To make all men see what is the fellowship of the Sacrament Eph. 3.9 To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this Sacrament among the Gentiles Col. 1.27 Great is the Sacrament of godlinesse 1 Tim. 3.16 The Sacrament of the seven starres Rev. 1.20 I will tell thee the Sacrament of the woman and the beast that carries her Rev. 17.7 And Tertullian speaking of Christianity calls it k Religionis Christianae Sacramentum The Sacrament of Christian Religion and Jerom saith l Sacramenta Dei sunt praedicare benedicere confirmare communionem reddere visitare infirmos orare Refert Gerardus de Sacram. cap. 1. The Sacraments of God are to preach to blesse to strengthen and establish to hold communion to visit the sick and pray Allegorical interpretations of Scripture also are called by the Ancients by the name of Sacraments Sometimes every outward sign of any thing that is holy is called by the name of Sacrament And as they began to borrow rites from the Jews in Baptisme they called them by the name of Sacraments Their Ointments and Chrismes yea the Crosse it self which the Church of Rome makes no more then a ceremony in Sacraments are called by the name of Sacraments But these acceptations of the word are grown obsolete and are so far from holding out the nature of those Ordinances which now passe under the name of Sacraments that men cannot be brought to any mistake in reading of them The word Sacrament is ordinarily now taken in that sense as Austine doth define it An outward visible sign of an inward spiritual grace that is a sign instituted of God to hold out and seal saving grace to the soul as afterward God willing may be more largely held forth Now in every Ordinance of this nature there is first an outward sign open to the senses secondly there is a spiritual grace thirdly an order established and declared between the sign and the thing signified and some of these still give the denomination Sometimes the outward sign is taken for the Sacrament and therefore the distinction is ordinary between Sacramentum and rem Sacramenti And it can be no more than a bare sign when the thing signified is apart considered and put in opposition to it Sometimes the outward sign and the thing signified considered joyntly are called by the name of a Sacrament and this Gerard sayes is the most proper and most usual acceptation Sometimes the order or analogy that is betwixt the sign and the thing signified is called by the name of Sacrament and therefore Keckerman defines a Sacrament to be m Sacramentum est ordo sanctus inter rem externam in sensus incurrentem et visus imprimis objectum tanquam â—â—gnum et inter rem spiritualem tanquam signatum à Christo Mediatore institutus ad obsignandam fidelibus redemptionis certitudinem et simul beneficia quae ex redemptione fluunt tum significanda tum confirmanda an holy order between the outward element obvious to the sense especially to the sight and the spirituall grace as the thing signified instituted of Christ the Mediatour to seal to Believers the assurance of redemption and with it all benefits that flow from redemption So that he makes neither the outward sign nor yet the thing signified apart considered to be the Sacrament in that definition nor yet the outward sign and thing signified joyntly considered but the order or analogy that is held between them Lastly the word Sacrament is taken for the outward sign with relation had to the thing signified leading to it and by way of seal confirming it and in this sense it is taken by Divines when they treat exactly about it And in that sense the Apostle takes circumcision when he defines it to be A sign and seal of the righteousnesse of Faith Rom. 4.11 The use and office of the cutting off the foreskin of the flesh as by way of sign and seal it stands in relation to the righteousnesse of faith is there held forth This therefore we may well judge to be the most proper acceptation of it Keckerman therefore as soon as he had defined a Sacrament as before presently tells us that n Sacramenti vox per se concreta est et significat rem sive subjectum cum modo rei id est cum rel tione rei additâ interim tamen potest etiam usurpari pro Ipso abstracto id est pro relatione ut nos quidem in definitione usurpavimus the word of it self is a concrete and signifies the thing or subject with the manner of it that is saith he with the relation added to it yet it may be taken for the abstract that is for the relation as saith he we have put into the definition But seeing the word of it self by our Authors confession is no abstract but a concrete and the Apostle in his definition doth so consider it we have just reason in that sense to speak to it and so in this whole Treatise I shall take it And before I proceed in any further Enquiry the Reader may justly expect such a definition as may serve as a thred through the whole Discourse But my intention being to enquire something into the nature of Sacraments in mans integrity that so the Work may answer the Title A Treatise of the Sacraments but mainly to insist on those that are appointed by God for his people in the Covenant of Grace I am necessitated to put off the enquiry after such a definition that may give satisfaction till I come to that which I intend as my principal Subject Yet that by the way he may not be wholly left unsatisfied I shall here offer such a definition that may comprehend all Sacraments as well in the Covenant of Works as in the Covenant of Grace intreating him to forbear any strict enquiry into the reasons of it untill he come into the full Body of the Discourse where by the definition which God willing shall be given of Sacraments in the Covenant of Grace and from Scripture at large confirmed he may easily judge of the definition of Sacraments in general and thus I suppose it may be held out A Sacrament is a sign instituted of God for the use of his people in Covenant to signifie and seal his Promises upon Terms and Propositions by himself prescribed and appointed CHAP. II. Sect. I. Of Sacraments in mans state of integrity I shall leave the word which is of least moment being not of divine original and come to enquire after the thing which must be distinguished before it can be defined either in the general what a Sacrament is or what this or that Sacrament viz. Baptisme or the Supper of the Lord is in particular Now Sacraments being instituted of God for the use of men in tendency towards their happinesse must be considered according to the several states of man and dispensations in which God hath
baptized the Reader can scarce imagine this I impute to haste or passion preventing or obstructing the use of reason He must then blot out Christian nomine tenus and insert instead of it an Heathen Jew or Pagan otherwise he is already a baptized person and in incapacity for baptisme by the power of the Word preached brought to renounce his way of Paganisme Judaisme and to professe and engage to a Christian faith and conversation These are the men that I would have baptized and if we must account them to be dogs and swine all Scripture-baptizers are within the lash they have given baptisme to them That repentance as well as faith was required in baptisme appeares saith he by the ages following the Apostles yea and in the Apostles time likewise A profession of both was indeed required they that renounced heathen worship renounced heathen conversation with it They engaged to a Christian faith and they engaged to a Christian conversation Mr. F. addes For those who would live in their lusts they deferred their baptisme knowing what that required I have read of the deferring of baptisme in those times and the reasons assigned why they put it off But I have not met with this reason Mr. Marshall in his defence of Infant-Baptisme hath given many reasons why some put off baptisme Some to be baptized at the age that Christ was baptized Some to be baptized in the river where he was baptized Some to be baptized by some special Bishop of eminent place Some which it seems was most common because they conceived that it takes away all sin and therefore they would have it delayed till sin was well over for which he quotes many authorities Tertullian it appears would have it delayed upon this ground seeing he would not have unmarried persons baptized but to stay till lust were extinguished and disswading from baptisme in younger years he hath these words Quid festinat innocens aetas ad remissionem peccatorum de baptis cap. 18. Yet perhaps some might delay it upon the account that he mentions though he quotes no authority for it but that Tertullian and Nazianzen intimate it one of whom was for delaying of baptisme in the place quoted the other against it as I find him cited But in case any did delay it upon the grounds by him mentioned might it not be their fault that did administer it in keeping the door too narrow as well as their sin who put off the time of it seeing Mr. F. himself complains of the rigour of some in New-England in holding men off from entrance into Church-fellowship by that door which is set up in the room and place of baptisme Mr. Firmin as well in his Serious question stated as in his Appendix against me vouches many authorities first Presbyterians instancing in his margine Lond. Min. Jus Div pag. 115. But in my book that page hath no such thing Gillespies Aarons Rod quoting many pages I can recompence him in setting up some of the Congregational way against him Mr. Gillesp will not have a known unregenerate man baptized But Mr. Cobbet saith John did and might lawfully baptize those multitudes albeit in the general he knew that many yea most of them would prove false and frothy And makes visibility of interest in the Covenant the Churches guide in application of Baptisme pag. 52. And how large a visibility of interest is is cleer and I have already shewen Let his words before quoted be considered and to these adde that which he hath pag. 54 55. The initiatory seal is not primarily and properly the seal of mans faith or repentance or obedience but of Gods Covenant rather The seal is to the Covenant even Abrahams Circumcision was not primarily a seal to his faith of righteousnesse but to the righteousnesse of faith exhibited and offered in the Covenant yea to the Covenant it self or promise which he had believed unto righteousnesse hence the Covenant of grace is called the righteousnesse of faith Rom. 10. Hence Acts 2.38 39. the seal of baptisme is put to the promise as the choyce matter and foundation in view and as that was a ground of repentance it self Repent and be baptized for the promise is to you Not for you have repented as if that were the thing to be firstly sealed by baptisme but the promise rather Appendix pag. 57. Mr. Firmin quotes in the Lump the Fathers Councels School-men out of Gregory de Val. as if all were of that mind In his Serious question he quotes Austin Alexander Hales Aquinas Gregory de Valen. In his appendix Justin Martyr Concil Naeocesar Concil Nic. Concil Elib as strict in admission of their Catechumeni concerning which I might have much to say First How would he like it in other things to leave the clear rode and track of Scriptures to hunt after humane authorities If we can but say From the beginning it was not so In case the authorities were more in number more eminent in honour we have sufficient The Scripture-way taking in those that the Word had brought to a profession of Christianity upon engagement to it is as clear as though it were written with a ray of the Sun Secondly For Fathers and Schoolmen their opinion about Baptisme on which they ground the necessity of praerequisites to it is known and as he may quote them against me so I can quote them against him and those of his party They maintain and as unanimously as they do the thing in debate that Sacraments confer grace on the receiver in case he put no obstacle on which account they expect not grace in the person for baptisme which they believe not to be possible seeing the Sacrament is to work it but a convenient disposition to grace which they call merit ex congruo Let Suarez speak in the name of the rest having laid down this Proposition d Ut alicui digne detur baptismus praeter voluntatem suscipiendi Sacramentum necessaria est dispositio conveniens sanctitati Sacramenti That Baptisme may be worthily administred besides a willingnesse to receive the Sacrament a disposition suitable to the holinesse of the Sacrament is required And then answering the question What this disposition is he answers e Resp Eam sufficere necessariam esse quae ad consequendum effectum Baptismi fuerit sufficiens ac necessaria quia cum per baptismum detur gratia si aliquis est recte dispositus ad effectum baptismi consequendum in instanti quo receperit baptismum perfectum recipiet gratiam Ergo cum sufficienti dignitate sanctitate recipit Sacramentum Quia cum hoc sit Sacramentum mortuorum non est ad illud digne suscipiâ—ndum prae exigenda gratia ad quam conferendam ipsum est constitutum Ergo sufficiet illa dispositio cum qua Sacramentum conferet talem effectum That is necessary and sufficient which is necessary and sufficient to attain the effect of the Sacrament and gives
are likewise seals where there are like Sacramental expressions notwithstanding they have no such name in Scripture And as the Apostle infers from the institution of Circumcision and Abrahams acceptation of it that Circumcision was a seal so may we infer in like manner that other Sacraments are signs and seals Compare that which the Apostle here deduceth from Gen. 17. concerning Abrahams Circumcision with that which may be deduced from Acts 8.34 35. concerning the Eunuchs Baptisme Abraham believed and was justified upon believing and then received the sign of Circumcision a seal of the righteousnesse of faith which he had being uncircumcised And the Eunuch did believe on Philips preaching and afterwards received Baptisme May we not well then say He received the sign of Baptisme a seal of the righteousnesse that he had being yet unbaptized so we may say of Pauls Baptisme and the Jaylours upon their miraculous conversion to the faith they received the sign of Baptisme for the same reason Secondly It is demanded whether the Covenant of grace and promises of salvation be compleat valid and firm in themselves Object without these things annexed to them or whether they be meerly void and null in Law as Kings and mens Deeds and Charters without a seal to confirm them If incompleat infirm and invalid this is extreamly derogatory to the Covenant and therefore they are not properly seals Answ 1. Sol. If there be some dissimilitude between civill seals used by men in Charters and conveyances and seals of God put to his Covenant will it then follow that upon that account they are no seals There are dissimilitudes between the Ambassadors of Princes and the Ministers of Christ respective to their functions are Ministers then no Ambassadors There is difference between servants of men and servants of God are Christians then no servants Sacraments are seals by way of metaphor because they do the office that seals do among men and if they do not per omnia quadrare as no metaphors do yet in case they agree in the main for which that serves from whence the metaphor is borrowed it is sufficient Ministers are fitly called Ambassadors being sent of God to treat from him with a people as Ambassadors are sent of Princes notwithstanding that those to whom Ambassadours come may treat or not treat at pleasure may give in Propositions as well as receive them when they to whom Gods Ministers are sent must give audience must take the Propositions delivered and not stand to Capitulate If Sacraments ratifie to us the promises of the Covenant That is enough to denominate them seales though wit could devise twenty differences And yet I read some differences assigned which I confesse I do not understand to be any differences at all 2. I know not that it is absolutely true in Law that mens grants are void altogether without a seal I have heard of Leases parol and Wills nuncupative which I am sure have no seal And seales sometimes by the injury of time are utterly broke and lost and in this case I suppose the Covenant may yet stand 3. What is objected against this office of Sacraments as seales may also be objected against the oath of God made to Abraham for confirmation of his Word That will admit the dilemma Either his Word of Promise was true and firm without it or else which I am loath to speak subject to change The application is easie The same thing was revealed to Pharaoh in a dream for seven years plenty and seven years famine by a double sign If there was truth in one we may argue the second needs not if untrue neither have cause to be heeded or regarded If we will undertake such kind of reasonings we should make no end 4. The Covenant is compleat full firm and valid in case we should never more then once hear it or never have any seal put to it nor any oath for confirmation yet our unbelief and distrust is such that we need ingeminations inculcations oaths seals and all from God to uphold us Object Thirdly It is yet demanded whether these seales are inseparably annexed to the Covenant and promises of grace in the Old or New Testament as parts or parcels of them as seales are annexed To the Charter If yea then shew us to what Covenants and Promises and in and by what Texts they are thus inseparably annexed and how any can be saved or made partakers of the benefit of the Covenant and promises of grace who do not actually receive these seales of grace when as your selves with all Orthodox Divines must grant that many who were never baptized and infinite who never received the Lords Supper are and may be saved and are made partakers of the Covenant and promises of grace without receiving or enjoying these seales of grace If no then how can these be termed seales of the Covenant and promises of grace which are not inseparably affixed to them as seales are to Charters since many receive the Covenant and promises of grace without these seales and other receive these seales without the Covenant or promises the benefit whereof they never enjoy Answ They are inseparably joyned respectu praecepti Sol. as being enjoyned of God and here all the Texts brought to prove the Sacraments not arbitrary but necessary may be brought in to witnesse though not so respectu medii The Covenant may have its effect without them The Covenant is intire in it self without them They are not inseparable quoad esse yet they have their necessity though not simple and absolute quoad operari for the Covenant to have its due work on our hearts God saw them necessary helpful and useful and therefore gave them in charge as many Scriptures witnesse and we of necessity must submit to them in order to obtain the end to which they serve and for which they are designed and appointed SECT II. Rules for a right understanding of Sacramental Seales FIrst These are outward visible seales Explicatory Propositions touching the sealing of Sacraments and priviledges of visible Churches and Church-membership committed to the Stewards of God in his house to dispense and apply to their people And so different from that other seal of God frequently mentioned the seal of the Spirit which is internal invisible proper onely to the elect regenerate reserved in the hand of God according to prerogative to give That these are external and visible needs no more then our eyes and that they are the priviledg of visible Churches and Church-members sufficient hath been spoken And therefore they both agree in the general nature of a seal both are for ratification and confirmation of the truth of Gods promises yet in a different way and different latitude They have the former that never reacht the latter and the former is serviceable to attain to the latter Secondly They are seales not to confirm any truth of God in it self or to work in us any assent to general Scripture-Propositions But
as general truths are brought home by particular application so they seal mens particular interest in the Covenant He that hath the Son hath life He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life These are Scripture-Propositions and he that is to seek here hath no cure in the Sacraments They can give no direct remedy These signs and seals take this for granted and cannot make proof of it But when this is assented to in the general He that hath the Son hath life and he that feeds upon him shall live for ever Here soules are confirmed in their particular interests that the Son is theirs and that they feed upon him for life eternal Thirdly we must distinguish the outward sign in the Sacrament together with that which is done about them or any of them and the Communicants act in the bare beholding of them from our act of receiving of them In the former sense they are no more then signes The Lords Supper thus considered is no more then a remembrance memorial or representation of Christs death and passion In the latter it is a seal pledge or earnest And therefore to say that Christ ordained it to be a remembrance memorial and representation of his death is a truth But to say that therefore he did not ordain it to be a seal is a manifest error If Christ had taken bread and broken it taken the cup and poured out wine and had said This is my body this is my blood here had been a sign a memorial a representation and no more But when he saies Take eat this is my body This is my blood in the New Testament drink ye all of this it is as Circumcision was both a sign and seal As a sign remembrance or representation the beholding is sufficient as the Israelites did the brazen Serpent and as Papists look on their Images for which if they had an institution as they have a prohibition they might be defended and if we were to do no more it would be no more then a sign memorial and representation But being to receive it It is a seal and pledge of that which it represents and brings to our minds Fourthly They are not absolute seals but conditional They do not make it good to all that Christ is theirs but upon Gods terms which is exprest by St. Peter to be the answer of a good conscience towards God Of this I spake largely Treatise of the Covenant pag. 34 35 c. which by Mr. Baxter in his Apology hath been examined Sect. 60 to Sect. 82. which here must briefly be taken into consideration A digression for vindication of chap. 7. of the Treatise of the Covenant from Mr. Baxters exceptions touching conditional sealing in Sacraments HAving in my Treatise of the Covenant shewed at large that the Covenant of grace is conditional In my seventh Chapter I inferr'd that the seals of the Covenant are as the Covenant it self conditional making it good with six several arguments as I had before asserted it in my answer of Mr. T. chap. 15. p. 100. This reverend Mr. Baxter is pleased to take notice of in his Apology and to put the question in opposition to me in these words Sect. 60. Whether the Sacraments seal the conditional promise absolutely or the conclusion conditionally when onely one of the premises is of Divine revelation and whether this conclusion be de fide I am justified and shall be saved Which terms I leave to the intelligent Reader to consider He is not pleased to take notice of any one of my arguments whether it is because he judges them unworthy of his answer or for any other reason I cannot tell I produce likewise the testimony of many of our Divines speaking the same thing and he takes as little notice of any of their authorities As I then spake what reason inforced me to believe so I have the same reason still to believe what I have spoke and when all is examined which may be found in that apology from p. 115 to p. 144. I think more is spoken for me then against me He is pleased pag. 139. to say The difference is so small that were it not for some scattered by-passages I would scarce have replyed to you I therefore shall return no other rejoynder but onely to observe such passages as may best serve to clear the truth in question He goes about to take away the subject of the question and saies I never heard of nor knew a conditional sealing in the world which to me is very strange Besides what I have spoken of it he hath doubtlesse read Mr. Marshalls answer to Mr. T. and pag. 224. of his Treatise of Infant-Baptisme he makes us know that he hath read it and he expresly calls it a conditional seal of the receivers interest in the Covenant He confesses the possibility but asserts the vanity of such sealing As if a man saith he Sect. 77. pag. 140. should set the wax and material Seal to a deed of gift with this addition I hereby seal to this or own it as my deed if such a man be now living in France or if such a ship be safe arrived or if such a man shall do such a thing otherwise this shall be no seal Here I think an impossibility is found out Is an actual Seal made no Seal upon any condition in the World Hath he never heard of that Maxime Quicquid est quando est necesse est esse or that other Quod factum est infectum reddi nequit And we are wont to say that this is not within an omnipotence to make a thing that is whilest it is not to be unlesse Mr. Baxter means that such wax with impression made is formally no seal before the time that in law it hath its efficacy as he seems to say Sect. 72. where he hath these words To say I conditionally seal is to say It shall be no seal till the performance of the condition So a bond sealed and delivered in presence of witnesses is unsealed till it be forfeited which is a manifest absurdity And I speak not of a conditional seal as opposed to actual I should call such a seal not conditional but potential I speak to conditional sealing as it is in the question that is when a man ties himself by seal to such or such a thing not absolutely but upon condition and such sealings I think are common in the world A Master seals to his Apprentice and binds himself at the end of his term to apparel him to make him free of his mystery c. but all this upon terms and condition of true and faithful service If Philemon in his way had sealed to Onesimus his seal had not tyed him to make good such engagements I have alwaies thought As is the obligation so is the seal and if there be no such conditional obligations we have been long abused with such forms The condition of this obligation is such
faith is not Sanctification Sanctification is inherent the righteousnesse of faith is imputed but circumcision is a sign and seal of the righteousnesse of faith And that Baptisme signifies and seals the same thing we find expressely in Peters words Ast. 2.38 Be baptized every one of you in the Name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins Remission of sins is by blood Heb. 9.22 Without shedding of blood there is no remission Baptisme is for remission of sins and therefore the water in Baptisme holds out the blood of Christ And I doubt not but Ananias had respect to this in his speech to Paul Act. 22.16 Rise and be baptized and wash away thy sins Somewhat it is to which these signs engage and that is all unto which a Christian in duty as duty stands engaged whether for his change in heart or life or in order to the pardon of his sin Baptisme engages to the first work of regeneration and to the first work of making all new within To this circumcision did tye as it signified it so it engaged to it Deut. 10.16 Circumcise the foreskin of your hearts and be no more stiffenecked If by vertue of their circumcision in the flesh God did not require it why is the want of it charged on Judah as their sin or how could it lay them open with other Nations to punishment Jer. 9.25 26. Behold the dayes come saith the Lord that I will punish all them that are circumcised with the uncircumcised Egypt and Judah and Edom and the children of Ammon and Moab and all that are in the uttermost corners that dwell in the wildernesse for all these Nations are uncircumcised and all the house of Israel are uncicumcised in the heart And that the first work is required as well as a further degree and progresse both in circumcision and baptisme is clear In baptisme we are explicitly dedicated as the Jewes were implicitly in circumcision to Father Son and holy Ghost and therefore engaged to be sincerely his in Covenant But this cannot be till a change be wrought and we be born again from above To this therefore we are engaged We are engaged to love the Lord with all our heart with all our strength but this cannot be while our hearts are in an unchanged condition and therefore the circumcision of the heart Deut. 30.6 is mentioned in order to this of the love of the Lord The Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart and the heart of thy seed to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul what is it but the first work that is called for in that of the Prophet Make ye a new heart and a new spirit Ezek. 10.31 And in those texts of the Apostle Awake thou that sleepest and stand up from the dead Ephes 5.14 Be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds Rom. 12.2 That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man And be renewed in the spirit of your minds Ephes 4.22 23. Howsoever some of these Scriptures may be conceived to be directed to men in a state of Regeneration and therefore that they call not for the first work but for a further progresse in grace yet all of them cannot be so Interpreted And there is not any of them but implyes that where the first work is not done it must be done where the old man is not put off it must be put off and where the new man is not put on it must be put on where the spirit is not renewed it must be renewed Neither is it of force against this to say that the first work is out of our power and that in it we are wholly passive and therefore we do not in baptisme engage to it but God rather engages for it To which I answer Though it be out of our power yet it is within the command of God and is matter of our duty Gods command is no rule of our strength neither is it brought down to answer our weaknesse so a carnall man should be under no spiritual command but it is a rule of our duty what we once were and still ought to be it commands us for to be And though we be passive in the first work yet we are alwaies concerned to be active and assoon as we do receive power we are to act Dead Lazarus was commanded to rise and having power communicated from God he did actually rise and come out of the grave There is not any promise of God for inherent Grace nor any work of Grace but it comes within our duty and a command lies on us as instance might be given and consequently there is an obligation and engagement to it Gods command and his promises stand not in opposition but in subordination and to say that God is engaged and not man is dangerous then all that are baptized must be regenerate or else God fails in his engagement Somewhat it is that these signs seal and in sealing ratify and confirm and that is as the text shewes the righteousnesse of Faith and consequently all other priviledges whatsoever of like nature that are annexed to it Remission Justification Adoption Glorification Sacraments as seals have not as I conceive at least immediately and directly reference to graces or inherent habits but priviledges They are as Mr. Baxter hath well observed seales of the conditional Covenant and so they must seal whatsoever they do seal on Gods terms and conditions they ratifie mercies promised on those termes that the Covenant doth promise now graces are the conditions and termes of the Covenant and mercies are promised upon those termes and therefore the Covenant requires them but the Sacraments do not ratifie and seal them The Sacraments as signs shew us our wants of or wants in grace by the help of the Word and light received from it they point us out where supply may be found they engage us to this change to the whole of duty required from the people of God and upon answer of our conscience in this work they seal and confirm all promised priviledges to us The nature efficacy and operation of Sacraments would be better understood if that which is proper to each part or the particular office in each relation were better known The seal in a Lease as from the Lessor doth not ratifie the homage that is to be done by the Lessee or the service from him due but the inheritance or benefit whatsoever which upon condition of such homage or service is conveyed Graces are the homage and priviledges are the benefit or the inheritance the priviledges then and not the graces are directly in Sacraments sealed to us It is not sealed up to us either in Baptisme or the Lords Supper that we do believe or repent but that believing and repenting we have forgivenesse of sin and salvation But some say that the Sacraments seal all that the Covenant promises but the Covenant promises Grace and therefore the Sacraments
seal and confirm in this that we have grace Answ Not to dispute the absolute Covenant in this place as many call it The Covenant to which Sacraments are annext as seales properly promises priviledges upon condition of graces and requires the graces though God in his elect ever graciously works what it is respective to grace that Sacraments do we have now heard that is to shew us our want of it and point us out the fountain of it engaging us to it and upon our making good our engagements through Grace they ratify these promised priviledges to us 7. Scriptures of two sorts are brought by those that would advance Sacraments above that which they work as signs and seales Seventhly The texts of Scripture brought by those that would raise the work of Sacraments above all that they do as signes and seales and to evince that they have an absolute work on the soul without respect had either to the understanding or faith of the receivers are of two sorts The first are such where no Sacrament at all is mentioned neither can it by any good argument be proved that Sacraments in those texts are directly intended Others are such wherein Baptisme indeed is mentioned but faith is evidently required to the attainment of the effect there specified when these two are proved a full answer is given to all the Scriptures which by the Adversaries in this behalf are objected Scriptures of the first rank are 1. Such wherein no Sacrament is mentioned nor can be proved that any is intended Titus 3.5 According to his mercy he saved us by the washing of Regeneration Ephes 5.25 26. Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it that he might sanctifie and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word 1. Cor. 6.12 Such were some of you but ye are washed but ye are sanctified but ye are justified in the Name of the Lord Jesus Though the thing signified in Baptisme is here evidently spoken to and some allusion may be conceived to be here made to Baptisme yet I suppose that it can by no good argument be proved that the Sacrament of Baptisme in any of these Scriptures is intended First Arguments evincing that Baptisme is not intended in the Sacramental work of it The Lords Supper may be as fairely evidenced out of Christ words John 6.53 54 55. Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood ye have no life in you whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day for my flesh is meat indeed and my blood is drink indeed as Baptisme may be evinced out of any of those texts alleadged when yet Protestant Writers unanimously conclude and severall learned Papists yield that no Sacramentall eating is there intended To clear this they say there is a meer Sacramentall eating and drinking the flesh and blood of Christ when the outward signs are received and no more a meer spirituall eating and drinking when Christ is applyed by faith without any Sacramentall sign and an eating and drinking both Sacramental and Spirituall when the Sacrament is received by sincere believers and the text in John is understood as they conclude of bare spiritual eating and drinking The same we may apply to washing and conclude that it is meerly spiritual washing that in these texts alleadged is understood Secondly There are the same phrases or those that are parallell with them in Old Testament-Scriptures when no Sacrament of this kind was instituted and therefore could not be intended Psal 51.7 Purge me with Hyssope and I shall be clean wash me and I shall be whiter then Snow Ezek. 36.25 Then will I sprinckle cleane water upon you and you shall be clean from all your filthinesse And it must needs be that meer Spiritual and not Sacramentall washing for the reason alleadged must in these texts be understood Thirdly If outward Baptisme were there intended why should not the word Baptisme be there as in other places used when we see it is yet omitted when other words are in the stead of it industriously chosen when common washing is intended we know that the word Baptisme is frequently used as Mar. 7.8 Luk. 11.38 and so also when legall cleansing is spoken to as Heb. 9.20 And in case Baptisme it self were here purposely intended it is marvel that other words should by the Spirit of God be chose and this laid aside Fourthly This Interpreters of eminent note have seen Mr. Gataker disceptatio de Baptis Infant vi efficacia pag 51. saith It g Dubitari potest non immerito baptismine Sacramentum an interna ablutio hoc nomine eo loci designetur may justly be doubted whether the Sacrament of Baptisme or inward washing in that place of Titus 3.5 be understood then adds h Atque ego certe etiamsi ad baptismi ritum externum respectum aliquem haberi nullus negaverim de interna tamen ab lutione diserte dictum existimo quae externa illa lotione corporis designatur ut ex clausula mox sequente verba illa exponantur per lavacrum regenerationis non videtur apostolus significare baptismum sed ipsam regenerationem quam lavacro comparat Though I am not he that will deny that some respect is had in those words to the outward rite of Baptisme yet I believe that they are expressely spoken of the inward washing and that the words may be interpreted by the clause immediately following the renewing by the Holy Ghost quoting Piscator for his opinion Thes theol vol. 1. loc 25. Sect. 20. who saith By the laver of regeneration the Apostle seems not to intend baptisme but regeneration it self which he compares to a laver and also Dr. Slater on Rom. 2.25 affirming That it is doubtful whether in Titus 3.5 there be any speech of the Sacrament or onely of the blood of Christ and of the Spirit and in his words as the Reader that pleases to consult him may see he takes in Ephes 5.26 likewise Vorstius speaks most fully of all to these Texts mentioning the Argument drawn from Ephes 5. Titus 3. for the opus operatum in Sacraments he sayes Our Divines answer i Aliena testimonia citari viz. quae res quidem in Sacramentis significatas metaphorice declarant attamen de Sacramentis proprie dictis non agunt That impertinent testimonies are urged which hold forth the thing signified in Sacraments by way of metaphor but do not speak of Sacraments properly so called Antibel Tom. 3. Contro 1. Thes 1. 2. And whereas Calvin is produced by some as interpreting Titus 3.5 of outward baptisme his authority will but little help them k Non dubito quin saltem ad baptismum alludat imo facile patior de baptismo locum exponi I do not doubt saith he but that the Apostle doth at least allude to baptisme and further saith I can easily bear
visible people of God and those that are strangers to him work no otherwise as to vitall and saving grace than hath been spoke let us take heed lest these dissimilitudes do not draw us to imbrace a cloud instead of Juno when it shall appear that they have not so much of elegancy but are answered with equal incongruity If they be such marks as these instances seem to hold out to us how are they then conditional means to communicate these blessings Upon what condition I marvel was it that Moses knew that God was in the bush Or the Inhabitants of Jerusalem that the Angel was in the water Or the Apostles that the Spirit was come down upon them These were undoubtedly to be lookt upon as unconditionate communications of the respective presence of God his Angel and his Spirit And how this stands with that which presently after we find in our Authour I know not unlesse many grains be allowed to abate the height of them that Sacraments are not Physical but moral instruments of salvation duties of service and worship which unlesse we perform as the Authour of grace requireth they are unprofitable For all receive not the grace of God which receive the Sacraments of his grace Moses undoubtedly did enjoy the presence of the Angel and the Apostles the presence of the Holy Ghost Let us then learn to use them as the Authour of grace requireth and that is as signs and seales as his chosen vessel to convey his grace here teaches I shall onely adde in this place If Sacraments work as signes and seales then they must be allowed to have that whole work on all that are Communicants which as signes and seales they can possibly effect either for the bettering of their understanding or farther engagements in wayes of godlinesse and that by the help of the Word they may help the understanding even of unregenerate persons and make discovery of strong engagements to wayes of godlinesse can scarce be questioned If the Word can teach the unregenerate by hearing then the Sacraments being appointed for visible teaching-signes by the help of the Word may also teach them by seeing and unregenerate men making profession of their relation to God may here see further engagements and provocations to godlinesse This effect cannot be denyed to be possible in Sacraments as signs at least upon some persons in unregeneration and when they further see all the glorious priviledges of the Covenant upon the terms propounded of God to be attainable may they not be of singular use as seales to put them on and stirre them up in all consciencious use of means to rise up to the answer of conscience And so as the Word as an instrument in Gods hand by instructions motives exhortations and other provocations is a means for conversion so may the Sacraments as appendents to the Word and by the help of it be herein serviceable likewise which is the whole that I do or ever did attribute to Sacraments so much as in a possible way of conversion CHAP. XII SECT I. The thing signified and sealed in Sacraments THe whole use and office of Sacraments we have seen Sacraments are suitable to Covenants which is to seal the gift and grant of God in Covenant as well as to signifie The thing sealed in them here comes to be spoken to which is the righteousnesse of faith There being a double Covenant given of God to man one in mans integrity whilest he was in spiritual life for preservation in life the other in mans fallen condition when dead for restitution to life There is a double righteousnesse answering to this double Covenant The one inherent in man to be wrought by himself and called our own righteousnesse The other wrought by a Mediatour in our stead and made ours by Faith and therefore called the righteousnesse of faith and sometimes the righteousnesse of God being wrought by Christ who is God And answerably to this double Covenant and double righteousnesse Sacraments of a double kind were instituted The first without respect had to any Mediatour confirming Gods engagements on the terms of perfect obedience The other with respect to a Mediatour and Faith in him confirming happinesse to believers The Sacraments of the Covenant of grace are of this latter sort They are signs and seales as were the trees of life and of the knowledge of good and evil and seales of righteousnesse as they were also but of righteousnesse of another kind The former were seales of the righteousnesse of works These are seales of the righteousnesse of faith Those were seales to assure a reward to our own righteousnesse These are seales to assure us of anothers righteousnesse made ours by faith From hence these two Observations follow one implyed the other in the words exprest The first which is implyed in the words is The righteousnesse of Faith is the great Promise of the Covenant of Grace The Apostle tells us of blindnesse that in part happened to Israel Rom. 11.25 and the blindnesse was this that they would not be brought to an acknowledgment of this righteousnesse But in an high zeal made it their businesse to establish their own righteousnesse Rom. 10.2 3. It do's not appear that they wholly denyed the concurrence of all grace for the work of this righteousnesse in which they confided The Pharisee who is brought in to personate those of this opinion saith God I thank thee I am not like other men He therefore did acknowledge some kind of discriminating grace But it was his own act thorow grace a righteousnesse inherent and not through grace imputed wrought by himself and not by another in his stead in which he confided This observation might have been pertinently and properly spoken to in this place being that on which the Sacraments are bottomed A flaw here must needs be the undoing of all The Jew mistaking here was at losse of all his pains in sacrifices Sacraments and all other personal performances When he had carried on this with the greatest vigour and alacrity he was still too short and this held him back that he look't not after any other righteousnesse and so perished without any such righteousnesse as was able to justifie I should not therefore have wholly past this by but that a long expected and greatly desir'd Treatise on this subject is sent to the Presse and will for a good space of time prevent this piece where the Reader I doubt not will find full satisfaction I shall therefore wholly passe it by and come to the Observation which the words expresly hold out The righteousnesse of faith is sealed in the Sacraments of the Covenant of grace This enters we see the definition a Sacra-ment Propositions holding forth this righteousnesse and is expressely laid down in the text of the Apostle and for a right understanding of this great priviledge here sealed some Positions or explicatory Propositions must be laid Proposition 1 down 1. This is called the
