Church's is good and pleadable both against the New Lights of late scismatical Innovators as also for the old Light of former and present Orthodex Professours As for the Negative the Not or No Custom Primitive and practice Apostolieal of Baptizing again at their growth upon Confession of Faith such as had been Baptized before in their Infancy I do reserve it for at other Place your Dipping Pond of which I shall speak at last onely here I shall bring in the Affirmative That the Ancient Prinritive Churchès succeeding the Apostles what the Apostles themselve did do and practied shall hereafter soon follow did hold and practice the Baptizing of Infants And though I think it will but disturb your Brain and cause you to stop your Nostrils and Mouth who small no sweet Savour or Odour of Antiquity as being one of the New Sent or unsent rather yet notwichstanding I shall and relate the Dictates of some of the Ancient Apostles succeeding Pastors and Fathers of the Church of old and I will do it for others sake who are Lovers of Antiquity but I will do it in English for your sake whom I am Instructing who are no lover of Languages more than you can speak I know you will not take this General Custom and Practice of the Church upon my bare word and present Assertion nor do I desire you should Therefore Remember the dayes of old consider the years of many Generations ask thy Father and he will shew thee thy Elders and they will tell thee ask now of the dayes that are past which were before wheâ—â—er there hath been any such thing as the Baptizing of Infants of Believers You shall readily find the same attested by the Reverend Fathers of the Church the Bishops and Doctors of the dayes of old and years of former Generations to have been so to be the Custom and Practice In a matter of Fact or Practice one Good and Creditable witness is sufficient and that I am sure I have Saint Augustine I mean not onely for the General Practice of Infant Baptism in his dayes and those present tim 's wherein he lived as might easily be shewed our of his Books of Original Sin Chap. 40. Third Book of the Merit of Sin and Remission Chap. 9. Third Book against Julian fourth Book of Baprism against the Donatists c. But also for the former and praeceding Churches up to the Primitive dayes For so Augustine who lived in the year after the Nativity of Christ 39â— and was Presbyter first and after Bishop of Hippo saith thus in his third Epistle to Volusian The Custom of the Mother Church in Baptizing little ones is in no wise to be despised not to be thought needless and were not to be believed but that it was as Apostolicall Tradition This is a very full and clear evidence of an Ecclesiastical Custom an Apostolical Tradition whether written or unwritten that infringeth it not according to that of the Apostle 2 Thest 2.15 hold the Traditons which ye have been taught whether by word or Epistle not to be despised but believed Nor did Augustine utter this suddenly but advisedly and therefore upon second thoughts saith it over again and the more Resolutely in his 15. Sermon of the words of the Apostle Let no man saith he buz or whisper into our eares any Doctrine to the Contrary This Practice of Baptizing Ghildren The Church alwayes had this it hath this it alwayes held this it hath received from the Faith or fidelity of our Ancestors and this it keeps Constantly to the end Therefore doth the same Father so often and so much press this Argument The Churches Practice of Baptizing-Infants upon Pelagius and his followers who were Contemporary with Augustine holding Infants were not taken or tainted with original Corruption and Sin by propagation but only contracted the same by Imitation as in his 150 Epistle unto Sixtus in his second Book of Marriage and Concup 18. Chap. in his first Book against Crescon the Grammarian cap 30. in his fourth Book against the Donat. c. 23. in his sixth Book against Julian one of Pelagius his Schollars or his opinions Now if this had not been truly and undeniably The Custom and Practice of the Church even up to the first and Primitive times as Augustine affitmed Pelagius and his Disciples would soon have fallen foul upon
found even of all which are done throughout the whole life Ambrose the Bishop of Millain by whom Augustine was Converted and Baptized in his Book of Abraham the Patriark lib. For the year 381. 2. Chap. 11. writing upon those words unless a man be born again of water and the Spirit See saith he Christ excepts none not the Infant not the prevented by some necessity c. Every age is obnoxious to sin therefore every age is fit for the Sacrament So also in his Epistle ad Demetriadem Virginem he mention eth the Baptism of Children Epist 84. lib. 10. speaking in that Epistle against Pride and Boasting of some especially Hearetiques and shewing the evill effects thereof to the defending false opinions extenuating of evil and sin and the evacuating of some good gives these two Instances amongst others Hence the sin of Adam is affirmed to hurt his Posterity by example not by passage or transition into them Hence is that Evacuation of the Baptism of little Children as if they should be said to have Adoption given there but not to be absolved from their guilt and again Though little ones not Baptized may or should be saved yet great is the negligence of those that hindeed their Baptizing In his Book de vocat lib. 2. cap. 8. he mentioneth Baptism of Children three or four times and once thus They speak very ill and unjurly of little Children who say Grace hath there what it may Adopt but the water hath not there what it may wash away speaking of such as deoyed sin in little Children Paulinus Bishop of Nola in Camqania For the year 379. a man famous for Poetry and Eloquence Piety and munificence a good acquaintance of Augustine and Hierom betwixt whom and Him there passed sundry Epistles a great favorite and familiar of Ambrose whose life he wrote as also of Sulpitius Severus to whom he wrote 14. Epistles As the Beginning of the twelfe Epistle to the same Sulpitius Severus hath these two verses whhich for your sake I must be fain to tranflate into English Thence from the Sacred Font the Priest did lead it The Infant white in body heart and habit Epiphanius For the year 376. In his first Book Haer. 8. The Figures were in the Law the Truth in the Gospel Circumcision which served for a time gave place to the Great Circumcision which is Baptism which Circumciseth us from sin and Sealeth us into the Name of God In His Book against the Cerinthians Circumcision had its time untill the Great Circumcision came that is the washing of the New-birth as is manifest to every one Surely he meant that which the Apostle calls so that is Baptism the washing or Laver of Regeneration and by calling Baptism the Great Circumcision he must intend Infant Baptism as Infant-Circumcision and speaks of them as of things manifest and wel-known the Carnal or fleshly Baptism as Circumcision In the end of his work calls Baptism and other mysteries observed in the Church which are brought out of the Gospel and setled by Apostolique Authority Traditions and then in his Time Baptism was ministred to Infants and observed Gregory Nazianzene For the year 375. In his 40. Oration of Holy Baptism largely speaketh of it the brief is in the Question and Answer What say ye of those who are of tender Age and perceive neither dammage or Grace shall we Baptize those Yes surely if any danger be it is better to be Sanctified without sense and feeling then to depart without the Seal and Initiation Circumcision bearing in a manner the figure of Baptism was offered to them who were void of Reason c. calleth also Baptism the Seal or Signet to such as enter into the Race of Life Basil the Great For the year 372. Bishop of Caesarea 1 Tom. Exhortation to Baptism wherein though the Baptism of Infants is not named yet I find these words There is a proper and peculiar time for this and that as for sleep for watching for warring the Time for Baptism is the whole life of man which he proves at large and again without Baptism there is no light to the Soul and then adds the Jew was compelled or forced to Circumcision because every soul which was not Circumcised the eighth day was to be cut off wilt thou defer the Circumcision not made with hands which is performed by Baptism in the putting of the flesh When wilt thou be a Christian Athanasius Q. 91. For the year 325. Of the Sayings and Interpretation of Scripture We dip or put the Infant thrice into the water and thrice bring it out insignification of the death and resurrection of Christ upon the third day I shall also here set down an answer of his Quest 2. to Antiochus because it confirmes what I have writ before of Infants having the Holy Spirit How shall we know that the Infant was truly Baptized and received the Holy Ghost in Holy Baptism when it was a Child but the answer is long and shall not need because I would be short The Question is enough to the purpose and sheweth both that Athanasius held both Infant-Baptism and therein affirmed them to receive the Holy Spirit the very question makes it unquestionable as to him Again in his Treatise of the Sabbath and Circumcision Hee calls Circumcision a type of Baptism Cyprian Bishop of Carthage and a Martyr For the year 247. The higher we go the cleerer the light shines for the Baptism of Infants for now here Cyprian with 66 Colleagues all Bishops do in a Councel at Carthage decree for it and so Certifieth his Friend Fidus in an Epistle to him third Book of Epistles Ep. 8. Yea that whole Epistle written by Cyprian and his 66 Colleagues sitting in Council with him The Title of it is of Infants to be Baptized and the subject of the whole Epistle is to justifie the Baptizing of them and answereth the objections of Fidus. As to the Cause the Baptism of Infants we all have judged that the mercy and Grace of God is not to be denyed to any Child born of man c. and that there is the same equallity of grace for the young Infant as the Elder God is no respecter of personages nor ages Yea he gives divers reasons why Infants and the rather and the sooner because Infants should be Baptized which for brevity sake I leave out here as who am onely upon the shewing having proved the Baptism of Infants before the Custom and Practice of Antiquity herein This Epistle also is owned and avouched both by Hierome Au-Augustine to be the true Epistle of Cyprian by Hierom as above is said and by Augustine Epistle 28. unto Hierome saying Cyprian did not here devise a New decree but kept and observed the true Faith or the faithful Practice and Custom of the Church Yea this Epistle of Cyprian was a very strong ground for them both to stand upon and they very much relyed
upon it for the strengthening themselves in their own opinion of Infant-Baptism Origen the Schollar and Disciple of Clemens Alexandrinus For the year 204. so forward a Schollar that at eighteen years of his age he set up a School and taught others in his fift Book to the Rom. 6. c. the Church hath received the Tradition from the Apostles even or also to little Children to give Baptism because in them as in all are the Genuine or ingenerated filths of sin the which ought to be washed with water and the Spirit Somewhat more of this there is in his eighth Book upon Levit 8. Homil. and upon Luke Homil. 14. Tertullain whom Cyprian read so diligently and esteemed so highly For the year 195. that in all matters of doubt he would have recourse to him saying Give me my Master meaning Tertullian in his Book of Baptism chap. 18. According to the Condition disposition and also age of every person the delaying of Baptism is more profitable especially in and about Infants for what necescessity is there if it be not so necessary to bring the suerties into danger of not performing their promise and whether this be meant of the Children which were not born of Christian Parents as some will or of the Children of believing Parents as others say its evident that Baptism was administred in all ages and he intimates the Custom and practice of the Church in his age to Baptize them even Children as well as others Though he seems not to be so well pleased with it and yet again the words import no other then that he denyed the Necessity onely of Baptism to them being out of danger of death not simply the Baptizing of them rather as in another place he doth imply they ought to be Baptized if there be danger or fear that afterwards they may not or cannot be Baptized in his Book of the Soul Chap. 39. and 40. where he saith that Infants of believing Parents or one Parent have such a Sanctity and that from the Privilege of their Birth not the discipline of their bringing up as gives them a Right to Baptism Therefore Tertullain calleth the Children of Believers The designees or destinates of Holiness or as elsewhere the Candidates of Holiness and so here is an evidence for that Birth Holiness or foederal Holiness of which I shall speak anon out of the 2 of Acts. Irenaeus 2 Book For the year 170. Chap. 39. He came to save all by himself I say all who are born again by him into God Infants and little ones and Children and yong men and old men c. The intention of the words is of Christ Jesus who as it followeth there went through every age to Infants made an Infant Sanctifying Infants to little ones made a little one sanctifying those of that age but you see there is an expression of Infants of whom he saith they are born again into or unto God that is Baptized for so Baptism is usually stiled by the Ancients especially the Greeks a Renascence or New Birth or Palingensy as might be shewed out of Athanasius and Basil who took it from the Apostolique manner also of speaking Tit. 3.5 as before I mentioned I can go no higher for Irenaeus was the Schollar and Disciple of Polycarpus and Polycarpus was the Schollar or Disciple of John the Evangelists and to you see I am come up to the very skirts and thresholds of the Apostolique Churches and Primitive Times with the Custom and Practice of Baptizing Infants Some go yet higher to Justin Martyr quaest resp ad orthod qu. For the year 130 90 60 56. and so to Clemens the Roman Bishop in his Apostolical constit lib. 6. cap. 15. and to Dyonisius Areopagita in his Eccles Hietarchy Ch. last And indeed there are pregnant places in them for Baptizing Infants if the Authors were Legitimate they are so good and sufficient against the Papists who own them and maintain them for true and Genuine but with us they are held to be suppositions and spurious and though many good and true things are in them as Infant-Baptism c. Yet they are not belonging to such venerable Names as those I have rchearsed and therefore not of that Antiquity with them and so impertinent to my purpose Onely one thing I must ad to satisfie the Reader why on this side of Augustine towards the Apostles I have mentioned no more of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church seeing there were many more or what were they discrepant in their opinion about the Baptism of Infants no sure the reason must needs be this they all lived long before Pelagius came out from the Brittish Seat and gathered to himself a Sect of Locusts which spread over the world and troubled the Churches with this matter for one they denying the Traduction of originall sin in Infants Therefore those Ancient Fathers of the Church having no occasion to intermeddle with any such matters about Infant-Baptism kept close onely to such controversies and questions as were on foot in their dayes save onely that Cyprian as I touched before was questioned hereabouts the silence of those Fathers that touched not upon it gives consent to the Practice as unquestioned by them but God would put words of it it to the mouthes of some of them to be witnesses unto posterity of the Antiquity of Infant-Baptism and the Churches Practice The like answer may be given why in those two General Councels the Nicene and the Constantinopolitan and some other Provincial ones which were before Augustine nothing is touched upon in their Canons about Baptism of Infants except that of Cyprian and his 66 Colleagues before mentioned because it was at a thing never in question amongst them never opposed by any and yet that was a very sruitful age of haeretical weeds springing up in those purer times witness the Munichees Arrians Donatists Macedonians Aaerians Eunomians Luciferians c. amongst all which not an Antipaedobaptist not any that so much as made scruple at it which sure some or other in malice or envy to the Church would have done if they could have found how to have shaken that as they did all other Foundations of Christinaity But after Augustines time when Pelagius arose Then the Councils came in against him thick and threefold as the Milevitane or Council of Carthage in the year 402. 418. Canon 11. and the Gerundense Council held in Spain 518. Can. 5. and the Bracarense Council the 2. 572. Can. 7. And so the Fathers and Doctors of the Church are ever and anon storming of Pelagius and his adhaerents And now Sir I know all this Labor is lost as to you who are and desire to be but a man of to day and for ever but for yesterday or Antiquity there you will leave even Christ and his Church and go no farther you are none of the old Martiald Souldiery but the New Modell'd Militia and yet you may remember how you began