Moses Baptisme into him what Page 526 N. Names GIven by God not empty titles Page 12 Nature What meant by the times of the Law of nature Page 24 Necessity Of Sacraments asserted Page 285 c. Argumeats evincing it Page 288 c. The kind of degree of the necessity of Sacraments enquired into Page 289 Not absolutely necessary to Salvation Page 289 Objections answered Page 290 Explicatory Rules delivered in it Page 294 c. A greater degree of necessity in the initiatory leading Sacrament then in that which follows Page 298 Arguments evincing it ibid. c. O. Obedience MAns sin disobligeth him not from obedience Page 195 196 197 Obligation Mans Obligation of himself unto God implies Gods mutuall obligation Page 130 Oblige Mans inability for duty doth not disoblige from duty Page 197 Orders Their number in the Church of Rome and their divisions Page 538 Most of this number doubted by themselves whether they be Sacraments ibid. The Matter Page 539 Form Page 539 Effect Page 539 Minister Page 539 Reasons evincing it to be no Sacrament ib. Ordinances All outward Ordinances are for the Church in fieri and not onely in facto Page 189 Sacraments must have the Honour of divine Ordinances Page 68 Originall sin Asserted Page 363 Distinguished into peccatum originans orinatum Page 365 Originall sin not a meer want of primitive integrity but attended with unversall defilement ibid. c. Oyle Anointing with Oyle Jam. 14 15. What it means Page 536 537 Queres put to those that would revive this practice Page 537 P. Parables CHrist speaking in Parables what it meaneth Page â—4 Pardon Closing with God for pardon is not to pardon a mans self Page 452 Passive Neither believing nor receiving are to be judged meerly passive Page 442 In what sense faith passive in justification Page 476 c. Pemble Not sole and singular in asserting the word to be a passive instrument Page 476 He is large in reasons of it Page 475 Penance The parts of it Contrition Page 531 532 Confession Page 531 532 Satisfaction Page 531 532 Papists agree not what that is in Penance that makes up a Sacrament Page 533 Arguments evincing it to be no Sacrament ib. People Allegations for their power examined Page 252 264 Perfection Of the subject and perfection of parts respective to the universality of the object distinguished Page 586 Pighius A learned Papist with divers others joynes with us in the doctrine of justification Page 440 Pope He hath his visible pardoner as well as others Page 464 Prayer A necessary means of faiths nourishment Page 509 Priest The several functions of Christ as Priest King Prophet are to be distinguished but not divided Page 562 Priestly Levitical types lead us unto Christ in his Priestly office Page 566 Privileges A faith short of justifying entitles to visible privileges Page 161 Profession Men of a visible profession truly and really in Covenant with God Page 128 Profession of faith engages to a lively working faith Page 172 c. Promise That which is the condition of the thing promised is not the condition of the Seal Page 173 Exceptions against it examined ibid. Gospell promises are a savour of death unto many Page 469 Protestants Vindicated from four supposed great errors Page 452 The author is confest to appear in the common cause of Protestants ibid. R. Rainbow DEfined Page 516 It had respect to a Covenant improperly so called Page 517 It was an instituted sign ibid. Correspondencies between it and the promise Page 518 How far it was Sacramentall ibid. How far it fals short ibid 519 Reall Covenants may be broke by men in Covenant Page 138 Common grace is reall Page 132 Men of a visible profession really in Covenant with God Page 128 Regenerate Duties of positive institution do not onely bind the regenerate Page 195 Repentance How prerequired in Baptisme Page 108 Repentance and Faith Are mans conditions not Gods in the proper conditionall Covenant Page 626 Right Fundamentall and actuall distinguished Page 88 The distinction cleered In civill immunities Page 88 Ecclesiasticall privileges Page 89 They must be both written Page 90 Right unto a bar to detain from Sacraments not alwayes express Page 91 Righteous Men are so denominated really and not equivocally that imperfectly obey the Law Page 614 Righteousness Non reaâ—us is not righteousness Page 588 Imperfect righteousness is no contradiction Page 589 Righteousness as well as holiness is intended and remitted ib. Righteousness and holiness in what sense commonly used Page 592 Righteousness in an imperfect conformity to the Law asserted Page 595 There is a partiall reparation of in herent righteousness in regeneration Page 611 That righteousness which the Covenant requires the Sacraments appendant to it seal Page 413 Righteousness Christ The naturall righteousness of Christ is not our justification Page 439 Whether the righteousness whereby Christs person was righteous be given to us Page 453 Queries put concerning this gift of righteousness Page 454 Faith being terminated on Christ is terminated on his righteousness Page 455 To receive his righteousness for justification no fancy or delusion Page 456 Righteousness Faith The Righteousness of Faith is the great promise of the Covenant of grace Page 414 This righteousness is sealed in the Sacraments of the Covenant of grace Page 415 Proved by Scriptures Page 417 Confirmed by reasons Page 418 Explained by rules Page 419 420 Bellarmines five objections answered Page 421 c. Propositions explaining the meaning of the righteousness of Faith Page 415 So called in opposition to the righteousness of works required in the Covenant ibid. It is the Synechdochically put for the whole of the Covenant that interests us in this righteousness ibid. c. All blessings and privileges flowing from and following upon this Covenant unto true blessedness are comprized under the righteousness of faith Page 416 Christ the Mediatour of the Covenant is the fountain from whence the blessedness of this righteousness comes ibid. Faith considered as an instrument receiving this righteousness ib. All must see that they be right principled in the doctrine of the righteousness of faith Page 429 Ignorance here was the Jews undoing ib. Papists mistake in this point Page 429 c. Faith the alone grace that interests us in this righteousness Page 432 Rock How it was said to follow Israel Page 524 The Rock it self was not intended as a sign but the water flowing out of it Page 525 Of the nature of a Sacrament ib. No standing Sacrament Page 526 Rule See Law S. Sacrament THe word vindicated Page 2 3 The reason of the word enquired after Page 4 5 The various acceptations of it Page 6 7 8 Whether man enjoyed or was capable of a Sacrament in the state of integrity Page 9 No Sacrament instituted of God during the time called the Law of nature Page 24 c. A Sacrament may be defined Page 32 c. The definition of a Sacrament in generall Page
confederate with him in Covenant and was upon that account to be circumcised which engaged to actual faith and upon actual believing it sealed this righteousness of faith to him This precedency of faith is a separable adjunct and comes not into the definition To make the definition full and clear the whole text of the Apostle is to be taken into consideration with the context and all that in the History Gen. 17. to which it relates hath relation to it all which is vertually in the words comprized where we may observe 1. The Person receiving or by right interessed 2. The thing received 3. The end or use 4. The thing signified or sealed The Person receiving or by right interessed is Abraham and giving and receiving being relatives as Pareus on the words observes if Abraham received it it is necessarily implyed that there is some one that gave it Christ sayes Joh. 7.22 Moses gave Circumcision to the Jewes because he delivered unto them a Law concerning it Levit. 12.3 but God gave it in charge to Moses as we may see there vers 1. as Gen. 17.9 10. he had before given it in charge to Abraham And therefore Christ saith that Circumcision was of the Fathers God is then the author as Abraham the receiver of Circumcision Abraham that thus received Circumcision from the hand of God may be considered 1. As a man so he stood in no other relation to God then barely as his creature and with others in the world was without God and not within the verge of his Covenant and for seventy and five years he thus continued 2. As a professor of the faith and worshipper of the true God renouncing the gods that he had worshipped in Charran and professedly serving the Lord Jehovah onely 3. As a man upright and sincere in the Covenant comming up to the termes proposed of God and walking perfect before him In all of these capacities Abraham may be considered as any other of the sons of Abraham that are sincere and faithful In the first capacity he had no right to Circumcision all that are in that condition are called by the Apostle Circumcision yet it was not of necessity to his interest in the Covenant or Circumcision the signe and seale of it to be sincere in Covenant though it be necessary to the attainment of the grace of the Covenant and mercy sealed in the Sacrament As others came into Covenant and were intitled to the initiating sign and seale so might Abraham but others came in upon a bare profession as those multitudes of Proselytes that joyned themselves to Israel One of which was Doeg an Edomite 1 Sam. 21.9 had he not been of Israel by profession he had not been detained in the Sanctuary before the Lord upon any religious account as we find he was ver 7. And had he been right in the Covenant he had not had so many things in charge against him neither had the Psalmist spoken in that language that we read of him The Eunuch as we have cause to think had an heart right with God but it was not so with Simon Magus as Peter expresly tells him Act. 8.21 Abraham then is considered as a man professedly in Covenant when he received this sign of Circumcision The thing received is here Circumcision which I shall speak to onely as of a Sacramental kind and not consider it in the individual nature of it as the initiating Sacrament of the Old Covenant held out under that external rite of cutting off the foreskin of the flesh The use of it is to be a sign and seal for signification and ratification to those that received it The thing signified and sealed is the righteousnesse of faith so it is also called Heb. 11. Elsewhere it is called the righteousnesse of God Rom. 10.3 being freely given to us of God and onely able to justifie us in his sight but chiefly because it is wrought by Christ who was not meer man nor barely a creature but the true God as St. John stiles him 1 Joh. 5.20 This righteousness of God is applyed to us and made ours by faith Phil. 3.9 and therefore as it is called the righteousnesse of God so also here and elsewhere the righteousnesse of faith This text being thus cleared a full and compleat definition of a Sacrament may be found The definition of a Sacrament A Sacrament is a sign appointed of God to be received of his Covenant-people to seal the righteousnesse of faith unto them I know there is somewhat put into the definition of a Sacrament by some that treat of this subject which is not here in words exprest and therefore upon that account this definition may be challenged as defective as 1. The Minister by whom it is to be dispensed from God to man But whether this be essential in a Sacrament or otherwise as afterwards is to be enquired into it is sufficiently implyed In case it must be received from God by his people in that way and from that hand that he himself in his Word hath appointed 2. The Sacraments contain as well a profession of our duty towards God as Gods tender and seal to man of which here is nothing said But this we shall find both in the sign and seal which are both mentioned necessarily included and as it appears that it is comprized so to make it more clear and explicite it may by the Reader be added CHAP. V. Sect. I. Of Sacramental signes I shall here purposely wave several Schoole-niceties as in what predicament a Sacrament is to be placed Taking it in the whole nature of it as consisting of a twofold matter the one outward and earthly which is the visible signe the other inward and heavenly which is the thing signified and of a twofold forme one outward which is the due participation of it according to the way prescribed of God the other inward consisting in the analogy between the signe and the thing signified it must needs be an Ens aggregatum and so not capable of any place in that series of being And signe and seale being clearly relatives I shall leave the Reader to informe himself from learned Keckerman in the third Book and eighth Chapter of his Systeme of Philosophy what is the Relatum the Correlatum the relation it self the foundation and the terminus in this Sacramental consideration and shall go on to lay open the several parts of this definition The whole of it being comprized in this text of the Apostle every part affords some doctrinal Observation In the first place I shall observe that Sacraments are signes The truth of this observation is so clear of it self that it needs no proof Taking the word Sacrament in the largest sense that we can speak of it in which it falls short of these Gospel-Ordinances known by that name it is yet Sacrae rei Signum the sign of an holy thing And might be made good by a particular induction not only in those
his reason seeing by baptisme grace is given If any one be rightly disposed to receive the effect of baptisme in the instant that he receives perfect Baptisme he shall receive grace therefore he receives the Sacrament with sufficient dignity and sanctity further adding Seeing this is a Sacrament of the dead grace is not praerequired for the receiving of it being ordained to confer grace that disposition is sufficient upon which the Sacrament confers such an effect Suarez in tertiam partem Thom. Tom. 3. Q. 68. Dis 24. art 4. Sec. 2. p. 250. Our opinion being otherwise of the work of baptisme it is otherwise concerning admission to baptisme when men are willing to be received into the number of Christians and will engage for Christian wayes which necessarily implies a profession of repentance of all unchristian practices we judge them to have right of admission Thirdly How far rules laid down by some Fathers and Councils for the way of discipline did exceed in rigour hath been the complaint of many not admitting those that had been overtaken by temptation to Church-fellowship notwithstanding any evidence of repentance till after many years space of humiliation In which time how much advantage might be given to Satan let men of experience judge Mr. F. himself dislikes their long deferring of their Catechumeni from baptisme and may not others have liberty to manifest their dislike as well as he Fourthly Let it be taken into due consideration whether such rigour in holding converts off so long a space and requiring such an height in preparatory graces were not a great remora to the progresse of the Gospel and gaining in men to Christian profession How speedy a progresse the Gospel made in the Apostles times we may see in the Acts of the Apostles and Ecclesiastical Story Dr. Andrewes in his Preface to his Work on the Commandements quotes a testimony of Egesippus That by the diligent instructing of the Church there was no known Common-Wealth of any part of the world inhabited but within 40 years after Christs Passion received a great shaking off of heathenish Religion But how slowly it proceeded after some time is over-plain May not the difference of their way that thus swerved from the Apostles and men in Apostolique times be assigned as a great reason We find them facile in admission but in the mean time exceeding plain in making known what was required of them in order to the end of their professed faith their everlasting salvation that were admitted Fifthly If it may be granted which according to Scripture rules can never be denied that men wrought off from Turcisme Paganisme Judaisme and brought to a profession of Christianity and a professed engagement to Christian wayes have their right and stand in title to baptisme If then upon observation of inconveniences arising as jealousies conceived that they may offer themselves out of design to work themselves into a fairer opportunity of persecution as was suspected in Paul the Church in Prudence for some space shall delay their admission I shall not contend Onely I assert their right and justifie their practice that proceed accordingly and unlesse some great cause appear to the Churches prejudice tendring themselves they are actually to be received A Digression for Vindication of Chap. 32. of the Treatise of the Covenant from Mr. Baxters Exceptions touching the Faith that entitles to Baptisme HEre I am put upon it to take into consideration The occasion of this Digression that which Learned Mr. Baxter in his Apology hath been pleased to oppose against me Though he be large I shall make it my businesse if it may be to be more brief I entitled the two and thirtieth Chapter of my Treatise of the Covenant in this manner A dogmatical Faith entitles to Baptisme being a Corollary naturally as I yet think inferred from the Doctrine that I had before delivered of the latitude of the Covenant explaining my self that I meant such a faith that assents to Gospel-truths though not affecting the heart to a full choyce of Christ and therefore short of that Faith which is justifying and saving ratifying it with several arguments In which I might well have thought that I should have found my ancient friend my Second rather then an Adversary considering what he had delivered pag. 224. of his Treatise of Infants Church-Membership This opinion Mr. Baxters concession that the Covenant of grace which Baptisme sealeth is onely to the Elect and is not conditional is one of the two master pillars in the Antinomian fabrick and afterwards If any shall think that this affirming that Christ hath brought the reprobate also into a Covenant of grace conditional be any part of the Arminian errors as the whole scope of Scriptures is against them so Mr. Blake hath said enough to satisfy He that will deny reprobates to be so farre within the Covenant of grace must not onely denye infant Baptisme but all Sacraments till he be able infallibly to discern a man to be Elect. I did never rise so high in words for my opinion as the Reader may here see my adversary hath done for me and I shall have more occasion to observe his concessions in this thing But how to reconcile all with that which pag 327. of the same Treatise he delivers I know not If men be taught once that it is a Faith short of justifying and saving faith which admitteth men to Baptisme as having true right in foro Dei it will make foul work in the Church This he asserts with five several arguments to which in the Chapter quoted I gave a brief answer not once naming the Author that if it might be such contests with a man that I so much honour might not have been observed and yet the truth not deserted Before he enters upon any refutation of my arguments or vindication of his own he is pleased to spend nine full pages to shew how farre he takes unregenerate men to be in Covenant and to discover as he saies my mind in this point Neere to the close of that discourse he saies that what I mean by Covenanting he despairs to know which surely will be the Readers wonder that knowes what he hath said pag. 224. before mentioned I speak impartially according to my judgement I think there is more true worth in those two or three leaves of Mr. Blakes book in opening of the Covenant then in all c. And as he despaires to know my meaning so I as much despair ever to make it known to him He quotes very many expressions of mine and knowes my meaning in none of them and some that I borrow from others as Dr. Preston and Pareus and he knowes neither my meaning nor theirs in them And in case I should make attempt if it might be to make it further clear he hath still an art to render it obscure He observes that I say that which I think all say that the accepting of the word preacht
he calls the great question between him and me is no question at all It were madnesse to affirm that which with these limits he thus denyes Yet still I say that the Covenant which Baptisme seales is made with the unregenerate as well as regenerate persons which as we have heard he makes Mr. Tombe's error to deny And because the Covenant belongs to them Baptisme in like sort belongs to them and as upon that account we must baptize them so in foro Dei according to the mind of Jesus Christ they have right to Baptisme Which in case Mr. Baxter shall deny I shall desire him to reflect upon the afore-cited passages of his own together with that which pag. 65 of this Treatise he delivers If it be the whole matter of Christianity that is professed but dissembledly then as he is equivocally or analogically a believer or Christian so I yield he is a member of the Church visible And Church-membership is one of his own mediums to prove a right to Church-entrance by Baptisme and here is a Faith not above dogmatical At least short of that which is justifying and yet such a faith as is real having reall fruits and effects and sometimes reall miracles If the argument hold when it is thus enfeebled how much more when it is put in its full strength Such an one is univocally in Covenant whose dissimulation is no other then necessarily attends an unregenerate estate in case there be any thing in Scripture above equivocation They remembred that God is their Rock the high God their Redeemer Psal 78.34 And whereas I stand charg'd in this discourse by Mr. Baxter with several uncouth if not wild opinions and assertions about the Covenant and Mr. Baxter despairs as we have heard of understanding of my meaning I shall here endeavour as to vindicate so to explain my self in like manner that the Reader if not Mr. Baxter may be brought to a right understanding avoiding as much as may be both nicety and multiplicity 1. It is said that I suppose certain Promises to go before the great Law of Grace Those that suppose such saith he are of two sorts 1. The Arminians and Jesuites 2. Such as Mr. Bl. about Church-Ordinances And having spent many lines upon the Arminians to shew his dissent and assent so that the Reader may well have forgotten both me and my charge he saith 2. The Author vindicated from a fiction imposed The second part of promises before the great Covenant of Grace is feigned by Mr. Bl. and if there be any other that go that way as some do and that with some difference amongst themselves and that is a promise of Church-priviledges upon condition of a faith not justifying nor saving One that Mr. Baxter will not deny to be eminently learned and I think as well vers'd in his Writings and mine as any man alive Far better I believe then he in mine or I in his upon observation of this passage replyed as by addresse to him You rather feign this of Mr. Bl. then find it in him And I professe I know no man whose brain ever either hatch'd or vented such a crotchet Neither do I know how this mistake was ever entertained for I believe it was a mistake unlesse it be that taking for granted that there is no Covenant of grace entred with any out of the state of grace and finding that I assert that Church-Ordinances appertain to unregenerate Christians and those that are short of faith that is justifying he here fancies a promise of these made to a faith of this kind Whereas that which I say is That every acceptation of a Gospel-tender which tenders a man a Christian outwardly actually vests him in right to these Ordinances as it did the Jew outwardly Rom. 3.1 And that these Ordinances are necessarily requisite to bring men up to the fruition of those happy priviledges of Pardon Justification Adoption Glorification So that I conceit no promise of these Ordinances made to such a faith but an actual investiture of every such believer in them Neither do I know any promises preceding the Covenant of Grace Such must be made to meer Heathens or those that are in a parallel estate aliens from the Common-wealth of Israel Unlesse perhaps some such promise to some such upon some particular account may be found Yet if he can work me to be of his mind that Election Regeneration and the Covenant of Grace are commensurate so that no non-elect man is in Covenant then shall I say that there are Promises made before the Covenant The Apostle speaking of the Jews that for the generality of them were neither elect nor regenerate saith To them appertained the Covenants I may therefore charge it upon him with better reason then he upon me Those stand vested in promises that he sayes are out of Covenant The Promise is said to belong to those Jews Rom. 9.4 on whom yet the Word took no saving effect verse 6. Hence by opposition to the Gentiles they were those that were not strangers to the Church but of it They were not strangers to the Covenant of Promise but in the same Eph. 2.11 12. Hence God saith he maketh his Covenant with them all Deut. 29.10 12 13 14 15. speaking there of that solemn renewal of the Covenant of Grace as Deut. 30.6 10 12 13 14. compared with Rom. 10.6 7 8. evinceth So Ezek. 16.8 he made a Covenant with that Church and people many whereof proved very base as that Chapter sheweth Cobbet just vindicat pag. 46. Where much more to this purpose from many Texts of Scripture may be seen The Authour further vindicated I am farther charged that my common phrase is That they namely unregenerate men are in the outward Covenant with this note upon it what that is I cannot tell Who would not now think but that here were a phrase peculiarly mine Upon which the same learned hand as before expresseth himself in these words I do not see that that phrase is common with Mr. Bl. He rather useth it as from others which any may evidently see if they consult pag. 189 190. of my Treatise of the Covenant But of this I have spoke before and therefore his guesses upon it that he believes that it is called outward by reason of outward blessings annexed to it might have been spared They that use it expresse their own meaning The Covenant they say is but one and the same but all are not in the Covenant after one and the same manner Some are onely in it by outward profession to the present participation of outward priviledges but some by cordial acceptance to the enjoyment of saving benefits by means of these priviledges He sayes in the place quoted I should have thought it but reasonable for Mr. Bl. 1. To have told us what those outward blessings are that this Covenant promiseth But what need I to tell him when pag. 61. he hath told me that it is a
promise of Church-priviledges and I now tell him that these stand actually possest of these priviledges and have all the Promises together with these priviledges that the Gospel contains And that these priviledges are appointed of God to bring them in Gods way to the possession of them 2. Saith he That he would have it proved out of Scripture that God hath such a Covenant distinct from the Covenant of grace which promiseth Justification and Salvation and having other conditions on our part To this I know not what to say but that when Mr. Baxter hath proved that there are not onely mountains of earth in his West side of England viz. Wreakin Mawbourn Clee but also mountnins of Gold I will endeavour the proof of this if I can tell how for he hath had as many thoughts of such golden Chimaera's as I have had of any such Covenant distinct from the Covenant of Grace which in my name he here imagineth Having vindicated my self from these imposed fancies that never entred into my thoughts I shall now endeavour if it may be further to clear my own meaning in these following Propositions Propositions tending to cleer the Authors meaning 1. Those that take upon themselves a Christian profession being separate for God calling him by the name of Lord that have Ordinances of God as their inheritance that acknowledge a Deity and no other but the true Deity a necessity of worship and none but the Christian worship these with me are in Covenant with God as was Propos 1 the whole state of the Church of the Jewes and the whole face of the visible Church of the Gentiles that were engraffed in their stead This to me is plain in that they are the Church or Churches of God Acts 7.8 Gal. 1.2 The called of God Mat. 22.14 The people of God Isa 1.2 Psal 90.7 They that sacrific'd to the true God Psal 50.7 Are the sons of God Gen. 6.1 Deut. 14.1 Rom. 9.4 Are a people nigh unto the Lord Deut. 4.7 Psal 148. ult God professing himself to be their God Psal 90.7 Are Children of the Covenant Acts 3.35 Saints Psal 90.5 Act. 26.10 1 Cor. 14.33 Believers Act. 8.12 13. Act. 21.20 Luke 8.13 Disciples Matth. 10.1 4. Acts 9.1 15.10 Christians Act. 11.26 That all of these imply a Covenant-state and that unregenerate men have in Scripture all this honour is clear These therefore with me are in Covenant I know that as to all of these elogies it is answered in a word that they are equivocal An answer that I can scarce take into my thoughts without horrour As though Gods oracles were all over from one end of the Bible to the other like those of Apollo and there were no reality either in their separation for God or gifts that they receive from God which as to illumination conviction faith as well ordinary as extraordinary oftentimes are many or priviledges that they enjoy But this we shall have further occasion to consider and when there can be no plain denial that all of this here mentioned argues Covenant-state a quarrel seems to be pickt rather then any direct answer given For as I say pag. 189 of my Treatise That in Old-Testament-times the Covenant was made with Israel in the uttermost latitude of it with all those that bore the name of Israel making proof at large from Deut. 29. as the Reader may see Mr. Baxter quoting the place takes notice of no more then that it was made with all Israel and infers pag. 65. So that it seems he takes all to be in Covenant that bear the name Christian And then questions What Though they know not what Christ or Christianity is Is taking a name entring into Covenant The poor Indians that by thousands are forced by the Spaniard to be baptized are said to know so little what they do that some of them forget the name of a Christian which they assumed And do's not he think that a man may take as plausible exceptions against his word where he saith The rule is That a serious professour of the faith is to be taken for a true Believer If he would travel as far as India for it as he doth here against Gods Word Do not we know that force may make these poor Indians to appear serious in their profession And it is wonder that it should be so strange with him that taking a name should be entring Covenant or at least that it should imply a Covenant-state Let him consult Isa 4.1 and those manifold Scripture-Texts which expresse the relation of Gods Covenant-people to him in these words A people called by his Name or on whom the Name of God is called And distinction should be put between children of the Covenant by descent from parents in Covenant whether Jewes or Christians who continue their Covenant relation till they professedly cast it off notwithstanding their ignorance and such that of meer aliens are to be received having no other title then their own present qualification This ought to be voluntary as well in renouncing their old false way as embracing the present as we see it was in those converts through the Acts of the Apostles And it is not to be without some competency of knowledge discerning the evill of their former course and the happinesse attainable in the present And I am easily induced to believe that more knowledg by the industry of teachers is now required then was in the primitive times seeing there is not so much of God by miracle to perswade and as it were to overrule So that it is not a naked taking of a name that is intended but that which still attends upon it As a wife is called by her husbands name and withall makes her abode in his house so it is with a Covenant-people and was with Israel They bore the name of God and they made abode in the Church of God enjoying his Ordinannances as their inheritance Mr. Baxter saies For the Word of God God oft bestowes it on infidels and in England there aremen that deride the truth of Scripture and esteem it afliction and yet for credit of men come ordinarily to the Congregation These have the Word given and so have other unregenerate men but not by Covenant that I know of That God doth bestow his Word on infidells to me is strange it is true that he often tenders it to them but in case they remain infidells they put it away from them and bestowing implies not onely a tender but an acceptance It is the great advantage of Israel above other Nations that to them was committed the oracles of God when others had not that honour And to speak of Gods giving his Word by Covenant is a most improper speech seeing it is the very Covenant droughts as though we should say he gives his Word by his Word And these sure are no open deriders that for the credit of men make such a publique profession this would work restraint on
but then it would have been as arrogant Sixthly That he make some provision for tender and scrupulous consciences that shall admit his principles 1. In taking in of members into Church-fellowship as it is called A man without grace in a visible Church according to him is as a wooden leg in the body how great a deformity this is and how great a trouble to have such instead of those that are of flesh and bone it is easy to judge and yet how many of these necessarily will and must be received 2. In baptisme of Infants To baptize an Infant is with him not onely to espouse but to solemnize a full and actual marriage with Christ Jesus and that in words not de futuro but de praesenti and what further glory then they may expect from his hand I scarce can tell An illustrious Prince will have none but of noble and Royal blood and Christ will have none to be thus in marriage relation given to him but the seed of regenerate and graciously qualified persons How shall I get intelligence that this or that infant is descended of such a race where shall I learn his or her pedigree that I may thus give to Christ Iesus And in case probabilities must lead us we have need of further help then yet we see to judge of such probability Must we find those qualifications in the man who himself is for Baptisme or his child that may move us to conclude that in all reason and possible apparance here is a child of God or an Infant of a regenerate person Or will it serve our turn and satisfie our consciences that we cannot certainly conclude the contrary If the first be required it will put all the Ministers of Christ hard to it and prove such a snare that I know not how they will extricate themselves If the latter be that which we must receive here is then a loose rule for to lead in so high proceedings For men will be so laxe in their own marriage choice as for to take any into that society if they be not able to conclude her a strumpet or desperately wicked we have hitherto believed that Jesus Christ is pleased to receive in a greater latitude into visible relation Seventhly I desire Mr. Baxter to tell us how he hath mended the matter and provided for the honour and lustre of the Christian name or made up at all that gappe of which he speaks He saies the Church is bound to baptize as largely as I say men have right to Baptisme I think here he will find little or no difference and when he refuses none that I receive and where I say they have right he saies we are bound to baptize without right how will this make Christianity to look with any better face how much will Worcestershire Congregations where this is received exceed other Congregations where unanimously it is denyed I would have him to reflect on his 18th Argument and see whether the force of it be not evidently as much against hinself as it is against me against whom it is brought It is thus framed That doctrine which makes it the regular way in Baptisme for all men to promise that which they can neither sincerely promise nor perform is unsound But such is Mr. Blakes Ergo. And after much work to explain himself it comes to this that unregenerate men cannot resolve or sincerely promise to love believe or obey and therefore upon that account are without right to baptisme Let it be taken into consideration that when I say these men that in their present state are thus unable to love believe and obey have notwithstanding right to Baptisme and he saies that this inability notwithstanding they ought to be baptized how is the matter mended If my Doctrine upon this account be unsound his doctrine and practice will be found unsound likwise Mr. Baxter saith Vocation which is effectual onely to bring men to an outward profession of faith is larger then election and makes men such whom we are bound to baptize Eighthly I shall desire some Scripture text or cogent reason to make it appear that we are bound to baptize those that in the sight of God have no right to Baptisme the command given will argue with me their right unlesse I hear an injunction from heaven that notwithstanding their want of right we are to baptize them Peter argues the right of those Acts 10.47 for their admission to Baptisme which had been more then needed in case without any such right the water in Baptisme might have been applied unto them and I marvel that Mr. Baxter should so tenaciously hold to Philips speech to the Eunuch If thou believest with all thy heart thou mayest seeing he believes as well as I that faith short of this which he saies these words necessarily imply might have admitted him and put a necessity on Philip to have baptized him though it would not have given him right to Baptisme His actual admission and not his right is there put to the question If these things be well considered Mr. Baxter may see cause to begin with a confutation of Mr. F. before he undertakes a defence and I suppose the Reader will see that he had small cause to censure my Arguments to be so dilute unlesse he himself had brought some of greater strength Lastly I would have Mr. Baxter seriously consider whether that which we have observed already out of him and might yet further be gathered may not make up a forcible Argument and conclusive of this title to Baptisme in those who yet rise not up to the Faith that is justifying when they are separate from Paganisme into fellowship with the visible Church as he asserts Saints Rest Part 4. Sect. 3. pag. 105. and with them their issue as he hath concluded from 1 Cor. 7.14 when they attain to graces real and true as we have seen from him I am sure the Apostle as hath been said Act. 10.47 argues from such qualifications to an interest in Baptisme when they have their interest in the Covenant of grace as a fruit of Christs death as he saith doubtlesse reprobates have Treatise of Infant-Baptisme pag. 224. when their Baptisme hath all that is essential to Gods sealing as he asserts it hath pag. 222. All of this laid together with more that may be taken up will in all indifferent Readers eyes conclude a title And further whether he have not spoken as much in plain words terminis terminantibus for the interest of unregenerate men or men of a meer visible profession in Baptisme let his words be considered Saints Rest Part 4. Sect. 3. pag. 104 105. Where giving holy and seasonable advice to beware the company of sensual and ungodly men he limits it with Cautions least it should be thought that he perswades as he rightly stiles it unto an ungodly separation he addes As I never found one word in Scripture where either Christ or his Apostles denyed admittance to
in whom by faith remission of sins may be obtained I know but that it is a signe either that we do believe or that we have remission of sin otherwise then upon our believing to which this engages but not presupposes I know not Simon Magus had not Baptisme to signifie that all his sins were forgiven but that by faith in the Name of Christ he might be forgiven Mr. Cobbet sayes well Vindication pag. 54. The initiatory seal which holds true of the other seal is not primarily and properly the seal of mans faith or repentance or obedience but of Gods Covenant rather the seal is to the Covenant even Abrahams Circumsion was not primarily a seal to Abrahams faith of righteousnesse but to the righteousnesse of faith exhibited and effected in the Covenant yea to the Crvenant it self or promise which had believed unto righteousnesse hence the Covenant of grace is called the righteousnesse of faith Rom. 10. I confesse it is a symbole of our profession of faith but this is not the faith spoken to neither is remission of sins annext unto it Secondly That which necessarily supposeth conversion and faith doth not work conversion and faith But the Sacrament of the Lords Supper supposeth conversion and faith The Minor is proved Mar. 16.16 Act. 2.38 Act. 8.36 37. ver 41. Act. 10.4.7 All which texts are spoken of Baptisme and not of the Lords Supper To that text Mar. 16.16 I have spoken fully Treatise of the Covenant pag. 243. To that Act. 8.36 37. I have spoken pag. 244. To that of Act. 2.38 I have spoken pag. 396. and ther is no need that I should repeat what I have said For Act. 2.41 They that gladly received his Word were baptized It speaks no more then ready acceptation of the tender of the Gospel and whether this necessarily implyes saving faith let Ezek. 33.31 Matth. 13.20 21. Gal. 4.15 be consulted For Act. 10.47 Can any man forbid water that these should not be baptized who have received the holy Ghost as well as we it proves that men of gifts from the Spirit have title such gifts gave Judas a title not onely to baptisme but Apostleship such a faith may be had and sanctification wanting Thirdly That which gives us new food supposeth that we have the new birth and Spiritul life and that we are not still dead in trespasses and sins But the Sacrament of the Lords Supper gives us new food Ergo. Ans 1. Metaphors are ill materials to make up into syllogismes 2. A difference may be put between ordinary food and living and quickening food It may be true of the former but not of the latter 3. The Word as well as the Sacrament gives us new food 1. Pet. 2.2 and yet presupposeth not new life If any reply that the Word is more then food it is seed as well as food and it gives not new life as food but as seed I answer that the Sacrament is more then food There is a Sacramental work preceding our taking and eating which some say may be done to edification and profit by those that are not admitted to be partakers where they divide I may distinguish and there Christ is set forth to the aggravation of sin to carry on the work of contrition and compunction Fourthly That Ordinance which is instituted onely for believers and justified persons is no converting but a sealing Ordinance But this Sacrament is instituted onely for believers and justified persons The Minor is proved Circumcision was a seal of the righteousnesse of faith Rom. 4.17 much more then Baptisme and if Baptisme much more the Lords Supper Ans Upon this account it must needs follow that as Abraham was a justified man so Ishmael was justified also who according to the mind of God and in obedience to his commands was circumcised Gen. 17.23 yea every Proselyte that joyned himself to Israel and every male in Israel according to this Interpretation must be justified 2. Howsoever Abraham was a justified person yet his Circumcision in that place is not made a proof of his justification but a distinct text of Scripture Gen. 15.16 quoted by the Apostle ver 3. And that Scripture setting out his justification to be by faith and not by works the Apostles words onely shew that the Sacrament of Circumcision sealed the Covenant not of works but of faith so that Mr. Cobbets words quoted in answer to the first argument are a full answer here Fifthly The Apostle argues that Abraham the Father of the faithful and whose justification is a pattern of ours was not justified by Circumcision Circumcision was not the cause but the sign of his justification Therefore no Sacrament is a cause of our justication Ans Though animadversions might be made on these words yet if any will put them into form I shall grant the conclusion when I say the Sacrament as an Appendix to the Word may have its influence with the word upon a professor offaith to work him to the truth of faith I am far from saying it is any cause of justification I look on faith no otherwise then as an instrument in the work and the Sacrament as an help and not the principal to the work of faith Sixthly There is an argument drawn from the necessity of examination which before hath received an answer Seventhly That Ordinance unto which none may come without a wedding garment is no converting Ordinance But the Supper of the Lord the marriage feast of the Kings Son is an Ordinance unto which a man may not come without a wedding argument Ans 1. Arguments drawn from parables must be used with all tendernesse But in this Argument here is much boldnesse to make this Ordinance that marriage-feast 2. We shall find if we look to the scope of it that this feast is the fruition of Christ in his Kingdom as appears by those words that give occasion to the Parable of the Supper Luk. 14.15 And when one of them that sate at meat with him heard these things he said unto him Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God Now those that pretend a forwardnesse towards it and are not prepared and fitted for it according to the scope of the Parable shall be cast out from it This therefore may fairly prove that none that appear in Ordinances and yet remaine in their sins shall come to heaven But it no more proves that a man cannot get saving good by this Ordinance then it proves that a man cannot get saving good by the Word The VVord may lay as fair a claime to this wedding feast as the Lords Supper Eighthly That Ordinance which is not appointed to work faith is no converting Ordinance But the Sacrament of the Lords Supper is not appointed to work faith Ergo. The Assumption is proved Rom. 10.14 Faith cometh by hearing hearing by the Word of God then not by seeing if by the Word then not by the Sacrament Ans If faith comes by hearing will
righteousnesse of faith as before was hinted in opposition to and to distinguish it from the righteousnesse of works required in the Covenant entered with man in his integrity and which the Jewes for a great part conceited they were bound to answer acccording to the letter of the precepts of the Law for the attainment of salvation That of works is called by the name of our righteousnesse Rom. 10.3 Phil. 3.18 being to be done by our selves in our own persons as also by the name of the righteousnesse of the Law being required at our hands by the Law so that salvation gained this way is of our selves of works Ephes 2.8 9. This other is called the righteousnesse of faith in this text as also Phil. 3.9 Heb. 11.7 Faith being the hand that receives it of Gods free gift by grace it is called also the righteousnsse of God Rom. 10.3 Phil. 3.9 Either as being the gift of God which that phrase seems to imply the righteousnesse which is of God by faith or else as being the work of Christ that is God So that salvation this way gained is of grace and the gift of God Ephes 2.8 These two are still opposed one to the other when one is followed the other is quit and left Rom. 10.3 They being ignorant of Gods righteousnesse and going about to establish their own righteousnesse have not submitted themselves unto the righteousnesse of God so also Rom. 10.5 6. Moses describeth the righteousnesse which is of the Law that the man which doth these things shall live by them but the righteousnesse which is of faith speaketh on this wise c. Phil. 3.9 Not having mine own righteousnesse which is of the Law but that which is through the faith of Christ the rigteousnesse which is of God by faith 2. This righteousnesse is synechdochically put for the whole Proposition 2 of the Covenant of grace that interests us in this righteousnesse and so it must be taken in those words of the Apostle forequoted The righteousnesse which is of faith speaketh on this wise that is the Covenant which interests us in the righteousnesse of faith speaketh this language so that Sacraments sealing this righteousnesse they seal the whole of this Covenant 3. All the blessings and priviledges following upon and following Proposition 3 from this Covenant unto true and full blessednesse are here by the like figure comprized as appears by the Apostles words v. 9. Commeth this blessednesse then upon the circumcision onely or upon the uncircumcision also For we say that faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousnesse This righteousnesse and blessednesse is made one and the same in those words of the Apostle Proposition 4 4. Christ the Mediatour of the Covenant that brings man into Covenant with God is the fountain from whence all this blessednesse comes in that by him this righteousnesse is wrought so that he is the whole of all that good that is comprized in the Covenant and sealed in the Sacraments This is plain in that of the Apostle Rom. 10.4 speaking of the error of the Jewes in going about to establish their own righteousnesse and their non-submission of themselves unto the righteousnesse of God he saith that Christ is the end of the Law for righteousnesse to every one that believeth that is finie consummans as Gomarus saith not consumens The end at which the Law aimed and not putting an end and period to it One Christ assumes to himself It becometh us to fulfil all righteousnesse Matth. 3.15 The other he disclaimes Matth. 5.17 Think not that I am come to destroy the Law or the Prophets I am not come to destroy but to fulfil The Law calls us to righteousnesse but is not able to work it in us Christ hath done it for us and in our stead He is therefore called our righteousnesse 1 Cor. 1.30 Jehovah our righteousnesse Jer. 23.6 so that wheresoever we prove that Christ is sealed to us in the Sacrament or any other benefit flowing from Christ as Mediatour there is a sufficient proof of this observation Proposition 5 5. Faith is here considered as an instrument receiving this righteousnesse and interesting us in this Covenant-promise They that will not allow that faith should be called an instrument of justification yet are not much troubled that it should be called an instrument that receives Christ that doth justifie And if either may be allowed as I do not doubt but that both will hold current this will hold that faith is considered here as an instrument and not as a work neither yet as an instrument of the soul producing any act beyond its self as the hand is the instrument to the soul in labour but as receiving and taking in a gift from God This the Phrase of the Apostle Phil. 3.9 doth clear The righteousness of God by faith otherwise it might be stiled the righteousnesse of works yea when the words are the righteousnesse of faith the meaning must still be the righteousnesse of works as a man when he receives pay for threshing or digging receives pay for working But these are made directly opposite one to the other and not confounded one with the other Rom. 10.5 6. Faith therefore is considered not as a work or habitual grace in the soul So considered it is a branch of our own righteousnesse but as an instrument applying Christ and interesting us in his righteousnesse These Positions being premised The Point proved the Observation may be easily proved that the righteousnesse of faith or the righteousnesse of God by faith is sealed in the Sacraments of the Covenant of grace and may be made good in an induction of particulars Circumcision the leading Sacrament of the old Covenant is expresly here spoken to and here we see what is the thing signified in it and sealed by it And in case we saw no more in it then the most carnal amongst the Jewes saw that it was a note of distinction between them and others that had no visible relation to God in Covenant yet we know that this distinction was grounded and founded in Christ By Scriptures The one stood in a visible relation to him and the other were strangers from him And the Apostle Col. 2.11 12. is full in the proof of it Having said that we are compleat in Christ enjoying him we want nothing it might be objected that we want the very leading Ordinance which receives a people into visible Communion with God which was Circumcision The Apostle answers that in him we are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ This Circumcision did figure Deut. 30.6 Jer. 9.26 Rom. 2.28 29. And this is the work of Christ as we see in the Apostles words and therefore circumcision led to him For the following Sacrament of the Passeover if we look to the letter of the institution together with the explication given we shall find it
die in impenitency and unbelief I do not here go about to dispute the thing but only observe that all that Amyraldus hath gone about to set up concerning universall Redemption with such high applause of yours is by this position utterly overthrown For the assertion which in the place mentioned I have laid down that impenitence and unbelief in professed Christians is a breach of Covenant I need say no more then that which I have spoke there having been nothing replyed to that which I have said My argument in the place quoted Arguments evincing that impenitence and unbelief in professed Christians are violation of Covenant in brief was this They that engage in Covenant to believe in Christ and forsake their sin break Covenant by a life in unbelief and sin But all professed Christians engaged by Covenant to believe in Christ and to forsake their sin Therefore all professed Christians by unbelief and sin break Covenant I only here add If unbelief and impenitence be not breaches or violations of Covenant properly so called then finall unbelief and impenitence is no breach or violation of Covenant properly so called This is clear Finall perseverance in unbelief and impenitence is no more then a continuance of the same posture or state of Soul God-ward in which they before stood in impenitence and unbelief As Perseverance in Faith and Repentance is the continuance of Faith and Repentance Explicatory distinctions examined If then finall unbelief and impenitence be a breach of the Covenant of grace then all unbelief and impenitence denominating a man an unbelieving and impenitent person is a breach of Covenant likewise For the clearing of your meaning which is all that you do in this question you distinguish first of the Word Covenant Secondly of the word Violation You say The word Covenant is sometimes taken for Gods Law made to his creature containing precepts promises and threatnings Sometimes for man's promise to Gâ—d Violation You say is taken either rigidly for one that in judgement is esteemed a non-performer of the condition or laxly for one that in judgement is found a true performer of the condition but did neglect or refuse the performance for a time You apply both these distinctions Taking the word Covenant in the latter sense you say that you have affirmed that man breaks many a Covenant with God yea even the Baptismal vow it self is so broken till men do truly repent and believe To which I reply That it is no other then the Baptismall vow or Covenant that we are to enquire into Baptisme is as Circumcision was a seal of the Covenant In Baptisme then we engage to the terms of the Covenant and till we repent and believe by your own confession we break this Covenant But taking the word Covenant say you in the former sense i. e. for Gods precepts promises and threatnings and Violation in the latter sense for one that in Judgment that is at the day of Judgment is esteemed a non performer of the conditions so you say None violate the Covenant but finall Vnbelievers and impenitent that is as you explaine it No other are the proper subject of its peremptory curse or threatning But Good Sir reflect upon this explanation of yours and in a more serious way yet consider of it To help your self out you refer mans violation of Covenant not to his own promise or engagement in which he stands in duty tyed but to Gods engagements containing his promises and threatnings and to violate Gods promise or threatning which you here implye to be done by Covenant-breakers scarce carries sense with it We may incur his threatning or misse of his promise but we do not violate either his promise or threatning Violation of Gods precept is disobedience of which Pharaoh a man never in Covenant was guilty but no violation or breach of Covenant where there is no voluntary engagement Our engagement is necessity to make it up into a Covenant and our violation of our engagements to make it a breach of Covenant Was ever any charged with breach of Covenant in breaking not his own but the condition of the other Conanting party Jsrael was under a Law to let their Hebrew Servants go free the seaventh year Exod. 21.2 In Zedekiah's time they serv'd themselves of them beyond that terme Here was the transgression of a Law but no breach of any particular Covenant But when they entred Covenant with God to do that which Law required and ratified it by cutting a Calfe in twaine passing through the parts of it and again served themselves of them here was a breach of Covenant So that the violation that you speak of if you may call it a violation is no Covenant-violation Every man that breaks a Covenant breaks his own and not anothers part in the Covenant And whereas you will have that to be a violation of Covenant laxly and not rigidly taken Impenitent persons in the most strict and proper sense are Covenant-breakers whâ—n one doth neglâ—ct or refuse the performance for the time but in judgment that is in the day of Judgment is found a true performer of the conditions to me it is very strange upon a severall account First I suppose you mean his own conditions to which he standes engaged which for a time he thus neglectâ— and not Gods And you so spoile all that before you spake of Covenant-violations respective to promises and threatnings Secondly Such a one in the strictest sense is a man guilty of breach of Covenant during such time of his neglect or refusall Was not that younger Son of his Father mentioned Luk. 15. properly and in the most rigid sense a prodigal when he wastâ—d his substance with ritotous living notwithstanding that he was after reclaimed to a more frugall course And was not shee also that was a sinner in the City Luk. 7. truly a sinner or only in a laxe sense because she afterwards repented Was not the penitent Thief as truly and in as rigid a sense a Thief when he stole as he that stole and repented not And so he that lives in breach of promise with God is as truly a breaker of Covenant notwithstanding following Repentance as those that live and die impenitent I know therefore no other way of explanation of your self to your Readers satisfaction but to say that the Covenant of grace is not finally violated unlesse the conditions be finally broke Who ever doubted but when a sinner repents the doom which is passed against him for sin is reverst And that Paul a persecutor not in a laxe but in rigid sense afterwards building the faith that he destroyed shall not appear in Judgment as a persecutor And so he that is as truly and in no laxe sense a Covenant-breaker being by grace brought in to keep Covenant in the day of Judgment shall be reputed and esteemed a man faithful in Covenant SECT VII Faith and Repentance are mans conditions and not Gods in the
as from God but reqâ—ired of God from us are not Gods conditions but ours in that Covenant This is cleare Being there expresly required of us and not so much as mentioned as from God they cannot be his engagement but ours to performe But Faith and Repentance are not mentioned as from God in the proper conditionall Covenant but required of God from us This proposition is your own in your answer as we have heard before pag. 45 46. Therefore Faith and Repentance are not God's conditions in the proper conditionall Covenant but ours 2. The conditions of a Covenant are his that performeth and not his that imposeth This Proposition is your own in this Section and clear in reason But we perform and God imposeth Faith and Repentance This is of two parts First that they are performed by us This you confess where you yield that they are our acts For the second that they are imposed on us none can deny See 1 John 3.23 Act. 17.30 They are therefore our conditions and not God's in this Covenant 3. Covenant-conditions are theirs that are charg'd with falshood in case of failing in them and non-performance of them This is plain in all Covenants To make conditions and to fail in them is to be false to them But in case of failing in Faith and Repentance man is charged and not God God fails not but man deals falsly Therefore they are mans conditions and not Gods 4. Covenant-conditions are theirs who upon failing in them and not performance of them suffer as Covenant-breakers This is clear Israel covenanted to dismiss their Hebrew servants and dismissed them not And Israel suffered for it Jer. 34. But upon failing in Faith and Repentance God suffers not so much as in his name He is not charged with mens unbelief and impenitence Men themselves suffer Therefore Faith and Repentance are mans conditions not God's So that though I have not refuted your answer which never was in my eye yet I have answered your Querist's demand and made it good that Faith and Repentance are mans conditions and not God's in the gospel-Gospel-covenant SECT VIII The Covenant of Grace requires and accepts sincerity I Have pass'd through those debates in which our judgements stand at difference for in the last you will differ though I had thought there had been a full accord between us Now I must come to that in which we do agree which pag. 144. Sect. 82. you entitle Whether the Covenant of Grace require perfection and accept sincerity In which I take to the negative conceiving that it requires the same that it accepts And in your Aphorismes if I understand any thing you have clearly delivered your self with me pag. 157 158. in these words As when the old Covenant said Thou shalt obey perfectly the Moral Law did partly I think you mean perfectly tell them wherein they should obey So when the new Covenant saith Thou shalt obey sincerely the Moral Law doth perfectly tell us wherein or what we must endeavour to do c. Whereupon Mr. Crandon is herein against you with as great vehemence as in any other of your doctrines Neither do I perceive by any thing that you have said that your mind is changed And I had much rather answer Mr. Crandon in defence of truth which he in you here opposeth then to spend time in my own quarrel Though my Tenent give you not distast yet it seems my arguments do not please But if truth stand it matters less though I fall You answer all my arguments in order as though you judged me to be in the fowlest error when I am yet perswaded that if not onely some but all of my arguments fail which you make your business to impugn the Position it self which with you is truth as well as with me will fall with it After a short Apology and conjecture made who that Divine may be whom with much reverence I mention supposing him the first that manifested himself in the contrary way that the Gospel requires perfection and accepts sincerity You tell me that you conceive this difference is occasioned by the ambiguity of the word Covenant of Grace and tell me that in your judgement I ought to have removed it by distinguishing before I had argued against their opinion And so you fall upon my work for me and give in abundance of acceptations of the word Covenant of Grace And if I may take the boldness to be as free with you as you with me I think you might have done well to have made it appear where and by whom this word is taken in all of these different senses and significations If your Reader knew all this before your Book fell into his hand you have nothing benefited him you have only told him what he knew before If he he knew it not he hath now alone your word for it And I know not where else any Reader may find a great part of it but from your hand I profess my self to be much more amazed then edified in Reading all that you have spoke of it When you have reckoned up very many senses of the word you say Now if the question be whether in any of these senses the Covenant doth command perfect obedience you answer An explication of the Authors meaning All the doubt is of the three latter one of which is Promises Prophecies and Types before Christ's comming And to speak mine own meaning and I had thought no man had doubted of it I take Covenant of grace in this dispute for the whole transaction that passes in a Covenant-way betwixt God and his people in order to Salvation as comprizing all that God requires promises or threats and all that to which man engages himself and which he expects But when I speak of that which the Covenant thus taken promiseth I mean that which it promiseth in the promissory part of it when I speak of what it threatneth I mean in the Minatory part of it and when I speak of what it requires I mean in the preceptive part of it Now this preceptive part must needs have some rule at which men in Covenant must look as distinguished from threats or promises and containing Agenda things to be done and not Credenda Speranda or Timenda things to be Believed Hoped or Feared The rule or Standard here in these things which man in Covenant is called to do is the Moral Law God quits not man of his Subjection He is a subject in this as he was in the former Covenant The Covenant of works called to the keeping of it in the highest fullest and most compleat perfection The Covenant of Gâ—ace cals us to eye it and with sincere endeavour to conform to it When God spake to Abraham the leading man in Covenant respective to all after-Covenanters whether Jewes or Gentiles he saith I am the Almighty God or God al-sufficient walk before me and be thou perfect Gen. 17.1 In which words we have first the
THE Covenant Sealed OR A TREATISE OF THE SACRAMENTS of both COVENANTS POLEMICALL and PRACTICALL ESPECIALLY Of the Sacraments of the Covenant of Grace IN WHICH The nature of them is laid open The adaequate subject is largely inquired into respective to right and proper interest to fitnesse for admission to actual participation Their necessity is made known Their whole Vse and Efficacy is set forth Their number in Old and New Testament-times is determined With several necessary and useful Corollaries Together with a brief Answer to Reverend Mr. Baxter's Apology in defence of the Treatise of the Covenant By Thomas Blake M. A. Pastor of Tamworth in the Counties of Stafford and Warwick Davenant de morte Christi pag. 1. Neque tam pugnam meditor aut dimicationem quam planam pacatam totius rei explicationem ad conflictum cum nullo hoste ventures nisi ita se nobis obviam dederit ut non possumus aliter quam pugnando viam ad veritatem aperire London Printed for Abel Roper at the Sun against Danstans Church in Fleet-street 1655. To the Right Worshipfull Sir FRANCIS NETHERSOLE of Nethersole in the County of Kent Knight THe great engagements in which I stand by many favours received to much Honoured friends of yours put me on to send forth a former Treatise into publick view under their names This being of so near affinity I thought it meet that it should come abroad under the Patronage of one of so near alliance I need not mention my particular engagements which you do not desire I know to hear Since the time that after your great imployments hath at home and abroad in affaires of State God hath been pleased to seat you in these parts your singular candour towards all those that labour in the Work to which through grace I am called is eminently seen You were tenderly consciencious without great caution put to adventure on the purchase of a Mannor to which an Impropriation was annext which yet for many reasons you could not without great inconvenience avoid And notwithstanding a Vicarage there endowed which others though not you would have judged a competency your great care was as soon as you were fully possessed finding an Incumbent there whom you had no reason to encourage nor power to remove to superinduce others one after other in a more happy and edifying way to carry on that work It was no sooner void but you took care to settle one of eminent gifts and graces with that liberal munificence that a free School for poor children built at your proper cost being provided for little remains yours of that part of your purchase Your sollicitous care is still no lesse whereof there are many knowing witnesses how to settle it with all possible speed upon posterity in such a way that God may be most honoured and piety advanced by it Which also as I have heard from your own mouth your much honoured and pious Lady deceased did often perswade to hasten although she well knew that out of your love to her you had by your last Will and Testament devised to her that whole Lordship of Polesworth to a fourth part whereof she was heir and all the rest of your Estate in these parts for an increase of her Joynture If the Lord Christ tells us that the cost which that Pious woman spent on him should be told for a memorial of her wheresoever in the world the Gospel should be preacht I suppose that this which you have done may be mentioned for your honour with hers that rests in the Lord wheresoever this small piece by Providence shall come to be read I may well look upon you as one of the most acute of my Readers If therefore this may gain your favour I shall have lesse cause to fear others censure Though in so great variety of things as are here toucht upon and so much controversal I cannot expect that any one should subscribe to every piece The whole may be serviceable though some part remain under dispute As it fares with me in reading the Labours of many others so I may well expect that it will be with others in reading any thing of mine Your great zeal as to the whole of the worship of God so to this part here treated of where you are known cannot be hid Your complaint hath often been of the sad neglect of the Lords Supper and it lyes as a sad burden on the spirits of many eminently Pious servants of Jesus Christ that they see not a door opened for their comfortable and orderly administration and participation of it If any thing be here said to give any further light in these sacred mysteries and to facilitate the way of administration to pious dispensers so as the honour of the Ordinance may be preserved and the edification of soules promoted I have that which I desire and have made my endeavour The Lord honour your hoare hairs with everlasting dayes and give you the comfort of all that you have done in and for his Name Sir I am From my Study in Tamworth Jun. 5. 1655. Your Servant in any Christian Office Thomas Blake Worthy Reader THe holy Scripture puts an eminent character Acts 18.24 25 c. upon Apollos then but an alphabetarian in the Gospel-doctrine That he was an eloquent man and mighty in the Scriptures of the Old Testament And if I would cut by this pattern and that either the Reverend Author whose learned Works have already spoken him to the Church Or this Judicious Treatise which now fitly followes its elder brother under the name of the Covenant sealed stood in need of an Epistle Commendatory I should not be ashamed both to testifie my honour of the man and my valuation of his Work and yet neither I nor any other man in this case ought to be interpreted as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a propugnatour of every opinion in the book by him commended to the Presse no more than the Midwife is accountable for every imperfection of the child by her brought forth to light I confesse I had the liberty and honour afforded me to peruse this Treatise before it saw the Presse but my indisposition of body prohibited me of making a full survey onely my greedy eye led me so far as that I could make observation of two things 1. The predominant scope of the Authour in this work 2. The pursuance thereof as to the main The scope is rare viz. An Essay to find a way of regular admission unto and holy administration of the Lords Supper between those extreams of promiscuous intrusion on the one hand and the total forbearance of it on the other both which do afflict the spirits of the godly that are cast into broken Congregations all the Land over without Card or Compasse to steer by to their comfort and so it is very likely to be a word spoken upon his wheeles to many Ministers who may find here a thred to direct them out
and received by a Whale and after three dayes and three nights cast safe upon the shore Satan must set up his Arion and make him famous in his Historians and Poets A skilfull Harper of Greece having by excellency in musick gained a great summe of money in Italy and Sicilia returning to his own Countrey with his treasure Mariners with whom he agreed for his Fare greedy of his money cast him into the Sea a Dolphin delighted with his musick carries him safe and landed him at Taenarus See the relation and application elegantly brought home to this purpose by Dr. Abbot Lect. 15. on Jonah making notable observations of Satans policy In case the Narrative carry any truth in it by his wonders so far as his art and power can reach Satan then makes it his business to disgrace Gods miracles and cast dishonour upon them by his imitation though he falls farre short of the Originall as he there shewes and followes him as little Ascanius his Father with very unequal steps And in case we take it for a meer fiction which is his judgement upon it his art is no lesse observable to discredit as farre as in him lyes the writings of Scriptures When this miracle of Jonahs shall be Preached and published in the world Arions fable shall be produced that like faith may be yeelded to either of both See Mr. Burges Spiritual Refining Pag. 131 132. Where this thing in many particulars is enlarged And the more high the wayes of Religion are raised of God in a Spiritual way the more easie it is for Satan who is a spirit to delude The Spirit is the great Gospel-promise to be poured out on all flesh that is on men of all sorts Joel 2.28 God will be served in types and shadowes no longer but in Spirit and truth Joh. 4.23 When the Jewes gloried of Circumcision as that which did denominate them a people of God and distinguished them from all other Nations and urged the necessity of it to salvation the Apostle tells us that they are the Circumcision that worship God in Spirit Phil. 3.3 Satan now on the other hand can take the hint and heighten his way in a destructive manner to Gospel wayes All outward Ordinances shall now be decryed as formes and beggarly rudiments and with Circumcision in the letter laid aside though they be Ordinances of the Spirit it self in which the Spirit expresses its power and efficacy 1. The written Word which was dictated by the Spirit 2 Pet. 1.19 is the sword of the Spirit by which it exercises his power on the soul must be laid aside as a dead letter and over carnal The Ministers of the Word that great gift from the Fathers right hand Ephes 4.11 set over the flocks by the holy Ghost Act. 20.28 on this pretence are to be cast off with Moses and Aaron taking too much upon them when all the Congregation is holy notwithstanding for a real confutation when this Spirit was first given in glory it came upon the heads of his Ministers in forme of tongues fiery cloven Act. 2.3 To let all know is that great appearance that was there that their tongues are sanctified of God to Preach the Word in power and life to all Nations And as the gifts of the Spirit encreased so the Ministers of the Spirit were multiplyed and that very title and name given Ministers of the Spirit 2 Cor. 3.6 And the mind of Jesus Christ made known that these in a peculiar order distinct from other men are set apart to preach the Gospel as the Priests under the Law in a peculiar order were to wait at the Altar 1 Cor. 9.13 14. Upon the same pretence Sacraments must be laid aside the Baptisme of the Spirit is pleaded for the overthrow of the Baptisme of water Though the Apostle that first spake by the Spirit after it was given in glory doth argue the clean contrary Act. 10.47 Who can forbid water that these should not be baptized which have received the holy Ghost as well as we They that have the Spirit will be raised in zeal for the honour and establishment of every Ordinance of God by the Spirit the more spiritual men are the more care they will take to advance the Word the Ministers of the Word Sabbaths Sacraments Let us then observe his imitations his falsifications He vents doctrine of his own sets up wayes of his own that carry a resemblance of Gods wayes And similitude is mater erroris we shall never heed them as long as we know they are the Devils but when he transformes himself into an Angel of light and puts the stamp of God upon his own coyn we must not be ignorant of his sleights but to have our senses exercised to discern between good and evill CHAP. III. Whether there were any Sacraments from the fall to the institution of Circumcision THe next consideration of Sacraments is in mans fallen condition under a Covenant not of works but grace not for mans preservation in life but his restitution to life A further distribution of Sacâ—aments And these are to be distinguished according to Gods way of dispensation of us Covenant to his people which is wont to be done into three periods The first is from the fall till Abraham or unto the time that God entered Covenant with him and his seed which Suarez saith according to the common account doth end at the giving of the Law by Moses when the old Law began yet Circumcision which was in use long before the Law continuing the same under the Law he determines the law of nature at that time when Circucision began The second from Abraham till Christ The third from the first comming of Christ in the flesh till the second comming of his to judgement The first juncture of time hath usually been known by the time of the Law of nature The second the time of the Old And the last the time of the New Covenant Why the first of these should bear the name of the Law of nature I can read of none that have given satisfaction The phrase should seem to imply that then men had no more light then that of nature for their guide in the wayes of God But this is evidently false God did not then begin by way of supernatural revelation to speak to men in the world Suarez in tertiam partem Thomae Tom. 3. Disput 4. Sect. 1. taking upon him to answer the question hath much to amuse the Reader nothing to satisfie him he sayes a Lex naturae intelligitur dictamen rationis non solum ex naturali sed etiam ex supernaturali lumine ortum The law of nature is the dictate of reason arising not onely out of natural but supernatural light And in ihat sense the Gospel is the Law of nature Concerning this space of time whatsoever is the period of it much enquiry is made whether there were any Sacraments at all instituted of God and enjoyed
to make use of some one according to their own will when this assertion of his is as inconsistent with his own doctrine as Austins can be that upon a manifold account as might be shewen 1. He scarce knowes how to make it out that Circumcision was any remedy at all against Original sin seeing that Sacrament did not conferre grace by the work done but by the merit or disposition of the doer which is not found in infants 2. He himself confesses that many infants dye in their mothers wombe and yet have no remedy provided either in the law of nature or the old Law or Law of grace that is neither before the Law under the Law or in Gospel-times 3. Water is not alwayes at hand as he not absurdly hints though a Minister with them is scarce wanting who set up Midwives for the work and then the infant dyes remedilesse All this he thinks to help with a distinction c Quanquam enim non de singulis in particulari provideret ut eis efficaciter applicaretur romedium generaliter omnibus provisum tamen quantum in ipso est omnibus providet Though saith he God hath not provided for each one in particular that the remedy provided in general for all should be applyed to them yet he hath provided such a remedy as far as in him lyes But foreseeing that there would be some impediment to hinder the application of this Sacramental remedy to some this he permits This is a speech beseeming a Jesuit that God provided quantum in se a remedy as though it had been above him to have avoyded these impediments If the Jesuites position must stand that God is so tyed up with these limits that he cannot take away Original sin from infants without application of somewhat that is sensible He could have made such provision as he forbade Sampsons mother whilest with child the drinking of wine or strong drink or eating any unclean thing and that respective to the infant because he should be a Nazarite to God from the wombe to the day of his death Judg. 13.7 so he could have enjoyned the mother to have taken that which might through grace annext have had that efficacy in the infant in the wombe to take away Original sin as they conceive water hath on an infant new-born yea God is so far from doing what in him lyes respective to many infants for provision of a remedy of this nature that he orders that such a supposed remedy shall not be applyed He with much ado makes Circumcision a remedy to deliver from Original sin Pag. 51. Yet God took order in his Law that it should not be administred before the eighth day and in that interim between the birth and the eighth day it must needs be that many dyed and so by the law of Heaven they were debarred of a remedy through grace provided But here he is opposed by divers of his own party who hold that the faith of the Parent is sufficient to take away Original sin from the infant for which opinion he quotes Bonaventure Dist 1. Art 2. Quest 2. Rich. art 1. 5. 9. 1. 2. And Chamier lib. 1. cap. 8. de Sacramentis in genere Sect. 6. quotes also Vasquez for the same opinion These place merit in the Parents faith to work to the justification of the infant a merit not ex condiguo but ex congruo and for merit of this nature a faith informed void of Charity is sufficient say they Here our Author takes two exceptions against his friends 1. saith he d Sed hi authores in hoc falsum supponunt quia revera ad meritum de congruo non sufficit fides informis praesertim ad merendam alteri gratiam sanctitatem praeterea non satis explicant vim radicem hujus remedii quia ut esset infallibile quod necessarium est ut esset verum remedium non satis erat meritum de congruo quia non semper infallibiliter effectum habet sed necessaria erat divina promiscio hanc oportet ostendere They argue from a false ground for faith informed will not serve for this kind of merits especially to merit grace for another And secondly they do not as he saith sufficiently set forth the force and efficacy of this remedy To make it infallible as it must be if it be a true remedy merit de congruo is not sufficient seeing it hath not alwayes infallibly its effects But a Divine promise is necessary and this promise saith he they ought to shew that maintain it So that one part gives too much to the application of a sensible sign to the infant and the other over much to the merit of the Parent Abuleusis on Matth. 25. Quest 677. comes nearer to Bonaventure Richard Vasquez then to Suarez holding that infants before Circumcision were delivered from Original sin in that they were born of believers not requiring as Rivet observes Exer. 88. in Genes any application of faith in the Parents to the infants in any Sacrament for that work who might be dead before the Sacrament was administred to them The same opinion is undertaken of late in behalf of the infants of Christians to prove the infallibility of their salvation whether dying before or after Baptisme I have enough on my hands already and am not willing to launch out into this controversie I onely say 1. I find infants of believers not onely of the faith of the Elect but of visible profession in Covenant the Scripture is cleare for a Covenant in this latitude 2. That salvation according to Scripture wayes is within the verge of the Covenant and doth not go beyond it The Scripture leaves men out of Covenant in an hopeless condition 3. As there is salvation for all sorts and degrees of persons of age in Covenant but not to be extended to all of those sorts and degrees to reach every individual person so in a parallell way we may think of infants I know no text giving us universal assurance of their happiness in case there were I suppose there were much mare cause for believers to begge of God their infants death then with David in prayer to seek their life there being full assurance of their happiness dying and so much fear of their condemnation living to see the temptations to which in their growth they are subject We find salvation entailed upon qualifications of grace but not upon any age or period of life 4. There is as much found in Scripture giving us hopes of the salvation of the infants of all in Covenant as to their infant-state as to the infants of those that are most exact in keeping of Covenant As much is said for the honour of infants of Parents of a faith barely dogmatical as of the infants of those that are actually in grace and justified by faith The infants of all such yea of the worst of such are the servants of God