in your first Leaf with the good and old way of the Baptism of believers stand now therefore in the way and see ask for the old pathes where is the good way and walk therein such a one I have shewed you without your asking even this the Baptism also of Infants walk therein and ye shall find rest for your Soul as there it followeth but if ye say still as there it followeth also we will not walk therein then I shall look upon you as Saint Austins myracle and wonder that I may end with him with whom I began this who believed not when the world believed Practice not when the world Practiseth Seeing then you care not for looking behind you to Antiquity look before you and see the Reformed Churches in France Dutchland Scotland why not England if Infant-Baptism be not now in present the practice and Custom and so hath been of old of these and other Reformed Churches what then is your Church if you have any but a deformed one but a New upstart one who oppose this so General Custom both Ancient and Modern and have quite cast it out of your doors introducing instead thereof and setting up the Man-Baptism and Infant Rebaptism crying out daily for these your Great little Nothings Diana's of the Ephesian first love and first Baptism forsaking Anabaptists Let the advise you to lay your hand upon your mouth and cease declaiming and clamouring against this infant-Baptism for therein you reproach God and his Church God for appointing Infant-Circumcision and his Church for using Infant-Baptism yea to lay your hand upon your heart and in love to the Truth to return unto your First Love and Truth to enter again into Communion and fellowship with your Mother-Church of England and those other her Sister-Churches of the Protestants giving unto us the Right of Fellowship who are ready to reach forth the same to you and also to embrace you And if this be any Blook you stumble at in the way to our Churches that there are Rents and Divisions still amongst us whom may we thank for them even about this infant-Baptism I answer you in a word that our differences are not about Baptizing Infants but about Infants to be Baptized and so in the Point of Paedobaptism or Infant-Baptism we are all agreed and agrieved only at your Schism and Division which you have made in our Churches which are all against you therefore our care must be if we cannot hold fellowship with you to keep our Communion notwiststanding with all Christian Churches and if you will separate and depart from us and them we must let you depart a Brother or a Sister is not under Boadage in such Cases But God hath called us to peace peace as Christs Legacy left to his Church we are willing to have with all man so we may withall retain Truth And seeing whil'st we speak of peace you are still for dissention whil'st we propound truth you will still hold errors our care must be and shall be I hope in our particulars to maintain and preserve our peace and Truth and our Communion in both withall the Reformed Churches abroad in this point of Infant-Baptism which Churches as ours at home God hath blessed in this way with great increase of heavenly gifts and infinite numbers of renouned professours and Saints of those that have bin baptized in their Infancy And that knowing the time that now it is high time for you to awake out of sleep Ro. 13.11 to repent of those sinful Scismes and Rents and Separations you have made between your selves and us and other true Churches to give over your charging us and them with iniquity wherein we shew piety and your putting a divine restraint upon Infant Baptism wherein God hath given them and us liberty and in excluding Christian poor Infants those privileges and helps to heaven which Christ hath indulged them And thus I have answered your last Quaere shewing unto you what warrants we have out of the word for our Baptizing of Infants namely the six warrants reasoned out of the word which are six Reasons warranted out of the word Now joyn all these reasons together with the Scripture out of which they are deduced and will they not make that Analogy or proiportion of Faith as to this point of Infant Baptism according to which we are to proceed nay may they not all arise to a Tantamount Command or a virtual or implicite Command or a consequential Command of the same yea I have made two or three of them to be such in their particulars I have been so used to give you Commands out of the word for our former practices being called ever upon by you for such Commands which so ring still in my ears that though the word warrant do not put me upon such a hot service as a Command which I believe notwithstanding you meant your Tongue either out-running or short-running your wit I shall interpret your challenge or Quaere to aim at what Command out of the word have you for Baptizing Infants And first what Command have you out of the word against Baptizing Infants of Baptized Parents if none Then you deny Baptism to those to whom Christ denyed it not and so in a manner you deny Christ to be your Master and if you deny him you deny also him that sent him if none then you have no authority to infring or Counter-command the liberty of the Church herein ye take too much upon you Sone of Muncer Secondly What Command would you have out of the word for our Baptising Infants of Baptised Parents do you mean an express and praticular Command in calling for this you grant an explicite Command for it and a general one I am glad of this and will make much of it as to my purposes for as general propositions are enough to infer their particular all Children of the Church and in Covenant are to be baptised and therefore the Infants of Baptised Parents are to be baptised So implicite Commands which are but folded up and wrapped in good reasons or good consequences are sufficient for all true Subjects and Disciples of Christ to do a work and this of Baptising the infants of baptised Parents as if it had been more expressed The words intimation or a deduction from the Word is to me and ought to be to you the Words Expression and an injunction from the Word For if you be so streit girdled and queasie-stomacht or narrow throated that nothing will down with you or can be digested but onely expresse Commands in so many Words Letters and Syllables as Infant-baptism doth consist of Then I pray produce such an expresse Command out of the Word for Children of Beleevers when they are grown to be instructed and baptised upon the Confession of Faith or for Baptism of Believers onely in Christian Churches to use your own words or for Woemens eating the Passeover and receiving the Lords Supper or for the first
the Church of God which the family of Christ chiefly was in the Apostles times at the beginning of their preaching the Gospel to and throughout the world was much after the manner of the Family of Abraham which was then the onely Church representative As therefore Abraham in his family had both adult and Infants himself being circumcised at 100. years old Ishmael at 14. years the Proselytes at other several ages Isaac at 8. dayes and so taught Ishmael and the Proselytes of his house of this covenant and the Sacrament thereof before he circumcised them but forthwith baptised Isaac before without any foregoing instruction just so doth our Saviour Christ appoint to be done in his family the Church which was now to be raised in the greater part and gathered out of the Nations So as the adult Heathens aliens from the Covenant void knowledge were first to be taught before they were baptised but the Children of such taught and baptised Heathens were forthwith to be initiated by the Sacrament of Baptism before they were taught in the heads of Religion Now the condition of our Churches is a constituted and planted Church already formed and therefore according to the intention of this Text the baptising of Infants is to precede and the teaching them to follow when by reason of years and capacity they can hear the word 4. Christ indeed gave Command that whom his Disciples had taught they should be baptised but that none should be baptised but suchf as were first taught that is your Addition or Tradition wherein you resemble the old Separates of the Jewes the Pharisees as I have told you the name of a Pharisee is in English a Separate For as they transgressed the Commandements of God by their Traditions of the Elders Matthew 15. So do you corrupt this Commandement of Christ by your Additions and the inventions of your Youngsters But in vain did they worship God Teaching for doctrines the Commandements of men and in vain do you worry us bringing in for proofes the glosses and expositions of Children But look again upon the Text in Matthew and see if Teaching do not also follow close after Baptising and Baptising so goeth before Teaching thus with your own Argument retorted I have slain you as Goliah with his own Sword But sure our Saviour Christ being the God of Order and the Wisdom of God did not thus place the words and order them up and down to no purpose Yea I conceive that in so doing he purposed to give a full and universal Precept or Command for Baptism both to the Apostles and others the Pastors of the Church unto the worlds end that so when they ceased committing their converted Churches unto these succeeding them these might proceed where they left to build upon their foundations To Baptise and Teach where they had taught and Baptised And thus the words are very orderly placed and ranked the first file as I may so speak being of Teaching and Baptising where the Apostles wâ—â—â— as Ambâ—ssidours in Extraordinary Teaching the Cown Men and Women of the Nations and Pagans the Gratuital Covenant of God and baptising them or giving them the initial Seal thereof The next file or order is of Baptising and Teaching where went either they also as Pastors in Ordinary or other Ordinary Pastors Baptising the Children and Infants of such converted Nations and Pagans being in Covenant with their Parents and teaching them afterwards to observe whatsoever Christ commanded c. So that here seemes to be Christs Commandement in this Text both for Adult-Baptism and also Infant-Baptism or if you will for Parental-Baptism upon their being taught the Covenant and their embracing and professing Christ and also for Filial Baptism upon their being in Covenant as being Children of baptised Professors after which is to follow teaching and instructing of them as they are able which is punctually observed by us who do or should having baptised them by order Catechise them afterwards that so they may be fitted in due time for that other Sacrament the Lords Supper according to that of Hebrews 6 2. Where the Apostle speaks of Baptisms The Baptisms I mentioned which are plural or Two in respect of the subjects capable the grown men of the Nations converted and their Infants or Children but yet but one and the same Baptism as formerly I have shewed Baptisms I say and imposition of hands and alludeth to the practice then and since in use with the Church That such Children as were baptised in their Infancy should afterwards openly in their own persons and with their own mouth own the Covenant confirm an ratifie the promise and condition make Profession of their Faith and so be by imposition of Hands farther confirmed and admitted to the Lords Supper Now you Sir quite contrary to the order of these prinicples of the doctrine of Christ as they are called in the 1. verse of Heb. 6. You begin at imposition or laying on of Hands before Baptism or the laying on of Water and so do but impose upon us as the Children Impostor-like requiring first Confession of Faith from them before they have from you Administration of Baptism as if your Children born Christians had no more privilege were in no better condition than the Pagans and Nations Christ sent his Apostles unto 5. I shall tell you that the word translated Teach all Nations in which lyeth all the force of your arguing against Childrens Baptism it signifieth see your want of skill in and your folly in declaming and clamoring against University and human learning in the divine languages for so are the original ones signifieth in the original not onely to Teach but to make Disciples of the Nations to admit them to be Scholars to be taught This is the end wherefore the Apostles were sent out namely to make Disciples and the Actions whereby they were to attain this end were Baptising and Teaching and if it were not thus there would be found a Tautology in Christs words and you must read them thus Go teach all Nations baptising them Teaching them Such an Exposition as this would put you to your shifts Go ye make Disciples to me out of all Nations by Baptising and Teaching and such a one may do well enough very well against you who when you come to this or any Text do but shift up and down for your self but sift not at all for the sense And therefore to puzzle you a little for there is no farther hopes of any of you I fear I will tell somewhat more that our Divines have added to justifie this Exposition Christ saith not go make Disciples and baptise them but make disciples baptising them implying that by baptising them they made them Disciples Like as it is said that John did baptise in the Wildernesse and preach as though he did baptise first and then preach So all Israel is said to be baptised into Moses not as already taught but to be taught by
father and children as the promise and seal Circumcision were to the particular families of Abraham father and children and so here came the Nations to be blessed in Abraham and Abraham here began to be the father of many Nations The which may be yet made more to appear if the time be looked upon when the Apostles were sent to teach or disciple these Nations just when Circumcision lay a dying as I may so say and expiring or ceasing to be a seal of administration unto the Jewish Church a very fit time the very time for the Lord to appoint Baptism and to enlive it for the seal to come in place of the other and perform the same office in the Churches of the Gentiles as the other did in the Churches of the Jews namely to let in the believing parents with their children Look again into Rom. 11.23 24. these Gentile and Pagan Nations were to be taken into the place of the Nation of the Jews now upon this their cutting off and casting out and these wild olives were to have the same engraffing into the good Olive as the natural branches had but they and their children were graffed in and now they and their children are cut off so these and their children of the Nations here were in the like manner here engraffed and implanted into Christ and therefore baptized Rom. 6.5 like as the other circumcised Lastly what a great change would there have been else in the heart and love of Christ if now he who rebuked the Apostles for hindring the little children of the Jews to come unto him yea who embraced them in his arms laid his hands upon them and blessed them should now himself in this commandement unto his Apostles to teach disciple and baptize the Nations not minde them the children of these Nations in the like manner as to Baptism as he did the children of Abraham as to Circumcision but leave them out or forbid them to come or be brought unto him as if he had now no delight or took no pleasure in the Infantry of the Gentiles whereas himself long before spake of this very time Isa 49.22 Behold I will lift up my hands to the Gentiles and set up my standard unto the people and they shall bring thy sons in their arms or bosoms and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders But why did not Christ here put in baptize the Nations and their seed as he did in the first administration Circumcise the Jews and their seed The Answer is made in the very Question Because he did it in the first administration of Circumcision there was no need of doing it again and besides children having once a right to be accounted as belonging to Christs Church and to be reputed visible Members thereof and no forfeiture made thereof on their part or bar put In by Christ or any other person of authority they are alwaies so to be reckoned of yea they are here put in again and mentioned in the discipled Nation and comprehensively included in Them baptize them the Nations discipled which consist of parents and their children which make them up Again if the children had not been included here in these Nations what a great change had here bin made in the latitude and extent of the Covenant as to the subject thereof I mean this particular of children and that without warning given whereby some other provisions or course might have been sought for and supplicated at Gods hands for the good of their souls for by this your rule of shutting out children from Baptism by the power of this commandement according to your interpretation if a Jew should convert to Christ and become a Christian and believe in Christ come in the flesh he should be in a worse condition as to his child than before as who may not be baptized whereas before he might be circumcised and the parents faith in Christ will be a loss and prejudice to his child and both parent and child may think it to be a worse Covenant than the former whereas it is but one and the same and therefore when he was a Jew his child was circumcised so when he becomes a Christian his child is to be baptized And thus I have out of this Text of Matthew 28.19 wherein your party glorieth so much though I forgate to tell you that herein is not described the primary Institution of Baptism but onely an enlargement of the Apostles Commission I have evinced a commandement for baptizing of Infants of Believers you perhaps looked for a command exprest in so many letters and syllables Go baptize the children of Believers but is it not good and effectual it ought to be if included in the sense and meaning of the words are not Magistrates and Ministers too by your leave meant in that commandement Honour thy Father are not envie and hatred likewise comprised in that command Thou shalt do no murder yet neither those nor these are expresly literally or verbally commanded where is the Bishop of Rome mentioned in the Revelations yet he meant and his universal headship by the Beast there and his mark I could give you many more instances And why not Infants also comprised in this command Disciple the Nations and baptize them though not set down there by name amongst the Nations and Disciples to be baptized But I have writ enough of this Point before I will onely as formerly now also for a conclusion of this Point leave with you another Syllogism supposing that now having been used to them Syllogisms I mean you will not be much afraid of them though you think them the bug bears of the Universities and limbs of humane Arts and Sciences fear not for unless you come nigh them which I believe you will not or dare not they will not bite you otherwise they have teeth in their mouths The sixth Syllogism is this The discipled or taught Nations and so brought into Covenant are commanded by Christ to be baptized Mat. 28.19 But the Parents and their children are the discipled or taught Nations and so brought into Covenant Therefore the Parents and their children are commanded to be baptized The first Proposition is the letter of the Text as is said The second is largely proved before and who need doubt but that children are included in the word Nations being a part and a great part of them and comprehended in every administration of grace and mercy especially And now leaving the commandement of Christ for Infant Baptism I proceed to the second kinde of Warrants you call for namely the example of Christ and his Apostles for so these two you yoke together in your Quaeres and impose upon my neck to bear up and carry out in this and all points Commands and Examples when your self as a Bullock unaccustomed to the yoke neither do nor can shew either of the two for your wild untamed and untaught opinion As for the example of Christ it is
a vain thing to demand it as who baptized none as I have told you formerly out of the Evangelist And for the Apostles they baptized but a few as whose business and work was especially and lay for planting Churches and raising of foundations out of grown persons converted by them out of Judaism and Gentilism as is expresly set down 1 Cor. 1.13 17. And therefore if Christ sent them not to baptize but to preach the Gospel not to baptize either especially in reference to preaching and converting or generally all whom they preached unto or converted it was not part of their commission to do so nor any violation of Christs command for them not to do so for then S. Paul would and should rather have asked God pardon than given him thanks as here he doth for that he baptised none of the Corinthians whom notwithstanding in Christ Jesus he begate through the Gospel 1 Cor. 4.15 save some few here also named and mentioned by him This I acquaint you with at first to let you understand the reason of so frequent mention of the Baptism of believing Converts and of so much silence in Scripture of Infant-Baptism and to shew you further the irrationality of your demand who as your friends and father Jesuites were wont to call upon us for Names Names of Protestants before Luther's daies now clamour me for Examples Examples of baptized Infants in the Apostles time Yea to present to you the invalidity of your reason so frequently urged the Apostles did not practise constantly the baptizing Infants and therefore it is not to be so done For besides that for you to reason negatively from the Scripture in a matter of fact as here from the not-practice of the Apostles to the unlawfulness of our practice and fact sheweth you are indeed averse not onely to humane but even Divine Arts and Sciences there being no Divinity little humanity in such arguments fitter for children than men for the scales of a Higler than the Schools of a Disputer I have shewed you good reason why the Apostles yea the Apostles own reason which I suppose you will not deny to be good did not baptize all either grown persons whom they converted or their Infants by name and sometimes did not baptize at all when they had converted people And may not I now turn the same Argument upon and against your self and put the same yoke upon your neck There is no practice of any Apostle to be seen or read of in the whole Gospel or Acts of the Apostles of their baptizing any Christians child when he was grown up to years and therefore your practice in doing so is unlawfull and unwarrantable you I believe would think this but mad arguing but you know the man and his communication 1 Kings 9.11 From the Acts of the Apostles there may be but from the non-Acts of the Apostles there may not be made or drawn a good reason to enforce or unforce a practice There is recorded no practice of any Apostle admitting women to the Lords Supper or example of any woman receiving the Lords Supper more then of Infants receiving Baptism and the Apostles admitting them thereto will you therefore hence conclude the practise of Womens receiving the Lords supper is to be omitted yes will say there is for doth not Christ say Drink