into four heads 1. That as to the cutting off the foreskin and the smart suffered in it it was no injustice in Masters to compell them seeing they were their Money 2. That he best approves of their opinion That hold that the Law of circumcising of Proselytes was on that condition that they were willing to be circumcised 3. That Masters ought to make it their businesse to perswade them but not against heart to circumcise them 4. If that any think that a necessity lay upon Masters to circumcise all servants it is safest to be of Cajetans mind to deny it to be any note of profession of the Jewish Religion Secondly It is objected on the other hand that some in Covenant were denyed Circumcision as 1. Infants before the 8th day But that is unworthy of any answer A stated day for it is not any denyall of it 2. Females were not to be circumcised seeing the institution is onely for the males To which three things may be answered 1. For those that make use of this objection they have authors of their own namely Walafridus Strabo de rebus Ecclesiasticis as he is cited by à Lapide on Genes 17. affirming that they were circumcised 2. The reason of their exclusion from any actuall participation was their incapacity of it And thirdly they were circumcised virtually and so reputed of that number as appeares in that they were admitted to the Passeover when the law was expresse no uncircumcised person must eat of it Exod. 12.48 And Samson was charged that he took a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines Judg. 14.3 So that I say a Covenanting people of God and they onely are entitled to the right of Sacraments when they are given to a people out of Covenant a seal is put to a blank which must needs be an horrid prophanation of the seales of the Covenant of God And when they are denied to those in Covenant as not their right they are injured from whom they are thus detayned SECT II. FOr further explanation of this point several Propositions must be laid down Explicatory Propositions Proposition 1. First A Covenant properly so called is entred between God and his people God enters a Covenant exactly and properly so called with his people A Covenant in the true nature of it passeth between God and man I took this for granted in the introduction into the Treatise of the Covenant of God entered with mankind where in its proper place it might have been handled supposing that there had been none that had denyed it But since that time I have seen my mistake and among the many questions that have been moved and agitated about the Covenant it is questioned whether there be any such thing as a Covenant entered between God and any of the sons of men upon earth Commands and promises are confest but a Covenant is disputed The way to make it good is to prove from Scripture the name and the thing when these are proved all is clear The word Covenant proved The word we find in places above number Deut. 29.12 They stood that they might enter into Covenant with the Lord God God is often put in mind by his people of his Covenant Psal 74.20 and he promises Levit. 26.42 to remember his Covenant These are then such transactions between God and his people that are called by the name of a Covenant when this cannot be dâ—nyed the impropriety of the word is objected that the word of command given of God out of Soveraignty and the word of promise given out of mercy they are called by the name of a Covenant when strictly so called they are as is objected no Covenant at all But to avoyd this the thing it self may be as easily proved as the word The thâ—ng it self proved and when we have nomen and nominis rationem then we have a Covenant not aequivocally but truly so called And here I may deal liberally with any adversary and undertake to make proof not onely of all the essentials of a Covenant but the usual adjuncts not onely all that makes up the nature but all accessories usually added to the solemnity of Covenants For the essentials of a Covenant or real properties they are as Mr. Burges saith A mutual consent and stipulation on both sides In the essentialls of it Parties consent and mutual engagement is all that is required to the being of a Covenant when two parties agree and either of them both have their conditions to make good there is a Covenant or bargaine see it exemplified in several instances given Treatise of the Covenant Pag. 3. All of these we find in that one place Deut. 26.17 18 19. in the Covenant that God enters with his people Thou hast avouched the Lord this day to be thy God and to walk in his wayes and to keep his Statutes and his Commandements and his Judgements and to hearken to his voyce And the Lord hath avouched thee this day to be his peculiar people as he hath promised thee and that thou shouldest keep all his Commandements And to make thee high above all Nations which he hath made in praise and in name and in honour and that thou maiest be an holy people unto the Lord thy God as he hath spoken There are the Covenanters God and his people There is consent on both parties Thou hast avouched the Lord hath avouched And there is a stipulation on both sides On Gods part to make them high above all Nations which he hath made in praise and in name and in honour On the peoples part to keep all his Commandements to be an holy people There are Covenant-mercies from God to his people unto which of grace he engages himself and there are Covenant-duties unto which man stands engaged Psal 103.17 18. But the mercie of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him and his righteousness unto childrens children to such as keep his Covenant and to those that remember his Commandements Let none say that this was a legal Covenant in which man had his conditions but is freed from all in the Covenant Evangelical Not to mention what I have elsewhere said Mr. Ball Treatise of the Covenant Pag. 102 103 104. Mr. Burges Vindiciae legis Pag. 224 225. have abundantly manifested the contrary and most amply of all others that I have read Mr. Cobbet in his Vindication Pag. 60 to Pag. 70. where he delivers this conclusion that the body of the Jewish Church was under the Covenant of grace making it good with twelve arguments and answering as many objections Gods engagements in Gospel-times none deny mans restipulation is all the question And this is as clear in New Testament-times as it was in the dayes of the Law that of Christ fully holds it out Joh. 8.51 If any man keep my sayings he shall never see death Christs engagement there is to keep from death and upon these termes that man keep
speech is no Covenant The outward Covenant is most usually in Scripture called by the name of Covenant 2. The outward and not the inward Covenant is most usually in Scripture called by the name of a Covenant which is plain in that they that have no part or portion in the inward Covenant are still spoken of in Scripture as a people of Covenant God calls all Israel his people and that upon Covenant termes see the place quoted Deut. 29.10 11 12 13. All of those that there thus Covenanted with God were not in the inward Covenant This people at their worst and the worst among them are called the people of God as by those that were strangers to this Covenant These are the people of the Lord say the men of Babylon and are gonc forth out of his land Ezek. 36.20 so also by the Lord himself Jer. 2.32 Can a Bride forget her attire yet my people have forgotten me dayes without number How often doth God own Israel as his people when he yet brands them as a rebellious revolting stiff-necked treacherous and adulterous people They that forsake the Covenant of God that break Covenant that deal falsely in it upon whom God brings a sword to avenge the quarrel of his Covenant are in the outward not in the inward Covenant But such there be among Gods Covenant-people as he frequently complaines that break Covenant c. These are not then in his inward but outward Covenant The great objection is and all that carries colour against this Jer. 31.32 33. where the Lord differencing the Old and New Covenant saith This is the Covenant that I will make with the house of Israel and the house of Judah not according to the Covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt which my Covenant they brake although I was an husband to them saith â—he Lord But this shall be my Covenant that I will make with the house of Israel After those dayes saith the Lord I will put my Law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts and will be their God and they shall be my people That is alone the inward Covenant and the elect regenerate are alone within it The inward Covenant then is called in Scripture a Covenant and is in exact propriety of speech a Covenant For answer I shall refer the Reader to what I have said scil Treatise of the Covenant Pag. 64 65. 66. In this place onely putting these Queries 1. Whether those that carry this text to an unconditionate Covenant and restrain it to that which they call the inward Covenant do not make the Covenant in the time of the Law and that in Gospel-times essentially different and consequently either make two Covenants of grace distinct in kind or thrust those under the Old Covenant out of all hope of salvation contrary to all Interpreters who make these Covenants one in substance See the last larger Annotations on the words 2. Whether such an Interpretation do not utterly contradict New-Testament-light which holds out the New Covenant in like latitude with the former in which many are called but few are chosen and where conditions are as explicitely and fully required as in Old-Testament-dispensations 3. Whether when Scripture speaks of things in opposition to mens erroneous conceits and for a further explanation of them and rectifying mens judgements in them it do usually lay down a full compleat and formal definition to which nothing is to be added or whether it doth not usually supply that in which men through mistake were defective and short And whether those texts Esay 58.6 7. Is not this the fast that I have chosen to loose the bands of wickednesse to undo the heavy burdens and to let the oppressed go free and that ye break every yoak Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry and that thou bring the poor that are cast out into thy house when thou seest the naked that thou cover him and that thou hide not thy self from thy own flesh Jer. 22.15 16. Did not thy father eat and drink and do justice and judgement and then it was well with him He judged the cause of the poor and needy and then it was well with him was not this to know me saith the Lord Jam. 1.27 Pure Religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this to visit the fatherlesse and widowes in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the world are not parallell to this text in their way of delivery And in case we cannot find a full definition of a religious Fast in that of Esay nor the whole of it that makes up saving knowledge in that of Jeremy nor the whole that makes religion compleat in that of James why is it that we should earnestly contend that the full nature of a Covenant is in this text exprest being fully parallell in the way of delivery to those other texts Men enjoy priviledges of ordinances and interest in Sacraments upon account of the outward Covenant Thirdly It is upon the account of the outward Covenant and not the inward that men enjoy priviledges of Ordinances and interest in Sacraments men that are so farre honoured as to an outward Covenant have just title to these priviledges It is in behalfe of the Jew outwardly that the Apostle Rom. 3.1 puts the question having so decried his condition respective to the approbation of God he objects What advantage hath the Jew what profit is there of Circumcision The Jew and Circumcision are there one A Jew outwardly and Circumcision in the flesh go there in equal latitude He that by nature is a Jew as Paul speaks Gal. 2.15 is of the Circumcision And to these the oracles of God are committed The instruments deeds and evidencos of the Covenants say the last Annotations It was the priviledg of Israel Psal 147.19 Rom. 3. and then the priviledg of no other Nation now it is the priviledg of all engraffed in their stead This is confest even by a great part of those that understand the inward Covenant or Covenant keeping to acceptation almost whensoever they mention a Covenant in that they baptize infants upon Covenant grounds all their infants that make a Covenant profession and that upon just warranty Scripture honouring them as I have shewen with the name of children and servants of God It is further plain in reason The outward Covenant must have priviledges suitable to it otherwise there is no manner of benefit or advantage of it This priviledg of the Sacrament is suitable being outward as the Covenant is outward And it was sufficiently cleered in the proofe of the main observation where the Covenant people of God are affirmed to be the adaequate subject of the Sacraments and all the Scriptures there urged lead us to an outward Covenant or as some speak to the interest of an outward administration of it
have challenged thousands of others But they feared that he onely pretended conversion upon a design to advance his way of persecution Let Mr. Cobbet from New England in this particular be heard who laies down this conclusion That the Church in dispensing an enjoyned initiatory seal of the Covenant of grace looketh into visibility of interest in the Covenant to guide her in the application thereof nor is the saving interest of the persons her rule by which she is to proceed There we find in the affirmative what that is that must lead viz. visibility of interest in the Covenant and in the negative what must not lead and that is saving interest in the Covenant And visibility of interest is certainly theirs who professe Christ engage for Christ and avouch themselves to be for him unlesse we will utterly confound Covenant entring and Covenant keeping which Scripture so carefully distinguishes I know Mr. Firmin in his reply to Mr. Caudry speaking of Scandalous persons Mr. F. appendix as to the admission of men of years examined pag. 4. saith According to our Congregational principles that which gives a man the first right to a Sacrament viz. his interest in the Covenant of the Gospel this man hath not for he doth visibly declare to the Churches that he hath no interest in the Covenant That interest in the Covenant of the Gospell gives a man the first right to a Sacrament we willingly imbrace but that censure of scandalous persons that they visibly declare to the Churches that they have no interest in the Covenant we must reject as evidently contrary to Scripture principles Israel of whom Moses gave that testimony that the Lord had not given them an heart to perceive and eyes to see or eares to hear speaking of the generality of them had some that might have been judged scandalous yet they all of them even then entred Covenant with God Captaines of their tribes Elders Officers even all the men of Israel from the hewer of wood to the drawer of water Deut. 29.10 11. Those that God owns as his people in Covenant and calls by the name of his people I shall take to have interest in the Covenant though thousands say the contrary But God ownes these as his people respective to Covenant interest they that did steal murder commit adultery sweare falsely burne incense to other gods and walk after other gods all men would judge to be scandalous yet such come and stand before the Lord in his house and professe themselves to be his people in Covenant and whether or no God doth not so esteem them let his own mouth speak Jer. 7.12 Chap. 6.26 Chap. 8.11 The Vineyard of the Lord consists of a people in visible Covenant yet with these we find not a few scandals and scandalous ones as Isay 5. is manifest see Hos 4.6 12. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledg my people aske counsel at their stockes and their staffe declareth unto them for the spirit of whoredome hath caused them to erre and they have gone a whoring from under their God Shall we say they were not Gods people or shall we say that these were no scandals to put all out of question the Apostle tells us Rom. 9.2 3. that interest in the Covenant pertaines to all Israel after the flesh neither is it any otherwise in Gospel times 1 Cor. 5.11 If any man that is called a brother be a fornicator or Covetous or an Idolater or a rayler or a drunkard or an extortioner c. he that is called a brother is visibly in Covenant but such a one we see may be scandalous The seven Golden Candlesticks are the seven Churches amidst which Christ walkes and whether there were not scandals among these read the Epistles to them If visible interest in Covenant give a first right then these undoubtedly may claime it their first right according to the forementioned principle is undoubted and for actuall admission as well as the first right to the Sacrament of initiation let the same Mr. Cobbet speak John Baptist did and lawfully might baptize those multitudes albeit in the general he knew that many yea most of them would prove false and frothy quoting Matth. 3.5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12. and afterward Albeit we may think in the general that to be sure in all visible Churches there will be some vessels of dishonour sometimes yet Ministers which are the Churches as well as Christs servants are not therefore to refuse to dispense Church ordinances since they are in the face of the Church such utensills as the Lord may have and hath need of Hence the Apostles which are extraordinary persons knew the guile of persons secret from the Church witnesse that act against Ananias and Sapphira Acts 5.1 c. yet in administring the Church seal of Baptisme they refused not Ananias and Sapphira no nor Simon Magnus Acts 8. Nor thousands of other of the Jewes amongst whom how many proved false Acts 2.41 and 4.1 2 3 4. compared 21.20 21 22 23 24 28 30 31 36. and 22.20 22 and 23.12 13. witnesse So that we see Scripture gives precedents if we judge them safe to follow of a very facile admission of those that professe and manifest their willingnesse to engage in Christian waies Mr. Firmin saies If a bare profession of faith in Christ be sufficicient to make a member of a Church then no person can be justly excommunicated out of a Church for the vilest sinnes or heresies provided he doth but hold this profession of his faith The consequence is cleere the person is the same now which he was when you took him into the Church To this I have answered pag. 449. The consequence is cleerly erroneous for he made a profession of his faith and not of his sin To this Mr. Firmin replyes Then it seemes the man must professe his sin with his own mouth as his faith though Mr. Blake knowes he is a ranter c. The members of the Church witnesse it yet because the mans own mouth doth not professe it you admit him I desire to know where witnesses were called in for this purpose to speake what they had to say against such and such a mans admission to Baptisme as now by an instrument affixt on the door of the publique place of meeting men are called to except in case they have any thing to speak against Ministers ordination Had Paul and Silas nothing against the Jaylour at Philippi who was so serviceable to those in power that he thrust them into the inward prison and made their feet fast in the stockes Acts 16.24 And wheras our author saies elsewhere that there was a legal work on his conscience so there is many a time on mariners in a sea storm which a calme will suddenly quiet Can he imagine that the lives of all the people even the Publicanes and harlots that John baptized Matth. 21.31 Luke 7.29 compared were so inoffensive that none could say
seed The latter is an inherent quality infused by regeneration by which the man is brought into conformity with the Law of God The former according to them and him in that Treatise gives title to Baptisme even where the latter is wanting Those words therefore were more then needed If men be once taught that it is a faith short of that which is saving and justifying which admitteth to Baptisme seeing it is in reformed Churches generally and universally taught Mr. T. very well knowing as all do know that in these last ages it is a doctrine generally received and setting himself to oppose it saith that he can derive its pedigree no higher than Zwinglius but he hath heard of those that were Zwinglius his seniors to be of the same mind as the Reader may see in my answer to his letter The Jesuites generally charge it upon Calvin and Beza and those of that party and well they may as their opinion but not as their invention As to that charge they stand acquitted by their adversaries Suarez in Thom. part 3. tom 3. q. 69. art 8. dis 27. Sect. 1. speaking of this opinion saith It is ancienter then Calvin as appears by Waldens tom de Sacram. tit 3. cap. 53 54. yet Calvin saith he either encreased or revived it as appears by Ruardus Lindanus Prateolus and others This easily may be yielded and if Chamier may be heard all Protestants embraced it Mr. Baxter in the words before may see the opinion of that Divine whom he so deservedly magnifies Mr. Cobbet full against him notwithstanding he lives where the greatest strength of that party is that are his opposites Let the Reader observe his fourth conclusion pag. 52. The Church in dispensing an enjoyned initiatory seal of the Covenant of grace looketh unto visibility of interest in the Covenant to guide her in the application thereof nor is it the saving interest of the persons in view that is her rule by which she is therein to proceed And compare with it the close of his whole discourse upon it in these words And I the more wonder that any which confesse that it 's not to be denyed that God would have infants of believers in some sense to be accounted his to belong to his Church and family and not to the Devills as true in facie Ecclesiae visibilis c. yet do oppose us in this particular now in question If he please to peruse Pareus 1 Cor. 7.14 as he shall find Stapleton in objections there produced his friend so Pareus fully his adversary And I shall adde one testimony that carries many more in the belly of it in which the Reader may see that Dr. Ward in this thing now in agitation hath the generall vote of reformed Churches for him and against Mr. Baxter Apollonius speaking to the question Quaestio quarta An infantes quorum parentes proximi solenni Ecclesiastico foedere alicui particulari Ecclesiae sese non adjungunt in Ecclesia non sint baptizandi sed ut baptismi in capaces privilegiorum Ecclesiae expertes sint aestimandi Resp. Existimant Reformati quod federalis quaedam sanctitas qua jus habent illi qui hoc modo sancti sunt ad media salutis Sacramentum Baptismi qua ab Ethnicis Turcis similibusque aliis infidelibus separantur 1 Cor. 7.14 toti nationi seu populo communicetur cui Deus tabulas sui foederis ita impertit ut easdem suscipiant profiteantur quos ad statum visibilis Ecclesiae suae vocat ducit Rom. 11.16 17 18 19 20. Haec foederalis sanctitas transfertur ad posteros non per proximorum parentum sanctitatom inhaerentem qui sua fide vel infidelitate eam posteriis proximis vel tollerent vel stabilirent sed misericordi Dei voluntate qua foederis illius privilegia externa parentibus etiam remotioribus promissa extendit constanter impertit in multas generationes posteris fidem profitentibus etiam iis quorum parentes proximi impii in foedere Dei perfidi fuere Whether infants whose immediate parents do not joyn themselves by any solemn Ecclesiastical Covenant to any particular Church are not to be baptized in the Church but are to be esteemed incapable of Baptisme and void of Church priviledges answers the question in these words The reformed hold that a certain foederall holinesse whereby those that are in this manner holy have right to the means of salvation and whereby they are differenced from Heathens Turkes and other like infidels 1 Cor. 7.14 is communicated to the whole Nation or people to whom God do's so impart the tables of his Covenant that they receive and professe them whom he calls and brings to the state of his church visible Rom. 11.16 17 18 19 20. This foederall holinesse is transmitted to posterity saith he not by the inherent holinesse of immediate parents which either their faith or unbelief should take away or establish to their immediate posterity but by the good and gracious will of God whereby he extends and constantly bestowes the outward priviledges promised to more remote parents for many generations to posterity professing the faith even to those whose immediate parents have been found wicked and false in their Covenant quoting these texts Ps 106.35 36 44 45. Isa 63.10 11.51.1 2 3. Ezek. 20.8 And confirming this assertion with severall arguments the last of which is this c Quia adulti omnes in Novo Testamento à Johanne Baptista Apostolis sunt baptizati telonarii milites quicunque ex Judea circumjacentibus regionibus ad Baptismum devenerunt absque longiore examine si modo fidem profiterentur peccata confiterentur et si hypocritae genimina viperarum homines malae frugis iter eos essent proinde infantes eorum ad baptismum admittendi Causam hanc pro praxi Ecclesiarum Reformatarum multis disputat Cl. Walaeus in locis communibus operum in Folio pag 494 495. Because all of years in the New Testament were baptized by John Baptist and the Apostles as Publicanes Souldiers and whosoever out of Judea and the regions round about came to Baptisme wit hout any further tryal provided that they professed their faith and confessed their sins though there were many Hypocrites generations of vipers and men of dissolute courses amongst them and therefore saith he their infants are also to be admitted unto Baptisme adding that learned Walaeus largely defends this cause for the practice of reformed Churches in his Common places pag. 494 495. adding yet further d Rejicimus igitur Antitheses eorum qui denegant Baptismum filiis eorum qui impie vivunt vita sua improba efficatiam baptismi sui irritam erga se reddunt Hisce opponimus judicium Leydensium in Synopsi Theol. ubi sic disserunt disput 44. thes 50. We therefore reject the contrary opinion of those which deny Baptisme to the children of those who live wickedly and by
their wicked life render the efficacy of their baptisme to themselves as null and vain To those we oppose saith he the judgement of the professors of Leyden in their Synopsis of Divinity dis 44. thes 50. If the Reader please to consult this quotation from these Authors he shall see it very full to the purpose as also Walaeus in the place before mentioned So that Mr. Baxter may see that he hath not onely me to oppose together with the ashes of Dr. Ward whose memory yet is to be had in reverence but ancient Writers within these 1300. years together with the concurrent voice of Divines in the generality of them in these 150 years last past which in other Points he confesseth are his adversaries on whose side the truth is whether on his few or the Churches many is further to be enquired A Vindication of several Arguments in the Treatise of the Covenant Chap. 32. of my Treatise of the Covenant I bring severall Arguments to evince this Proposition that A Faith which is short of Justifying and saving admits to Baptisme The first of which refers to that which I had before spoken at large concerning the latitude of the Covenant expressing my self in this manner Argument vindicated 1 All that hath been said for the latitude of the Covenant may fitly be applyed for the like latitude of Baptisme To this Mr. Baxter replies Therefore did I say the more of the Covenant before Covenant and Seal commensurate to shew your confusion and mistake in that It is not every Covenant or Promise that Baptisme is the seal of I desire no more of the judicious Reader but to reflect upon that which I have spoke Chap. 27 28. of that Treatise together with that which he hath been pleased to speak so largely against me His distinctions of Covenants and Promises The severall wayes that according to him men may be in Covenant How unregenerate men may be in Covenant and how not together with his multitude of Positions most of which look not at all towards the businesse and then consider whether he or I stand more guilty of mistake or confusion and whether he hath brought any thing home after so tedious a discourse for satisfaction or to give any colour to it that unregenerate men are not so in Covenant as thereby to have interest in Baptisme which must be done if he speak any thing in opposition to me My businesse being to prove that they are so in Covenant that they have upon Covenant-right title to the seal and if the Reader can find any thing tending that way let Mr. Baxter consider whether it be not in full opposition to himself who reckoning up Mr. Tombs his errors makes this the fifth in order that he holdeth That the Covenant whereof Baptisme is the Seal Mr. Baxters Concessions of the latitude of the Covenant is the absolute Covenant of Grace made onely to the Elect. Did not Mr. Baxter then believe that those that are non-Elect were comprized in it The conclusion of his large discourse is laid down by himself pag. 63. in these words Though wicked men have many Promises from God especially the great conditional Promise of life if they will repent and believe and though they are also by their imperfect equivocal covenanting with God yet God remaineth still unoblig'd to them But how this stands with that which he hath in dispute in the place before mentioned let him also take into further consideration where he chargeth this as his adversaries fourth error That every right administration of Baptisme is not Gods sealing Actually God sealeth not but when it is administred to a Believer It may be called a right act of the administrator according to Gods appointment but not Gods sealing Against which he thus disputes pag. 222. If the Sacrament rightly administred to an hypocrite have all that is essential to Gods actual sealing then it is his actual sealing But the Sacrament rightly administred to an hypocrite hath all things essential to Gods actual sealing Ergo. The Minor he proves at large as I may have occasion hereafter to make known And whereas he so peremptorily determines that though wicked men oblige themselves yet God still remains disobliged let him consider God stands obliged to all that he doth avouch his people whether God be not some way obliged to all that he avoucheth to be his people If this be denyed there will be found no great happinesse to a people to have the Lord for their God But God avoucheth those to be his people Deut. 26.17 who are yet in an unregenerate estate And if we look into Scriptures we shall see that this is Gods ordinary language Are there many worse to be found in any visible Church-state then those with whom God holds contest Psal 50 Yet to these he sayes verse 7. Hear O my people and I will speak O Israel and I will testifie against thee I am God even thy God Together with those Isa 1. to whom he addresses himself under these titles Rulers of Sodom people of Gomorrah yet we see verse 2. what language he speaks of them Israel doth not know my people do not understand And whereas he states the Question as though the whole of the dispute turned on this hinge Whether these men be in Covenant with God as to Gods actual engagement to them so far as that Gods promise is in force for conveying actual right to them as to the promised blessings and so whether it be a mutual Covenant and both parties be actually obliged And thus I say that wicked men are not in Covenant with God that is God is not in Covenant with them Neither have they any right to the main blessings given by the Covenant viz. Christ Pardon Justification Adoption Glory I know no man that hath spoke so much as himself towards the proof of it in the affirmative So long as they break not the Covenant-engagement in which he confesseth they have oblig'd themselves God stands engaged to them for the greatest spiritual blessings But according to him they break not Covenant untill they arrive at final impenitence and unbelief He very well knowes that I hold that every wicked man in the Church lives in continuall breach of Covenant and is therefore under the curse and penalty of it and that I should think that God were actually engaged to give Christ Pardon Justification Adoption Glory to them in that state and condition were more then strange These may know by vertue of their Covenant-priviledges upon what terms they may attain the mercies mentioned and upon what terms God stands engaged to give them and they enjoy the power of Ordinances to work them up to the said terms which they do not who are without Covenant and therefore are afar off when men in Covenant are near Did ever man speak of an absolute tye in a conditional Covenant whether the conditions are kept or no That therefore before mentioned which
the one hand as it puts upon profession on the other And in case any such thing be though the Covenant is perfidiously broke yet as I conceive not totally cast off as long as any open profession is continued What shall we say of those that take their sons and daughters to give them to Moloch this can be no low crime and an high departure from the true God yet these bring forth children unto God and they are his children that they thus sacrifice Ezek. 16.20 21. So also Psal 106.35 c. Israel was mingled among the Heathen and learned their works and they served their Idols which were a snare to them yea they sacrificed their sons and daughters unto Devils and shed innocent blood even the blood of their sons and daughters Yet this as appears casts them not out of Covenant God notwithstanding remembred with them his Covenant ver 45. This was therefore doubtlesse but a partial apostasie taking in the worship of Idols they did not totally cast off the worship of God God was not totally cast off in Judah neither did cast off Judah Ahaz was of the worst of Kings and yet his posterity was reckoned among the people of the Lord. Had the Jews then been as severe disputants against a Covenant-state as are risen up now the Church of God had wanted an Hezekiah he had never lived much lesse wrought so happy a Reformation in the Church of God Propos 2 2. Those that are look'd upon by men as in Covenant with God and so ordinarily judged as the people of Israel were by the name that they bear their abode in the Church and profession that they make and so accordingly styled they are truly and really in Covenant A man may know a man to appertain to such or such a person because he sees him in his family hears him call him Master sees him sometimes at least in his work and knowes him to have the repute of his servant Though to know him to be a faithful servant requires more diligence of enquiry and a stricter scrutiny So a man may be as easily known to appertain to Jesus Christ The same Characters make him known For all that is required to being in Covenant is visible open evident but sincerity of heart in covenanting is invisible and secret And therefore the Jew outwardly Rom. 2.28 is called by the Vulgar Vatablus Tremelius Arias Montanus and Castalio Judaeus in manifesto by Calvin Judaeus in aperto by Beza Judaeus in propatulo the Jew inwardly Judaeus in abscondito or occulto Their Church or Covenant-station giving them those great advantages after mentioned was open and manifest Those that say Lord Lord as Matth. 7.21 are of those that avouch God to be their God and God avoucheth them to be his people And therefore when they come with their sacrifices though in their sins and God upon that account testifies against them yet he sayes I am God even thy God It is confess'd by Mr. Baxter that we must judge those that make profession to be in Covenant with God we must give them the name of Christians and men in Covenant with God and we must use them as Christians in works of charity and Ordinances and Church-communion and so must use their Children as Christians children And seeing reason to judge so according to Scripture-character of men in Covenant they are so Either in this we judge right or else we proceed upon mistake If we judge aright then all is well If we mistake then all in these proceedings is null Water hath been applyed to the child of such an one but no Sacrament dispens'd And according to a mans hopes thoughts or fears of his fathers regeneration are his hopes thoughts and fears of his own baptisme and consequently of his interest in Church-communion for this stands or falls according to his fathers interest or non-interest in the Covenant When Mr. Baxter is urged with this he uses to refer to his Treatise of Infant-Baptisme where he layes us down a grand Rule or Maxime and out of that extracts many others His grand Rule is That a serious Professor of the faith is to be taken for a true Believer and this being laid down he proceeds on If this Proposition were a Scripture-Maxime then it would have born a farther superstruction but being neither found there nor any proof made that it is any way deduced thence mother and daughters may all justly be called into question and seeing he cannot but know that very many as to the thing for which it is produc'd which is in order to admission to Ordinances will utterly deny it he might have done well to have made some essay to have proved it I do yield that charity is to hope the best but that we should put our charity to it or our reason either for probability or certainty when we are no where so taught and have a more sure rule for our preceeding I see no reason I can scarce meet with a Minister that sayes and I have put the question to many of the most eminent that I know that he baptizeth any Infant upon this ground of hope that the Parent is regenerate but still with earnest vehemence professes the contrary I desire the Reader to consider Mr. Cobbets third and fourth Conclusions in his just Vindication pag. 46 52. There is a bare external being in the Covenant of Grace saith he of persons who possibly never shall be saved Concl. 3d. The Church in dispensing an enjoyned initiatory seal of the Covenant of Grace looketh unto visibility of interest in the Covenant to guide her in the application thereof Concl. 4th Visibility of interest and saving interest are there oppos'd See also Mr. Hudson pag. 249. John Baptist did not in his conscience think they had all actually really and compleatly repented and reformed themselves whom he baptized but he baptized them unto Repentance Matth. 3.11 and they by receiving the same bound themselves to endeavour the practice thereof It were a sad case for Ministers if they were bound to admit none or administer the Lords Supper to none but such as were truly godly or that they judged in their conscience to be so or were bound to eject all that they judged were not so Propos 3 3. Mans obligation of himself in Covenant unto God upon the terms by him proposed necessarily implies Gods obligation to man Where God makes tenders of the Gospel by his Ministers to any one out of Covenant there he makes tender of the Covenant and where a person or people professedly accept that is engage themselves as myriads of thousands did through the Acts of the Apostles this person this people each man of them is in Covenant As Scripture calls them by the name of Saints Disciples Believers Christians so we may call them Covenanters They have all a sanctity of separation which Camero sayes is reall and Mr. Baxter disputed from thence to a right in Baptisme from that Text 1
Cor. 7.14 There is in most of them if not in all some graces that are reall either common or saving and a Covenant doth not wait till the terms be kept and the conditions made good before it hath the being of a Covenant And whether these be every way sincere or any way dissembling yet as Mr. Baxter acknowledges they really oblige themselves And God howsoever dissembles not but is bound by himself upon his own terms which they professedly accept to confer all that the Covenant holds forth So that wheresoever man is obliged there a compleat Covenant is made up For Gods tender goes before and man is the last party and compleats the Covenant Propos 4 4. Sincerity and integrity of heart or full reality in a mans intentions to stand to the whole of a Covenant is not of the essence and being of it Both parties stand engaged upon their respective terms though one part should have unsincere intentions A wife is a wife and the marriage is compleat when both parties have publiquely express'd consent though she hold a resolution to be stubborn refractory profuse c. A man consenting to serve whether in bare words or taking earnest as is most usual or by hand and seal as in the case of apprentices is a servant although he intend with Onesimus to purloyn or take his opportunity to be gone Mr. Baxter thinks it makes for his advantage to say that unregenerate men are unsincere in Covenant but that is a concession that utterly destroyes him If they be unsincere or as the Psalmist speaks not stedfast in Covenant then they are in Covenant A Propositione secundi adjacentis ad propositionem primi adjacentis valet argumentum If it be true that Catiline is a seditious man then it is true that he is a man that Peribomius is a vicious man then he is a man that Judas is treacherous and perfidious in Covenant then he is in Covenant A mans conviction that he is an unjust steward or an unfaithfull servant doth not conclude him to be no servant or no steward but the contrary And whereas pag. 66. he saith The differences Mr. Bl. must take notice of between humane Covenants and ours with God or else he will marre all Men know not one anothers hearts and therefore make not Lawes for hearts nor impose conditions on hearts and therefore if both parties do confesse consent though dissembledly they are both obliged and the Covenant is mutual But God offers to consent onely on condition that our hearts consent to his terms and therefore if we professe consent and do not consent God consenteth not nor is as it were obliged This were somewhat to purpose in case he could make it appear that Scripture denyes all being of a Covenant where the all-seeing eye of God sees not all integrity and sincerity But Scripture-language which is the safest for us to follow being as we have heard far otherwise there is nothing marr'd in non-observance of any such supposed difference For which we shall presently hear again and again Mr. Baxters own confession 5. There is a reall and serious purpose in many unregenerate persons Propos 5 to serve the Lord and to come up to as much as they think he in Covenant requires though with Austin they have a great mind to delay and often to put off the thought of their more exact and serious service and too ordinarily think that they keep Covenant when they break it Having not as yet any right knowledge either of their own hearts or Gods commands And in this posture in which they thus stand before they come up any higher yea though they never come higher they reach unto graces in themselves reall true and good and also do the works which God commands and this sometimes is Mr. Baxters own thoughts When his businesse is to inform his Hearers or Readers and not to make opposition against others then he can use the word reall and forbear the word equivocall as appears in his Saints everlasting rest Part 3. Sect. 6. There is a common grace which is not saving yet reall and so true and good and so true grace as well as special grace which is saving Which may be a fair answer to that which himself hath said pag. 68. of this Treatise Mr. Bl. in his explication of this Dogmaticall faith addeth by way of exclusion though not affecting the heart to a full choyce of Christ where he seems to imply though he expresse it not that the faith that he meaneth doth affect the heart to a choyce of Christ which is not full But if so then 1. It is much more then assent or a meer Historical Dogmatical Faith 2. But is the choyce which he intimateth real as to the act and suited to the object That is the reall choyce of such a Christ as is offered and on such terms If so it is justifying faith If not either it is counterfeit as to the act or but nominal as to the object and is indeed no choosing of Christ That which is reall and true is neither counterfeit nor merely nominall so far as they know either Christ or their own hearts they undissembledly choose and take to him as expecting to be happy in him rather then any other object though too often it is upon mis-information and when they come to a right understanding of the terms they are in danger to quit the way in which they might enjoy him He further sayes Mr. Bl. thinks that there may be an undissembled profession which yet may not be of a saving faith and addes But then I conceive it is not an entire profession of the whole essential object of Christian faith viz. of assent and consent In which it doth but cast dust in his Readers eyes in confounding the entirenesse of the object and the integrity of the subject There may be an entire profession of the whole essentiall object of faith where the will is brought in to make no more full choyce or consent then hath been said There is added It will be an hard saying to many honest Christians to say that a man not justified may believe every fundamental article and withall truly professe repentance of all his sins and to take God for his Soveraign to rule him and his chief good to be enjoyed to his happinesse and to take Christ for his Lord and onely Saviour and his Word for his Law and Rule and the Holy Ghost for his guide and sanctifier and the rest which is essentiall to Christianity I think it will be nothing hard for any honest Christian to say that a man not justified may believe every fundamentall article as to assent and that he may be convinc'd of the necessity of such repentance and accordingly to make profession of it as Johns converts were baptiz'd into it That such an one may freely yield that God hath right of Soveraignty and rule and that he is the chief good to be enjoyed for
happinesse and that he ought to take Christ for his Lord and Saviour c. and that this may be done truly not onely as to reality of assent but as to reality of purpose to make this choyce so far as the man knowes his own heart or the mind of God in this work though there be not that integrity to yield up himself wholly which yet by the power of Ordinances through the Spirit in Gods time may be done and through grace perfected Lastly God setting up a visible Church upon earth in order to that Propos 6 which is invisible will have those admitted that give assent to Scripture-doctrine and accordingly make profession And this of it self in foro Dei brings them into Covenant-right and visible Church-membership And therefore according to the mind of God and as Apollonius speaks jure Dei in this estate are to be received Though they shall hit or misse of the mercy of the Covenant accordingly as by grace they come up to or by sin fall short of the Propositions contained in it A Scholar saâ—th Mr. Hudson that is admitted into a School is not admitted because he is doctus but ut sit doctus and if he will submit to the rules of the School and apply himself to learn it is enough for his admission The like may be said of the Church visible which is Christs School Vindicat. p. 248. To which Mr. Baxter himself if I understand him hath given his assent in his Treatise of everlasting rest Part 4. Sect. 3. The door of the visible Church is incomparably wider then the door of heaven and Christ is so tender so bountiful and forward to convey his grace and the Gospel so free an offer and invitation to all that surely Christ will keep no man off if they will come quite over in spirit to Christ they shall be welcome if they will come but onely to a visible profession he will not deny them admittance This seems to speak the mind of Jesus Christ for their admittance and that in foro Dei as well as in foro Ecclesiae they stand in Covenant-relation and have title to Church-membership Thus Mr. Baxter and the Reader may see my thoughts in this thing and though I doubt not but that he will question much that I have said yet now at last I hope both he and others may know my meaning Argument 2. vindicated Argument vindicated 2 My second Argument is All the obsurdities following the restraint of the Covenant to the Elect or men of a saving Faith follow upon this restraint of interest in baptism Mr. Baxter answers What absurdities follow such restraint of it to sound believers as I have asserted I should be willing to know though with some labour I have searched for it Bear with me therefore whilest I examine what you referre me to It is pag. 109. where you charge those absurdities I wonder that all this labour for search should need when as he saies he hath a reference and the Reader I think may see enough from Mr. Baxters own hand in the places already mentioned one part of the first absurdity which I have pressed Mr. Baxter is pleased to repeat This restriction of the Covenant to shut out all the non-regenerate makes an utter confusion betwixt the Covenant it self and the conditions of it The restriction of the Covenant to the regenerate confounds the Covenant and conditions together or if the expression do not please the Covenant it self and the duties required in it between our entrance into covenant and our observation of it or walking up in faithfulnesse to it All know that a bargain for a Summe of money and the payment of that Summe the covenant with a servant for labour and the labour according to this covenant are different things Faithfull men that make a bargain keep it enter covenant and stand to it But the making and keeping the entring and observing are not the same and according to this opinion Regeneration is our entrance into Covenant and regeneration is our keeping of Covenant before regeneration we make no Covenant after regeneration we break no Covenant there is no such thing as Covenant-breaking All this makes an utter confusion in the Covenant After a charge big enough he saies I cannot give my judgement of the intolerablenesse and great danger of your mistake here manifested without unmannerlinesse I will therefore say but this It is in a very weighty point near the foundation wherein to erre cannot be safe To which I onely say I wish he had spoken fully out that the intolerablenesse and supposed great danger of my mistake might have been seen and I earnestly desire all my friends that in case I erre in this manner as I stand charged that they would afford me their help to discover my error but I trust I shall make it good that my error at the highest is but equivocal He addes In my Aphorisms pag. 265. I gave my reasons for the contrary we must therefore see first what is said there where he thus bespeakes his Reader Here let me mind you of one useful observation more The Covenanting on our parts is a principal part of the conditions of the Covenant though this may seem strange that a covenanting and performing conditions should be almost all one And indeed I think all intelligent Readers will judge it to be farre more strange than true though we are to hear of that which is more strange presently we are told of reasons in this page but I find no piece of a reason in it but onely I say instead of a reason And I know not where any thing towards a proof of this position may be found unlesse it be in the Poets Hyperbole Dimidium facti qui bene coepit habet He that hath well begun hath half done yet half is not almost all He goes on It is a truth so farre beyond all doubt that our own Covenanting is a principal part of the condition of the Covenant of grace as that it is in other terms a great part of the substance of the Gospel Here are mysterious words Is our covenanting a part of the condition or is the condition a part of the Covenant The condition is here made the integrum and our Covenanting one part of the condition This is above my reason And for the other part I say if our covenanting be a great part of the substance of the Gospel then the Jew outwardly did make a better progresse in Gospel-waies then we are yet aware of or the Apostle understood when he spake so much as we read Rom. 2. concerning him for he was in Covenant otherwise he had been no Jew at all but a Pagan or Heathen Having told us I cannot guesse to what end that the same act is called our conditions as the performers and Gods conditions as the imposer and promiser giving his blessings onely on these imposed conditions he addes Most properly they are called the
conditions of Gods Covenant or promise rather than of ours for our own promise is the first part of them and our performance of that promise but a secondary part Is not here a convincing reason Our own promise is the first part our performance the second part Ergo they are more properly the conditions of Gods Covenant then of ours I deny not the thing but wonder at the reason but speed it as it will I thence collect that promises and performances are distinct things and that is enough for me Our promising to God I am sure is our covenanting this then differs from Covenant-keeping or performance and is not to be confounded with it There followes For 2. Gods Covenant is a free gift of Christ and life to the World on condition of their acceptance This our Divines against the Papists and the doctrine of merit have fully proved That God doth freely give Christ to those that accept him I freely yield and that our Divines have fully proved it against Papists I confesse and that it must be asserted against Antinomians but what Divines have proved that Gods Covenant is his free gift of Christ and life to the world on condition that they will accept I know not It is the first time I think that ever I heard it This then is a full definition of a Covenant which I yet think comes short of it and if it be a truth it well serves my purpose many a Covenant is made and conditions never performed After his expression of himself about the modification of our acceptance of Christ by faith he addes Our acceptance or consent is our Covenanting and our Faith So that our Covenanting with Christ and our Faith is the same thing that is our accepting an offered Saviour on his terms or a consent that he be ours and we his on his termes And who knowes not that this Faith or Covenanting or consent is the condition by us to be performed that we may have right to Christ and life offered I do know the latter and therefore upon that account as upon divers others I deny the former I know that justifying faith is the condition by us to be performed and I as well know that it is not our covenanting but our making good our Covenant That Faith by which the Romans stood in Covenant with God was such a faith that the whole visible Church of the Gentiles had and the Jewes both Rom. 11. But this was not a justifying faith but short of it To make justifying faith and Covenanting Synonyma is an error I am confident of what size I leave to others to determine If they were both one Scripture would promiscuously speak of them but we find that it still distinguisheth them and gives us clearly to understand that the greatest part of Covenanters are short of Faith that is saving and justifying Ordinances in which the Covenant of grace is dispensed and which speak all those that entertain them to be in Covenant are granted of God to men short of justifying faith as their proper inheritance Rom. 3.1 Deut. 33.4 Titles implying a Covenant-state as I have abundantly shewed are given of God to them that are short of this faith viz. Christian Disciple Saint Believer Called Brethren God imposes Covenant-conditions makes promise of Covenant-blessings upon these imposed conditions to those that are short of Faith that justifieth These therefore are in Covenant Though I hear neither of Scripture nor argument nor any thing else but bare words in two or three Paradoxes for my conviction yet by a similitude I shall understand that our own Covenant-act is the primary condition of Gods Covenant In his Aphorismes he sayes It may seem strange but now a similitude shall render it familiar If a King saith he will offer his Son in marriage to a condemned woman and a beggar on condition that she will but have him that is consent and so covenant and marry him here her covenanting consenting or marrying of him is the performance of the condition on her part for obtaining her first right in him and his but for the continuance of her right is further requisite If we had had either Scripture or argument to have given us a first light then a Simile might have served for somewhat and come in as a garnish but being served in alone it may speak the Authors thoughts but never settle any in the truth And I shall leave it to the Reader to judge whether the edge of it may not easily be turned against himself and whether when it is brought home it will not prove destructive to his own opinion I must therefore tell the Reader that our relation to Christ whilest on earth is more frequently expressed in Scriptures by espousals then marriages as we may see through the book of Canticles and Hos 2.14 2 Cor. 11.2 and that there is ordinarily a relation of men to God preceding faith that justifies Now Mr. Baxter is not so ill read in the Civill Law but that he knowes that there are sponsalia de futuro and sponsalia de praesenti Those God is pleased to take for his people that are his onely in the first relation and to honour them with priviledges to bring them on to the second Whereas he sayes Our Covenant principally is to receive nor is it onely de futuro but de praesenti I may answer first If our Covenant be to receive then it doth precede this receiving and secondly if he mean that it is our duty to receive Christ in present and not to delay the least moment of time I shall readily yield but in case he say that present profession and engagement to receive gives a people no title to any Covenant-relation before Christ be actually and savingly received I may well ask what we are to say to the whole body of Old Testament-Scriptures were not all Israel in Covenant were they not all visibly the people of the Lord are they not owned of God for such when they were at the worst and lowest How many thousands of Scripture-Texts may be brought to evince it Had they called themselves so and valued themselves as such on this account to be a people nigh unto the Lord and no people so nigh it might have been said to be their own vapour but when God gives them that testimony of honour and hath never done with it sure he would have us to believe it There is a first right therefore before that right in the similitude contended for and that is no other but a right of Covenant to be without God and without hope is the case of a meer heathen uncircumcised in the flesh Eph. 2.11 The state of visible relation is one step nearer than aliens from the Common-wealth of Israel do enjoy and yet too short of a state of salvation Mr. Baxter concludes By this time I leave it to the Reader to judge who it is that introduceth confusion about the Covenant and whether it be
to baptize no Infant as being unable to know the Parents faith to justification and further with Walaes concluding that the Parents faith doth not justifie the child but as Calvin resolves lib. 4. instit cap. 16. Sect. 20. they are baptized into future faith and repentance which Walaeus also sayes is the opinion of most others Neither shall I baptize any man of years till I have as high assurance if not more of his justification than Mr. Baxter seems to think any man can have of his own If this must stand then Paedobaptists and Anabaptists must all leave their Principles and both men and women when they have learn'd to read that new name in the white stone that is have concluded their assurance must turn Sebaptists and then let us look for as many counterfeits as there were Jews in Christs time with broad Phylacteries Those that bottom Baptisme on the Covenant holinesse of Covenant distinct from that of sanctification stand ensnared in none of these difficulties or inextricable perplexities All the following Arguments to the 9th may be easily granted and that is thus formed Titles given by Apostles do not argue that in their thoughts they were alwaies answered with inherent grace If the Apostles use to communicate the proper titles of the justified to all that are baptized till they see them prove apostates or hypocrites then they did take all the baptized to be probably justified though they might know that there were hypocrites among them yet either they knew them not or might not denominate the body from a few that they did know But the antecedent is true Therefore For the truth of the antecedent here laid down That the Apostles use to communicate the proper titles of the justified to all that are baptized I expect better proof then a naked affirmation And all that is brought for proof is I need not cite Scripture to prove that the baptized ar called by the Apostles Believers Saints Disciples Christians Mr. Bl. hath done it already pag. 28. And he very well knowes that I there make it good That those titles are not proper to the justified but ordinarily given to those that are not justified nor in any saving condition But if my words in the place quoted or elsewhere may not be heard Mr. Baxters sure will take who in his Saints rest Part 4. Sect. 3. p. 105. saith There are many Saints or sanctifyed men that yet shall never come to heaven who are onely Saints by their separation from Paganisme into fellowship with the visible Church but not Saints in the strictest sense by separation from the ungodly into the fellowship of the mysticall body of Christ quoting these following Scriptures Heb. 10.29 Deut. 7.6 and 14.2 21. and 26.19 and 28.9 Exod. 19.6 1 Cor. 7.13 14. Rom. 11.16 Heb. 3.1 compared with vers 12. 1 Cor. 3.17 and 14.33 1 Cor. 1.2 compared with 11.20 21. c. Gal. 3.26 compared with Gal. 3.3 4. and 4.11 and 5.2 3 4. John 15.2 His demand therefore to me is strange Now who knows not that salvation is made the portion of Believers Saints Disciples when he himself affirms that there are Saints that never shall be saved He afterwards puts a further question Is it another sort of them or doth the Scripture use to divide Saints as a genus into two species Not that I know of It is but an aequivocum in sua aequivocata The name belongs to them but as the name of a Man to a Corps c. Then it seems that there is nothing of Reality in such Separations Camero tells us otherwise that there is a reality in this Saintship by separation In the relation of his dispute with Courcellius he affirmed that the Text of the Apostle 1 Cor. 7.14 was without doubt to be understood of reall holinesse To which Courcellius replying He that is really holy hath no need of regeneration and baptisme But Infants of Believers after they are borne have need of baptisme and regeneration Ergo. Which Camero answered as the relation sayes by distinguishing of real holinesse which is twofold One consisting in the bare relation of the person to the people of God or the Church and depends wholly upon birth within the pale of the Church and of parents embracing the Covenant The other is c. And it seems that the Scripture is still under the change of equivocal speeches all over As Camero hath somewhere observed that the word Saints in Scripture is far more frequently taken for Saints on Earth then for Saints in heaven so I doubt not but it may be maintained that it speaks far more frequently of Saints by dedication and separation and so of Believers and Disciples by profession then by inherent qualification and doth it in all these places speak equivocally had it been affirmed to be Genus Analogum in opposition to uni vocum Scripture Language real and not aequivocal as is said of Ens in respect of Substantia Accidens it had been lesse but to make nothing of this noble priviledge of which Scripture speaks so honourably is too plainly to side against the truth it self I would know for my learning what advantage or profit a dead Corps is in Capacity to enjoy I think one at all but these as the Apostle tells us have much every way even they that have no more then sanctity of this nature If such equivocation be found in the word Saint their the like is to be affirmed of the word Believer and believers having their denomination from their faith that is equivocal in like manner and so our Common division of faith into dogmatical or historical temporary miraculous and justifying is but a division of an aequivocum in sua aequivocata which I should think no man would affirm much lesse Mr. Baxter who makes common and special graces to differ onely gradually and then as cold in a remisse degree may grow to that which is intense so one aequivocatum may rise to the nature of another animal terrestre may become Sidus coeleste one of our dogs that we use on Earth may become a star in heaven then miraculous faith it self hath onely the name and nothing of the power and nature of faith in it Judas had power given him to cast out unclean spirits Maetth 10.1 4. and he never had faith that justifieth if his faith was onely aequivocal then the unclean Spirits were equivocall likewise I shall never believe that an aequivocal faith can cast out a real devil The Apostle tells us of faith to the remooval of Mountains void of charity 1 Cor. 13.2 If this were equivocall faith those must be equivocal Mountains Mr. Baxter addes To put the matter beyond doubt I wish Mr. Bl. to consider that it 's not onely these forementioned titles but even the rest which he will acknowledge proper to the regenerate which are given by the Apostles generally to the baptized Instances given in Adoption Gal. 3.26 27. union with
the inward Essence and the other according to the outward manner of Existence Yet this must be taken further into Consideration seeing from this distribution of the Church Mr. Baxter hath got up an Argument to prove visible Churches to be no Churches which is his nineteenth Argument of his 26. and is thus framed If the distribution of the Church into visible and invisible be but of the subject into divers adjuncts and not of a Genus into its Species then that part or those Members which are meerly visible are indeed no part of the Members of the Church so distributed but are onely Equivocally called a Church Church-Members c. The Antecedent must be yielded him the Consequence he saith is undeniable in that adjuncts are no part of the Essence much lesse the form or the whole Essence and therefore cannot denominate but aequivocally instead of the essence To this I answer the consequence might as fairly have been that these members which are invisible are no parts or members of the Church so distributed seeing invisibility or invisible as is confest is an adjunct as well as visibility or visible There may be a distribution of man by hundreds of adjuncts either corpulent or leane high or low black or fair old or young rich or poor learned or unlearned c. If one of these so denominated be a true man shall the other then be onely aequivocally a man If a corpulent man be a true man is a leane man no man If a tall black or old man be a true man shall then a low fair or young man be no man This must needs follow as well as the other The reason given that adjuncts are no part of the Essence is not at all to the purpose seeing the subject that is denominated by such adjuncts hath its Essence though blacknesse be not of the essence of a man yet the man that is black hath his essence and though visibility be not of the essence of the Church yet the Church which is denominated visible hath its essence And whereas we are warned to note that visibile is not the same with visum so I can give warning that invisibile is not the same with non visum though I know not to what purpose Secondly I answer the Church being an integrum and that per aggregationem and onely one in exact propriety of speech it cannot be capable of any such distribution so there must be one Church of one denomination and another of another but it is a distribution of Church-members which serve as parts to make up the whole some of which are onely visible that is all their honour to make a visible profession and to enjoy the glory of Ordinances and the Divine protection of God over his vineyard upon which account they are nigh when others are a far off The other are invisible members As they have all the visible honour before mentioned so they have an addition of a far greater glory of invisible graces The former I take to be the Church most properly though I know others are of another opinion for two reasons 1. When the Church is an integrum as Mr. Hudson hath largely proved it the visible Church containes the whole for the invisible part is also visible invisible respective to graces but visible respective to profession and outward priviledges The invisible is onely one part and so not the Church in its most proper signification 2. The Scripture almost wheresoever it speakes of a Church takes it in this acception and that which is the ordinary and common language of the holy Ghost which he uses most often almost alwayes is that which is most proper Some have said that the word Church is not more then once taken for the Church invisible which is Heb. 12.23 The Church of the first born If it should be granted that there is two or three places more which will bear that acceptation of it which is as much as can be pretended yet I dare say there is not one for twenty where the Church is taken for the Church visible And is the language of Scripture still all over aequivocal When Christ sayes The Kingdome of heaven is like to a man that sowed good seed in his field is like to a draw-net shall we say the Kingdome of heaven aequivocally taken Stephen sayes This was he that was in the Church in the wildernesse must we understand it of the Church aequivocal And when Paul gave Timothy a directory how to behave himself in the house of God which he sayes is the Church of the living God must we understand it of a Church aequivocal Such a one would be but a weak ground or pillar of the truth we may say the same of abundant other places If all these aequivocals be granted it will shortly be questioned whether there be any reality in Scripture language The Author vindicated from Arminianisme As the authority of our Divines is produced against the Papists so also their authority against the Arminians is brought forth Our Divines against the Arminians saith he do suppose the first act of believing to be the first time that God is as it were engaged to man in the Covenant of grace and that it is dangerous to make God to be in actual Covenant with men in the state of nature though the conditional Covenant may be made to them and though he hath revealed his decree for the sanctifying his elect That God is then first engaged for the graces of the Covenant I easily yeeld for then the grand condition by the help of grace is put in by the soul But let us here take up that which he is pleased to yield and compare it with that which he hath put into the Index of his Treatise of Infant-Baptisme where he notes this as Mr. T. his Error That the Covenant whereof Baptisme is the seal is onely the absolute Covenant made onely to the Elect which pag. 223. he confutes And if men in the state of nature be in that Covenant that Baptisme seales viz the conditional Covenant then men in the state of nature and short of justifying faith have right to Baptisme It follows In my opinion the transition is very easie from Mr. Blakes opinion to Arminianisme if not unavoidable save by retreat or by not seeing the connexion of the consequence to the antecedent When this was charged upon me by another hand I was acquitted by Mr. Br. and he testified for me that I had acquitted Mr. M. from any such charge I marvel therefore that now it should be fastened upon me But let us hear his reason For grant once that common faith doth coram Deo give right to Baptisme and it is very easie to prove that it gives right to the end of Baptisme God having not instituted it to be an empty sign to those that have true right to it What is it that we hear will it give immediate right to the end of Baptisme
That may be easily said but I think hardly proved It is no empty sign if in the right use of it it may prove serviceable to it I am sure the Jew outwardly had right to the Oracles of God and yet no immediate certain right to their end which is to be the power of God to salvation It will be an hard task to prove the certainty of all their salvation that in the right of God stand entitled to any Ordinance of his the reason will hold of all as well as one they are not empty and vain The Jewes had right to Circumcision in the flesh and none that was a Jew outwardly might neglect it and yet were void of Circumcision of the heart or forgiveness of sin The conclusion is That it will be no hard matter to prove that it is some special grace that is the end of Baptisme at least remission of sin And so upon the right use of common grace God should be in Covenant obliged to give them special grace which is taken for Pelagianisme It will far rather follow from that opinion that a common and special grace differ onely gradually not specifically According to that promise of our Saviour Matth. 13.12 To him that hath shall be given which our Divines have still understood of graces of the same and not of a different kind he that hath common graces and improves them shall have a larger measure of those graces and he that hath spiritual graces and improves them shall have a more large measure of spiritual gifts And if they be both of one kind then Christs promise holds from the one to the other It will be an hard matter I think to prove that all that have right in Ordinances though they make no right use shall attain to the end of them Argument 5. vindicated My fifth Argument was An enquiry into Simon Maegus his Baptisme That faith upon which Simon Magus was in the Primitive times baptized is that which admitteth to Baptisme Simon himself believed and was baptized Acts 8.13 But Simons faith fell short of saving and justifying To which a sudden answer is given Concedo totum sed desideratur Conclusic He is certainly much to seek both in Syllogismes and Common reason that could not infer and could not know that I left the Reader to infer that Ergo a faith that is short of justifying entitles to Baptisme And so I have the whole in question yielded and that which was once said would make foul work in the Church if once granted But as soon as it is yielded me a Means is unkindly used to take it away from me And it is further answered That may be said to admit to Baptisme which so qualifieth the person as that we are bound to baptize him as being one that seemeth sound in believing as Simon did If such liberty of interpretation be yielded who may not easily elude the sense of any Scripture-Text the Text saith that Simon believed and was baptized Is it now enough for us to say he seemed to believe and therefore those whom he thus deceived were bound to baptize him Let the whole Text be viewed and the former Verse taken in and then let us see whether such a Glosse be fair When they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the Kingdome of God and the Name of Jesus Christ they were baptized both men and women Then Simon himself believed also That faith upon which all the other Samaritans were admitted to Baptisme Simon was admitted upon also But it was not a seeming to believe but a believing that admitted the other Samaritans Therefore it was believing not a seeming to believe that admitted Simon When the Holy Ghost saith Simon believed as he saith other Samaritans believed and his faith satisfied Philip full of the Holy Ghost to give him admittance How may we that stand at this distance dare to call it into question If the Seal were put to a meer blank paper why is not all reversed upon discovery of a Misprision in proceeding So any man would do that had put a Seal where no name was written Why was not all ipso facto made null what reason could be given but that Peter had he been of that mind should have said Repent of this thy wickednesse that upon testimony given of thine integrity thou mayest yet be baptized But when the Text sayes he did believe and Philip upon that account thus proceeded and no retractation upon such discovery was made I believe no such Glosse is to be suffered My sixth and last Argument was In case onely justifying faith give admission to Baptisme then none is able to baptize seeing this by none is discerned To which Mr. Baxter sayes very little but onely refers to what he hath said to Mr. Tombs and I having had occasion before and may have occasion hereafter to speak of it shall here make no further defence of it Additional Arguments that a faith short of that which justifies gives title to Baptisme SEeing these Arguments have given Mr. Baxter so little satisfaction I shall endeavour to make some addition onely premising this That Baptisme is our door of Entrance or way of admission into the Church visible which I shall take for granted seeing Mr. T. pag. 54. of his Apology as Mr. Baxter observes hath yielded it and Mr. Baxter to my hand Treatise of Infant-Baptisme pag. 24. by Arguments hath proved it If then I shall prove that such are to be received into the Church I shall take the Conclusion to be the same as if they said they were to be baptized and proving their right to be taken into the Church I prove their right to be baptized 1. They that have right in the sight of God to many and Arg. 1 great Priviledges of his gift have right in his sight to the first and leading priviledge this I think cannot be denyed Having a right to those that follow they have right to those that lead If any had in the time of the Law right to the Passeover they had right to Circumcision and if any now have right to the Lords Supper they have right to Baptisme But those of a faith that is short of that which justifies have right to many and great priviledges in the sight of God This is clear from the Apostle Rom. 3.1 The Jew outwardly where Circumcision of heart was wanting had every way much profit and advantage he had therefore right to Circumcision and those with him that are short of a faith that justifies have right in the sight of God to Baptisme 2. Those that are a people by Gods gracious dispensations Arg. 2 nigh unto God comparative to others have right in the sight of God to visible admittance to this more near relation This I think is clear Men have right to be admitted to their right But those that come short of justifying faith are a people by Gods gracious dispensation nigh unto God comparative to others this is
and the bruised reed broke There have not been a few hungry sad souls that I have known that have born the terror of the Lord separate themselves for this reason But it will be replyed by those that give this warning that they mean not these they are not at all intended in their speech these they would tender and with all endeared affection of love encourage as those that have most need and are most fit to receive food for their strength But all of this helps not when this Proposition is laid down That no man in whom justifying faith and a new life by the Spirit is not wrought may dare otherwise then on the peril of his soul to draw nigh hither will not such a soul necessarily assume A new life through the Spirit is not wrought in my soul I am conscious to my self that I am carnal whatsoever endeavours I have used to believe yet how far am I from faith in strength and truth I find my self all over doubts and fears and plunged in unbelief And though I have made it my businesse to keep off from sin yet how far am I from a true change by repentance I find my heart hard obdurate even as an adamant yea the poor deserted soul will take to it self the state of Cain the condition of Judas If there be any other high in wickednesse they have matched yea they have exceeded them They are to put it to the question whether they are in grace or no whether they have a new life wrought or as yet are short of it This they must either determine in the affirmative that they are in grace at least there are those hopeful signs in present that they cannot but conclude it and then they safely may come upon sight of this they may with cheerfulnesse make their addresse or else they must carrie it in the negative all that is yet wrought is not life is not grace is not faith in its power is not repentance in truth as they can do no other that walk in darknesse and see no light that say God hath forgotten to be gracious and so they must keep off from the Ordinance and debar themselves from those cordials those apples those flagons that are there tendered and sick of love yet dare not intermeddle with the Lords tokens that are tendered to them or in the third place suspend and so sit down in doubtful fears whether they have grace or no and then that of the Apostle Rom. 14.23 He that doubteth is damned if he eat because he eateth not of faith for whatsoever is not of faith is sin will soon come into their thoughts and so all that are short of fulnesse of assurance must in dreadful horror separate themselves Secondly This Sacrament in that it is a Sacrament hath the name and nature of a seal as we see in the text and God willing shall be shewn a visible seal intrusted in the hands of man and therefore must needs be of a more different latitude and large extent then that seal which God reserves in his own keeping the seal of the Spirit The Lord knowes them that are his 2 Tim. 2.19 But man is to seek who are the Lords God knowes how to put to his seal to his own man who hath not this knowledg must needs be here allowed a greater latitude either men entrusted with it must have the knowledge of God as to this particular who they are in whom a new life is and grace wrought or else they must be allowed a greater latitude to take in men that make profession of God and as members in Church-Communion may be edified by it I know this argument is carried another way and that we conclude the contrary upon a double account 1. These seales of God outward and inward should answer each to other Those that have the outward seal they are to have the inward those that take into their hand the seal of the Sacrament should have the impresse of the Spirit on their soules To which I answer That the writing of the Word with Inke and Paper in the Bible and the writing in the heart by the Spirit should answer each the other that is every Christian should make it his businesse to hide that Word in his heart that by the Ministery sounds in his ears and yet Christians are not warned not to take a Bible into their hands till the impresse of that which is there is put on their hearts The Word is delivered in a greater latitude and so also must the Sacrament 2. Some say this Sacrament seales Gospel-promises onely they therefore that can claime the promise and have their interest in it can claime the seal otherwise the seal is put to a blank there is a seal where there is no Covenant-promise 1. I answer this argument thus carried speaks sadly to the hearts of all dispensers of the Sacraments they must see there is a Covenant-promise or else they must not dare to put to a seal To put any mans seal to a blank paper where nothing is written is a vain use of that seal It stands there as a cypher Now to put Gods seal to a blank where nothing is written doubtlesse is as vain and an high taking of Gods Name in vain according to these the Covenant is written in non-legible and invisible characters This inward work is that white stone with a new name written which no man knoweth save he that receives it Revel 2.17 and so the dispensers too often against convictions of conscience allwayes at hap-hazard must deliver them any thing written or not written whether a blank or filled up they cannot tells but are all at uncertainties 2. I answer as is the seal so is the Covenant both of them external and one must answer to the other Now these in question as hath been demonstrated at large are in Covenant An outward Covenant is by few questioned and so the seal is put to no blank but given to one interested in Covenant It seals the grace of the Covenant and mercy tendred in the promise on Gods termes and propositions So that the different latitude of the seal of the Spirit and of the seal of the Sacrament do conclude that men of no more then visible Church-interest may partake of it 3. The Church de facto hath injoyed it in this latitude not to instance in some ages following the times of the Apostles in which the Pastors called all their people to daily Sacraments and the use of it in Austins time when wicked ones in the Church were so numerous that they durst not deal with Church-censures but look into the Scripture though we are kept much in the dark concerning their practice little mention being made of the administration after the institution yet we know that this Sacrament was the priviledge of visible members then in being and it is clear enough how far many even then were short of sincerity If that of 1 Cor. 11. be
regenerate or unregenerate which is an undiscernable work and accordingly to admit or refuse SECT XIII Proposition 11. The Lords Supper with the Word as an appendant to it may be serviceable to bring a man of Covenant interest up to the terms of the Covenant THere is nothing hinders but that the Lords Supper with the Word as an appendant to it may be serviceable to bring up those of Covenant interest to the terms and propositions of the Covenant may serve to work a man of profession of faith unto faith saving and justifying a man in name the Lords to turn unfeignedly and sincerely to the Lord. This I shall endeavour by Arguments to confirm First Men of that interest that baptisme receives as the intention of the work in order to salvation these the Lords Supper serves to carry on by sanctification to salvation as the end of the work likewise But Baptisme receives men of visible profession onely and visible interest as the intention of the work into the visible Church in order to salvation Therefore the Lords Supper carries on these by sanctification as the intention of the work to salvation The Proposition cannot be denyed unlesse we will without reason bring in that vast difference between these two outward vâ—â—â—ble Ordinances both intrusted in the hands of man as that the one shall be of that latitude to receive men of visible interest and the other restrained to invisible members The one according to the mind of God shall let many into the Church for salvation the other shall be in capacity to nourish and bring on very few The Assumption cannot be denyed That Baptisme receives men of visible profession and visible interest in order to salvation and hath been abundantly proved we baptize infants upon the bare account of Covenant-holiness which is onely a visible interest men of years were baptized and by just warrant yet may in case not baptized upon a visible profession The conclusion then followes that the Lords Supper carries on those as the intention of the work that Baptisme receives to salvation Secondly If it be the mind of God in the Gospel revealed that men of visible interest having not yet attained to the grace of sanctification should have admittance to the Lords Table then it must needs follow that it serves as an instrument with the Word to raise them up by faith and sanctification to salvation But it is the mind of God in the Gospell revealed that men of visible interest having not yet reached unto sanctification should have admittance to the Lords Supper The Lords Supper then serves to raise up men of visible interest by faith and sanctification for salvation The Proposition is clear unlesse we will make mens admission most mens admission meerly vain having no power nor any capacity to advance their happinesse but being wholly in a tendency to increase their judgement Whatsoever the secret will of God to us unknown is that in the event it shall prove yet the work it self must have a tendency and power respective to those for whom it is appointed for edification not for destruction The Assumption is evident that those of visible interest having not attained sanctification according to the mind of God revealed in his Word should have admittance by the barres that are assigned for mens exclusion The alone barres that are ordinarily assigned to hold men in Covenant-interest off from the Lords Table are ignorance Error and Scandal But many that cannot be charged with ignorance error or scandall are yet short of sanctification Many short of sanctification then have no barre to their admission Either visible interest with capacity to improve it or saving interest in the Covenant must be the rule for admission But saving interest in â—he Covenant cannot then to use Mr Cobbets words Vindication pag. 54. it would either necessitate Ministers to come under guilt of sin or anomie breach of rule or for avoiding of that which they must needs do with such breach of rule never to administer any Church ordinances since they sometimes shall break that rule in administring it to hypocrites and albeit they do sometimes administer them to elect ones yet not being able to know that secret infallibly they observe not the rule in faith but doubtingly and so can have little comfort of any such of their administrations If any reply that saving interest in the Covenant is the rule but we are not tied infallibly to come up to the rule but as farre as our charity can judge men to be in grace we must admit them to this seal of grace To this I have several things to reply 1. God never puts mens charity to this work as respective to admission to ordinances to judge whether in grace or not whether regenerate or in unregeneration And indeed charity which is assigned by some to that place is most unfit to judge A Judge or Umpire in a businesse must be impartial and have nothing to byasse him on any hand But charity would be ready to cover a multitude of sins which is no blemish of the grace but a demonstration that this is none of its office If then man must judge as he is most unmeet his reason and not his love must take the chair for it and go as high as conjecture can reach 2. If charity or reason thus set up mistake then the rule is broke which though these will say is not the admitters sin seeing the thing is not so scibile or of possibility to be known and by the way we observe that he is therefore no competent Judge yet a seal is by this meanes put to a blank which is no small prophanation and the ordinance administred solely and necessarily for the receivers judgement 3. Though we infallibly know a mans unsanctified condition and were able to charge it yet whilest it is not open and breakes not into scandal we cannot upon this account as is confest exclude him from the Sacrament That Judas received the Sacrament of the Lords Supper most of the Ancient held as Maldonate on Matth. 7.6 observes we have large lists brought to our hands of names that go that way The greater part of late Writers are of the same mind Ravanellus as the last man in verb. Sacrament is peremptory in it and there concludes also the interest of all in Covenant yet Judas was known to Christ to be a thief a Devil and yet he receives him Christ had doubtlesse power vested in him for his exclusion The non-suspition of the Apostles nor the close carriage of his treachery could not then have excusâ—d his receiving in case it had not been the mind of God that a man of visible interest though unsanctified might be admitted And to say that Christ acted here as a Minister and it was not fit that he should be both Judge and witnesse though it be a truth yet it serves not to take off the Argument Had it not been the mind of God that