ye all of this And I say Christ also said Teach baptise all Nations therfore Infants will as well follow here As therefore women will follow there you will say again was not the Lords supper administred to the whole Church of Corinth and therfore to the Women therein and so say I was not Baptism administred to the whole Church of Corinths and to whole families there and therefore to the children therein You will say again that in Christ Jesus there is neither Male nor Female Gal. 3.28 And may not I say that in Christ Jesus there is neither Old nor Young Father or Child Thence indeed you may prove and deduct that Women are not to be kept back from the Lords supper but there is nothing expresly set down or mentioned of their receiving the Lords supper or the Apostles giving them it And so may I prove hence and have proved many wayes that Christian-Infants are not to be kept back from the Lords Baptism Though there should be nothing mentioned explicitly of the Apostles practise of baptising children or childrens examples of receiving baptism in the Gospel For your fuller Understanding in this poynt look back to what I have discoursed formerly about our imtation of the examples of th Apostles and their practises To which I add that their practise and example is and ought to be in all Morall and material acts of Religion an affirmative and Positive Rule to the Churches of God as thus and herein they baptised such and such and therefore we may do the like But it is no negative or exclusive rule They baptised not such and such That therefore we may not baptise such for the reason is plain that they possibly might not meet with all persons and occasions and their practise is not a full rule though a good rule but the reason I gave before is a playner one for that they were altogther in a manner or chiefly taken up with the preaching to the Nations converting people and planting Churchs that they could not nor did attend so much upon Baptising and therefore their Practise and example in not baptising such or such is no rule for the Churches to walk by now But yet Sir notwithstanding all this there are fair footsteeps and prints of the Apostles feet to be seen walking in this though not so much beaten way of baptising beleevers and their infante which the scriptures have traced and tracked out for us to take after them As in the Acts of the Apostles chap. 16 15. Lydia she and her houshold was baptised and verse 33. The Gaoler He and all his houshold was baptised Acts 18. chapter verse 8. Crispus with all his house and many of the Corinthians with their housholds for so it is meant were baptised So in the Acts of Paul the Apostle 1 Cor. 11.4 5.6 Where is repeated again the baptising of Crispus and Gaius and the houshold of Stephanas And I know nothing to the contrary or contrary to the Analogy and proportion of faith but rather it may be agreeable to the Harmony of the scripture and these scriptures If I should say that those persons who are mentioned but single are meant to be baptised them and their housholds as Gaius here by Paul So Cornelius by Peter yea the Eunuch baptised alone by Philip might procure his children if he had any to be baptised by some or other Evangelical minister coming into those coasts and so where the houshold of Aristobulus and the houshold of Narcissus are mentioned as Romans 16.10 And the houshold of Onesiphorus 2 Tim. 4.19 Baptised housholds are there meant Now when it is said such and
unto the Church For which you may see Acts 2.39 41. because you give me no Text here which I wonder at of which I have your consideration in particular to peruse anon Onely I shall add a word or two about Sureties in the Baptism of Infants because I do not remember that hitherto before now you have made any mention of them and for that I see you are here in an errour about them and you would put a slur upon us and a kinde of slander upon our Church as if Infant-Baptism stood upon account of faith in the Parents and Sureties although say you they have none for themselves I will adde somewhat although they have more than your self I may say the one as well as you say the other Know then Sir that the costom of having Sureties at the baptizing of Infants hath been very ancient in the Church when Truth was in its prime light and Primitive purity though thereupon it is the less liked because the more unlike to the new upstart and out-staring novelisms of these later Ages and last declining times and their office was as to bear witness of the birth of Infants of Christian Parents and therefore were called Attesters or Witnesses as at this day so to answer for the faith and take upon them the education of the baptized Infants and for this they were called Sponsors or Susceptors Hereupon the Infant to be baptized although he did not profess himself to be Believer with his own mouth nor could yet being asked and interrogated as the manner was Doest thou believe he answered in the mouth and tongue of his Sponsors or Sureties or the very Parents or they which is all one answered in stead and place of the Infant I believe And without such profession of faith Infants publickly were not baptized in the Church Thus in and by the judgment of charity the Ancients held and judged the Infant to believe and that if it could speak with its mouth it would answer that it believed and because it could not they appointed as before Sponsors and Sureties in the name and place of the Infant to answer I believe And in this sense also besides others I have given were Infants of Christians called of old Believers because they did in some manner profess faith in and by the mouth and words of their Sponsors Sureties and Parents True its uncertain and unknown to the Church or man whether the Infant doth believe or not but unless the Church had so judged by the judgement of charity which saith the Apostle believeth all things hopeth all things the Infant to believe she would not have appointed Sureties and Sponsors in the name and place of the Infant so to asnwer and unless the Infant it self had so answered in the words and mouth of its Sponsors and Sureties she i.e. the Church would have forbid it to be baptized Thus I have told you of the ancient manner of the Primitive Baptisms with Sureties and Sponsors you must not now here call upon me for proof hereof out of the plain and direct Scripture for I acknowledge this ancient Custom and many a one in use amongst the first Christian Churches is not expresly prescribed in Scripture for then it might be concluded absolutely necessary for all ages and persons to follow so neither is it forbidden explicitly in Scripture and therefore not utterly to be rejected as unlawfull to be used as which was for the good of the Infant and hurs of none as having neither impiety nor iniquity in it so also it was for the provision and better education of the Infant the edification of the Church and the demonstration and exercise of Charity to and charitable judging of others Insomuch that as those venerable Names and Lights of the Ancient Church Tertullian and Auguâ—tine have related and delivered that Custom of baptizing with Sureties and Sponsors so other Reverend Names and Lights of these Modern reformed Churches as Luther Zanchy Beza have allowed approved and commended the aforesaid Custom as fit to be retained still From all which it now appears that you Sir are much out when as you talk and tattle of the Churches baptizing Infants upon account of faith in the Sureties although they have none of their own for you see it was not upon the account of the faith of the Sureties which the Sureties had of their own that Infants ever were baptized but upon the account of the faith of the Infant which the Infant had of its own testified and professed in their name by the Sureties appointed by the Church which judged charitably of the Infant to beleive that the Infant was baptized But now before I proceed to the next I will call upon you to consider That your Doctrine of baptizing actual Believers onely and thereupon not baptizing the Infants of Believers until they have actual faith and can and do make confession of it doth rather overthrow as much as in you lieth the nature of the Covenant of Grace and the whole Gospel of Christ at leastwise to the Seal thereof all the while from their birth that such Infants are kept by you from the same Seal of Baptism for you cannot keep them from their Covenant though you do shamefully ingratefully ungraciously yea and unnaturally keep them from the Seal The thing is evident enough if you do but remember this is the nature of the Covenant and Gospel of Christ the Promise of God to be the God of the believing Parent and his Seed joyntly therefore also of his child as soon as it s born yea before when it is his Seed and soon after its birth Gods will is declared to have this Covenant executed and confirmed by an initial Seal of Circumcision upon Infants in the Old and of Baptism upon Infants in the New Testament now who overthroweth this Covenant we who put our Infants under the Seal of the Covenant soon after their birth it being their birth-right or you that with-hold it from your Infants until they come to be of years to make profession let God himself be judge and that his Word Genesis 17.14 He hath broken my Covenant who the child whose flesh of his fore-skin is not circumcised so also he whose flesh is not washed with the water of Baptism which latter if not done or ordered to be done by you who are Parents to the Child the breach and overthrowing the Covenant lieth upon you and not upon the child to answer for You have broken the Lords Covenant and the Lord may break in upon you as he did upon Moses for neglect of circumcising his Seed Exodus 4.24 Consider of it it s the Lords mercy you are not broken and consumed let the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long suffering lead you to repentance the Covenant Gospell Christ being the same under both Administrations God will look and justly may and must that his Covenanters or covenanted with even Instants shall be now partakers of
this Doctrine of thus baptizing Infants overthrows your practice of baptizing onely Children grown though born of baptized Christian Parents when they can give a reason of their Faith I say Infant-Baptism overthrows this your Man Baptism in a setled planted Church and you have not one Text to raise or lift it up or hold up your selves But I remember you joyned with Infant-Baptism overthrowing its preventing also the Baptism expresly commanded in those Scriptures alleged by you What mean you Sir by such a conjuntion of overthrowing and preventing for if that overthroweth this then it doth more than prevent and if that doth but prevent this it doth not so much as overthrow it For my part I think the one doth not prevent the other but both were joyned together both in the Precept Baptise the discipled Nations the believing Parents and their children as also in the practice The Apostles having converted Pagan Nations and Houses I mean the grown Parents unto the Faith baptized them and their children at the same time or left them baptizeable and to be baptized of others if they were in haste of their preaching the Word like as Abraham the Believer and Ismael his Son were both circumcised upon one and the same day Sure if any one prevented the other it was the old Administration as you call it in this place the Baptism of Believers that prevented the other the Baptism of Infants and not the other back way as you affirm for the Believers both of the Jewish and Heathenish Nations were first baptized and then their Infants were afterwards baptised as Abraham was first circumcised and then the self-same day was Ismael circumcised But let me hear and reade your Reason You say likewise Insant-Baptism prevents the old ministration of this expresly commanded baptizing of Believers because most of persons look upon themselves as baptized in their infancy and so never look after the command of Christ to be baptized when they believe What a Reason is here given of Infant-Baptism preventing another Baptison expresly commanded namely the baptized persons imagination of himself or looking upon himself as baptized in his infancy and so never look after the command of Christ to be baptized when they believe To let go the irrationality of this Reason I must say again that there is no such old or new ministration of an expresly commanded Baptism of Believers grown after they have been once baptized in their Infancy Your cannot wring or wrest it out of the mouth of any one of your cited Texts so far are you from deducing and leading it fairly by the hand as I may so say out of them or any one of them This of yours savours too rankly of the old Heresie and new Schisme of Rabaptization ever condemned in the Churches of God both of old and of late as I have formerly proved from the Apostles casting up this account and bringing all Baptismes to this as the total summe that there is but one Baptism and therefore once baptized are not to be baptized any more And therefore not onely most of the persons but all of the persons baptized are to look upon themselves as baptized sufficiently and never to look after any other Baptism commanded them of Christ when they believe for there is none commanded Do you Sir express it as if it were a fault or a fancy that most of persons look upon themselves as baptized in their infamcy and never look after to be baptized when they believe Stop your ears Oye baptized men women and children at the voice of the chaarmers for they charm neither wisely nor foundly nor sweetly as to you and your good and benifit not wisely for you but subtlely for themselves and their party who having forsaxen their first love and renounced their first Baptism now compass about to make your their proselytes and so two-fold more the children of Hell than themselves if ye after so many strong Reasons and so fair a warning will also renounce your Baptism wherein ye renounced the Devil and all his works A chief one of the DXevils works is to draw people to renounce their Baptism the mark and Seal of their Covenane with God Gods with them as he useth to do with Wirches and Sorcerers before he entreth into Covtract with them and give them a mark and Seal of their Langue with him and his with them Not soundly or truly for you but hypocritically and falsly for themselves do they thus charm as who onely do pretend the Word and Commandement but can shew you none nor example for any Christian once baptized who ever was baptized again The desire to have you baptized again as the Impostors would have had the baptized Galathians circumcised That they may glory in your flesh Galat. 6.13 a most vain and shamefull glory and make you tread under foot the Son of God and to count the blood of the Covenant wherewith ye were sanctified an unholy thing and do despite unto the Spirit of grace Heb. 10.19 at least to grieve the holy Spirit of God wherewith ye were sealed unto the day of redemption if ye belong to the Election of God Such a grievous hainous and unsound thing tit is to renounce your Christian Baptisms Look therefre diligently to your selves as the Authour to the Hebrews hath it lest any man among you fall from the Grace of God even that Grace offered in the Sea crament of Baptism ot you and it may be received by you therein lest any root of bitterness springing up in you trouble you lest there be any profane person amongst you as Esau who for one morsel of meat sold his birth-right Heb. 12.15 16 thus Esau despised his birth-right Genesis 25 34. Is not Baptism your birth-right also is not your renouncing of your Infant-Baptism a despising of your Infant Birth-right and a breaking or pulling off or a trostrating or evacuaring the Seal either way a despising it and a profaning of the Covenant of Grace and will ye thus part with your Birth-right first Baptism and sell it as it were to these supplanting Jacobs and all for a mess of twice sod pottage such is second Baptism or rebaptization Will you leave your Manna that came down first from Heaven loathing it to lust after and hunt after these Quails and listen to their Quail piper who say What is this Manna nothing before ouer eys but this Manna Remember that whilest the flesh of the Quails eaten in cintempt of Manna was yet between their teeth ere the Quails were chewed the wrath of God was kindled amongst the people to the smiting of them with a great plague besides that the flesh afterwards came out at their nostrils and was loathsom unto them and so fear ye left while the water of the new Dippers or second Baptism received in contempt of your first Baptism is yee upon your heads and ears and faces the wrath of God which ever attends upon the
gift greater than the fault 4. Rom. 5. 1 Cor. 7.14 Rom. 11.16 It is from the Faith of the Parents in Covenant with God that their Children born of them are not unclean but Holy and if the Root be Holy so are the Branches So also for the obtaining of Temporal blessings upon their Children the Faith of Parents is avaylable How often is God said to bestow such and such good Temporal things for Abrahams and for Davids sake Jesus seeing their Faith Matth. 9.2 who brought him lying on a bed Healed the sick man of the Palsie So Christ said unto the Centurion Go thy way and as thou hast believed be it unto thee â—â—t 8.13 and his servant was healed the same hour that he believed will Christ do so much for a sick servant because of his Masters Faith who brought him to a sick man because of his friends Faith that brought him and will he not do the like or more for Children because of their Parents Faith who bring them and offer them to him in Baptism Matth. 15.28 John 4.50 Yes he healed the daughter that was grievously vexed with a Devill for the Mothers great Faith the woman of Canaan and healed a Son that was at the point of death for the Fathers Faith a ruler in Capernaum In a word one mans Faith may profit another as the Parents the Children towards both Temporal Spiritual and Eternal Salvation by way of intreaty and impetration but not by way of conveyance and application For this the Application of Christ and his Benefits is not another mans work of Faith but it is every mans Faith to work it and now Sir you that have thus slighted the Faith of Parents as to the good and benefit of their Children Go you and learn what this meaneth Believe in the Lord Jesus and thou shalt be saved and thy House Act. 16.31 And so you suppose it ware were so that the promises ware were made unto the faithful in the behalf of their Children and they concluded to be in the Covenant thereby Then either God doth perform his promise in saving all the Children of faithful Parents according to his Covenant or else he breaks his Covenant made to those Parents and doth not perform it his promise either of which particulars no man which is in his right wits will dare to affirm and therefore this Exposition that Children have any right to the Covenant by vertue of the Faith of their Parents or to any privilege of the Covenant by vertue of the same is a falce false Exposition of the Text and a wresting of it Jesus saith ye do err not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God Matth. 