whatsoever is charged but enquire further what they deliver of the efficacy of it Thomas Aquinas Part 3. quaest 73. art 3. putting differences between Baptisme and the Lords Supper assignes this for one Baptisme is the beginning of spiritual life and the entrance of the Sacraments The Eucharist is the consummation of spiritual life and the end of all Sacraments And further The receiving of Baptisme is necessary to begin spiritual life The receiving of the Eucharist is necessary for the consummation of it The Councell of Florence quoted by Suarez disput 7. Quaest 62. saith By Baptisme we are spiritually born again and are nourished by the Divine Alimony of the Eucharist Suarez disput 63. Quaest 79. laies down this conclusion This Sacrament is not instituted per se to conferre the first grace and confirmes it by multiplicity of Authors and the Churches custome who never used to give the Sacrament unlesse it be to those whom she believes to be cleansed from sin by Baptisme or penance And thus argues it by reason The Sacrament saith he doth not suppose the effect that it serves to work but this Sacrament doth suppose the man to be just that receives it 2. Meat saith he is not ordayned of it self to quicken or raise the dead but to nourish or strengthen a man already alive But this Sacrament is instituted as meat and drink And though he after affirmes that this Sacrament sometimes and as by accident conferres the first grace which according to his principles he hath much a do to make out yet he acknowledges that many and grave Divines held the contrary quoting Gabriel Alensis Bonaventure and Major And their distinction is well enough known That as a Sacrifice offered it takes away sin but as a Sacrament received it onely nourishes and increases spiritual life By all which it appeares how farre those of that part are from assent to this position and no marvell when they will hold their communicants in that ignorance as to look after no more then consecration to inquire nothing into the institution The way of the Sacraments work as a visible Word as a demonstrative sign in the aggravation of sin and tender of pardon is to them a mystery As for the other part of the charge Nor oppose the unanimous judgement of Protestant Writers which is the opposition of the unanimous judgement of Protestant Authors I know many are produced speaking of the Sacraments as no causes of spiritual life or vessels to convey it but as seales and testimonies of Gods good will towards us To which I fully subscribe as after shall God willing appear But how farre most of them come short when they are throughly examined of that position which is laid down as their opinion That they are appointed to seal unto a man that saving interest in Christ and the Covenant of grace that he hath already may easily be demonstrated First That position hath that confusion in it that many of them will not own and is inconsistent almost with all their principles This makes interest in the Covenant of grace and interest in Christ which is understood of interest as a lively member the same when it is well known that they make Covenant-interest farre more large then interest in Christ see Mr. Cobbet in his Vindication pag. 48. quoting not alone Tertullian Cyprian Gregory Nazianzen Jerome Austin among the Ancient but also Amesius Chamier Luther Calvin Beza Pareus Peter Martyr Bucer Melanchton Mr. Philpot for this latitude of the Covenant Pareus who is not looked upon as any dissenting man from the rest of his brethren speaks fully When it was objected that all Israel was not in Covenant with God nor all the infants of Christians because some among them were and are reprobates he answeres To be in Covenant or to have interest in it is taken two waies either according to the right of Covenant or the benefit of it He is in Covenant that either obtaines the benefits of the Covenant which are pardon of sin Adoption regeneration salvation or which hath onely the right or outward symbole of the Covenant He applies his distinction that that proposition That no reprobate is in Covenant with God is onely true of the benefits of the Covenant which heretofore were and still are peculiar to the Elect but being understood of the right and outward symbole of the Covenant it is to be denyed for that indifferently belongs to all that are born in the Church among which many are reprobates as the event doth demonstrate neither is it lawful for the Church to exclude any that by their own impiety do not exclude themselves which Israelites in times past did and Apostatizing Christians now do to their greater damnation whether they be of those that by a true faith receive the benefits of the Covenant or whether they be those that remain hypocrites All of his practice must necessarily be of his judgement unless we believe that their practice militates against their principles And that this is the practise of the reformed Churches in general needs not to be shewn Secondly They cannot then baptize any upon the account of Covenant-holinesse but onely holinesse of regeneration This is plain If the right be theirs alone that have their interest as in Covenant so also in Christ onely these must be baptized or else we must baptize without right And that they do not onely baptize but dispute for Baptisme upon a bare Covenant-interest without any further title is manifest Thirdly This stands not with that which they hold concerning the way of the Sacraments sealing which according to them can be no evidence that he does believe as some assert evidences of faith must be in the soul and not in the Sacrament neither doth it absolutely make up to the soul the benefit of the Covenant then no man without infallible revelation such as it seems Ananias had concerning Paul could administer it It seals the benefits of the Covenant upon Gods terms and propositions which when the soul makes good there is Gods seal for performance That this is the judgement of Protestant Divines I have elsewhere declared Treatise of the Covenant pag. 35 36. so that their Doctrine of the Sacraments doth not oppose the position delivered Hitherto I have considered some generall charges against this position now I must look into some Arguments in form produced against it Several particular arguments answered First Sacraments say some are signes as appears in their definition and not causes of what they signifie signes declaring and shewing that we have Faith in Christ remission of sin by him and union with him To let that slip passe making them no causes because they are signes as though no signe were a cause of the thing signified This to me is as strange as new that Sacramental signes declare and shew that we have faith and remission of sins The Sacrament now in question is a signe of the body and blood of Christ
are not so inviolably joyned but that the work is done though unduly by him that is not called to it yet though the validity of the work be asserted the disorder must be opposed Entring upon Aarons work and never called of God as Aaron was with Vzziah officiating in that work that appertains not to him leaving scruples in the thoughts of those to whom in this disorder they have administred these ordinances This the Church hath never suffered save onely tha Papists and Lutherans dispense with Baptisme in case of necessity putting so much weight upon it and placing such efficacy in it which the Church of England also suffered after the reformation till King James his dayes and then as appears in the conference at Hampton-Court it was reformed Dr. Abbot in his Lectures read while it stood in power appeared publickly against it and as I remember for the book is not in my hands affirmed that zealous Ministers then generally did distaste and decry it The Midwife was usually employed in the work as nearest at hand to cast water upon the infant ready to dye in her armes though in no capacity of that function by reason of her sex and though the sex might have born it she was never called to it But they must first make that good that all perish without Baptisme or that the act of Baptisme assures us of salvation before they can justifie this practice Protestant Writers with irrefragable arguments opposing it produce as a dispensation from God for the breach of an order by him set up otherwise we shall conclude that from the time of the said conference it hath justly been put into the hands of the lawful Minister and notwithstanding Mr. Tombes his quibble it was upon just grounds concluded by the late Assembly in their confession of faith Chapter 27. Sect. 4. SECT XVIII A further Corollary from the former doctrine All that are interested in Sacraments must come up to the termes of the Covenant IT further followes that all those that interest themselves in Sacraments expecting benefit by Baptisme and comfort at the Lords Table must come up to the tearms of the Covenant They receive them as signes and badges of a people in Covenant with God They receive them as seals of the Covenant God puts to his seal to be a God in Covenant In their acception they engage as by seal to be his people in Covenant The obligation now is mutual in case man fail on his part God is disobliged If any tye be upon him it is to inflict the just merit of breach of Govenant upon them I have spoken to the necessity that lyes upon the Ministers of Christ to bring their people up to the termes and Propositions of it Treatise of the Covenant chap. 20 21. Here I speak to it onely as the interest in the Sacraments tyes to it And this obligation hath all force and strength in it When God entred Covenant with man in his integrity upon condition of perfect and compleat obedience and gave him as we have heard Sacraments for the ratification and confirmation of it when man failing in obedience and falling short of the duty of the Covenant those Sacraments were of no avail notwithstanding the tree of life man dyed and notwithstanding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil man became brutish in his own knowledge It fares no better with those that are under a Covenant of grace and live and persist in breach of Covenant we see the heavy curse that God pronounceth against them Jer. 11.3 4. Thus saith the Lord God of Israel Cursed be the man that obeyeth not the words of this Covenant which I commanded your Fathers in the day that I brought them forth out of the Land of Egypt from the iron Furnace saying Obey my voyce and do them according to all which I Command so shall ye be my people and I will be your God And to this Jeremy adds his Amen or So be it O Lord which assent of his though it may be referred to the Prophets duty in obedience of Gods Command when he had said to him ver 2 3. Speak to the men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem and say unto them Thus saith the Lord Cursed be every man that obeyeth not c. The Prophet in these words says What thou hast enjoyn'd me I will do it and so Junius and Tremelius understand it or to the Prpphets earnest desire to have the promise fulfilled which the Lord utters in the close of his speech ver 5. That I may perform the oath which I have sworn unto your fathers to give them a Land flowing with milk and honey as it is this day To which the Prophet answers So Lord let it be that this people being careful to keep Covenant with thee may still enjoy that land which thou didst by oath bind thy self to settle them in as the last larger Annotations understand it or to Jeremies answer in the name of the people binding themselves to obedience as Diodati understands it yet doubtlesse it also comprizeth the Prophets acknowledgement of the equity that the curse should fall on those that obey not the words of the Covenant The Amen is of that latitude that it comprizeth the whole that goes before of the Prophets duty his desire the peoples obligation and the equity of the curse that lyes upon disobedience As the Sacraments in Paradise could be no protection to man in sin so the Sacraments under the present Covenant whether in the old dispensation of it in the dayes of the Fathers or new dispensation of it in Gospel-times can be no protection of those that lye in unbelief and impenitence Let not an unbeliever let not an impenitent person think to find shelter here as the Jewes did think to find in the Temple and say They are delivered to do these abominations Priviledge of Sacraments can help Christians no more then birth-priviledge could the Jewes who are checkt by John Baptist for making it a plea to this purpose and called to bring forth fruits worthy of repentance and amendment of life Matth. 3. I do not say that unlesse you are assured that you do believe to justification and repent in sincerity and unfeignednesse that you must not come to the Lords Table I have declared my self to the contrary but I say you must make it your businesse to believe your work to repent in truth and sincerity or else you shall never find here acceptation The Covenant of works was for mans preservation in life and Adam could have help towards immortality in the tree of life no longer then he made it his businesse to keep up to that which the Covenant required The Covenant of grace is for mans restitution to life none under this Covenant can find any help towards life in any Sacraments annext to it otherwise then in keeping up faith and repentance which are the termes and conditions of it Which way doest thou expect
their ruine Then he parallells Baptisme with it The like figure whereunto even Baptisme doth also now save us not the putting away the filth of the flesh but the answer of a good conscience towards God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ which according to Interpreters implyes no more then a resemblance or as Calvin speaks a correspondence though Heb. 9.24 the Apostle useth the same word otherwise The Ark then saved a few when the rest were destroyed Baptisme now saves a few by the resurrection of Christ It will alwaies be saith Calvin on the words as it was in Noahs daies when mankind runnes on their own ruine God wonderfully saves some from the common destruction But here an objection lies that Noahs Ark and New Testament Baptisme are nothing parallell few entred that but now numerous or rather innumerable multitudes are baptized The Apostle answers that the parallell lyes not between the outward Baptisme that is the outward act as man administers it which he calls putting away the filth of the flesh which we know is the work of Baptisme but the answer of a good conscience or the restipulation of a good conscience I desire now to know how the Apostle can be salved from a contradiction He saies Baptisme saves and yet saies the outward putting away the filth of the flesh doth not save but the answer of a good conscience towards God Now this putting away the filth of the flesh done in the Name of Christ or in the Name of the Father Sonne and holy Ghost is Baptisme so is not the answer of a good conscience that is no Baptisme The Apostle then should rather have said that the answer of a good conscience saves and not Baptisme But he saies Baptisme saves I see no other way of reconciliation or to make sense of his words then to understand him that Baptisme saves as it hath its work on the conscience as it works upon our understanding and our faith as a sign and seal and is no immediate conveyance of happinesse not any other way of conveyance then as it hath its work on the conscience of the receivers Reasons con ∣ firming Reasons First The Word and Sacraments work after one and the same manner on the soul for salvation respective to any mediate or immediate way of conveyance of any graces or priviledges This is evident in regard of that relation that the Sacraments have to the Word as appendants to it But the force of the Word on the soul to salvation is not inherent not by any immediate conveyance of inward graces or priviledges but as it hath its work on the understanding and faith of him that receiveth it they that understand not are as the highway-ground that gaines nothing It is the power of God for salvation to them that believe Rom. 1.16 It profits not where it is not mixtwith faith Heb. 4.2 It is effectual onely in those that believe 1 Thes 2.13 The bare work done in hearing saves none and so also it is with Sacraments Secondly Signes and pledges added to promises are efficacious no other ways then as they work upon the understanding and faith of those that receive them as signes This may be made good in particular instances in a large induction of signes of all sorts The double sign vouchsafed of God to Gideon for his confirmation in the deliverance of Israel Judg. 6. did not work at all towards such a deliverance further then as it had its work upon the understanding and faith of Gideon to whom it was given The Scarlet thred in Rahabs window had no power for her safety further then it was a sign between her and Joshua minding Joshua of his engagement to her The rainbowe is of no power to save the world from an universal deluge of water further then it minds and assures us of Gods promise The same we may say of all signes and pledges both humane and divine But Sacraments are signes and pledges added to promises as we see here in the text Sacraments then have no others efficacy then as they work on the understanding and faith of the receivers Thirdly There is nothing that is material sensible corporeal that hath any immediate influence or operation upon any object that is spiritual This is plain There must be proportion between the agent and the patient the instrument working and the object wrought upon But the Sacramental signes that we receive as seales are material corporeal sensible and therefore have no such immediate influence upon the soul for the work of grace or conveyance of it Fourthly If this Scripture hold out the work of Sacraments onely by way of sign and seal and no other Scripture holds out any other work to be wrought by them in the soul then this is the whole of their work This is clear Scripture must somewhere hold out the whole that Sacraments effect But this is the whole that the Apostle in this Scripture gives to them where he gives an account of the fruit of Abrahams Circumcision neither is there any other Scripture in which any more is attributed to the working of Sacraments The assumption is of two parts The first none can question that the Apostle ascribes no more here to Sacraments then as hath been said For the second that no other Scripture ascribes any thing further to them shall God willing be made good when we come to examine those Scriptures which are brought in by way of objection for a further work If any would see authorities quoted of men of eminent name that have appeared in defence of this position I shall referre him to reverend Mr. Gatakers learned dispute held with reverend Dr. Ward where he may see multitudes voting for it And when Dr. Ward a Quod quosdam theologos ait hic haerere baptismi effectum hunc ad electos restringere Imo non quâ—dam dunxtaxat sed multo maxima nostrorum pars non tam hic haerent quam ex adverso se diserte opponunt quod ex testimoniis supâ—a adductis luculentissime demonstratum est saith that some Divines do stick at his tenent and do restrain the effect of Baptisme infallibly taking away the guilt of original sin onely to the effect Mr. Gataker replyes not alone some but the greater part of our Divines do not so much stick or hesitate here as professedly oppose which is evidently demonstrated in the testimonies saith he before cited pag. 134. And my reverend friend Mr. Bedford unhappily engaged in this controversy to carry the Sacraments higher then Scripture hath raised them misled with the over esteem of some that have gone that way tells us of hir discouragement by reason of the multitude of those of an opposite opinion that held otherwise then he did about the Sacraments And Mr. Baxter rightly doth observe that at the first broaching of this doctrine among us it was so much disrelished not by Dr. Taylour onely but by most Divines and godly people as
farre as I could learn that it did succeed and spread as little as almost any error that ever I knew spring up in the Church Plain Scripture proof of Infants c. pag. 294. so inconsiderable was the party that stood for it And Vorstius speaking in the name of Protestant Divines in general saith b Id potissimum quaeritur an Sacramenta sint signa tantum sigilla foederis gratiae sive externa symbola signacula foederi gratiae appensa divinitus ad hoc institura ut gratiam Dei salutarem in foedere promissam nobis significent atque ita fidem nostram suo modo confirment simul publice testaram reddant quae quidem communis est Evangelicorum sententia an vero preaterea sint causae efficientes hujus salutaris justificantis gratiae sive an sint effectiva gratiae ejusdem organa nempe ad hoc divinitus institura ut gratiam istam realiter instar vasorum in se contineant omnibus illa percipientibus candem vi sua imprimant reipsa conferant quae Bellarmini Pontificiorum omnium opinio est It is disputed whether Sacraments are onely signes and seales of the Covenant of grace or outward signes annext the Covenant and appointed for this of God that they should signify saving grace of God promised in the Covenant and signifying seal and after their manner confirm our faith and give publick testimony of it which saith he is the common opinion of Protestants or whether they be further efficient causes of this saving and justifying grace or whether they be effective instruments of this grace appointed of God for this thing that they should indeed containe it in them and convey it which is the opinion of all Papists Vorstius Anti. Bellar. ad Contro 1 Gen. And our men further judge that opinion of the opus operatum or of the outward Sacramental action as though without the faith and pious motion of those that use it it could justifie any to be evidently false and pernicious And they teach that all Sacraments by the ordination of God himself have onely a power to signifie and seal and not to conferre the grace of the Gospel it self And whereas several passages in the Liturgy of this Church did seem to favour the opposite opinion affixing adoption membership of Christ and inheritance of the Kingdom of heaven and regeneration to Baptisme we know how great offence it gave to many eminently Learned and pious putting them upon omission of those passages And also what Interpretation as with a grain of salt others put upon them that they were onely Sacramentally such And doubtlesse these either hit upon the meaning of the Church which was held to these phrases in imitation of many hyperbolical speeches in the Fathers or else the Church had mist the meaning of Scriptures so loth were the sons of the Church to be quarrelling with their mother and yet more loth with her to run into errors The Observation it self if heeded hath a caution or limit in it Affirming that Sacraments work no otherwise then as signs and seals and that they conferre no inward graces or priviledges further then they work upon the understanding and faith of those that receive them it implyes that they do conferre what an outward symbole or sign is apt to and of powder to convey and that outward priviledges in Sacraments are either conferred of infallibly evidenced This is clear the Apostle having so far undervalued Circumcision in the flesh as to make it Parallell with uncircumcision so that a circumcised Jew and an uncircumcised Gentile differed nothing as to their Spiritual state and condition inferres by way of objection What advantage then hath the Jew and what profit is there of circumcision And answers not that outward circumcision is altogether unprofitable but that it hath much profit and instances in one eminent one To them are committed the Oracles of God This is the inheritance of the Congregation of Jacob Deut. 33.4 as Moses speaks and carrying with it this great priviledge it conveyes with it all other inferiour Church-priviledges right to the Passeover upon this account was theirs Exod. 12.48 and not otherwise So it is with Baptisme men are taken into the Church at this door according to the Commission given to the Apostles Disciple all Nations baptizing them in the Name of the Father c. Whatsoever they were and whomsoever they professedly served before they are this way taken in as the consecrate servants of the whole Trinity and added to the Church Act 2.47 When they had by the Covenant a precedent title in Baptisme they have a solemn inauguration By one Spirit we are all Baptized into one body 1 Cor. 12.13 It is the Spirits work to shape the heart of unbelieving Corinthians to enter into one visible Church-body as that work of Gods power whereby he did perswade Japhet to dwell in the tents of Shem Gen. 9.27 And therefore when c Durandus docet characterem esse ens rationis id est respectum advenientem ex deputatione ad certum officium qualis est relatio in Doctoribus Praetoribus c. Quae sententia vix distinguitur ab haeresi hujus temporis Durand denyed that the Character which the Church of Rome speaks of was any quality in the soul but meerly a relation comming as by way of deputation to an office or duty exemplifying it by the relation that is seen in Doctors Praetors c Bellar. lib. 2. de Sacramen effectu cap. 14. saith That this opinion can scarcely be distinguished from the Heresie of this time d Haeretici non negant neque negare possunt quin sit aliqua relatio rationis in Ministris quae non est in aliis qui non sunt deputati ad ministrandum And further saith That Heretiques do not deny nor can deny but that there is some relation in Ministers which is not in others who are not deputed to the Ministery We do confesse indeed that there is that relation in Christians to Christ by the work done in the Sacrament of Baptisme which is not in Heathens And though we deny Orders to be any Sacrament yet we confesse there is that relation in Ministers to Christ by vertue of their Ordination that is not in those that are not called to the work of the Ministery There are those indeed that do deny it But those that Bellarmine had to deal with and that he charges for Heretiques as Luther Melancthon Calvin Beza Peter Martyr Chemnitius willingly yeeld it And in case this were all the character that they talke of to be imprinted in Baptisme yea in Ordination we should never contend about it And as these priviledges are conferred as to actual interest in the initiatory Sacacraments both of Baptisme and Circumcision so the same priviledges in the following Sacraments are infallibly evidenced as appears in that text 1 Cor. 10.17 The Apostle there making it
his businesse to take off Christians from their resort to the Idols temples to eat there of that which had been offered in sacrifice which they judged to be within the verge of their liberty An Idol being nothing in the world tells them that as joyning with Jewes in their sacrifice offered on the Altar did declare them to be one body with the Jewes and eating of the Sacramental bread did make them one body Christian so also going to the Heathens sacrifices did evidence them to be one body Heathen The Apostle as we see Rom. 1.5 thought no understanding man would question it we must therefore readily yeeld it which holds true of the Passeover seeing onely the circumcised who were in saith Jewes were to be admitted do it Exod. 12.48 And this I suppose is that which Reverend Gataker means opposing that tenent that the Sacraments conferre grace by the work done where there is no barre put and having quoted testimonies of Bishop Abbot Calvin and Whitaker sharpely enough declaring themselves against it adds That for the axiome it self I will not contend about it if that effect of the Sacraments be understood for which they were instituted of God and the Word be taken in a more large sense for all that whatsoever it be that may be any impediment that the Sacraments cannot have their effect Though perhaps in these words of his he had some other intentions It were an endlesse labour to lanch out into the controversie and to gather up the various opinions of those of a contrary judgment and their different thoughts to make good their tenents whether of those that deny Sacraments to be Seales as generally the Papists whom Anabaptists in this follow at the heels as in most other things both about the Covenant and Sacraments Or Lutherans who yeelding them to be seales as well as signes yet affirim that these are lesse principal offices and uses of Sacraments the chief end is to be instruments of conveyance of grace to the soul Or dissenting brethren among Protestants some of them falling in with Popish Schoolmen wholly closing with their tenent that Sacraments conferre grace where no bar is put to hinder their working or others that hold it with limit onely to Baptisme and that to elect children not daring to put reprobates into a state of regeneration or remission of sin nor yet to assert that the elect are alwayes thus regenerate in Baptisme But that it holds so in ordinary Or of some that I have met with in discourse that suppose that Baptisme hath his work in those elect infants where God foresees that death will prevent their regeneration by the Word or others that say that God works by Baptisme to regeneration and forgivenesse of sin but according to pleasure they dare not assign to whom Some of these I judge to be more evidently opposite to the Scripture then others yet I confesse I see not foundation in the Word for any of them These that are thus agreed that the Sacraments as instruments conferre grace without respect had to the receivers faith yet are at odds among themselves what manner of instruments they are He that pleases may read in Suarez disput 9. quaest 62. art 4. Sect. 2. six several opinions about it some will have them to be no efficient but material causes onely as a dish conveying a medicine is no cause of health but a material instrument onely of conveyance Others hold that they conferre grace per modum impetrationis because the Minister and the Church obtaines of God by prayer grace by them Others say that they are conditions without which God gives not grace Others yet say that the Sacraments are causes of grace because when they are applyed they move God to conferre it As we say they work by way of sign on our understanding so they say they work by way of sign with God moving him to remember his promise Others say they conferre grace because God in a more special manner appears in them as a principal agent or efficient which my Authour complaines is very obscure But he that will consult the Authour of this opinion which is Henricus à Gandavo Quod. quart quaest 37. may find much against any power in the Sacraments to conferre or to speak in his language to create grace in the soul creation being solely the prerogative of God and above the power of any creature to be assistent in it yet lest he should run upon an heresy against the determination of the Catholick Church in making them no more then signs and seals he is put upon it to come off thus blewly that Suarez with all his high wit cannot find out his meaning Suarez himself concludes that they are Physical instruments in the conveyance of grace and that they are causes of grace because by a true Physical action they concur to the sanctification of men Having with much adoe endeavoured to prove a possibility of their working of grace in a Physicall way he concludes that this is their way of working and that not barely in working some disposition towards grace not reaching grace it self nor yet in working an union only of grace with the soul But in the most proper and rigorous sense Sacraments Physically work grace the very Physicall action by which Grace is wrought and drawn out of the obediential power of the soul truly really and Physically depending on the Sacraments which he judges to be most agreeable to the dignity of the Sacraments the phrases of Scripture and Councels and Fathers about them But it might pitty the Reader to see how miserably he comes off with this assertion of his only telling us that the Scripture sayes we are cleansed sanctified or regenerate of water or the laver of regeneration and washing of water in the Word of life without the least light given us to let us understand that these phrases must be taken in his Physical sense meaning adding some sentences of Fathers who ordinarily give that in their writings to the sign which is proper to the thing signified finding yet opposite sentences in them that much troubles him in which in an orthodox way they explain themselves sufficiently against his position In case in this position of his of the Physicall working of Sacraments he had only understood that they work according to the nature of the office and place assigned unto them there might have been just cause to have subscribed to his judgment It is of the nature of a sign to hold forth to us the thing signified of a relative symbole to ingage to the filling up of such a relation It is of the nature of a seal to confirm every grant past in Covenant but to give a Physicall power to those elementary substances to create Grace in or confer grace upon the soul is a monstrous tenent A little Philosophy will accquaint us with the natural properties of water and as applyed in washing experience will soon discover it The
that this place should be interpreted of baptisme on which words of his Mr. Gataker pag. 123. very well comments l Quasi aliam potius quorundam expositionem probaturus ni aliorum importunitas aliò impelleret Verba sunt enim alii concedentis aliquid potius quam animi sui sensum enuntiantis As though he would rather saith he allow another interpretation if the importunity of others did not lead him that way They are words of one granting or rather yielding somewhat to another man then speaking his own mind as he further observes And Mr. Burges Spiritual Refining Part 1. pag. 214. speaking of Baptisme saith it is called the laver of regeneration Titus 3.5 as some expound it giving us to understand that it is no exposition universally agreed upon and sufficiently hinting that it is the more inconsiderable part that do interpret it this way Fifthly Though we should yield that these places were to be understood of the Sacrament of Baptisme as Calvin saith he could be content to do yet all this while nothing is gained seeing it still rests to be proved that this is meant any otherwise then by way of sign and seal they conclude no abolute work but onely as they have their influence upon the understanding and faith of the receivers And therefore Calvin when he was prevailed withall to yield so farre as we have heard presently addes m Non quod in externo aquae symbolo inclusa sit salus sed quia partam à Christo salutem Baptismus nobis obsignat Not that salvation is included in the outward symbole of water but because Baptisme seales it to us when Christ hath obtained it for us And Danaeus speaking to that Argument of Bellarmine that the Scripture witnesseth that the words of the Sacrament are active instruments of our justification and not seales of the promise giving instance in these and the like Scriptures for this purpose answers n Instrumenta signa etiam mere obsignantia testantia dicuntur per tropum metonymiam id facere quod obsignant nam annulus sponsalium qui solus est signum eorum dicitur conjun gere obligare sponsos contractus instrumentum quod solum consensus signum obstringere contrahentes Doctoratus sigillum literae creasse effecisse n. Doctoâ—em quaeenim nos juvant efficere ea ipsa dicuntur propter finem in quem spectant in quibus ab eis juvamur Verum vitanda est verborum hujusmodi quae ut causis vel signis vel instrumentis actionem tribuunt homonymia ne propterea censcamus ea signa vel instrumenta esse causas istâ—us actionis vel effecti vel fructus efficientes efficiunt enim aut efficere di cuntur illa effecta suo tantum modo nempe per modum duntaxat signi quatenus obsignant certificant eam actionem vel effectionem aut per modum instrumenti quoniam ad effectionem ad hibentur multum enim signa vera instrumenta inter se proprie differunt signa vero nihil plane ad effectio nem conferunt qualia sunt Sacramenta sed affectionem Sp. S. opus illius in nobis duntaxat vâ—rissime certissime testantur consignant Instruments and signs meerly testifying and sealing are said by a trope and metonymy to do that which they seal for even a ring used in espousals which onely is a sign is said to joyn and bind the espoused an instrument of contract which is onely a token of agreement is said to bind the contractors and the letters and seal of a Doctor to create a Doctor for those things that are helpful to us are said to effect those things as to such an end in which they are helpful But the homonymy of words of this nature is to be shunned which attributes actions to signes or instruments as to causes lest upon that account we may think that such signes or instruments are causes of such actions or efficients of such fruits and effects For they effect or are said to do such a work alone after their manner that is onely by way of sign as they seal or certify such an act or work or by way of instrument because they are used in the work For signes and instruments properly so called do very much differ For signes contribute nothing to the work of which sort are Sacraments but onely truely and certainly testifie and seal the work of the Spirit of God wrought Danaeus Contra Bellarmi Tom. Contro 2. Cap. 14. ad Arg. 2. Abundance more might be added to clear these Texts and take them out of their hands that urge them for this purpose though they were meant of the Sacraments which is not to be granted And what we have said of these Texts may be affirmed of that also Deut. 30.6 I will circumcise thy heart and the heart of thy seed Circumcision which was a Sacrament is indeed there named but the speech is onely borrowed by way of metaphor from the circumcision of the flesh and applyed to the heart as is clear Deut. 10.16 where that work is given in command to the Jewes and they were not commanded to circumcise themselves but were already in Circumsion A second sort of Scriptures are such in which baptisme is mentioned but faith evidently required to the attainment of the effects of it A second sort of Scriptures are such where Baptisme is indeed mentioned and the Sacrament of Baptisme intended but faith is evidently required for the attainment of the effect specified These especially are Acts 2.38 Repent and be baptized every one of you in the Name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins Acts 22.16 Rise and be baptized and wash away thy sins calling on the Name of the Lord. I shall referre the Reader for a full vindication of these Scriptures to Mr. Gatakers disceptation pag. 9 10 c. pag. 56 57. and shall onely adde that that phrase in the Name of the Lord utterly destroies all that they would build on these words seeing it implies faith in his Name as Acts 3.16 may be seen And howsoever Infants that are in Covenant upon their parents profession of faith are baptized into this Name yet those of yeares as these were to whom this speech is directed are in their own persons not onely to make profession of faith but in sincerity to believe in order to attainment to the pardon of their sins or any other spiritual priviledge of the Covenant whatsoever Yea that which these men would draw from these Texts stands not with their principles that urge them The Sacraments work grace say they as instruments I shall then desire to know whether positive infidelity be not such a barre that will hinder If it be a barre in men of yeares then the Sacrament works not without actual faith in the baptized It is the priviledge of faith to obtain forgivenesse of sin Act. 13.39 Rom. 3.25 It is the work then