22.29 I am the God of Abraham and of Isaack and of Jacob God is not the God of the dead but of the living vers 32. I thought it it would come to this at last that after your Railing upon the Church of God in England for worse than naught even no Church and after your baiting the Ministers of God there and by your good-will ill-will your quaerying and tearing Gods portion of Maintenance from them your Quarrelling at their Ministrations of the Sacraments of God this especially of Infant-Baptism besides abundance more of Gods institutions and allowances that you have been Quaerulous at you would at last ascend above the height of the Clouds and fall to Questioning of God himself about the performing and breaking his promise about his saving all or not saving all the Children of faithful Parents Either of which particulars if you had been in your right wits you would not have dared yet what is it you will not dare in matter of Interpretation of Scripture or argumentation of reason to have drawn and enforced so inconsequently and inconsiderately from that though but supposed proposition For suppose it again that the promise was made to the saithful in the behalf of the Children and they concluded to be in Covenant thereby yet neither of the particulars you mention doth follow that all their Children must be saved according to that Covenant that so God may perform his promise or if not God must be a breaker of his promise and seeing you have not proved the consiquence I will prove the Inconsequence of it by the reason I have touched before the Promise and Covenant made to the faithful in the behalf of the Children and concluding these in the same I must here use your words containeth not only the inward saving graces and the spiritual benefits of the same such as are Justification Regeneration perseverance and glorification freely promised in Christ if so taken only then indeed all in Covenant must be saved or else God be a breaker of Covenant But it containeth in it also the outward administrations in visible Ordinances and Church Privileges which are many as to be Gods people and the Children of Gods invisible League to have the Oracles of God c. and thus taken God is no breaker of promise if all in Covenant with him be not saved by him for God made no such Covenant with all faithful Parents to save all their Children but to put them under the way and means of Salvation by taking them also to be the God of and owning them for children in Covenant and appointing them a Seal thereof This may be called the Covenant of Administration or rather that part of it which stands in administrations of external Ordinances and Privileges the which hath belonging to it all visible and external professors as also a visible Seal which all that are in this Covenant ought therefore to be partakers of you as it appears allow none to be under the Covenant of Grace but only such as are inwardly believers Justified Sanctified and partakers of the saving Graces of the Covenant The which error and mistake as I told you before I tell you again hath seduced you into these inconsequent consequences and mislead you into your Anabaprismal Baptismes for as many are called but few chosen so many are to be reputed to belong to the Covenant of grace and to be Covenanters though they have not inwardly and effectually the saving graces of the Covenant Besides I could prompt you that the Covenant is but conditional not absolute And now for a conclusion because you have made mention of such a thing the Salvation of Infants born in the precincts of the Church I will leave with you a few Propositions to consider off 1. That the Church of God determineth nothing positively and peremptorily about the Salvation of Infants dying either with or without Baptism for she knoweth that secret things belong to God and onely revealed things belong to her and her children 2. She judgeth that Infants in the general Baptized or unbaptized are saved that is some but not all for this she hath a judgement of certainty an charity both both the charity and certainty of such a judgement 3. That this and that particular Infant
baptized or unbaptized is saved she hath no judgement of certainty but only of charity and this may have though there should be none of those particulars saved 4. That inward saving grace doth not alwayes attend the Covenant largely and comprehensively taken of which before nor the Seal but only in such as belong to the election of grace Yet the Church may in charity think so as to particulars in Covenant and under Seal till the contrary appear though she have no certain knowledge of it 5. Elect Infants Baptized and dying in their Infancy have no outward means of Salvation but their Baptism the Seal of the Covenant but there is an inward invisible grace which the Holy Spirit before in at or by Baptism doth truly really and actually impute or impart to them applying Christ in his Justifying and Sanctifying vertue unto the souls of such Infants This the Church holdeth not only as of Charity but as of certainty 6. Such Elect Infants Baptized and so dying are capable of and do attain to such saving inward graces not by the usual and ordinary way of Believing upon hearing and conceiving for such actual Faith is not of absolute nececessity to all Gods Elect but only to those to whom God affords the means of it it is the application of Christs Righteousness that justifieth them which is done to them either by some habits of Faith infused of God into their hearts or by Gods Spirit in a secret and unknown way to us supplying all defects in them and doing all things on their parts and this he holdeth most in charity with some though not full of certainty because it is secret 7. Such Elect Infants Baptized and living to the Use of Reason and Understanding the seeds of Grace and Faith infused before or in Baptism do grow up by the ordinanry means unto an actual apprehension of Christ and his Righteousness yea areall possession and comfortable fruition of Christ and all his benefits which were in Baptism truly and effectually sealed before unto them whensoever they should be capable to make use of them and this she affirmeth both out of certainty and charity 8. Because the Church and all this while I speak of the Church of old England hath no certain knowledge of particulars who are Elect Infants and who not but only a charitable opinion of this and that and so every particular one born in the bosome of the Church for that she not only charitably holdeth but certainly knoweth that all Infants born of Christian Parents are also inexternal and professional Covenant of God together with their Christian Parents Therefore she is carefull as she ought that all such in convenient time and with the soonest may be Baptized and receive the Initial Seal of the Covenant so as none as much as may be depart out of this life without Baptism not as if she certainly thought Infants having been true partakers of Baptism must needs without doubt be saved but because she will not be wanting in her charity and duty to God and such Infants which being once baptized and dying soon after she thinks them saved in her judgement of charity in which she thinketh the inward grace may accompany the outward Ministration but for any judgement of certainty and verity herein she disclaimeth and referreth the same to the God Omniscient Now to what end you add these last words Jesus saith Ye do erre not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God Mat. 22.29 I am the God of Abraham of Isaac and Jacob God is not the God of the dead but of the living Verse 32. unless it be to shew a kinde of fatality of errour falling upon you and following you wheresoever you go not knowing but pretending ever the Scriptures which still you cite as heretofore and speak words against your own life the life of your Cause and cut your own throat with your own knife or run your self thorow with your own Sword even the Sword of the Spirit the Texts of Scripture as you cite and apply them as here For by virtue of Abraham's saith which God so well accepted of did not God enter into and make a Covenant both with Abraham and his Seed Isaac and Jacob and all other both Jews and Gentiles who should be followers of Abraham's faith and God being the God not of the dead but of the living Abraham liveth still in the children of Abraham who are of the same saith with him and so the Covenant made with Abraham lives still in all believing Parents for themselves and their children In that saidest thou truly John 4.18 And for your last words hereabouts Consider these things with a single eye aiming at Gods glory and thy Neighbours good and answer these Considerations by plain and direct Scriptures if you can or eise leave off wresting the Scriptures to your own ends if not your destruction I have done it you see considered your Considerations which I wish you had better considered of that so they might have been truly Considerations and that not onely with a single eye as you speak but with a twofold eye so I must if aiming at both Gods glory and my Neighbours good even your good also as well as Parents and their children whereas your Considerations did neither but rahter obscured Gods glory in his Covenant and diminishing your Neighbours good the good of Infants especially which God hath enlarged to them And God hath enabled me for I can do nothing of myself to answer your Considerations by plain and direct Scriptures and Reasons drawn from them yea and such Scriptures as you have wrung wrested and wronged I have vindcaged by explaining them and directing of them to their right end and construction And so I shall not need to leave off that I never began But truly it is time for you to give over that which you have practised all along your Letter to me the wresting of Scriptures and that to your own ends if not destruction yea I must tell you though you may wrest the Scriptures to your own destruction unless you see your errour and repent you do not wrest them to your own ends I am sure for they do not come up or attain either to your own end the destruction of our Infant-Baptism or to your other end for both these are your own ends the justification of your Adult Baptism of persons before baptized I will not be my own judge herein but refer it to the indifferent Reader if any shall peruse this my Answer I proceed to that which followeth of yours An Exposition according to the minde of the Holy Ghost in that Scripture 1 Cor. 7.14 For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the believing husband else were your children unclean but now they are holly holy or clean which is opposite to uncleanness What a Mountebank are you alwaies thus to mount up your low bank and to elevate
regard them as little as you do our Students and the learned of our Universities but is there any such to be seen in the chair of Moses or to be read in the Pentateuch of his books all that I can meet with is this that when their children should ask their Parents the meaning of the Pesseover the Parents were to instruct or Catechiz them therein and so prepare them for a Passeover against the time should come that they under stood the service thereof in the mean the memorial of the Angels passing over them in Egypt and their passing over the Red Sea into the Wilderness was so held up even amongst their children Exod. 13.14 What 's now become of your old Quaere now what expresse command have you for such and such I retort it upon your self for childrens eating the paschal Lamb Every Male-child shall be Circumcised a command is expresse for the Circumsing of children Deus 16.16 and sure if chidlren had been to eat of the paschal Lamb there would have been as expresse a command for this and whereas Exod. 34 23. Thrice in the year shall all your men children appear before the Lord God the place which he shall choose whereof one time was the feast of the Passeover it s granted as a Commandement that such children who could hold the father by the hand and walk with him up to the Temple went along with him but wherefore namely to be instructed Catechized and blessed of the Priest but not to eat of the paschal Lamb unless they were of that groweth in years and in understanding of the mystery if otherwise they had other food than the paschal Lamb for them of lesser age and knowledge as also for the unclean as some might happen to be and uncircyncumcised both at home when they did eat the Passeover and also at the Temple as for the unleavened bread I suppose the children did eat of that because for seven daies together all leavened bread was to be put quite and utterly out of the house and burnt insomuch as they must not look upon any yea it was under Gods curse if any did eat any leavened bread during those seven daies which at other times ordinarily they did but for the paschal Lamb which was to be eaten up all in that one night and what remained of it to be burnt with fire in the morning I take it the children of the Jews did eat nothing of it at all who were there fore had to bed and laid to sleep whilest the Parents were celebrating their evening and night-service of the Passeover At other Sacrifices and Offerings which were not Sacramental it s expressed it shall be for Aaron and his sons for the Priest and his children as being a part of their maintenance Now this I the rather enlarge upon to perswade you from your opinion that you have taken up I know not where yes I believe I know where you have taken it up even where it lay in-Tombed that so you may be no occasion of reviving and raising up and old bruied error that hath lain quiet in its grave these thousand years and upwards and that is The administraing the Lords Supper unto Infants and children of Chriftians as necessary and decent This opinion was of force in the Roman Church in the daies of Pope Innocent the first I will not name some others of ancient and reverend remembrance in that Age who held the same thing and practice and did thereby shew that men standing too much upon their own conceited interpretations of Scriptures may fall from the truth and erre from the faith in some particulars as you Sir have generally done throughtout your whole Letter for then He and the rest of the Roman Church under him believed that Infants baptized could not be saved except they should participate of the Eucharist taking their ground from that Scripture John 6 53. Jesus said unto them Verily I say unto you except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood ye have no life in you and therefore they held it the Lords Supper wherein the flash of the Son of man is eaten and his blood drunk necessary to the life and salvation of Infants But this was not the right interpretation of that Text as which is not meant of that Eucharistical or Sacramental feasting upon Christs Body and Blood but of a Spiritual Faith and believing in Christs Death and Passion And hereupon this opinion of Pope innocent the first and the Roman Church under him is since retracted and rejected by Pope Pius the fourth and the Roman Church under him in that Council of Trent whose Decrees are all held and canonised to bâ—â—â—lieved upon necessity of salvation as who have determined against administration and participation of the Eucharist as neither necessary nor decent for Infants How say you to this you Great Patrons and Imitators of the Church of Rome who say she cannot erre at leastwise hath not erred Did the Church of Rome not erre in the daies of Pope Innocent then is she now in an error doth she not now erre herein then did she formerly erre and conseq tently may erre hereafter But now if those above named had light upon your Tenet or error as I think it and could have made it hold up which you onely raise and startle having the Gift as any gisted Brother that ever I read to prove nothing and affirm any thing That the Infants of the Jews did eat of the Paschal Lamb and Supper they would have had a far fairer pretext and faster ground for the Infants of Christians to participate of the Eucharistical Cup and Bread of the Lords Supper for then they would have pleaded hard for a Commandement of Christian Infants to partake of the Eucharistical Supper even in or out of that Commandement you mention but shew not of the Jewish Infants to partake of the Paschal Supper and pressed it the rather for that the Eucharistical Supper succeeds in place under the Gospel unto the Paschal Supper under the Law and rather more for that the Grace of Christ now exhibited is of larger extent and greater latitude than when he was to come and be revealed And I tell you these reasons would have troubled much these Tridentine Fathers to have answered and refelled more than that Text of John above cited But I believe that you never had any such notion or dream in your head either sleeping or waking nay upon a re-view of your words I see I may answer to your Question and say as you mean and you never the nearer to what you aimed at for you say thus Did they eat the Paschal Lamb before they had a Commandent I answer They did not eat the Paschal Lamb before they had a Commandement you mean so do you not and so do I and what then therefore the Jewish children had a Commandement to eat the Paschal Lamb. But this followeth not well nor will before
you follow this better But some others whose opinion I rather think you follow than they yours they drive it on to another design as thus Because the Infants of the Jews did eat the Passeover as well as they were circumcised Therefore the Infants of Christians should eat and drink the Lords Supper as well as be baptized This structure is soon pulled down standing upon a false foundation even as the house fell built upon the slippery sand and therefore I shall but touch it and it sinks or slides Because the Infants of the Jews did not eat the Passeover but were onely circumcised Therefore the Infants of Christians are not to eat and drink the Lords Supper but onely be baptized So taking off the Argument against Infant-Baptism from its false and ruinous foundation of the Jewish children eating the Paschal Lamb you were best set it upon its own proper Basis and build Baptism upon the Lords Supper thus or rather pulâ— it down by the Lords Supper thus If Infants of Christians may be partakers of Baptism then also they may be partakers of the Lords Supper for why of one Seal of the Covenant more than another and if Infants may not be partakers of the Lords Supper why then not of Baptism no more of one Seal than the other besides they are capable of the spiritual part of the one Sacrament as well as the other So I have made the Argument as strong for you as I can if you can for t fie it yet more do it quickly for I am in haste to answer as desirous to make an end of these wearisom skirmishes as to my self and tedious discourses as to the Reader What! will you become of Antipaedobaptists now Propaedocoenists and grant Infants sometimes and sometimes deny them in Argument the Lords Supper that you may deprive the of the Lords Baptism You shall never do it by such ambidextrous inconsequences to which the Answer and Reason is very obviouâ— 1. Your own Reason and Answer will do it that from the one Seal ordered and appointed for Infants to another Seal not enjoyned or instituted for Infants the Consequence is vain and invalid the former I have largely proved and disproved the latter clearly let but the Argument rest till can can disquiet or disturbe it and I desire no more 2. From Baptism which is the Seal Initial and of Admission due to Infants to infer the Lords Supper which is the Seal Progressional and of nourishment to be also due in present and partaked of in infancy like as the other is as inconsequent an absurdity as to infer time to come from present or perfection from beginning or a man from a child and to joyn them in one moment state and age Can a man enter into his mothers womb and be born a babe again or as soon as he is born a babe can he run over the ages and become a man presently When I a child saith the Apostle I spake as a child and understood as a child I thought as a child but when I became a man I put away childish things I mean Infants may be initiated by the Seal of Baptism into the Church and are fitted to have the Graces and Benefies of the Covenant sealed unto them but that they are presently perfitted to have the nourishment and growth of the same Graces sealed and confirmed unto them by the Lords Supper passeth mine and your as much as their capacity It is true that both Baptism and the Lords Supper do seal the same and the whole Covenant and the Graces of the same but both in their place order and time so as the prime and main use of Baptism is to be the Seal of Initiation and Reception into Covenant and the Lords Supper is the Seal of Augmentation and Confirmation of the same as to the main and prime use of it so as that Baptism seals the Infants entrance and admission thereinto which the Lords Supper doth not properly and principally but onely by way of supposition and testification of a spiritual life and entrance such doth the spiritual food of the Lords Supper imply and require aforehand So also as that the Lords Supper seals the growth and nourishment of the same Graces of the Covenant which Baptism doth not properly and primarily but onely by way of infusion of a seed or laying a foundation of such growth and nourishment such doth the spiritual life of Baptism tend and proceed to afterwards Lastly Though Infanrs may and ought to be partakers of Baptism yet may they not nor ought to be partakers of the Lords Supper in their infancy because the Lords Supper belongs onely to such as can spiritually examine themselves and discern the Lords Body as the Apostle expresly and directly saith 1 Cor. 11.27 28 29. whereas Baptism belongs unto Infants of Christians by right of their being in the holy Covenant of God and birth of baptized Parents for more is required to the Lords Supper than unto Baptism of Church-members by nature and birth whereas of Aliens and Strangers more is required of them unto Baptism than of Church-members unto the Lords Supper a publick profession of faith is necessary for the admitting of a Heathen into the visible Catholick Church by Baptism and his entring into the Gospel-Covenant for himself and his Seed and he may presently after be partaker of the Lords Supper upon the examination of his faith for the confirmation of the same But Infants being in Church-Covenant by birth have a just Title and Right to all the external Privileges in the Church as being free-born to them all in due time and order as to Baptism in their infancy because born members of the Church so to the Lords Supper when by reason of full age and use they have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil and this their Covenant-right remains until it be forfeited by a renunciation of Baptism on their part or by excommunication from the other the Lords Supper by the Churches power when they are either wilfull violaters of the Conditions of the Covenant or hate to be reformed by wholsom Censures If any farther reply He must be a better replyer than you That the Infant baptized can no more discern the Lords Body and Blood in Baptism than in the Supper nor the sign it self in the act of Administration of either Sacrament and therefore Baptism is as vainly given it as the Lords Supper I re-joyn That our Infants can and do as well discern the Sacramental Sign and the thing signified in Baptism as well as the Jewish Infants did discern the same in Circumcision So that if our Baptism be in vain to ours their Circumcision was also in vain to their Children and the Replyer doth but open his mouth against Heaven and chargeth God himself with vanity and folly for appointing Circumcision of Infants and also Baptism of Infants whereas the Axiom is God and Nature doth nothing in vain or foolishly As
Gentiles that are in Covenant with God and enjoy the Ordinances of his grace and mercy do also by vertue of Gods Promise I will be thy God and the God of thy seed convey to their issue and posterity a state and privilege and so rather it is the joynt Covenant made by God with both together the Parent and his issue and posterity to be reputed of a holy and clean society and Congregation before God from the other Pagan and heathenish world and so the child or children born of such Parents in Covenant to be truly holy like as the Parent because of the Covenant Not that insants have any real personal qualitative holiness in them which is and must be in all true believers whither Parents or children to make them acceptable to God as to justification and Salvation whom I confess though born within the Church and of believing Parents to be born in sin naturally and be unclean children of wrath by nature as well as others the children of Pagans without the Church But I say they have a federal and parental so it may be called by a savory mouth and relative or imputative holiness put upon them by the Covenant of God and brought forth or executed on them by or at their birth of believing Parents which is sufficient and enough to make them passe in the eyes of God and in the face of the visible Church for clean and holy or if not their professions of the faith of Christ for you will not deny them to be professors of Christ and members of the Church in part and in kinde at leastwise by the mouth of their Sureties presenting them and speaking for them this will bear them out to be holy likewise And what if I should tell you in your ear that Christian infants in Covenant with God are holy too by an inward holiness also are not all inward sanctifying graces effects of Gods Covenant and who knoweth when God as where he effects them you perhaps would stop that ear cry out Then grace which onely maketh holy cometh successively and is derived by nature and Parents shall be the authors and conveighers of grace and holiness to their children No such matter Sir For the children are primitively holy with the Parents by the Covenant as co-partners and confederates with them therein I will be thy God and the God of thy seed not derivatively holy from the Parents as solely or first partners and prefederates without these Christian Parents and children are both joynt confederates I say and do both draw and derive together their holiness as other privileges from the Covenant and Tenour of grace therein and not successively from one another children from Parents derivatively as you fondly fansie to your self and erroniously imagine The which truth may also serve much to clear off those cloudy difficulties so much pressed by the Anabaptistical party from the Jesuitical side about infants being Baptized sanctified saved by the faith of their Parents as they use to blate and bâ—â—e abroad You like enough before you will believe any holiness in them would have them shew some such thing either in words before they can speak and whilest they are infants that is nonfants or indeed before they have any idoneity of instruments and ability to act Have patience a while and you may hear them speak the words and see them do some acts of holiness What! are you so sensual all for sense and so altogether lead by sense that nothing but a sensative or sensible manifestation of holiness in children will be believed by you I had thought you had walked by faith and not by sight you believe a holiness in other things in Faith in the Word in the Sacraments in the Church of God and in all things which the holy Scriptures the oracles of holiness have pronounced holy though you have not a visible and sensible demonstration of holiness in them you walk by faith there and not by fight and why cannot you believe a holiness in children of Christian Parents in Covernant with God though they shew forth no sensible effects of such holiness seeing also the same holy Scripture doth call them holy and not unclean and so supplying their defect of speech and action giveth you what you ask even a sensible manifestation of their holiness and speaks them holy unto your ears not declares them holy to your eyes so you may now walk by sight and hear say not by faith and hope limping and halting therein for except you shall see in their hands and tongues the prints of holiness in works and words and perhaps thrust your fingers into their fides to feel the holiness of their hearts too in affections and thoughts you will not believe What and if our Saviour Christ should now as once take one of our little children in Covenant with him and set it before you and say whosoever humbleth himself as a little child the same is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven would it not be strange for you to tell him you see no such yet you hear of such humility lowliness meakness mildness innocency in children and is it not a like to tell him you see no such holiness here when you hear of it from the mouth of Christ his and this Apostle Paul here saying They are holy But that I have said it before and already I would say that even children shew themselves more bumble lowly meek mild and innocent and so more holy than a great many of your grown Professors and grand Pretenders unto holiness and all those graces let their holiness and other graces rest but a while as seed hidden up in their hearts or wrapped up in Gods Covenant with them and see if afterwards they do not shew it and their holiness break not forth as the light at noon day that was within the cloud or as the seed in harvest that was within the clod and in the mean time shew me thy faith by thy works and thy holiness by thy words and learn to speak better of childrens holiness and to do better with children for their holiness even so well as to let them be Baptized But besides this in hand there are two eminent Texts that hold out infants of Christians their holiness by Covenant the one is Rom. 11.16 If the first fruit be holy the lump also is holy and if the root be holy so are the branches I know the stream of our Divine Advocates for Infant-Baptism run altogether and out of this Text upon a derivative holiness from the Parents or Ancestors to their children which notwithstanding they call and make a federal holiness I am not willing in my old and infirm daies to strive or swim against a stream onely I will be bold to venture and wade so far as to hint again and mention unto those akilful steersmen now especially that the waters of strife about Infant-Baptism are risen high
what great difficulties and intricate Objections are laid upon the Point as pleaded and held to be derived from the faith or holiness of Parents and Ancestors the which for my part I have not found so easie to extricate and shake off though I have said something for it and enough against my Antipoedo baptist hare I do therefore refer this to better Confideration whether our Plea for Infant Baptism would not be stronger cleerer and more consonant to the Truth not that I any way do implead the other as weak dark or dissonant if it be made directly and primitively from the Covenant it self and the saith of which before much is said and the holiness of children themselves thereby I see indeed our worthy Divines do interpret and call the derivative holiness from Parents to their children a federal holiness too and so we all agree together in our general meanings but would it not be more properly and rightly called a federal holiness if it were said to be derived from the Covenant of God as to Parents so to children to both joyntly equally and indifferently made And methinks the Text above cited speaks clear for it somewhat clearer in the Original than in the Translation as to the former part but if the first fruit be holy And or so the lump is if the root be holy And or so the branches are And thus we shall not need to fly to Parental holiness as sometimes we are driven or faith of which before for the upholding of holiness in children seeing we may have federal holiness for them the which I know not but that it may be called a personal holiness sure it is not an abstract Metaphysical Metaphorical or an aerial imaginary notion I say a personal holiness being in or upon the persons of children as the Covenant is and as other relative privileges and the imputative righteousness of Christ are If I erre in any thing here I will not be either Hereâ—ique or Scismatique for I am ready to retract if convinced noâ— willing to divide from the differing Either way it will be still a federal holiness and good either way against you Sir And therefore also some of those our Divines do Expound the holy Root and first fruit in St. Paul to be the Covenant and in a good sense and sounding to that I have said it may be so upon which Abraham and his seed and so along all believing Parents and their children do grow together as holy lumps and branches and it is by vertue of such Covenant that Abraham and every believing Parent is called and meant the holy root and first fruits and their children or posterity the holy branches or lump For the holy Covenant stayed not and determined in Abraham and his seed Isaac and Jacob as some say because the Covenant runs in their names onely the God of Abraham the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob as if that were meant when God Covenanted I will be thy God and the God of thy seed God often renewed this his Covenant with that people even after those Patriarchs were deceased and the Covenant entered into with Abraham was an everlasting Covenant and comprehended under it all Nations as the Jews even the Gentiles as many as the Lord our God should call to the saith of Abraham had a share therein and in the eternal privileges thereof both Parents and children and were both holy thereby before the Lord as in others and the Churches account For not onely the Jewish children the natural branches of their father Abraham if he be the holy root as he is but by vertue and in respect of the Covenant are holy and partakers of holiness and the other privileges thereof but even so Gentilish children the natural branches of their converted Parents or Parent being also a holy root as it s said the root of Jesse Esa 11. still by vertue and in respect of the Covenant are holy and partakers of holiness and other privileges thereof But to derive the Pedigree as I may so call it of holiness of children to its first original and root I think I may safely say that all Parents and their children both Gentilish and Jewish even up to Abraham and his seed Isaac were holy branches and partakers of holiness and other privileges from the Covenant it self as the first original and root of their holiness Another Text there is that doth eminently hold out the holiness of Christian infants by Covenant which is Gal. 2.25 We who are Jews by nature and not sinners of the Gentiles of which because I have had a former occasion to say something I shall need to adde but a little there Jews by nature or birth are put in opposition to sinners of the Gentiles just as heâ—e the holy children are to the unclean And these two Texts seem to be parallel As therefore Jews by nature or born Jews in contradistinction to sinners of the Gentiles were holy federally by being born in and under Covenant and of Parents in and under Covenant so Christians by natures or born Christians in contradiction to born Heathens are holy federally by being born in Covenant and of Parents in Covenant our children must be one of the two holy or unclean Christians by nature or birth or sinners of the Gentiles but unclean they are not or sinners of the Gentiles or Pagans therefore tâ—â—y are born Christians and holy with the holiness external of the Covenant and also the holiness particular of the Parents and the chosen Nation in Covenant Besides that they are dedicated and consecrated to God and designed to holiness as Candidates thereof as some of the Fathers were wont to call the infants of Christians and therefore are holy as the Temple is holy the Sabbath is holy the Priests were holy Again Moses and the Prophets every where call the Jews a holy Nation and holy people in respect and by vertue of the Covenant and shall not the children of that Nation and people being also in Covenant be holy federally too yea in therefore called a holy seed Ezra 9.3 in Ezek. 36.38 a holy flock is the flock of Jerusalem and shall not the little Lambs a great part of the flock be holy too The visible Catholique Church is holy and so are particular visible Churches and all the members of the same are federally holy and therefore also little children are so who are members of the same even as the little finger is a member of the body and partaker of the bodily external cleanness Lastly is not the external Covenant it self holy why then sure all who are taken and assumed into it are Covenantly holy and they are Parents and their children And so now lastly I will shut up this Point as I have done often before even all along before with this Syllogism to bring you still into more love and liking of our University Arts and Sciences one whereof is Logical syllogising and it shall be this All
persons in the Church holy and so reputed by the Apostle to be by their being in and under the holy Covenant of God or by being children of a believing Parent or Parents in Covenant may and ought to have the holy Initial Seal of that Covenant which in the Gospel is Baptism But all infants in the Church of believing Parents are such persons holy and so reputed by the Apostle to be by their being in and under the holy Covenant or by being children of a believing Parent or Parents in Covenant Therefore all infants in the Church may and ought to have the holy initial Seal of the Covenant which in the Gospel is Baptism You will now Sir of your self I shall not need to urge or advise you being experienced and practised often before therein now the eighth time with much facility deny the conclusion For the first Proposition you cannot deny it being grounded out of that Text Act. 10.47 where Peter saith Can any man forbid water that those should not be Baptized who have received the holy Spirit and as is largely explained and proved before as also upon this Reason deducible hence that where holiness is the Spirit is and where the Spirit is Christ is and where Christ is the Covenant is and where the Covenant is the Seal initial namely Baptism may and ought to be For the second Proposition you cannot deny it being the expresse affertion of Paul here But now they are holy namely their children And whereas I have put in my whole Discourse all these my eight or nine Arguments into the form of a Syllogism I have done is the better to inform you to which you pretend to be willing in the close of your Letter I hope you will taste it now at last the better though savouring much of our University Arts and Humane learning as consonant and agreeing subservient and conducing to the Divine wisedom and of good use for the understanding and Expounding of the Scriptures written in the learned Tongues and Languages and often referring to Moral and Phylosophical matters of which I have spoken largely before and should not have mentioned again but that you have another fling at the same in the close of your Letter saying that it appears that the most learned by Humane learning want the learning of the Spirit to interperate interpret Scripture It is true that some of the learned by Humane learning may and do want the learning of the Spirit to interpret Scripture but do not more of the ignorant by their Humane ignorance much more want the same yet none of the learned and much less of the most learned do by humane learning as you must mean though you point not your words with any Comae's or Colons for want of Humane learning by Humane learning I say want the learning of the Spirit seeing the Spirit of God hath both taught it at first as the Author of it and made much use of it practising some of it in the Scripture and as Hagar and Sarah may dwell together in the same house humane learning as you call it and the learning of the Spirit may keep together in the same head-house so long as Hagar is an obedient handmaid to her Mistris Sarah and Humane learning humbly submits and is servant or subservient unto the learning of the Spirit and the Misteries of it But of this matter there is enough written before and how it should now at the last appear to you that the most learned by Humane learning do want the learning of the Spirit to interpret Scripture if you mean it of those who interpret the Scriptures for Infant-Baptism against you it is marvelous to me for I will instance but in this one and last interpretation of 1 Cor. 7.14 But now they are holy We interpret it holy federally as who are born in Covenant with God and of a believing Parent or Parents in Covenant with God and so are not unclean as the Gentiles out of Covenant but you interpret it holy legitimally as who are lawfully born of Parents in wedlock according to the Law and so are not unclean as bastards born out of wedlock now do you remember your words four times repeated in one of your pages I will repeat them once more for you but to you Judge you but judge you righteous judgement for God will judge you I say whether of the interpretations savours most of Humane learning or the learning of the Spirit yours or ours doth it not clearly appear to your eyes that your interpretation is a meer Humane natural carnal political interpretation and such as you can bring no word or example for from the learning of the Spirit the Scriptures where holy are called or meant legitimates and unclean bastards and therefore it is a meer Humane learning and not agreeable to the learning of the Spirit nay repugnant to it for by the learning of the Spirit all bastards are not unclean nor all legitimates holy But our interpretation is a very Divine gracious spiritual Ecclesiastical interpretation and such as I have brought both word and example for from the Scriptures the learning of the Scriptures where all in Covenant with God or born of Christians or one Christian Parent are stiled holy and all childeren born out of Covenant or of Parents both Heathens are called unclean and therefore ours is the very learning of the Spirit to take your words now out of your mouth and put them into ours as justly I may according to the minde of the Spirit as who declared unto us in the Scriptures and we from it to you that all Covenanters born of Covenanters with God are holy and all out of Covenant and born of such as are out of Covenant are unclean And so now by this as indeed by all or most of the Scriptures that you have made use of throughout your whole Letter which rather you have made an abuse of it will appear yea doth that your self is one of them the most learned by Humane learning certainly Sir for all your talk against it you have been at the University and gotten up some Humane learning and are a great Practitioner therein as appears by this and your other interpretations yea I take you to be a man if not a Master of Arts and Humane learning more than of the learning of the Spirit though pretending to this more a better Humanist than Divine or rather an Alchymist who can extract out of the Spirits holy in Scripture the spirit and flesh to a child lawfully born and out of spirits unclean the quintessence of a bastard Do you call this the learning of the Spirit to Interperate Scriptures with all for so you write and shew your self to be good at expounding as you are at spelling your Orthography and Orthodoxy being both alike do you interpret the Scripture by your learning of the Spirit no sure you Interperate interpret Scripture rather by the ignorance and illiterature of