is broke and our most solemn engagements with God made void In Baptisme we undertake a profession of Christ in wayes of sin we are treacherous towards him and stand up in hostility against him When those Israelites Jer. 34. had covenanted with God to put away their servants which contrary to the Law they had kept in bondage and afterwards served themselves of them we see what followes upon it the Lord proclaims liberty to them to the sword to famine and pestilence When we have once covenanted to put away our sins we have lesse reason to serve our selves of them or rather again to serve them then these Israelites had to serve themselves of their bond men and bond-women The highest reproach is this way cast upon Christ No man leaves one Master to betake himself to the service of another but he prefers in his judgement the latter before the former especially when he breaks all Bonds Covenants and Engagements for such an exchange of service When a penitent person leaves sin to come over to Christ Christ hath honour It appears that he is now in dislike with sin and better pleased with Christ But when a man leaves Christ and his wayes to serve sin there is a reproach cast upon Christ and of this he is very sensible Jer. 2.5 What iniquity have your Fathers found in me that they are gone from me and walked after vanity and became vain An aspersion of iniquity is cast upon a Master when he is left and the vainest of men is chosen and this cast upon Christ in the highest way in a Christians turning to sin and in this case we see in what manner he expostulates and complaines 3. In this case where conscience answers not to Sacramental Arg. 3 engagements those two seals vouchsafed of God for his peoples benefit will stand one oppsite to the other and will not answer each other The seal of the Sacraments and the seal of the Spirit will be thus divided The former may serve to give assurance that they are Gods in a visible relation but the other will be wanting to give an invisible title This restipulation of conscience being no other then Sanctification and Sanctification the impression that the Spirit makes by way of seal when we are not onely not assured of this work of the Spirit but assuredly want it then our want of interest in Christ is evident for if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his The visible seal in the want of this impresse on their spirits is necessarily inefficacious 4. When conscience answers not to Sacramental engagements Arg. 4 in participation of Sacraments men subscribe to the equity of their own condemnation and give assent to the sentence of death pronounced against them Coming for the seals of the Covenant they ratifie and establish the terms of the Covenant Now the Covenant hath penalties as well as promises punishments as well as mercies conscience answering to Covenant-engagements they are interested in mercies conscience witnessing the contrary they necessarily become lyable to judgements and therefore the Apostle sayes He that eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks judgement to himself That very kind of eating hath an obligation in it to suffering and the equity of such obligation by such a communicant is acknowledged If an idle unfaithful purloyning run-away apprentice should bear stripes from his Masters hand and should upon it produce his Indentures to implead his Master for reparations these Indentures will give full evidence to the justice of his sufferings or a man that enjoyes a lease with several clauses of forfeiture and by non-payment of rent or otherwise makes forfeiture the producing of his lease for ratification of his title proves a nullifying and destruction of it This is the case of an unbelieving impenitent disobedient Christian All therefore that willl find comfort in Baptisme and expect it at the Lords Table must study to come up to Covenant-engagements and exercise themselves continually to have a conscience void of offence both towards God and toward man SECT V. A case of Conscience upon occasion of the former Corollary answered When it is that Conscience answers to Sacramental engagements HEre a great question lyes When it is that conscience thus answers to Sacramental engagements so that we may conclude their efficacy for salvation and when it is that they come short and so in our claim of them we subscribe as hath been said to the equity of our own condemnation To this I answer that every soul must make it his great businesse all the daies of his life to get abilities to give satisfaction to this demand and all the books that have been written in positive Divinity and Cases of Conscience are little enough for directions for it yet to speak something for their help that desire to look into it in their enquiries into Scriptures and the labours of the learned in this particular they must first distinguish between keeping of Covenant failings in Covenant and forfeiture of it between keeping in the way strâ—yings out of the way and a total resolved leaving of it He may fail that makes not a total forfeiture And for discovery of these which I call failings in Covenant we must yet distinguish of sins some are meer infirmities and unavoidably weaknesses others are sins above infirmities presumptuous acts or at least acts of inadvertency or carnal security As for those that are meer infirmities and unavoidable weaknesses unto which Noah Lot Abraham David Job Nathaniel to whom God gives largest testimonies when in their walk they were most exact and circumspect were subject I take them not to be so much as failings in Covenant seeing we never Covenanted with God to be above infirmities or never to be any more found in any weaknesses These with sincere hearts keep up to their Covenant engagements Of such it is testified that they were upright perfect without guile The promise then made to those that keep Covenant and that remember to keep Gods Commandements to do them Psal 103.18 is theirs These are no Spirit-grieving sins Complaint is made of God of those that grieve the holy Spirit of God Isa 63.10 Psal 95.9 but no complaint is made of these persons they are men after Gods own heart 1 Sam. 13.14 his delight Prov. 11.20 The effects which grief hath with men is not seen in Gods dealings with them He departs not from them upon this occasion neither doth he upon this account afflict them Whereas some say that God in Justice may damne for the least sin and therefore he may much more afflict I answer The Covenant of Grace supposed this cannot as I think stand with Justice he is otherwise engaged to the believing and penitent and no instance can be given of his punishment of unavoidabie weaknesse He brings not his sword upon them to avenge the quarrel of his Covenant Though sin wheresoever it is is opposite to Gods Spirit yet God is
reconciliation applyable to man by faith which is the means or instrument whereby we receive the mercy of God So also Gal. 2.16 is very full Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but by faith in Christ Jesus The Apostle there first in the negative shewes where our justification is not and in the next place tells us in the affirmative where it is so that all works of all kinds are by him excluded and faith onely is acknowledged Whereas one saith that Paul doth either in expresse words or in the sense and scope of his speech exclude onely the works of the Law that is the fulfilling of the condition of the Law our selves but never the fulfilling of the Gospel-conditions that we may have part in Christ It is fully against the Apostle if by fulfilling the Gospel-condition any thing but faith be understood All works are excluded and faith as in opposition to works is acknowledged and we have our part or interest in Christ in or by fulfilling of no other Gospel-condition then that of faith whereby we receive Christ and Christ dwells in us John 1.12 Eph. 3.17 The same Authour teaches us to distinguish betwixt our first possession of Justification which is upon our contract with Christ or meer faith and the confirmation continuation and accomplishment of it whose condition is also sincere obedience and perseverance But being first possest of justification we are justified and of this Paul still speaks and there is no intercision of it nor any other way in progresse of time to be interested in it Being justified we enter upon are reconciled state which is never lost and held up onely by Christ upon the interest of our faith Obedience and Perseverance are both of necessity to obtain the end of our Faith the salvation of our soules but not to give us this interest in Christ Sin in the elect-regenerate may work a man as hath been said under present wrath but renders him not a child of wrath brings upon him an inaptitude for glory but makes him not simply liable to condemnation for eternity This accomplishment of Justification in the sense spoken to is no other then glorification and these two are distinct links in Paul's golden chain as it is called Rom. 8.30 Whom he did predestinate them also he called and whom he called them also he justified and whom he justified them he also glorified As Predestination differs from vocation and justification so Justification also from glorification when our first possession of Justification is acknowledged to be of meer faith Paul's justification is confessed to be of meer faith likewise The same Authour saith Paul doth by the word faith especially direct your thoughts to Christ believed in for to be justified by Christ and to be justified by receiving Christ is with him all one and I am sure faith alone receives Christ and no Evangelical work either of obedience or perseverance therefore Faith alone justifies There is added And when he doth mention faith as the condition he alwayes implyeth obedience to Christ therefore believing and obeying the Gospel are put for the two summaries of the whole conditions But Faith as an instrument receiving Christ is the condition when the Evangelist complains that He came to his own and his own received him not Joh. 1.11 he points out their neglect of the condition required They were his in Covenant or else they had not been called his own and in not receiving him they failed in the condition required of them and in the words following the Evangelist speaks of those of his own in Covenant that did make good the condition of it and that is no otherwise then by believing But as many as received him to them he gave power to be the Sons of God even to them that believe on his Name And this faith implyes onely acceptation though it be an act of the soul that yeelds obedience It is further said Our full justification and our everlasting salvation have the same conditions on our part But sincere Obedience is without all doubt a condition of our salvation Therefore also of our justification Here is either a manifest tautology or an errour For either full justification and salvation are both one and so here is a tautology or else if they differ it is an errour The same are not conditions of both strictly taken onely Faith gives title to Christ for Justification Works qualifie as a condition in order to salvation And whereas it is further said It would be as derogatory to Christs righteousnesse if we be saved by works as if we be justified by them Either of both is doubtlesse derogatory to it and therefore still disclaimed in Scriptures and alwayes expresly denyed except in that one Text of James Jam. 2. which speakes to Justification and must admit of another interpretation then our Authour would put upon it otherwise he can neither be reconciled to himself nor to the whole current of the Gospel Works may be causa sine quâ non of salvation or a qualification of those that are saved as Heb. 5.9 He became the Authour of eternal salvation to all them that obey him But this is not to be saved by works which the Apostle denyes Eph. 2.9 Not of works lest any man should boast And works of this efficiency wrought through grace will raise a man to boastings as appears in the Pharisees God I thank thee But seeing there are several new questions started Whether Faith be an instrument in Justification Whether works do not justifie Whether the new Covenant have any condition Whether Faith be not the alone condition And how Repentance can be a condition of the Covenant and not of Justification And Mr. Ball is almost on every hand appealed to I suppose it will not be ungrateful to the Reader if in this place I commend to him the words of that Reverend Authour though it be in a larger way then quotations are ordinarily brought in which we have not barely his authority which I do not offer to put in the balance with any but the Points in question with singular strength debated and spoken to Treating of the Covenant of Grace pag. 18. he saith Repentance is called for in this Covenant as it setteth forth the subject capable of salvation by faith Luke 13.5 Acts 11.18 2 Cor. 7.10 Ezek. 18.27 but is it self onely an acknowledgment of sin no healing of our wound or cause of our acquittance The feeling of pain and sicknesse causeth a man to desire and seek remedy but it is no remedy it self Hunger and thirst make a man desire and seek for food but a man is not fed by being hungry By repentance we know our selves we feel our sicknesse we hunger and thirst after grace but the hand which we stretch forth to receive it is faith alone without which repentance is nothing but darknesse and despair Repentance is the condition of faith and the qualification of
a person capable of salvation on our part required It is a penitent and petitioning Faith whereby we receive the Promises of mercy but we are not justified partly by prayer partly by Repentance and partly by Faith but that faith which stirreth up godly sorrow for sin and enforceth us to pray for pardon and salvation Faith is a necessary and lively instrument of Justification which is amongst the number of true causes not being a cause without which the thing is not done but a cause whereby it is done The cause without which a thing is not done is onely present in the action and doth nothing therein but as the eye is an active instrument for seeing and the eare for hearing so is faith also for justifying If it be demanded whose instrument it is It is the instrument of the soul wrought therein by the Holy Ghost and is the free gift of God In the Covenant of works works were required as the cause of life and happinesse but in the Covenant of grace though repentance be necessary and must accompany faith yet not repentance but faith onely is the cause of life The cause not efficient as works should have been if man had stood in the former Covenant but instrumentall onely for it is impossible that Christ the death and blood of Christ and our faith should be together the efficient or procuring causes of Justification or salvation Rom. 3.21 22 28 30. Gal. 2.16 17. Rom. 4.2 3. When the Apostle writeth that man is not justified by works or through works by the Law or through the Law opposing Faith and Works in the matter of Justification but not in respect of their presence Faith I say and works not faith and merits which could never be without doubt he excludes the efficiency and force of the Law and works in justifying But the particles By and Of do not in the same sense take Justification from the Law and Works in which they give it to faith For faith onely doth behold and receive the promises of life and mercy but the Law and Works respect the Commandments not the Promises of meer grace When therefore Justification and life is said to be by Faith it is manifestly signified that faith receiving the promise Deut. 7.12 10.12 Jer. 7.23 Lev. 19.17 18. Luk. 10.27 Mark 12.30 doth receive righteousnesse and life freely promised Obedience to all Gods Commandments is covenanted not as the cause of life but as the qualification and effect of faith and as the way to life Faith that imbraceth life is obediential and fruitful in all good works but in one sort faith is the cause of obedience and good works and in another of Justification and life eternal These it seeketh in the promises of the Covenant those it worketh and produceth as the cause doth the effect Faith was the efficient cause of that precious oblation in Abel Heb. 11.4 7 c. of reverence and preparing the Ark in Noah of obedience in Abraham but it was the instrument onely of their Justification For it doth not justifie as it produceth good works but as it receiveth Christ though it cannot receive Christ unlesse it bring forth good works A disposition to good works is necessary to Justification being the qualification of an active and lively faith Good works of all sorts are necessary to our continuance in the state of Justification and so to our final absolution if God give opportunity but they are not the cause of but onely a precedent qualification or condition to final forgivenesse and eternal blisse If then when we speak of the conditions of the Covenant of grace by condition we understand whatsoever is required on our part as precedent concomitant or subsequent to Justification repentance faith and obedience are all conditions but if by condition we understand what is required on our part as the cause of the good promised though onely instrumental faith or belief in the promises of free mercy is the onely condition Faith and works are opposed in the matter of Justification and salvation in the Covenant not that they cannot stand together in the same subject for they be inseparably united but because they cannot concur or meet together in one and the same Court to the Justification or absolution of man For in the Court of Justice according to the first Covenant either being just he is acquitted or unjust he is condemned But in the Court of mercy if thou receive the promise of pardon which is done by a lively faith thou art acquitted and set free and accepted as just and righteous but if thou believe not thou art sent over to the Court of Justice Thus far Mr. Ball. In which words of his the blood of Christ faith in his blood repentance and works have all of them their due place assigned them The blood of Christ as the alone efficient procuring cause Faith as the instrument giving interest and making application Repentance as a necessary qualification of the justified person in order to glory In this which is the good old Protestant doctrine God loseth nothing of his grace but all is free in the work Christ loseth nothing of his merit it stands alone as the procuring cause Faith receives all from Christ but takes nothing off from the free grace of God or Christs merits God loseth nothing of his Soveraignty and man is not at all dispensed with in his duty God is advanced in his goodnesse and Soveraignty man is kept humble thankful and in subjection no place being left for his pride or gap open for licentiousnesse A Digression concerning the Instrumentality of Faith in Justification HEre I cannot passe by that which Mr. Baxter hath animadverted on some passages of mine in the Treatise of the Covenant concerning the Instrumentality of Faith After I had spoke to our Justification by Faith in opposition to Justification by works in several Propositions of which he is not pleased to take any notice I infer pag. 80. These things considered I am truly sorry that Faith should be denyed to have the office or place of an instrument in our Justification nay scarce allowed to be called an instrument of our receiving Christ that justifies us Mr. Baxter not acquainting his Reader at all with the premises immediately falls upon this inference making himself somewhat merry with my professing my self to be truly sorry for this thing telling me I was as sorry that men called and so called faith the instrument of justification as you are that I deny it acquainting his Reader with his Reasons which he would have to be compared with mine which he passes over in silence 1. No Scripture doth sayes he either in the letter or sense call faith an instrument of Justification This the Reader must take on his word and it should further be considered whether he do not in the same page contradict himself where he saith It is onely the unfitnesse or impropriety of the phrase that he
a principal efficient Mr. Baxter is I am sure as zealous as I can be to assert a conditionate Covenant and if an adversary be as streight-laced to him and me in that as he is to me in this he will hardly prove a condition either in the Covenant of works or grace I will as soon find the word instrument in Scripture applyed to justification as he shall find the word condition applyed to either Covenant And he can name I think no word implying a condition that is alwayes put for a condition and the context wheresoever we are said to be justified by faith or that Christ is a propitiation through faith is in all indifferent Readers eyes as clear for an instrument in justification as those which he and I can bring which yet are clear enough for a conditionate Covenant And that doctrine hath farre more adversaries then this though there is little cause that any man should be an adversary in either He sayes the same answer serves to Act. 15.9 and then the same reply may serve There followes To what you say from Rom. 8.13 I reply 1. An adjutor or concause is ill called an instrument must the Spirit needs be our instrument because it is by the Spirit as if by signified onely an instrument Mr. Baxters head was doubtlesse on somewhat else either when he read these passage of mine or when he framed his answer I never had it in my thoughts that justification is expressely spoken to in any of these texts nor was it my businesse to find out any instrument in them though I doubt not but that faith is spoken to instrument in two of them and as a condition non-instrumental in none of them neither did I dream of making the Spirit an instrument All that I intended was to prove The acts of God are entitled to man and the acts of man to God in Scripture that the acts of man were intitled to God and so the acts of God to man not considering as the businesse in hand let not to it about what these acts are exercised if they prove that It is to me sufficient whether it be in Justification Sanctification Mortification or any other work There is added 2. All this is nothing to the businesse of justification nothing directly immediately but much by way of Analogy It is enough to prove That to be the instrument of man and the instrument of God are not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And if he desire a proof more punctually applyed to justification let him consult Rom 3.30 It is one God that shall justifie the circumcision by faith and the uncircumcision through faith and Gal. 3.8 The Scripture foreseeing that God would justifie the Heathen through faith Faith for justification is usually ascribed to man being properly his act and therefore that text of the Prophet Hab. 2.4 The just shall live by his faith is by the Apostle more then once applyed to justification And in the text now quoted this act of faith is ascribed to God for that work I explained my self man neither justifies nor sanctifies himself yet by faith he is raised to close with God in both c. To this is answered If man justifie not himself and yet faith be his instrument of justifying then farewell old Logick Mr. Baxter is the first great Logitian that I ever heard talk so much of his Logick in the last Section but one we had it and now we have it in the same thing again there I shewed that old Logick may stand and yet his consequence not yeelded 2. It is said If man sanctifie not himself under God as to the progresse and acts of sanctification then farewell old Theology And if man may be said to sanctifie himself further then hath been said or so as to be a principal efficient which will follow from Mr. Baxters reasonings then welcome the newest Divinity It will not be denyed that a sanctified man differs from one that is unsanctified and then in case it may be allowed to say I sanctifie my self he may say I make my self to differ which I never heard that any in direct termes would say against the Apostle but Grevenchovius as I find him cited by Dr. Featly and yet it seems it is my great error that I will not say so I lift man up in that height in justification as to pardon his own sin in holding that it is of faith that it may be of grace not of works lest any should boast And I raise him not high enough in sanctification If I say no more then that by faith he receives power from God by the Spirit for it that text 1 Pet. 1.22 would farre better have served my purpose if I had first hit upon it The Spirit of God and not man is to have the denomination in sanctification Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit They that have done any thing in purifying their hearts through the Spirit will rather entitle the Spirit of God then themselves to it and will judge that he rather then they should be denominated a sanctifier And for other texts that are hinted and one mentioned 2 Cor. 7.1 To argue from the Command to the power is that old Theologie that I am ready to bid farewell to As God requires it so he doth often undertake it and declares that it is his work to do it Ezek. 36.25 26. Deut. 30.6 I think few will say that they make their own hearts new There is added 3. To close with God in pardoning me signifieth not that I pardon my self or that I or any act of mine is an efficient cause of pardon This is for me therefore I am contented it should be said over again and my faith is the instrument wherewith I close with God In case it be the instrument wherewith I receive Christ as Mr. Baxter hath sometimes yeelded There followes 4. When you say that faith as an instrument receiveth righteousnesse to justification you speak exactly the conceptions of most Divines that I have met with or read that go your way and therefore these words deserve a little further consideration and after some enquiry into their meaning There is added but these things must be more accurately considered I think Here it is confessed that I tread in the beaten road and that I do appear in the common cause and comparing what is here said with that which in his conclusion he delivers The Author is confest to appear in the common cause in behalf of Protestants It appears that the Divines of this corner of the world for 1300. years past have all taken this way which is all that go under the name Protestant whether Calvinist or Lutheran as they are wont to be distinguished I shall therefore expect that some of those that by grace have obtained to be as of the first three among Davids worthies will step in with their Auxiliary helps in case the
cause be prejudiced by my weaknesse He asigns me to the party of those that he calls Reformers pag. 16. on what party himself stands it is easie then to determine Having said that these things are to be more accurately considered he expresses himself without any one title of Scripture in eight particulars I shall as briefly as I can take notice of the sum of them Mr Faxters eight heads taken into consideration 1. It must be known that the righteousnesse given to us is not the righteousnesse whereby Christs person was righteous for accidents perish being removed from the subject but it is a righteousness merited by Christs satisfaction and obedience for us Here we have a negation with its reasons and an opposite affirmation without any reason at all The negation is That the righteousnesse given us is not the righteousnesse whereby Christs person was righteous The reason is Accidents perish being removed from the subject and therefore the righteousnesse given us is not the righteousnesse whereby Christs person was righteous impliying that the reformed party take righteousnesse for justification out of Christ and leave him belike without any righteousnesse and put it into themselves and so as Christ was before so now they are inherently righteous He well knowes that they hold that it is still in Christ and of grace reckoned to be ours and therefore that of accidents perishing needed not an opinion which he vehemently opposeth in his Preface to his Confession If Christ onely saith he were righteous Christ onely would be reputed and judged righteous and Christ onely would be happy The Judge of the world will not justifie the unrighteous meerly because another is righteous nor can the holy Ghost take complacency in an unholy sinner because another is holy And yet himself holds That the Judge of the world will not onely take an infant born under the defilement of sin into Covenant as holy but also justifie him though in his opinion uncapable of any real change by the Spirit barely upon the account of the parents state in grace through regeneration We cannot be righteous through Christs righteousnesse notwithstanding we know that in the Gospel of grace it is reckoned ours and by faith have our interest Yet an infant is righteous by the parents rigteousnesse Notwithstanding we read not of any such imputation or any such way of interest by faith or otherwise I must crave leave to hold to the former which he leaves though not with his but Scripture comment upon it God does not justifie us meerly because another is righteous but because Christ is made of God to us righteousnesse 1 Cor. 1.30 and is Jehovah our righteousnesse Jer. 23.6 And to leave the latter which he holds I believe neither regeneration nor justification to be from Parent to child ex Traduce In which sense that holds Nemo nascitur sed fit Christianus I choose rather with Walaeus to subscribe to the opinion of Calvin lib. 4. instit cap. 16. Sect. 20. That Infants are baptized into future Repentance and faith which he saies is the opinion of most other Authors I believe Mr. Baxter chiefly took up this opinion of justification of infants tanquam Apendices parentum for Amiraldus his sake who had it from Camero Amiraldus qui nihil Cameronis imitatur preter naevos idem dicit and was his follower as aged and reverend Molinaeus saith in nothing but his blemishes And I would not have so good a friend and eminent ornament to the Church to make either of them in these his precedents The affirmation is that it is a righteousnesse merited by Christs satisfaction and obedience Here is a Proposition delivered with very little accuratenesse 1. The righteousnesse given is here distinguished from his obedience when certainly this obedience is that which is given to us By the obedience of one many shall be made righteous Rom. 5.29 2. Christs satisfaction and obedience are here distinguished when his satisfaction was his obedience Joh. 10.18 Phil. 2. 3. His satisfaction is distinguished from this righteousnesse when I think it is plain that it self is righteousnesse Christs own as a Redeemer Ours as redeemed ones when Christ had taken upon him our sins he had not stood righteous in Gods sight without a discharge and this discharge is our acquittal and deliverance Queries put concerning this righteousnesse 4. We hear not whence this righteousnesse thus merited is where it resides and how made ours Is it a righteousnesse by a new Creation as the light was once made to shine out of darknesse was it put immediately into Christ or given immediately to us which seems to be Mr. Baxters thoughts to avoid perishing of accidents Is it one gift indefinitely at once for all or to all or is it given particularly numerically individually Is it made ours without us or by us If it be made ours whether is it by our acceptation through faith or ability merited for us to work it and so Christ merited that we might merit 2. It must needs be known saith he that the faith which is the justifying condition is terminated on Christ himself as the object and not on his righteousnesse which he gives us in remission remission or rigteousnesse may be the end of the sinner in receiving Christ but righteousnesse or remission is not the object received by that act which is made the condition of justification or at least but a secondary more remote object c. In this whole piece we have an affirmation a negation a concession and illustration Our Faith being terminated on Christ it is terminated on righteousnesse For the affirmation that faith is terminated on Christ we grant but that it is not therefore terminated on the righteousnesse which he gives in remission for remission I think was intended we are to learn And when it is granted that remission is the end which is ill confounded with righteousnesse one being the cause the other the effect it must be granted that a righteous Christ is the object and that Christ is received upon account of his righteousnesse were not this an accurate way of distinguishing to say that a man ready to perish with cold goes to the fire and not to heat for warmth The heart ready to perish with thirst goeth to the water and not to moisture If the soul ready to perish in unrighteousnesse goes to Christ for righteousnesse his faith cannot be terminated on Christ but it must be terminated on righteousnesse as the eye cannot be fixed on the sunne but it must be fixed on light We are holpen with a similitude As a woman doth not marry a mans riches but the man Though it may be her end in marrying the man to be enriched by him nor is her receiving his riches the condition of her first Legal right to them but her taking the man for her husband If Christ and righteousnesse were separable as a man and riches are this simile might be to
these words I know you had not leisure to write them in vain and meerly to fill paper 1. I may fear there was a worse end in the reply then barely to fill paper In contentions of this nature it is easie for great wits voluble tongues and nimble pens to be more then vain And here is scarce fair declaring to cut off my words before any full period and so render them to the Reader That my meaning cannot be seen till he have gone over three or four Sections interlaced with needlesse triflings 2. If Mr. Baxter know as he sayes that I will not own such an argumentation as he there frames without so much as colour of sense in it which were vain to repeat what was his end but meerly to fill up paper or somewhat worse in framing of it A Reader of half Mr. Baxters wit if he look on my words as they lye in my Treatise and not as mangled by his divisions may easily see another way of argumentation and such that carries sense and I leave to the Reader whether or no it carries strength And for his satisfaction Tht Authors argument against the sole-sufficiency of Covenant grace as instrument in justification I thus put it into forme That which often failes of obtaining the end for which it is employed and never can attain to it without the concurrence of some other with it is no sole instrument in any work But the Gospel or Covenant-grant often failes of attaining that end of justification when it is to that end published and imployed and never can obtain it without the concurrence of somewhat further to be joyned with it Ergo it is no sole instrument in the work Mr. Br. signifies that it may still be the same thing and have the same aptitude to produce the effect even when it is not applyed I answer then Mr. Kendall hath well told him it is an instrument aptitudinaliter and is no instrument in actual being but when the end is obtained and then it is no sole instrument being not sole in producing the effect Mr. Baxter takes it for granted that it alwayes hath its effect when it is employed and I took it for granted that it is often employed and the effect not produced but I did not then think that Mr. Baxter had meant an application to convey right where right is already in possession I added When the Minister is a Minister of condemnation and the savour of death to death there the Gospel becomes an instrument of condemnation and death and so comes short of justification To this is replyed 1. So it is if there be no Minister where it is known any way 2. I speak of Gods grant or promise in the Gospel you speak of his commination 3. If the threat be the proper instrument of condemnation à pari the promise or gift is the proper instrument of justification I grant his first and he threapes kindnesse with me in the two last he will have me to speak of the threat onely when I speak as well as he of Gods grant or promise Gospel promises are a savour of death to many This is a savour of death unto death unto many It is as great an evil to sleight a Promise as to disobey a Command or neglect a threatning his third therefore migt well have been spared but that I intend not to trifle away time I could easily shew him if I had spoke of threat a great disparity I added which should not have come in thus dismembred The efficacy that is in the Gospel for justification it receives by their faith to whom it is tendred To this is replyed Darkly but dangerously spoken and reasons given For it is possible you may mean that it receives it by faith as by a condition sine qua homo non est subjuctum proxime capax and so I grant the sense There is no possiblity that I should mean so having sufficiently as he after observes declared my self to the contrary if I understand his sine qua non frequently found in his writings which men eminently learned professe they do not It followes Dangerously for the words would seem to any impartial Reader to import more viz. That the Gospel receives its efficacy from faith or by faith as the instrument which conveyeth that efficacy to the Gospel It is my meaning that the word is inefficacious without faith and that faith renders it efficacious not by infusion of any new power into it but raising up the soul with strength to answer it which is not barely said but proved But my bare speech must first be censured and then my proof in a disjunct way at pleasure as we shall see dealt with A reason is rendred why for the truths sake and my own these words have never been seen For if faith give the Gospel its efficacy 1. It cannot be as a concause instrumental coordinate but as a superiour more principal cause to the subordinate By Mr. Baxters leave I do believe that concauses instrumental may receive efficacy one from another The thred hath efficacy from a needle and is a concause instrumental to sow up a rent or to make a seam or hem The line gives efficacy to the anglers hook to take a fish I believe he hath seen a knife touched with a Loadstone fetch up a needle from the bottome of a vessel of water Here the hand is the principall agent or the man using his hand The knife is the instrument yet such an instrument as receives efficacy from the spirits of the Loadstone as a concause instrumental The Gospel works no more without faith then a knife in this thing can work without a Loadstone It followes 2. If it were the former that is meant yet it were intolerable For which reasons are given but how these hang together I know not His former now spoken to was brought in as the first in order to disprove what I had said taking my words in the second sense which he gives of them and this which is in order the second is to shew by three reasons that in case they be taken in the first sense which he himself professedly grants yet it were intolerable seeing therefore that I take it not in that sense and if I did he grants the sense there is no cause that I should trouble my self with his Reasons I added in way of proof Heb. 4.2 Unto us was the Gospel preached c. 1 Thess 2.12 13. To which is replyed But where 's your conclusion or any shew of advantage to your cause I must speak nothing it seems but syllogismes in form and he that cannot here make up a syllogisme and find out a formall conclusion is a very Infant in Logick In the first Text the Apostle as he sayes speaks of the Words profiting in the reall change of the soul and our question is of the relative Heb. 4.2 Vindicated And what shew of proof is there that it is
Lastly as Durand Reas 4 doth observe The whole that is done in it speaks its own use and signification and the use and signification of Sacraments wholly depends upon divine institution They have nothing that beares any colour to say for the Sacramentality of it save that Text of the Apostle Ephes 5.32 where the Apostle having illustrated that love which is due from the husband to the wife by that similitude of the love of Christ to the Church concludes This is a great Mystery and having spoke both of the union betwixt Christ and the Church and between man and his wife to prevent all mistakes he addes but I speak of Christ and his Church so that first we have not the word Sacrament there but the word Mystery which by Bellarmines own confession is not elsewhere in Scripture to be understood of any Sacrament and Cajetan on the words as Amesius observes warnes the prudent Reader to observe that we have not from Paul in this place that Marriage is any Sacrament So that neither word nor thing is found in Scripture that Marriage is a Sacrament Every one of these might have born a large discourse as is well known to all that are verst in these controversies But so many having spoken so fully to them though I was unwilling intending a Treatise of the Sacraments wholly to omit them yet was resolved that the Reader might not be overburthened to be as brief as possible in them FINIS A POSTSCRIPT TO REVEREND and LEARNED Master BAXTER IN WHICH These following QVESTIONS are friendly debated Whether faith in Christ quà Lord be the justifying act Whether mans Evangelicall personall righteousness be here perfect Whether the Morall Law is a perfect rule of righteousness Whether Vnbelief and Impenitence in professed Christians are violations of the Covenant of Grace Whether Faith and Repentance be Gods conditions or mans in the proper conditionall Covenant Whether the Covenant of Grace require perfection and accept sincerity With an enquiry into the judgement of Antiquity about severall things in reference to Justification Sicut meritum Christi non potest apprehendi ad justitiam salutem nisi per organon fidei divinitùs ad hoc ordinatum ita si fides alibi quà m in suo proprio principali objecto quaerat Justificationem non invenit nec accipitillam Chemnit exam concil Trident de fid Justif pag. 159. LONDON Printed by S. G. for Abel Roper at the Sign of the Sun against Dunstans Church in Fleet-street 1655. THE INTRODVCTION REverend Beloved and much Honoured I have received your Apologie according to your appointment from your Stationer for which I return you hearty thanks as for the gift it self so for the pains that you have taken to rectifie me where in your judgement I have publickly stept aside An error in Divine things if it stand alone without addition of further aggravations is not light Truth being of such divine excellency that no pensil can draw out all deviation from it into opposite error must needs answer in black deformity and darkness But when it is not simple error but joyned with endeavour to engage others it is far above it self in fowlness To reduce a brother therefore not onely erring but thus erring must needs be an high acceptable office of love But in this I need to do no more than to say over to you what you have said to me in your first and second page which you stile your Prologue In this if we both speak our hearts thoughts we are one And I wish that in all other things there were a like unity in judgement and the time I hope with some confidence is near at hand that all mists and clouds will be so dispelled that we shall arrive at perfect union And as for infinite other reasons so for this glory is infinitely desireable In order to a right understanding between us I must acquaint you that your first words after your Christian salute have their mistake though not much material whether upon mistake of my words when I last saw you in Shrewsbury or fayling in memory I cannot determine I told you not that I had then sent to the Press a treatise of the Covenant◠but wished you indeed not to be offended in case I should in such a treatise publish somewhat in the way that you mention In which I do not barely oppose my memory to yours but also the witness of the Reverend Brother whom you know was then present together with the computation of time which speaks it to me to be above contradiction It was May 3. that we spake together as I well know by the errand that I had at that time into those parts and my book saw not the light till towards the end of November following and yet made speedy haste after it went out of my hands I was glad of the opportunity as of a brief discourse of some things as the little scantling of time would bear so also to understand your mind in the thing already mentioned before any further proceeding that there might be no unbrotherly difference which at that time you express'd with all possible candor for my encouragement in that way Yet you now complain that I have given the first onset and so put you upon a necessity of this way of dealing against me which you mention in your Preface Apologetical and in this Prologue and more at large in the Preface of your Confession preferring in your judgement a more private Collation and enquiry into things before this publique way of appearing in the Press And indeed I had it in my thoughts to have written to you before I had any setled resolution at all any more to have appear'd in publique had done some little that way as soon as your Aphorisms came to light which was more than three years and an half before my treatise of the Covenant was published as may be seen comparing the dates of either but after-thoughts took me off And indeed I see no cause of Repentance considering the issue of things between you and others After so much pains of writing on both sides I do not hear that any of those eminently learned men which you say from most parts of the land have taken this way to impart their animadversions have at all prevail'd to change your mind Neither do I hear that any of your replies have wrought any change in them for satisfaction And in the mean space those elaborate writings on both sides are buried in your Study and theirs and no other but your selves have any benefit at all Only we have their complaints such is humane frailty that their names suffer in your publick writings As to the Charge against me for making the first onset I had not appear'd at all had I not upon other occasions which may be seen in my Preface been put upon it to come out in open view And how far I stand guilty of that in which I