before the Truth and stoop to it now that that I have brought it unto your house and set it before your face and eyes and if you would but rise up betimes in the morning and admit in of the light of Christ that true morning Star you might see your Dagon fallen down before the Ark and the truth standing up over your errors I doubt not but there will be those for Sir if you will be reled by your friend never meddle more with any controversie of Divinity I had almost said Text of Scripture that will take up Dagon again and set him in his place again but I may foretell them it will be labour lost for when they rise up the next morning they will behold Dâ—gon fallen again upon his face to the ground before the Ark of the Lord and in worse case than before with his head and both the palmes of his hands cut off upon the threshold and onely the stump of Dagon to be left him But why should I lie down before and stoop to your Quaeres Considerations and Interpretations and the Truth of them that will appear at that great day and now appeareth proved by Scriptures For that now I am enformed informed and so cannot plead ignorance before the Lord at his appearing when he will reward every own according to his work I am now informed you write and must mean by your self your Letter and I am glad to finde you here in form though now you are out of matter for when you had matter to Quaere and Propound then I am sure you had no form to proceed or order it in I was then fain to inform you that is to put your matters in form which are so deformed and disordered that so I might inform you in the matters which were material and of moment for if otherwise you mean of the matter I pray let me know wherein I am now informed by you not by your Quaeres these rather put doubts than bring any matters of Informations from you or themselves nor by your Considerations for they were so inconsiderable in themselves and so inconsiderately delivered by you that I never considered them farther than to refutation of them they never got within me and took any place in me to form or inform or conform or transform into or unto any thing in them nor by your interpretations of any Texts of Scripture for you never had the spirit you have so talked of to give a right interpretation of the Text but still as you broached it for my information it seemeth the Text of the Spirit informed me to the contrary that it was not the meaning of the Text nor minde of the Spirit I acknowledge I am not too old to learn nor so much a Scholar but I may be informed but I think I am too old a Bird to be caught with such your chaff and too long a Scholar and a Minister to be taught by such your stuff What is the chaff to the wheat saith the Lord by Jeremiah Jer. 23.28 If Sir you spread out any more shrapnets and send out any more Letten of Information to me let them be more literate and better baited with wheat else I shall not come down to them as who care not for pecking amongst such light and chaffy Quaeres and Considerations though I like well of sound solid and wheaty Reasons and Argumentations Again what are the resuse fish to Soles and Salmons now that you have toiled all this night for I see you fished in the dark night and have caught nothing of worth if you launch out into the deep again of controversies and let down your Net again of another Letter for a draught of Objections or Answers I pray be carefull to enclose a multitude of good fish Salmous and Soles of solid Objections and Reasons salving Answers and Distinctions or else I shall not be beckoned to to come in as who cannot though I love Fish well such as are sound and whole as a fish should be as I have mentioned feed upon poor John and fresh Herrings Minna-Quaeres and Sprat-Considerations and such other refuse fish you will never fatten me or inform or immatter me with such but I shall still be lank lean and ignorant and may plead ignorance before the Lord at his appearing for any thing of knowledge I have found in you and when he will reward every one according to his work you are not like to be rewarded for your informing me or for your interpreting Scripture or for your denying Baptism to Infants or for your dipping again the baptized or for your reviling the Church of Christ and his Ministers or for presuming to preach in Pulpits without Ordination and Authority for there shall be no reward to the evil man Prov. 24.20 Therefore take heed of having an evill eye or evil tongue against little Infants and their baptising or against the great God and his Church and Ministers and bringing and evil report or interpretation upon the good Word of God and the Scriptures lest God reward you according to your work and your evil work be rewarded with an evil wages of punishment for David's prayer is still with God Psal 94.2 Lift up thy self thou judge of the earth render a reward to the proud But now again Sir why do you follow And if you can answer these Quaeres and Considerations by plain Scripture I pray do or else hold your peace and leave your unwarrantable practices Did you not tell me but even now that I was informed now by your Quaeres and Considerations so that I could not plead ignorance and what will you have me answer them when as I am fully informed by them and have gotten full knowledge by them shall I answer against my information and dispute against my knowledge of your truths you even here contradict your self and your own spirit and speech as it often falls out to them that have such speeches and such a spirit of contradiction of others But if I can answer them and that by Scripture it is possible it seems or otherwise why do you pray me to do it then sure you have not rightly informed but rather mis-informed me and mis-interpreted the Scriptures and therefore I may more justly set upon the answoring them to inform you better in the knowledge of the truth and to infirm in you the grounds of your errours which I have done by plain Scriptures and by Arguments also proved by direct and plain Scriptures rightly interpreted And now that it is done I will command my self to hold my peace and enjoyn my self silence You boldly enough prayed me to do it or else hold my peace and I kindly enough have done it and do hold my peace Isa 62.1 It was for Zions sake that I held not my peave and for Hierusalems sake that I did not rest until the reighteousness thereof went forth as brightness or rather some little glympse brighter by my enlightning some
3. The case of necessity in state of Person I scarce understand unless it be this When as he or she earnestly desireth and imploreth for the same whether by its speech or its need and there is no Minister to give it Baptism here the Lord will have mercy and not sacrifice and men are not to stand upon this ordination but the persons salvation Let but your Brother or your self stay and expect such cases of necessity before you or he dip any more or baptize again and then though you be not nor he set a part for the administring that Ordinance but are meer Lay men you shall hear nothing from me against the same I assure you But if in a well ordered and already planted and constituted Church and that when there are no such cases or states of necessity but that lawfully ordained Ministers may easily be procured you and your Brethren will go on still to dip and baptize and that publiquely being no better ordered or set a part then you have related I shall say though again Ye take too much upon you ye sons of Gad for I shall not hold you of the Tribe of Levi Num. 16.7 or Issachar rather couching down between two burthens Genes 49.14 your Laical and Ministerial Callings And it shall come to pass as Zacharias saith Zach. 13.4 5. that such Prophets shall be ashamed every one of his vision which he hath prophesied and every one of his Division that he hath made and set a partition yea of his Dipping also that he hath ministred and Baptisin and he shall say and confess at last I am no Prophet I am an Husbandman for man taught me to keep cattel from my youth God never ordained me to dip Christians from my birth Distinctly Take this a Presbyter or Priest in respect of his Ministerial Character and Order I mean onely a sacerdotal gift power and commission is primarily and principlally the publick and ordinary minister of Baptism A Deacon may baptize also and that publikely so it be at the appointment of the Bishop or Priest but a Priest by his own right may baptize ex officio as we say by vertue of his sacerdotal office even in the presence of a Bishop But a Layman may not baptize publickely but onely privately neither privately in the presence of a Priest or Deacon but onely in their absence neither alwayes in their absence but onely in case of necessity Then it hath been permitted according to the good old way and new way also of true Churches some such times to Laymen to baptize so he intend to do that which the Catholick Church doth in that kind of administration The second Catechistical Quaere is concerning the Persons Dipped Quaere 2. What warrant of precept or example have you from the Sacred Word or Prim tive Antiquity for your Dipping and Anabapâ—izâ—ng Christians washed before or members of the visible Church baptized once in their Infancy by lawful Ministers so as the two Women and Sisters were whom your Brother Dipped Ask now of the days that are past which were before since the day that God created man and woman upon Earth and commanded circumcision in the eldest Chruch of the Jews and appointed Baptism in the younger Church of the Gentiles ask from the beginning to the end of both whether there hath been any such thing as this that a person circumcised or baptized in their infancy were ever recircumcised or rebaptized at growth or yeras after when they could render a Reason or make confession of their Faith c. Instance in one if you can and be instant upon it as you will and is not then your dipping the formerly dipped a new business As for that example of Joshua upon Gods command Circumcise again the children of Israel the second time Jos 5.2 This doth not intimate any Repetition or Reiteration of that Sacrament in or to the same particular Israelitish person circumcised as if he should be now circumcised again but onely relates the Restauration and Renovation of that Sacrament unto the people of Israel in general amongst whom Circumcision was a long while intermitted and discontinued by reason of their frequeut yea continual journals and removings up and down as the 4 5 6 Verses do evidence the same As for that Acts 19.5 of St. Pauls practise the example of the Ephesian Disciples in the Acts it is abundantly answered in my Instruction of your Scribe to which I refer you and I add this for a plainer and shorter Resolution for you 1. That it maketh nothing for your Re-dipping and Re-baptizing 1. Because St. John's Baptism being there spoken of and you or your Sect being Popish in your opinion of Re-baptizing and so holding from hence that the Baptism of John and Christ are two different Baptisms and that in the substance and not onely in the Degree of their signification and efficacy Here was no iterat on of one and the same but the ministration of a diverse Baptism and so is not to your or my purpose 2 For that there is no Baptism of water spoken of much less there laid to be reiterated that the Ephesian Disciples had long before received from some of Johns Disciples but onely the Baptism of Fire i.e. of the Spirit and the miraculous gifts of the same is there mentioned which they confess they had not so much as heard of namely that they unsually as then accompanied the other Baptism of water And so that the former was that they were baptized with and was poured upon them there in the Name of Jesus namely the gifts of the holy Spirit which were miraculous If you shall produce as somewhat you must say for your selves the example of Saul Cornelius and the Eunuch baptized in their elder years upon their conversion to and cofession of Christ and the commands of God to Ananias Peter and Philip c. to baptize them thereupon All this and as much more which you might have alledged of the same sort brings no advantage to your practice no age to your new business of Rebaptising the second time for that the mentioned above were their first and onely baptizings they being some of them Pagans born others aliens from the Covenant of Christ adverse and opposite to ignorant at leastwise of the Christian Faith were then frist of all baptized upon their embracing of it and never after baptized again No not the Black Aethiopian amongst them was ever dipped the second time And what is all this to your Redipping of two Women baptized before in their infancy as being born Christians and within the Covenant of Grace and Christ Yea more if the Pope of Rome should come over into England and turn Protestant or become one of your Sect a separate nor we would nor should you of right baptize him again having been baptized before rightly as to the Element and Words of Institution Therefore the Ancient Orthodox Church never Re-baptized Hereticks themselves upon their
Bishop to be confirmed as Gregory the Great acknowledgeth in his Sacramentary in which is set down the order of baptizing Infants To which I shall adde the Testimony of another one Alcuine or Albine by name who lived in the Year 780. and so 220. years after the aforesaid Gregory and the rather I do because he was an English man born in Yorkshire and it may be thereupon called the other name Albine of Albion he was the scholar of our venerable Bede and the school-master also as friend and familiar to Charles the Great by whose advice Charles the Great founded the University of Paris and appointed four principall Heads and Presidents thereof Rabanus Alcuinus Claudius Johannes Scotus all the Scholars of our Beda so much is France beholding to England for their Learning and learned men but to the purpose the words of Alcuine are Postquam vestiti fuerint Infantes he is speaking of Infants after they had been baptized naked deportantur ante Pontificem ad confirmandâ—m who sate in a seat fixed somewhere in the Church or in Sacrario the Chancel or Vâ—stry for the same purpose whereby I conceive it was at the solemn times of Baptism twice in the year Easter and Whitsontide an evideut Testimony both for Infant-baptism and also for Infants baptized naked And it is true also that the old and late Liturgy of our Church of England mentioneth the Ministers taking the child to be baptized into his arms naming it shall as the Rubrick hath it dip it in the water so it be discreetly and warily done but whether in the cloaths or out of the cloaths it is not expressed In present I think and so shall until I be better informed that our Church meant a dipping of the Infant out of the cloaths and therein owned the Antiquity of the practise but yet shewed her authority in things of such nature for that she addeth if the child be weak it shall suffice to pour water upon it so indulging the health and welfare thereof and what child is not weak in these our Northern cold Clymates though not contradicting Antiquity which did so dip children naked in those Eastern warmer Countreys where they might more safely do it I am sure she meant not your new way of dipping in the cloaths over head and ears and the whole body What if she meant the dipping of the naked face onely or the naked forehead and head also in the water by such as hold still to the dipping there mentioned so doing as it crosseth not the Antiquity for the reason I gave but now so it favoureth not your novelty for the reasons I have given against the same all this while By this time you may see and hear how your dipping and baptizing bodies in their cloaths in a new busines and none of the old way I remember Justin Martyr in dial ad Tryph. gives the Pharisees that peculiar term and epithite of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because of their washing so many things as cups pots vessels and tables us are mentioned Mark 7.4 But these are civil or superstitious washings or ceremonial Your Scribes surpasse these Pharisees in dipping of cloaths and all in their baptizing and washings which are Eclesiastical religious and even moral with them and therefore may more justly be called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dippers or washers and in this sense Johns the Baptists I do look when you shall fall from this novelty in this Sacrament of Baptism to such another novelty in the other Sacrament and when you break bread give it into your proselytes hands with their gloves on I omit to open unto the Reader the packet of these other frivolous if not scurrilous Rites and Ceremonies which were used at this your dipping some whereof you relate and others for modesty I suppose you silence but are talked of by the spectators as ridiculous and infamous I question them not at all for they were all such questionless onely this I question How men of such sincerity onely should be thus full of ceremony also and wonder also how you who hate in others innocent and significant ceremonies in ministerial celebrations and abominate them as the abomination of desolation throwing them away as the rags and patches of Popery and rending them off as the fringes and laces of the whore should now be so far in love of them as to clothe and adorn your Dippal administrations in such offensive and sensless Rites and Ritual dresses so that your brother may be better called a master of Ceremonies then a Minister of Ordinances This one thing I shall question here why your brother was so quick of his words and so slow at his work for so it seems by the narration which is your relation that he spake the words according to the institution I baptize thee in the Name of the Father the Son and the holy Ghost before he dipped them in the water though but immediatly before The which I take to be another novelty if not more some vanity be not in it For our English Liturgy consonant to the ancient Liturgies of the Churches doth otherwise and better practise direct where as the Rubrick hath it the Minister naming the child shall dip it in the water saying I baptize thee c. And I conceive there is good reason for it that the dipping into or sprinkling with water and the pronouncing the words of administration I baptize c. should be done in one and the same instant of time as two conjunct Acts and not one before the other because the sign and the thing signified are two correlate parts and go together not one before the other If either may go immediately instantly before the other It is the dipping before the words as our Liturgy hath it Dip it in the water saying and not the words before the dipping as your Tympany doth it he spake the words before he dipped nay there is not verity or truth in it to say the words I baptize c. before the party be in the water or the water upon the party But your Dippers tongue dipt and tipt it may be aforehand for the better keeping out of the cold of water did run so fast in the pronouncing the words of institutution too fast indeed as which did run before it was sent and spake before the Lord opened the mouth of the man Numb 22.28 that his hands having taken such fast hold of the sisters by their clothes about the shoulders and loath to let it go or put them out of his sight till needs must he forgat the work action of dipping them putting them under the water at the same time or before the speaking of the words of Institution And so I may say as the Comaedian doth in a like dipping and tripping Neque lingua neque manus suum faciebant officium I may put in neque pedes as the Comaedian doth for his feet ran too fast to the Pond
baptism yet shall we not need to infer hence or to introduce hither the Rite of immerging and emerging which is your total dipping as which is resembled as well and better in our manner of aspersion and effusion of water upon the party though but upon a part for when water is poured upon or is laid upon the head of the adult standing on his feet or kneeling on his knees as likewise upon the face of the child lying in the Arms of the Minister or the Parent or other presenting it are they not the while as it were buried in or do they not lie under the water as the buried doth under the earth and so the party may be said to arise as it were when it comes or goeth from the water as the body doth from the earth or the Ministers dipping his hand into the water and plucking it out when he layeth it on may it not have the same signification with immerging and emerging and so of the Burial and Resurrection of Christ And I think I may say our Church in giving liberty of dipping or immerging and emerging of Infants if not weak did it not so much from authority of this or any other Scripture as in conformity to some of the Ancient Christians and Fathers of the Church in this custome as in other lawful Rites they practised to which and whom I now come Onely I shall give but a tender and gentle touch of one thing that floweth more naturally or rather more mystically from the afore-alledged Texts That if the baptized his being buried with Christ in baptism be represented and signified by the lying and abiding of the water upon the face or forehead as a part of the body and so the body in that part thereof its lying and abiding under the water even sprinkled and poured upon it Then sure it is not advisedly and conveniently done by Gentlewomen and tender Mid-wives to wipe off the water from the part and absterge it with a handkerchief as soon as it is laid on by a Minister or by turning the head of the Infant whom I speak for that cannot speak for it self presently downward to cause the water to fall off it upon the ground In all the History of Baptism from the beginning of it in Jordan and Rivers to the present being of it in Fonts or Vessels I do not read of such a word spoken or such a work done as absterging or wiping off water in Baptism no not then when there seemed more occasion for it as when the adult and likewise Infants were immerged all over their naked bodies in the water at Baptism nor then when presently after it they went or were carried to be anointed as they were either all over their bodies as in the Greek Churches so Cyril Catech. Mystag 11. Chrysest Homil. 6. in Col. witness or in their foreheads and breasts and between the shoulders so Epiphanius Haeres 79. Rabanus de Instit Cler. l. 1. c. 23. affirm Therefore learned Vossius doth justly censure the Translator of the Apostolical Constitutions of Clemens as they are called for rendring those words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lib. 3. Cap. 15. Thus deinde Diaconissa eas abstergit for the word is and signifieth anointeth not abstergeth and the work was the Deaconess anointed them not absterged them after baptism The truth is they neither absterged or wiped off water after their Baptism or oyl after their unction and so such a custom hath no ground either in Equity or Antiquity True it is also that this our Westernly Northen Climate is colder much then those Easternly Southern and our waters therefore are colder and our Infants tenderer and our Mothers more indulgent and our Midwives are more adventerous but our Ministers are descreet not to pour on much water and that they do to hold it some while in their hand to the warming of it and gently to rub and wash the face of the Infant with such warm hand and warmed water and God is ever merciful at his Ordinances and Sacraments especially so that I never heard of any child that ever sickned much less died upon a cold taken at Baptism In a word and a word also is enough to a wise woman The wiping of the Baptismal-water from the childs face as soon as it is laid or poured on is so far as lieth in her the taking off and avoiding I will not say a frustrating and evacuating of the sign and seal as soon as it is laid on as to that signification and sigillation of the parties being buried with Christ in baptism as which onely the abiding and remaining of the water upon the body or bodily part and it s lying and centinuing under the water doth resemble and represent But I return to you Sir and shall now proceed to farther discussing of your dipping and our sprinkling by Antiquity to shew which is the good old way I or it may be when you wrote me word that your dipping was older then our sprinkling or pouring on of water and that it was the good old way you had some squint-eye upon Antiquity of the second hand for the Scripture is the Antiquity of the first hand the very good old way it self for that your right or direct eye could see little or nothing in the Scripture for your dipping and immerging And I am glad to meet you here again in this your good old way hoping that by your looking upward to Antiquity and the ancient Customes of the Churches of God you may ere long lay down your Novelties and the yesterday fashions of your new Brotherhood And to say the truth whither else can you now go being beaten out of your holds you thought you had and those firm ones as you had thought in Scripture for your dipping and immerging and finding at leastwise now no ground or footing in any Pond there no not River for your Dippers and Immergers to stand in and baptize whither I say can you go but need of it more then zeal to it driving you to the next Antiquity which succeeding and some of them seeing the Canon of Scripture consummated and consigned by St. John the Revelationist as Evangelist and so living and dwelling next to those starry times of the Apostles and those Sun-shining dayes of Christ Jesus can best discover relate and traject their light they being the next neighbours to the same borrowed and participated from them But to the point I acknowledge that some of the Ancients yea many of them did use to dip and immerge at and in their baptizings and because it lieth upon your hand to prove it let the learned of your side take it in hand to transcribe and produce such ancient Authors and their Testimonies I had as live they should spend the time and lose their labour when they have done as my self for so they will neither will it be of any advantage to you and your dipping and immerging being far different as to the
some used the one in their Dioceses some the other manner of baptizing in their Divisions and both sorts with an opinion of indifferences of the thing in it self and with liberty of practise left each unto other as the affairs and the occasions of the Church required of changing and altering Who can justly challenge or rebuke our Church of England and the guides thereof for holding and retaining either the one or the other or both as she doth in some way and case but betaking her chiefly and most usually to aspersion and pouring on-water and that but once so leaving both the Ancient Fathers of old some of them and the younger Fathers of Rome all of them in the number of the Trin or thrice for that the Trinity is sufficiently enough set out in the very form of our baptizing In the name of the Father the Son and the holy Ghost why should any impose upon us or require of us either the Trine immersion at all or immersion at all constantly and continually considering we are not of the Eastern Churches where the Clymate being hot parties to be baptized might the better undergo the waters and be dipt but we are of the Church Western and our Church of the more Northerly side were the air waters clymate being cold the tenderer bodies of our infants cannot be immerged or dipt without evident danger to their healths and lives Have we not power to lay down and old custom as well as Gregory and Augustine and Cyprian or I onely and Barnabas the Ministers of the Church of England have we not power to forbear dipping and immerging especially where it may be sodangerous prejudicial What though some ancient Churches had such a custom of old we have no such custom neither the Churches of God now a dayes 1 Cor. 11.16 and when they had it it was but for a time Temporary it was but for an use upon an occasion Arbitrary it was not under a necessity for but with a liberty to other Churches It is a part of the former Gregory his words in the same Epistle worthy notice taking In eadem fide nihil officit sanctae Ecclesiae consuetudo diversa where there is the same faith and an unity in it a different custom in things indifferent nothing burteth or prejudiceth the Church of God as which hath power and authority to enact and to abrogate such things to be observed or omitted to all her Church children and members And therefore Sir I have not nor do censure and condemn you absolutely for the one and simple immersion nor for immersion simply and onely but for your immersion your simple one an immersion that hath almost nothing of Antiquity being such as is every way distant and different from the ancient immersion in all things but in this that your dipping was but once and simple and also for that it was a rash and presumptuous undertaking of a few private Plebeians and vulgar people without any Law or Licence or order of Church or State so far is it from any precept or prescript or President of the Word and Scripture I will be briefer in the next Corrollary for it is time to have done about this matter Coroll 3. §. 3 The nature of baptism is but this the cleansing and washing away the guilt and filth of sin by the application of waters according to the appointment of Christ signifying and exhibiting the blood of Christ that purgeth and purifieth that way and all the outward Sacramental actions thereof are but onely to represent and set out more lively the inward grace of baptism which is still but the ablution of sin This indeed ablution and washing of sin is necessary as being of the nature as I said and Essence of Baptism for this is called therefore the very washing of regeneration by which we are saved through the mercy of God Tit. 3.5 and so the washing of water by the Word with which Christ doth sanctifie and cleanse his Church Ephes 5.26 and so St. Paul tells the Corinthians 1 Cor. 6.11 Such were some of you soul sinners but ye are washed but ye are sanctified c. in the Name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God But the manner and way of washing and ablution of sin either that way by dipping and immerging the whole body into and under the water or by aspersion or perfusion or rather superfusion of water upon some part of the body this is not necessary but as I said Indifferent and Adiaphorous and Arbitrary and so not of the essence and form but of the accidence and formality rather or solemnity of Baptism so then if the ablution of sin washing off the guilt and filth thereof may be as well if not better represented by aspersion and sprinkling and pouring on of water upon some part of the body and gently rubbing on the same by the moving of the hand thereupon as by the dipping immerging and plunging of the whole body into and under the waters and holding it some while thereunder as it must be I add also if it the aforesaid aspersion or perfusion be as effectual to the good spiritual ends and purposes of baptism as the aforesaid immersion I see no reason to the contrary but that both the ancient and modern or present aspersion and perfusion or superfusion of water is as warrantable and allowable in baptism if not still more as the somewhat ancienter immersion dipping and diving in and under water for as for any such modern or present immersion dipping or diving under water as yours is I acknowledge it not we have no such custom nor the Churches of God as I said but now It is true the body must be washed and wetted with water in baptism either one way or another and that 's enough for the truth and nature of baptism now this may be and is done when we baptize with sprinkling and pouring water upon it or part of it and gently rubbing the flesh therewith as well as by dipping and immerging And therefore we do not speak falsly when but sprinkling and pouring on water we say we do baptize and do not dip that 's your false speech for though we dip not into the water we lay on water and wash and therefore do baptize Oh but were it not far better more agreable to Antiquity and the benefit from baptism more ample and large if the whole body were dipt and immerged then onely some part thereof the face forehead or head aspersed and washed This is answered already that our way of superfusion or aspersion with water is as significant as effectual as the other and as ancient within a sew years if any as the other way yea was in force and life amongst the Ancients when the other was dead and gone and besides we are freed from it where we will plead our freedom because we live out of the Hot Countreys where it was bred and born and was to be
kept and maintained in these Northern parts of the world where the Churches of God cannot practise or use it I speak of dipping and immerging with safety to our Infants healths and lives But to the other part of the objection or doubt I answer and that from Antiquity First I gave you but even now four several Testimonies out of four Ancient Fathers and Writers of the Church how in their times they poured water upon the heads of those who were baptized so I gave you good probabilities and more then so of John the Baptists manner of baptizing of Christ and Christs Apostles most of them if not all and the great multitudes that resorted to his baptism by pouring water upon their heads were not all those as amply and sufficiently baptized as those who had their whole bodies dipped and immerged under water and were they not as fully partakers of all the benefits and effects of Baptism In the Ark were the eight souls the Epilogue of the World and the Epitome of the Church saved by water The like figure whereunto even baptism doth now also save us 1 Pet. 3.20 21. Now then as the Ark being washed with water but in a part of it whether that which was immerged under the water or that which was aspersed with the rain that fell saved the Church then so baptism doth the Church now though but a part of the body as the head or face or fore-head be either immerged and dipped or aspersed and sprinkled with the water in baptism And good reason for it because by and from the Divine Institution the Baptismal-water is blessed sanctified and impowred of God and his grace to be the ablution and washing of the whole man body and soul though it be applied in the out ward Element but to a part onely of the body and so received but of a part it being so in this mystical as it is in some physical soveraign Doses and Receipts which being taken onely at the mouth and into the stomach diffuseth its healing vigour and vertue unto the whole body though not here in baptism by any natural and self-operation in this but a gracious and the spirits dispensation so then though the water which in baptism is poured onely upon the fore-head or face doth reach to or flow down to all the whole body in the external liqucur to wash and wet it yet in the internal vertue and efficacy which the same hath from the Institution and Benediction of God it extendeth to a total ablution of the party baptized so that it goeth over all body and soul too even to an internal ablution of the soul chiefly as being principal in sin and all this still by the force and vertue of the Divine Ordination of the water hereunto See it also from the Analogy that Baptism hath with Circumcision I know you are never willing to hear of that Circumcision but you shall hear of that whether willing or not In Circumcision there was but one part of the flesh the fore-skin was touched and cut off with the Knife yet it was and is so called the putting away the filth of the flesh the whole body and soul for that the vertue and efficacy of that which was done but to a part redounded also by Gods appointment to the whole even to the Circumcision in heart and ears and lips as the Scripture every where speaketh Now in Christ Jesus also we are circumcised with the Circumcision made without hands in puting off the body of the sins of the flesh Coll. 2 11. that is we are baptized with the baptism of Christ to the washing away the sins of the body and soul and therefore though but some one part and the fittest part the head or fore-head or face be onely externally sprinkled washed with the water thereof yet the baptism is valid and effectual to the ablution internally of the soul also and all the body also virtually some way according to his ordination Lastly I think not the meaner of our Baptism by reason of our but handful of water and our but sprinkling or pouring on of it upon the face and fore-head or the better of yours by reason of your Pond-full of water and your immerging and dipping of the whole body therein No Ordinance of God is to be esteemed more or lesse effectual for either the more or the lesse of the Instrument or Element for God usually and more usually saveth with a few then many 1 Sam. 14 6. with little then with great that so all power might be known to be of him so all glory might be to him Rom. 11.36 as who is the God of the Valleys as well as of the Mountains 1 Kings 20.28 This is true especially in mystical and spiritual Ordinances and proceedings which have his Inslitution and Benediction upon them as I have shewed in Circumcision and may do the like in the Lords Supper where a smal portion of bread and a little pittance of wine a morsel of the one and a spoonful of the other are as sâ—gniâ—cant as effectual to a spiritual and internal refection of the Communicant as if a whole loaf of the one and a full Cup of the other should be given and taken So also in baptism a few drops of water or a little handfull of it sprinkled and poured on the face or forehead of an Infant or other is as representing of and as working to a spiritual and internal ablution of the baptized as if a whole pailfull of water should be poured on or the whole body of the Infant dipped and immerged into a River full of water after the custome of the Eastern Churches I will onely add to this point a Testimony or two of Antiquity Chrysostom writing in his 6 Homil. upon the 2 Chapter of the Coloss and those words in the 11 Verse In whom ye are circumcised with the Circumcision made without hands in putting off the sins of the body c. buried also with him in Baptism He hath these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I shall not stand to English all the effect of all is this that both in Circumcision and Baptism though the hand in the one doth but cut off a part of the flesh as the fore-skin with a small knife and in the other pour on a little water but upon some part of the body as the fore-head the whole body of sin may be and in the Elect is cut off put off in the Apostles phrase and washed away in both Sacraments by a spiritual operation of Christ So also for the other Sacraent the Lords Supper it being one of the Popish evasions for their not giving the wine unto the people by reason of the great quantity of wine would be spent upon the numerous multitudes of them that would then the rather come and drink great draughts which should not have been thought upon here by them seeing at other ordinary seasts and banquets they stand not upon such
charge nor are so sparing of their wine our Divines tell them and they should teach their people that a sup of wine as a morsel of bread may do well enough as well if not better then greater quantities of each at the Sacramental Communication according as anciently they did as Gelasius Lyzicenus in Act is Concil Nicaeni cap. 30. reporteth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For this cause we take not much but little of the Bread and Wine for that we know we take them not to or for satiety but sanctity The like whereof is that of Eucherius Serm. 5. de Pascha Eucharistiae sacrae perceptio non in quantitate sed in virtute consistit quòd corpus sacerdote dispensante tantum est in exiguo quantum esse constat in toto The participation of the holy Eucharist stands not in the quantity but efficacy for that the body of Christ when the Priest dispenseth the same holy Eucharist is as much in a little part of the Wine and Bread as in the whole together I have indeed said the more of this as being in my opinion very needful and necessary to strengthen and arm our selves and our people against the dangerous tentations of the Devil wherewith he and his instruments which are many in these dayes do mainly assault the mindes and scruple the consciences and pervert the faith of the weaker amongst us as indeed they have done to your self Sir by your leave He as he goeth about the earth roaring and they hissing as they creep into houses that their and your sprinkled baptism was no true baptism as being but a little water poured upon your face but onely one part outwardly and telling you if you will be baptized indeed and to purpose you must be dipped and immerged in your whole body and in every part outwardly that your whole spirit and soul and body may be preserved blameless against the coming of the Lord 1. Thess 5.23 Thus they together have cast a snare upon you they have snared you into their nets and caught you with some other silly Fry as the Spider hath the simple Fly and have dipped and doused you in your cloathes under water you being in their nets the devil in a corner laughing snearing and dancing the while over you even as the Spider doth winde up and truss up the Fly being come into its Cobweb and then skips leaps and runs about it and which I may mark sucks and seeds upon the poor Fly Well Sir if you be willing to come to the acknowledging of the truth as I am zealous to bring you to it and to recover your self out of the snare of the divel who are taken captive by him and others at his will and theirs 2 Tim. 2.25 26 read consider believe the Truth I have set before you but read with impartiality without prejudicateness Consider with indifferency without precipitancy and believe the Truth with submission without resistance and with many other words have I testified the Truth in the answer of your Brother before as well as in this answer to you and have exhorted and do exhort saying Save your selves especially save your self from this untoward and froward Generation Acts 2.40 And if this be not enough that I have said read on still for I have somewhat more to say unto you as willing that you should not perish but come to the knowledge of the Truth and the acknowledgement of your Errors for so also there is somewhat more that you say to me in your Letter thus you write further Sir I wonder how you dare to say that you do imbrace the Truth as it is laid out by Jesus did Jesus ever lay down that a man should learn the Latine and Greek Tongue and so to a Vniversity to read Philosophy and commence Batchelor and Master of Arts and Batchelor and Doctor of Divinity and so come to a Parish there to take a Living from them to the value of 100 l. per annum more or less they nilling willing and there stile himself the Minister of Jesus Christ Did ever Christ lay down that you should take a little water and sprinkle it on the face of an Infant and say you dip them in the Name of the Father Son and Holy Ghost did ever Christ lay down that his Ministers should be his peoples Masters as Lords over Gods Heritage Did Christ lay down that you should take a Parish a Church and to them cast the holy things of the body and blood of Christ as unto a company many of them if not the most of them no better then dogs I my self having been one who was not so good as a god till the grace of God appeared plucking me out of my wicked wayes to the knowledge of the Truth which you fear I have not owned But the day will discover and God will judge between you and us Here is stuff indeed enough to make an onely English-man to speak Greek and Latine of purpose to declare the vanity of such words against Languages like as the Sedentary Philosopher did presently arise and walk about to shew the folly of him who before him denied motion Quis expedivit Psittaco suum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Picasque docuit nostra verba conari I wonder Sir where you learned to speak these our words to spie out our Liberties yea to Pie and Parrat out our Tongues Degrees and Learning of the University your self never living there and now conversing with the Antipodes to the same Auditum spectatum admissi risum teneatis amici Truly friends and Readers so I would join you for that I know all Readers of me will not be friends with me I had not written out this passage but that I would at the closure of my answer present you with this spectacle of ridiculous stuff to move some mirth in you for there is nothing of Oracle or solid matter in it to take up any of your serious eyes ears or thoughts These indeed having been carried now a long time even unto wearisomness and tediousness I fear through the washes deeps and dippings of Ponds and Rivers it is time to bring you now to a fire to warm and dry you and in good time be it spoken as done Here 's an ignis fatuus a smoaking fire-brand a sparkling squib a blazing Comet a crackling thorn-bush enough to smutch a whole University but fear nothing deest ignis there 's no fire under the words nothing but a little flash and fume and new light a noise vox preterea nihil if you cannot warm your hands at it yet clap your hands at it and shout and laugh at it till you have warmed and refreshed your self sufficiently whilst I go on with my answer to such words for there is nothing of matter in them and shew the vanity of vanity in them also and all to be but vanity here Sir How dare you say you embrace the truth laid out by Jesus did ever Jesus lay down
good old Way into a new by and bad path from the publick Ministery or Steeple-houses be it so to private mysteries or smokeries rather of their Chimney-houses from your first true Baptism at a Font. to a second vain Dippism in a Pond They have been rather instrumental to your Confusion then your Conversion Yea I say further God doth not use them the Anabaptists as Anabaptists andtheir doctrine as any ordinary means or instruments of his to the Converting fouls to the Faith and Truth I promised to give you a Particular of them and their Doctrines and this it is wherein they differ from us and have forsaken the Truth of our Church and the Word of God and which doth denominate and constitute an Anabaptist They reject all Infant-baptism renouncing their own Baptism they took in Infancy and therefore Re-baptize themselves and others and keep their children from Baptism till years of discretion and ability of profession and so in a manner deny the Seal of the Covenant of Grace to Infants with whom also God hath entred into it saying I will be thy God and the God of thy seed They hold all stinted and set forms of prayer unlawful to be used in Church or House and even so also the Lords prayer That there is no distinction betwixt Clergy and Laity That the taking of Oaths before or by the Authority of a Magistrate is unlawful That the office of a Magistrate is neither lawful nor necessary with abundance more for why should I stir the whole dunghil to infect the Air of coherent and coincident Errors and Lyes as the Prophetical Scriptures call them Are such Teachers and Tenets like to pluck you out of your wicked wayes and to bring you to the knowledge of the Truth whether private or publick who hang so fast in the Bushes and Thickets of Errors and stick so deep in the Bushes and Thickets of Erros and stick so deep in the mire of Vices dipt in both up to the chin and mouth yea over head and ears especially seeing such were never called or sent about the work of Converting souls to either For my part I am of Paul and I am of Jeremiah and so should you be of both too the Apostle and the Prophet But first I am of Paul the Apostle who saith indeed Faith cometh by hearing for how shall they believe in whom they have not heard But it is hearing of a Preacher for how shall they hear without a Preacher And it is of a Preacher sent for how shall they preach except they be sent The Apostle is clear of the opinion that onely sent Preachers who have Mission and Commission from God can bring hearers to the Faith and seems to wonder at those in his vehement and frequent Interrogatories who say or think otherwise This Text I may call Faiths Clymax or Ladder with its steps and gradations which none of your Lay-brethren could ever yet climbe up to or come down by if they begin at the lower end as they ought being the ground and foundation of the work and so offer to go and climbe up they mâ—ss of their first step and footing because they are not sent and so must climbe no farther or higher for want of Mission they cannot go up the Ladder in the Right way of preaching and begetting faith in the Hearers or your self And if they begin at the upper end and top of this Ladder as indeed presumptuously they use to do and heap to themselves at first a multitude of Hearers and so come down along to their preaching yet they fall off the Ladder at the lower staffe or step again because still they be not sent and so can do no missive or ministerial good upon their Hearers nor your self as to Faith It is Gods great mercy to them and you that they cast not themselves down head-long or that they are not cast down by him that took them up into the Pulpit and set them on that Pinnacle of the Temple to the breaking of their necks as well as making shipwrack of Faith for they tempt the Lord their God and are not in their wayes which words must not be left out by you as they are left out by the devils citing of that Text and therefore God hath given his Angels no charge over them being out of their wayes to bear them in their armes or hands that they dash not their foot against the stones Yea they do dash not onely their feer but their tongues also against the stone the Head-stone of the corner which these builders refuse in ascending Pulpits or stepping into chairs and preaching without his sending or Commissioning them according to his Prerogative given unto him of which this is a part All power is given me in Heaven and in Earth as my Father hath sent me so send I you Mat. 28.18 19. John 20.2 So also I am of Jeremiah who is so frequent and fervent in the point that I shall onely name the Texts and make the proofs out of all together Jer. 14.14 23.32 21. 27.14 28.8 9. where I observe that six or seven times the Lord by the Prophet saith that he sent them not and thereupon it 's said thrice they prophesied lyes once otherwise then the word is once deceits and dreams once their Errors and lightness false visions and divinations things of naught and the deceits of their own hearts enough one would think to keep off people from hearing of them and yet in plain terms therefore they are forbidden thrice to hearken to them or their words And if for all this they will be hearing of them as they have now very itching ears and give themselves much to hearing new men as news-men the Prophet tells and foretels them more plainly They shall do no good on it at the 32. verse of the 23. Chapter I sent them not nor commanded them Therefore they shall not profit this people at all saith the Lord. Hear you this Sir and hearken to this all ye separate people of England those of God unsent uncommanded Preachers false Teachers of the Anabaptistical separation for are they not so that teach you the Doctrines and Practices I have particularized but even now and now may assimilate unto the lyes dreams deceits vain visions of those false Prophets those false Teachers of the Anabaptisticall separation I say nay saith the Lord shall not profit you at all therefore they have not nor any Grace of God appearing in by or from them for God doth not give Converting ministerial Grace to them whom he doth not send nor Commission them plucked you or any of our people nor shall pluck them or you from your wicked wayes to the knowledge of the Truth for this is and will be a great deal of profit they have not turned and converted you or any of our people nor shall unto the Faith and unto God for this is and will be the greatest profit of all that can be You
margent wherewith they made Baal And so you do not or did not know that Gods first Covenant of Grace in Christ I will be thy God and the God of thy seed sealed unto you in your Infant-baptism your first Infant-baptism sealing unto you the Covenant of the Grace of God in Christ gave you your knowledge of the Truth your Conversion from your evil wayes your Repentance your Faith and increased these and other Graces in you which you and they prepare for and ascribe to their and your Anabaptism and wherewith they and you would make Anabaptism leaping upon the Altar that they have made and dousing in the Ponds that you go to crying O Baal hear us or Great is Diana of the Ephesians the dipping of the Anabaptists Why halt ye or how long O ye people halt ye between two opinions or two Baptisms 1 Kings 18.21 if your first Infant-baptism be the Seal of Gods Covenant of Grace to you follow it but if the Anabaptists second Dippism be the Seal then follow it Therefore I say farther to them the people and you not I even I onely but we even we also thousands of us remain the Ministers of the Lord and your Prophets are a great many more for every one that will with you may consecrate himself and be a Prophet we as we do will still bring our children and Infants of believing Parents unto Baptism in our Churches pouring on or sprinkling water In the name of the Father the Son and the holy Ghost with invocation or calling on the Name of the Lord and do you as you use go out with your grown but born Christians men and women whom you have with-held from their Baptism in their Infancy or with other grown persons formerly baptized whom you have seduced into your by-wayes and carry them to your dippings and diving them over head and ears body cloathes in your Ponds of the field the Baptism or washing that answereth by fire I mean the Spirit 1 Kings 18.24 and spiritual Graces bringing after to Repentance from evil wayes and unto the knowledge of the Truth let that be the right washing and Baptism indeed All the people I know will and yur selves also must needs answer The word is good and it is well spoken Now then I propose and it s my major proposition most true That washing with water or Baptism which answereth by fire cavil not at the phrase God in or by Baptism I mean and hath the Graces of Gods Spirit Faith Repentance Conversion answerable and following thereupon is that and that onely which is mentioned in the Scriptures as of Gods Institution so conjunction Mat. 3.11 Mark 1.8 Acts 2.38 John 3.6 and in a great many other places which formerly I have brought shewing the correspondence or accompanying the one of or to and after the other the Baptism and the Spirit But I assume and it is my minor proposition yet no less true That neither of your two dippings I call them two in respect of the Subjects which are of two sorts some formerly baptized and some not are to be found in any part of Scripture throughout the whole Bible either instituted of God or conjoyned with fire or the Spirit as my whole Book and this annexed Treatise or Censure hath cleared demonstrated And therefore I may conclude Negatively against your diping by Anabaptists that it answereth not by fire and so you have received from them and it nothing but water no fire no Spirit no Grace no Regeneration no Conversion no plucking out of your evil wayes into the knowledge of the Truth What you have of these Goods or Graces in present you have and received as sparks at your first Baptism in your Infancy which being according to the Scriptures and to Gods Ordinance and Institution answereth by Fire in all Gods elect children as who are inwardly also baptized of the Spirit whch is the fire I mean and speak of which answering also by fire in them afterwards sheweth their Baptism in Infancy to have been according to the Scripture Gods Ordinance and Institution To come up yet closer to you If you Sir be one of those that belong unto the Election and Covenant of Grace as I in charity judged of you as I ought to do when I baptized you and gave you Baptism as the seal of the Covenant then were you baptized with fire i. e. the Spirit as well as water the inward Grace being united to the outward Sign unto such and the Spirit as truly and really and actualy applying the merits and blood of Christ in the justifying and sanctifying vertue unto your soul as I did the water to your body or bodily part of your face or forehead and the invisible Grace of the Sacrament was conveyed to you by such visible means so that if you had dyed in your Infancy this your Baptism had been to you supposing you still an Elect Infant as a seal of the Righteousness of Christ extraordinarily applied by the holy Ghost to your Justification and Salvation God hath now suffered you to live to years of discretion I must therefore put you in remembrance that you stir up the gift or Grace of God which is in you as Paul speaketh to Timothy 2 Tim. 1.6 I cannot say by the putting on of my hands but I may by the pouring on of that water with my hands The word in the original is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to stir up that fire of the Spirit I spake of and to quicken up the grace of Baptism that hath lien under the ashes throughout your youthful and sinful dayes of ignorance that so now it may kindle and burn brighter in you You are now to bestir your self in reading the Word and hearing it preached by such Ministers as God sendeth into the Church and amongst them him especially who baptized you at first that so you may come to Faith by such means and by Faith now actually lay hold on the promises of the Covenant of Grace touching Justification Remission and Adoption and enjoy them to your use and comfort which were but made and sealed in your Baptism as to every Elect Childe of God and estated upon you on Gods part as to your Right and Title I do not say that your Baptism properly did give you or primarily the Right and Interest you have unto God and Christ Gods free Covenant and promise did it but it sealed up onely and mainly confirmeth that Right and Interest which you had already even then in Gods Govenant and Promise Gods Word is as good as his Bond and his Promise as effectual as his Seal your Baptism as the other Sacrament was not for the strengthning or effectualizing of Gods Covenant but to the confirming and supporting your faith in apprehending it I would make this very plain to you hoping it may be for some good to you Suppose an Estate made over unto you in your Infancy by a Will and Testament under Seal you