Where world in the first place signifies the earth in the second place men on the earth 2 Cor. 5.21 Him that knew no sin he made sin for us Where in the first place sin is taken properly in the latter place by a Metonymy 2 Chron. 35.24 And they brought him to Jerusalem and he died and was buried in one of the sepulchres of his Fathers and all Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah In the first place Jerusalem is taken for the City in the second place for the Inhabitants of it And so also Matth. 2.1 3. There came wisemen from the east to Jerusalem When Herod the King heard these things he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him With further instances which there may be seen concluding that therefore the supposition of the adversaries is false that the repetition of the same word must be allwaies in the same sense 3. No doubt say you but Paul and James handle two distinct questions but not the two that you here expresse Paul speaks of meritorious works which make the reward of debt and not of grace if you will believe his own description of them Rom. 4.4 But James speaks of no such works but of such as have a consistency with grace and a necessary subordination to it I prove it The works that James speaks of we must endeavour for and perform or perish Paul excludes not only works of merit but all works from Justification supposing time but the works that Paul speaks of no man must endeavour or once imagine that he can perform viz. such as make the reward to be of debt and not of grace To this I answer 1. That if Paul speaks only of meritorious works then according to you he speaks of no works at all for there are none such no not in Angels Confess Chap. 3. § 6 Paul speaks in the place quoted of works where there is a reward of debt and yet speaks not as I conceive of works of merit seeing as he mentions none such so there are none such He exclude then works to which a reward is due vi promissi rather then meriti As Eph. 2. he excludes boasting of works done by the help of grace for there is a matter of boasting in these as we see in the Pharisee Luk. 18.11 2. If Paul had here spoken of works of merit and I must believe him so elsewhere he speaks of other works and there both you and I are to believe him likewise 1. He speaks and excludes all the works that we have done Tit. 3.5 Which he universally opposes to Justification by free grace v. 7. and it is of faith that it may be of grace Rom. 4.16 2. He speaks of and excludes all those works or that righteousnesse which is not the righteousnesse of God by faith Phil. 8.8 9. that is all the righteousness that is inherent in us and not in Christ alone and made ours by faith therefore he is called the Lord our Righteousnesse Jer. 23.6 and said to be made of God unto us righteousnesse 1 Cor. 1.30 3. He speaks of and excludes all those works which the Law commands Rom. 3.20 Now there is no work of grace but the Law gives it in charge yea the Law commands to take in grace wheresoever there is a tender of it for our assistance Requiring a duty it requires all necessary helps to it And therefore Chemnitius observes that when the Apostle excludes the works of the Law from Justification his intention is to exclude the highest and noblest not only done by Pharisees or unregenerate persons but Abraham David or the most eminent convents 4. He speaks of and excludes all those works that any man in the highest pitch of grace can attain unto in the place quoted 1 Cor. 4.4 I know nothing by my self yet I am not thereby Justified He knew no matter of condemnation say you sensu Evangelico he then kept up to that which God in the gospel-Gospel-Covenant calls for And yet he is not thereby justified Though God will not condemne a man of that integrity through grace yet this doth not justifie This place saith Cartwright on the words is the death of your Justification by works For if Paul knew nothing by himself in that wherein the Corinthians might suppose him most guilty and was not so much as in that point Justified before God who is he that dares to Justifie himself before God in any work And Fulk on the words Paul doth acknowledge that he is not Justified by his faithfull service and labour in the Gospel therefore no man can be Justified by his works done of grace in as great perfection as can be done of mortall man If the whole discharge of Paules ministeriall function wherein he took heed to himself and to his doctrines was not such where by he could be Justified How then could Abraham be justified in offering Isaack or Rahab in her hiding of the spies If the Apostle therefore do exclude works of merit we see what works he also excludes with it You futher say Paul speaks indeed of faith collaterally but of Christs merits and free grace directly and purposely So that the chief part of Pauls controversie was Whether we are justified freely through Christs merits or through our own meritorious works But James question is Whether we are Justified by faith alone or by faith with obedience accompanying it and both as subordinate to Christs merits Answ Some will think that you judge faith not worthy to be named but on the bie Who can be of your mind that reads the Apostle speaking so often Paul treats diversly and industriously of Justification by faith and so fully to the office of faith in Justistification but that his scope is no lesse to shew what justifies ex parte nostri which it still faith then what that is that justifies ex parte Dei which is grace or ex parte Christi which is his blood or merit Pauls question you say is of the meritorious cause of our Justification James his question of the condition on our part If you are in the right Paul certainly was much defective in his Logick We think the question in debate is to be put into the Conclusion see how he concludes Rom. 3.28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the works of the Law Inferences are made and consectaries drawn from that which is mainly in dispute and not from that which is collaterally mentioned and upon the bie onely touched upon Now he concludes from the doctrine of Justification by faith mentioning as we see Justification ex parte nostri peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ Rom. 5.1 You further say Paul speaks of Justification in toto both in the beginning and progresse but especially in the beginning but James speaks only of Justification as continued and consummate and not as begun For both Abrahams and every mans was begun before works of obedience I Answer
personally righteous And in this sense it is that the faith and duties of believers are said to please God viz. as they are related to the covenant of Grace and not as they are measur'd by the Covenant of works Are not faith and duties here our personall righteousnesse and is not faith a branch of holinesse as well as it is of righteousnesse And hath it not its degrees as well as righteousness Surely the Apostles thought so when they prayed Lord increase our faith Luk. 17.5 And the Lord Christ had no other thoughts when he rebukes his hearers for their little faith Matth. 6.30 And commends the Woman of Canaan for the greatnesse of her faith Matth. 15.28 And as it riseth and falls so do other duties with it they are more intense or remisse in like manner And as for their speeches which you challenge do you think that their ignorance was in that measure intolerable as to believe the righteousnesse of what they spake was a meer non-entity i.e. had nothing of the being of righteousnesse in it They doubtlesse looked upon righteousnesse as a renewed quality as you do upon holinesse and the Apostle both upon holinesse and righteousnesse Eph. 4.24 The new man is so put on that we must be still putting it on It follows that seeing these things are exactioris indigationis understand that the reason of my assertion lyes here The law as it is the rule of obedience doth require perfect obedience in degree and so here is an imperfection in our actions in the degree as being short of what the rule requireth and it being these actions with their habits which we call our holinesse therefore we must needs say our holinesse is imperfect And if our righteousnesse were to be denominated from this law commanding perfection we must say not that such righteousnesse were imperfect because the holinesse or obedience is imperfect but it is none at all because they are imperfect It seems you intend here exactnesse equall to that in which you appeared to the learned brother before mentioned and as you did distinguish before of a metaphysicall and morall perfection so you seem here to distinguish of righteousnesse and holinesse either as a duty performed by men in the Covenant of grace according to rule or else as a condition required by the Covenant of works respective to the attainment of life upon terms there required This seems to be your meaning in your last words in this Paragraph Duty simply as duty and holiness or supernaturall grace as such may be more or less But holiness and duty as the materia requisita vel subjectum proximum justitiae consistit in indivisibili How duty and holiness can be the subject of it self I know not for so they are if they be the subjects of righteousness That righteousness in which we must exceed the righteousness of Scribes and Pharisees is our duty and our holiness as well as of our righteousness but if you carry it thence to make it the righteousness of the covenant of works it is easily granted that the imperfection of it renders it as no righteousness respective to that end of attainment of life by it A Pharisee might as well be justified upon the terms of that covenant as Noah Daniel and Job Zachary and Elizabeth or any other of those that were most perfect and eminent in righteousness But I think no Reader could observe either in your own words or theirs that you censure any such meaning To assert the imperfection of our righteousness I said Isaiah I am sure saith All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags Is 64.6 no greater charge of imperfection can lie against the most imperfect holiness then the Prophet layes upon our righteousness Interpreting the Prophets words as I think the sense of them is generally given by interpreters ancient and modern But seeing you go off to speak of righteousness of another kind I will not contend I there added Neither do I understand how holiness should be imperfect taken materially and righteousness perfect taken formally in reference to a rule After such courteous censure that you please to give you fall to examine what that is that I understand not In which you take one piece of my sentence apart and say How holiness should be imperfect taken materially sure you understand that It is therefore say you no doubt the other branch that you mean How righteousness is perfect taken formally in reference to a rule If the Reader please to consult my words he may see that I put them not divisim but conjunctim giving in my reason why to me it is non-intelligible telling you that we may for ought I know as well make holiness formall and refer it to a rule and righteousness materiall in an absolute consideration without reference to any rule at all This you disjoyn from the rest and fall upon my words apart for what reason is best known to your self And I leave it to the Reader to judge whether that I may not call holiness perfect and righteousness imperfect as well as you may call righteousness perfect and holiness imperfect and whether there is not a materiality and formality not in the one or the other but in the one as well as the other and this was that which I spake to And any man that understands no more then I will I think take this to be a material exception against that which in your Aphorismes was delivered You say if you or any man resolve to use holiness in the same sense as righteousness if I once know your minds I will not contradict you for I find no pleasure in contending about Words but for my self I must use them in the common sense if I will be understood Righteousness and holiness in what sense commonly used But you might have done well to let us know that that is the common sense of the word righteousness taken for personall inherent righteousness which you here use till I see that made good I shall judge it to be your own peculiar acceptation of it I would know what interpreter of Zachary's words Luk. 1.75 of Paul's words Eph. 4.24 of John's words Revel 22.11 do put such a difference as you make between righteousnesse holiness as to make one a renewed quality of the Spirit the other no such thing but a relation in esse formali to what you must explain your self I have read so much difference indeed made as to put holiness for duties of the first Table in immediate reference to God righteousness for duties of the second Table in immediate concernment to man but thus taken they are both equally new qualities from the Spirit and have their intension and remission one as well as the other And I have read a rule given that where they are put together as in the Scriptures quoted they are to be distinguished as before but where the one is put apart it is to be understood as comprehensive of
as you have laid them down The first of your seven is If no man be called Righteous by the Law of works but he that perfectly obeyeth so as never to sin then no imperfect obeyer is called Righteous nisi aequivocè by that Lawy But the Antecedent is true Therefore so is the consequent Here I would desire that you would explain your self in what sense any Law can call any particular man Righteous The Law laies down generall Rules and makes not particular application to this or that person If you mean that no man hath the denomination of a righteous or just person upon his observation of the precepts of the Law you must except Zachary and Elizabeth and all other which in Scripture have the title of just or righteous I pray you consult Calvin on Luke 1.6 (o) Neque enim est haec definitio negligenda justos esse qui vitam suam formant ad legis praecepta Dominus quia illis peccata non imputavit sanctam illorum vitam licet imperfectam justitiae titulo dignatus est Neither is this definition saith he to be neglected that they are just that frame their lives according to the precepts of the Law and afterward adds Because the Lord doth not impute unto them sin he honours their holy life though imperfect with the title of righteousness See also Rivet on Gen. 6.9 Exercit. 5.2 * Perfectio verò inchoata per omnes partes in nobis etsi non absoluta per gradus est sincera 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 secundum totam legem obedientia sive sincerum ac serium studium obediendi Deo secundum omnia ejus praecéta Perfection begun in us in all parts though not compleat in degree is a sincere and undissembled obedience according to the whole Law or a sincere and serious endevour of obeying God according to all his Commandments God in the Covenant of Grace looks upon and accepts a sincere endeavour of ordering our conversation according to the precepts of works All the rest of the arguments carry it to a deniall of justification by the Law which is far from me to go about to assert but touch not upon denomination of righteous or righteousness upon a sincere endeavour of conformity to the Law Who knows not but that the Law curseth upon the least trangression were there not a redress in the Gospel yet men of Gospel-grace to whom sin is not imputed are denominated righteous upon their sincere though weak endevour of conformity to the Law (p) Potest homo in se justus denominari ab illâ qualitate justitiae quae est quantumvis imperfecta modo vera at non potest constitui justificatus coram Deo nisi ab illâ justitiâ quae omnes perfectionis numeros comprehendit A man may saith Davenant be denominated just (q) A man may be denominated just from that rule that will not denominate him justified in himself from such quality of righteousness which is true though it be imperfect but he cannot be constituted justified before God but from that righteousness which comprizeth all kind of perfection in it Davenant de Just habit pag. 342. * Mortui sumus legi diversâ ratione Nam legi ceremoniali ratione necessaria observationis justificationis condemnationis morali vero non ratione justitiae seu observationis sed justificationis condemnationis We are dead to the Law saith Gomarus upon a severall account To the Ceremoniall Law as to necessary observation justification and condemnation To the Moral Law not as to righteousness and observance but as to justification Gomarus in Galat. 2.19 So that the whole of these seven Syllogisms may be put to the other thirty one concerning unbaptized persons believing in Christ Jesus There is not one of the Conclusions that touch me I say not that the Law judges righteous or that men by the Law are judged righteous but that God in the Covenant of Grace cals weak conformity to the Law righteousness and men of such conformity righteous Davenants distinction of denomination of a just man and a justified man is a sufficient answer to all these arguments SEC III. The Morall Law is a perfect rule of righteousnesse IN the next place you take me up for saying I know no other Rule but the old Rule the Rule of the Morall Law that is with me a Rule a perfect Rule and the only Rule And make it your businesse to Catechize me better And thereupon you say distinguendum est And so we have a multitude of distinctions too many to write out with this Elogy upon them I think the solidity and great necessity of all these distinctions is beyond dispute But I confesse I cannot be induced to be of your mind Mr. Brs. distinctions discuss'd I think the solidity of some of them may well be disputed and the necessity of most of them as to our businesse wholy denyed I am to seek how the preceptive part of the Law of nature delivered to Moses and the preceptive part of the Law of nature now used by Christ as his own Law which is one of your distinctions do differ Whether Christ and Moses in holding out a Law of nature stand at any such distance may at least be disputed though perhaps when others see it not you may be able to conclude it I as yet neither know any detraction from or addition to the preceptive part of the Law of nature by Christ I think there was neither any abolition addition or diminution respective to the Law thus considered made by our Saviour I do not yet see reason so much as to recede from that opinion that this Law as delivered by Moses is binding to Christians If you be able to conclude the negative yet I know that as it hath been so it may be still disputed And when we are speaking of the rule of Righteousnesse or obedience which is the line and thread according to which our actions should be squared under which you justly comprehend the prohibition as proeceptum de non agendis I see no necessity of talking either of a rule of reward or punishment or a rule of the condition of the reward or punishment which is another of your distinctions These three last Rules if they be true Rules may here as to this businesse be very well over-ruled They are not at all essentiall to a Law as comming neither within the direction for duty nor obligation to duty but only serve ad bene esse to quicken our obedience and to withold from transgression As to the Promise God might have commanded us to work and never have told us of any pay and The Punishment is upon supposall of fayling in duty And if you thus bring them in as accessary parts of the Law yet I see no imaginable reason to speak of them as Rules unlesse it be such as God hath proposed to himself in his way of distributive Justice They
sufficient Rule for us now for believing in Jesus Christ no nor the same Law of nature as still in force under Christ For a generall command say you of believing all that God revealeth is not the only Rule of our faith but the particular revelation and precept are part c. To this I say 1. As before I think I may answer out of your own mouth where you say Neglect of Sacraments is a breach of the second Commandement and unbelief is a breach of the first If we break the Commandement in unbelief then the Commandement binds us to believe 2. Much of that which I have spoke by way of answer to your former may be applyed to this likewise 3. I have already spoke to this that faith is a duty of the Moral Law Treat of the Covenant Chap. 3. pag. 18 19. To which I refer the Reader 4. If Adam had no command for faith then he was not in any capacity to believe and by his fall lost not power of believing And consequently it will not stand with the Justice of God to exact it at our hands having never had power for the performance of it 5. I say there was power in Adam for that faith that justified but not to act for justification Adam had that habit and the Law calls for it from all that are under the Command of it But the Gospel discovers the object by which a sinner through faith is Justified 3. The same answer may serve to your third objection 3. Exception which indeed is the same with the former only a great deal of flourishing is bestowed in discourse of the understanding and will paralleling them with the Prefaces grounds and occasions of Laws And at last bringing all to the Articles of the Creed to which enough allready is spoken 4. You say But what if all this had been left out 4. Exception and you had proved the Morall Law the only Rule of duty doth it follow theâ—efore that it is the only Rule Answ I take righteousnesse to be matter of duty and then the only Râ—le of duty is the only Rule of righteousnesse You say further Sure it is not the only Rule of rewarding And I say Rewarding is none of our work but Gods and I look for a Rule of that work which is ours and that we are to make our business I confess an imperfection in it to give life but assert a perfection as thâ— Rule of our lives It justifies no man but it orders and regulates every justified man 5. You say The same I may say of the Rule of Punishment 5 Exception To which I give the same answer It is not our work bu Gods either to reward or punish And here you speak of a part of the penalty of the new Law And I know no penalty properly distinct from the penalty of the old You were wont to compare it to an Act of Oblivion and Acts of Oblivion are not wont to have their penalties You instance in that of the Parable None of them that were bidden shall tast of the supper when thâ— sin for which they there suffer is a breach of a Morall Command 6. You say The principall thing that I intend is 6. Exception that the Morall Law is not the only Rule what shall be the condition of Life or Death and therefore not the only Rule according to which we muâ—t now be denominated and hereafter sentenced Just or Vnjust To this I have already given a sufficient answer and if I had not you answer fully for me Aphor. p. 144 Thes 28. Where you say The precepts of the Covenant as meer precepts must be distinguished from the same precepts considered as conditions upon performance of which we must live or die for non-performance And I speak of them as meer precepts and so they are our Rule of righteousness and not as they are conditions either of the Covenant of works or grace And a man may be denominated righteous by the Laws Rule when he cannot stand before the sentence of it as a Covenant of which we have heard sufficient After a long discourse against all possibilitie of Justification by the Law of works as though I were therein your adversarie or that the Antinomian fancy were above all answer that a man cannot make the Law his Rule but he makes it withall his Justification you go about to prevent an objection and say If you should say this is the Covenant and not the Law you then tell me that you will reply 1. Then the Law is not the only Rule To which I say When my work is to make it good that the Law is our only Rule I marvaile that you will so much as imagine that I will say that which makes it not the only Rule But perhaps you think I do not see how it cannot follow as indeed I do not neither can I see any colour for it 2. You reply It is the same thing in severall respects that we call a Law and a Covenant except you mean it of our Covenant-act to God of which we speak not who knowes not that praemiare and punire are Acts of a Law And that an Act of Obliviom or generall pardon on certain terms is a Law and that the promise is the principall part of the Law of Grace To which I say that praemiare and punire are not essentiall in a Law Some have power of command so that their words in just things is to be a Law where most deny any power of punishment as an Husband over the Wife Some Parents have Authority to command Children Children remaining under the obligation of the fifth Commandment as long as the relation of a Child continueth when they have neither power to reward or punish Jacob took himself to be in power to command Joseph among the rest of his Sons as appears in the charge that he gives concerning his buriall Gen. 47.29 30. and Chap. 49.29 So compared and yet he was not in power either to reward or punish him And though they be acts of a law where he that gives the Law is in power Yet they are no parts of a Rule nor any directiory of life to him to whom they are proposed I know that an Act of Oblivion or generall pardon may be called a Law as many other things are catachresticè and abusivè but that it should be a Law properly so called I know not The Romanes defined a Law whilst that a Democratie was in force among them to be Generale jussum populi aut plebis rogante magistratu Afterwards when the State was changed and the Legislative power was in other hands they defined it to be Jussum Regis aut Imperatoris And Tullye's definition of a Law is that it is Ratio summa insita in natura quae recta suadet prohibetque contraria Here jussio suasio and prohibitio are express'd which are not found in Acts of Oblivion That every man who
but no man can by it be denominated righteous nisi aequivocè but he that perfectly obeyeth in degree Your concession I accept but wonder at your assertion Is not doing required in and by the Law and did John equivocate when he said He that doth righteousness is Righteous 1 John 3.7 And do you equivocate also when you put it in your title page of this piece against me Is that an equivocal honour that is given to Zachary and Elizabeth to Abel Lot Joseph Simeon and divers others in Scriptures The men of Sodom were denominated wicked upon their breach of Gods Law being sinners exceedingly And Lot is denominated Righteous upon his observation of it I said in my Treatise A perfection of sufficiency to attain ths end I willingly grant God condescending through rich grace to crown our weak obedience In this sense our imperfection hath its perfectness otherwise I must say that our inherent Righteousness is an imperfect Righteousness is an imperfect conformity to the Rule of Righteousness Here you are displeased with the ambiguity as you say of the word otherwise and tell me of a natural perfection or imperfection of which actions are capable without relation to the Rule which you confess is nothing to this business And then you adde Many a School Divine hath written Gibieuf at large that our actions are specified à fine and denominated good or evill and so perfect or imperfect à fine more especially à fine then à lege But this requires more sbutilty and acurateness for the discission then you or I in these loose disputes do shew our selves guilty of Answ If there be no more subtlety acurateness in these many School-men Gibieuf then that which you please to quote out of them and particularly out of him there is no despair but either you or I might soon render our selves guilty of as much subtlety and acurateness as they And indeed guilty is the most proper term I think that can be given to discourses of this nature Actions say they as you quote them are denominated good or evill and so perfect or imperfect à fine rather then à lege Though the Law that commands an action and the end at which the action aimes or ought to aime stand in a Diametrical opposition and the end is wholly without the cognizance of the Law Did not those Jewes in the time of the captivity transgress the Law of God when they fasted and mourned did not fast and mourn at all unto God Zach. 7.5 And did not the Pharisees break the Law when they did their almes to be seen of men and pray'd in Synagogues and Streets upon that account also that men should observe them The Law had it been heeded would have led them hgther as we may see in our Savious words Mat. 22.37 According to this doctrine a good meaning or intention will salve the worst action Saul had then performed the Commandment of the Lord as he said to Samuel when he spared the best of the Sheep and Oxen for sacrifice to the Lord God that had been a pious end if no command had prohibited it But to give Gibieuf his due I have examined his dispute De fine and there cannot find that he makes any such comparison or puts such opposition nor that he so much as mentions the Law when he speaks so much De fine as you mention I referred to Dr. Davenant De Justit habit 349. disputing against Justification by inherent Righteousness upon the account of the imperfection of it To this is replyyd Do not you observe that I affirm that which you call inherent Righteousness to he imperfect as well as Bp. Davenant Answ Why is it then that you laid so high a charge of ignorance on learned Divines calling it imperfect when you well know that they had not any such notion of a Metaphysical entity in their heads but maintained what they spake as indeed Reverend Davenant do's with that which you call a simple objection that as we are called holy by an imperfect holiness so we are called Righteous by an imperfect Righteousness They never refer their Righteousness to the Law as a Covenant You can find no way to charge them and acquit him As to this They are as learned as he and he as ignorant as they You adde Yea I say more that in reference to the Law of works our works are no true Righteousness at all Answ If you mean by the Law of works not a Rule but a Covenant I say with you That they are no such righteousnesse as will obtain the grace or avoid the penalty of it yet this reference to this Covenant cannot make imperfect righteousness simpliciter no righteousness though secundum quid or versus hoc it is such If I am bound in strict justice to pay the sum of a thousand pound and bring an hundred instead of it this is money though it is no full pay or totall discharge You say further He that saith they are no Righteousness saith as little for them as he that saith they are an imperfect Righteousness Answ The question is not who speaks more or less against this righteousness but who speaks most truth And Righteousness being as Rollock on Ephes 4.24 observes A vertue in man whereby he wils and do's those things which agree with the Law of God and as Gomarus on Mat. 3.15 defines it An obedience due to God and still joyn'd with holinesse it cannot be nothing and yet it can be no better then imperfect You say You suppose that I know that Bp. Davenant doth not onely say as much as you for the interest of works in justification but also speaks in the very same notions as you do referring me where I may find it in Davenant Answ 1. The interest of works in justification is not to our present question of the perfection or imperfection of righteousness therefore whether he be therein for you or against you it is not to this question much materiall Yet seeing you speak so confidently here to me and more fully else where that you have this Reverend Author in that point firm on your part insomuch that having qâ—oted a Century of witnesses that are as you say for you you adde If the reader would know which of these speak most my own thoughts I answer most of them if not all in a great part but Davenant most fully Confess pag. 457. It will be worth our pains to make some further enquiry And at the fi st sight the thing doubtless will appear to all your Readers that have read as Davenant as wonderfully strange If he speak your thoughts so fully how comes it to pass that you have so many adversaries as you complain of when he for ought I know amongst Protestant writers hath none at all If you speak both the same thing your Adversaries doubtlesse would be his And his work being so much more large then yours he would have found so
writers of note much differing one from the other in one particular subject I think I should first mention Bp. Davenant and Mr. Richard Br. in the point of justification Your Reader may well judge that he is amongst those that you say Confes pag. 459. you may safely and boldly advise all those that love the everlasting happiness of their souls that they take heed of Where you warn all such that they take heed of their doctrine who make the meer receiving of that is affiance in the righteousness of Christ to be the sole condition of their first justification excluding Repentance and the reception of Christ as a Teacher and King and Head and Husband from being any condition of it yea and will have no other condition of our justification at judgement who call that affiance only by the name of justifying faith and all other acts by the name of works And as to that which you here assert that he speaks as much as you for the interest of works in justification you may conceit it but those that have perused him will hardly be induced to assent to it Why is it then that he admits no other condition in the Covenant then faith only (m) In hoc foedere ad obtinendam reconciliationem justificationem atque aeternam vitam non alia requiritur conditio quà m verae vivae fidei In this Covenant saith he cap. 30. de Justit act pag. 396 there is no other condition then that of true faith required to obtain Reconciliation Justification and life eternall And having quoted Rom. 3.16 Rom. 4.5 Gal. 3.8 he adds Justification therefore and right to life eternall is suspended upon condition of faith alone But good works are also required of justified men not to constitute a state of justification or demerit life eternall but to yield obedience and testifie thankfulness towards God who justified us freely and hath markt out that way for their walk whom he hath designed for the kingdome of glory How is it (n) Justificatio igitur jus ad aeternam vitam ex conditione solius fidei suspenditur Sed ab hominibus jam justificatis opera etiam bona exiguntur non ad constituendum statum justificationis aut promerendam vitam aeternam sed ad exhibendam obedientiam testificandum gratitudinem erga Deum qui nos gratuito justificavit atque ad ambulandum in illâ viâ quam ad regnum gloriae designatis ipse delineavit then Haec gratia sc inhaerens ut saepe dictum est est appendix five consequens gratuitae justificationis that again and again as he says himself hath said that it is but an Appendix or consequence of Justification pag. 317 If he thus interest works in Justification how he will be reconciled to himself where in the passage before quoted he says that They that affirme that man is Justified by other vertues or works do not leave the whole glory of Mans salvation in Justification alone to God but ascribe some part to themselves And in all that you quote out of him Pag. 319 c. to Pag. 326. how little is there that looks this way You think you have just cause to charge contradictions upon the Reverend Author of the first and second part of Justification Because having delivered that very doctrine which here is held forth out of Davenant concerning the imputation of Christs active obedience in which they scarce differ in termes yet afterwards adds Though holy works do not justifie yet by them a man is continued in a state and condition of Justification So that did not the Covenant of grace interpose grosse and wicked waies would cut off our Justification and put us in a state of condemnation If you can reconcile Davenant to Davenant which I doubt not may be done this Author may then be as easily reconciled to himself Passages of this kind only you quote out of Davenant which are as much opposite to himself as to the Author now mentioned SECT VI. Vnbelief and Impenitence in professed Christians are violations of the Covenant of Grace THe next you enter upon is a Query How far unbelief and impenitence in professed Christians are violations of the new Covenant Opposing your self against that Position of mine Chap. 33. Pag. 245. The men in impenitency and unbelief that lie in sin and live in the neglect of the Sacrifice of the blood of Christ live in a continuall breach of Covenant Here you confesse that I cite no words of yours and therefore you are uncertain whether it is intended against you To which I say that it is intended against all that deny what in the Position is asserted which you seem to do Aphor. Thes 34. Pag. 163 Where you say That the Covenant of grace is not properly said be violated or its conditions broken except they be finally broken But before I enter upon the thing it self Men in finall unbelief and impenitency in Covenant with God a give me leave to assume thus much out of your own mouth That men in finall unbelief and impenitency are in Covenant with God This is clear They that break Covenant and render themselves properly guilty of the violation of if are in Covenant The breach of promise presupposes making of a promise and bâ—each of Covenant presupposes entrance into Covenant Jer. 34.18 The Lord threatneth those that trasgressed his Covenant and had not performed the words of Covenant And those that thus transgressed Covenant did likewise as wee see there enter into Covenant But these as you affirm break Covenant and render themselves properly guilty of violation of the conditions of it Therefore it follows that they are in Covenant And as the Covenant is that they transgresse such the Covenant is that they enter They do not enter one Covenant and transgresse another They transgresse a reall and not equivocall halfe-erring Covenant It is therefore a reall and not an equivocall halfe-erring Covenant that they enter And as this clearly follows from hence so that from you prosition that immediatly goes before it That Christs passive obedience and merit was only to satisfie for the violation of the Covenant of works but no at all for the violation of the Covenant of grace it clearly follows Universall Redemption overthown That there is no universall Redemption by Christs Death or satisfaction If Christ died not for satisfaction of their sin that stand guilty of the breach of the Covenant of grace then he died not for the sins of all This is clear But according to you he died not to make satisfaction for their sin that thus stand guilty Therefore he died not for the sins of all Yea it will follow that he dyed for the lesser part only of those that make profession of his name Seeing the greater part die in impenitency and unbelief Yea it will follow that he dyed for the Elect only For Faith and repentance are proper to the Elect All others
parties in Covenant and the engagement of either party Gods engagement is to be to Abraham Almighty and Al-sufficient for protection for provision so that he need not look else-where to compass good or keep off evill Abrahams Engagement is to walk before God and to be perfect or as it is in the Margent reading upright sincere which walking saith Ainsworth comprehendeth both true faith Heb. 11.5 6. and carefull obedience to God's Commandments That faith is called for in this perfection see 2 Chron. 16.8 9. To rely alone upon God in one verse is to be perfect in the other That this perfection of service of obedience is no other then sincerity all interpreters that I have seen acknowledge See Peter Martyr Vaetablus Paraeus Calvin on the place God Covenants for obedience saith Calvin from his servant and the integrity which is here mentioned is opposed to hypocrisie Rivet closeth with Calvin and in many words expresseth himself that this perfection means nothing else but integrity or sincerity otherwise saith he they that walk and are yet in the way do not attain to a perfection properly so called So that according to him the Covenant requires the same that through grace the Saints here attain and that is a perfection not property so called Dr. Preston on the words is very large to this purpose As for that which you produce as an opinion of an acquaintance friend of mine of extraordinary learning and judgement leaving me to guess whom you mean as indeed I do but with possibility of mistake That the Morall Law is the matter of the new Covenant I cannot well understand at least as you express it How far the word matter may reach I know not I believe that it is their Rule in the New Covenant but otherwise held out then it was in the Covenant of works as I have before expressed my self As a Law it loses nothing of it's ancient strictness for it is ever unchangeably the same the rule of our duty and not of our strength onely the terms of the Covenant of Grace are not for exact observation but sincere endeavour So that the least failing is a sin against the Law but not a breach of Covenant which for ought I discern is the sense that you give As for that which in the second place you urge from him whom you stile Learned Judicious and much Honoured Brother and my friend and acquaintance making these two but one Law quo ad formam I command thee fal'n man perfect obedience and oblige thee to punishment for every sin yet not remedilesly but so as that if thou Believe and Repent this obligation shall be dissolved thou saved else not I should rather take them disjunctim then conjunctim but I know not whether there be any considerable difference I so far subscribe that all that perish by the sentence of the Law to whom the Covenant was ever tendered are by neglect of Covenant left in a remediless condition The Law damns the unbeliever and impenitent unbelief holds him that he is not by the Covenant of Grace delivered from the Law 's sentence When you come to bring all home by application to me with your censure for laying an heavy charge upon them that I oppose and apologizing on their part I do not well know how to understand your words that so I might see my own error You say It is most likely that those Divines that affirm that the Covenant of Grace doth require perfect obedience and accepts sincere do take that Covenant in this last and largest sense and as containing the Moral Law as part of the matter Before you spake of the Moral Law as the matter of the Covenant and now you speak of it as part of the matter And so understood you say No doubt it is true if I understand it of perfection for the future And then doubtless it is an error for I understand perfection for the present And what the Law of God or Covenant do's require it doth in present as I think require And what gave you occasion to suspect otherwise I cannot imagin When you have taken upon you their defence or at least their excuse that hold against you you come to answer my arguments that hold with you I said This opinion Arguments that the Covenant of grace requires onely sincerity vindicated That the Covenant requires perfection establishes the former opinion opposed by Protestants and but now refuted as to the obedience and the degree of it called for in-covenant You answer If you interpret the Papists as meaning that the Law requires true perfection but accepts of sincere then if it be spoken of the Law of works or nature it is false and not the same with theirs whom you oppose Answ I marvail that you will put the case if I do when I tell you expresly that I do not I limit the parallel to the obedience and degree called for in Covenant which these Reverend Divines make to be the same as those that I had spoken to but differ respective to acceptation and so their mistake if it be one is infinitely below the Popish error in the Councill of Trent held forth which I did oppose You further say If you take them as no doubt you do as meaning it of the Law of Christ as the Trent Council express themselves then no doubt but they take the Law of Christ in the same extended sense as was before expressed and then they differ from us but in the fore-mentioned notion Answ I do not understand your distinction between the Law of nature and the Law of Christ as I have before largely told you and given in my reasons You speak somewhat in that which follows that the Papists do not indeed take the Covenant or Law it self to command true perfection but that which they call perfection which is no other then the grace of Sanctification as I expressed out of some of the chief of the writers But it is true perfection that those mean whom I now write against And so you conclude that you see not the least ground for my first charge But you might observe what I further say in words more at large then is here fit to he repeated purposely to prevent this objection that they look upon this which we say is no more then Sanctification as full Perfection and such that answers to the Law in the sense in which it was given Our character of grace inherent is their interpretation of the Law and so they raise up men in a conceit that they answer the Law when they live in a continual breach of it 2. I said If this opinion stand then God accepts of Covenant-breakers of those that deal falsly in it whereas Scripture chargeth it upon the wicked upon those of whom God complains as rebellious Deut. 29.25 Jos 7.15 Jer. 11.10 and 22.8 9. c. You answer This charge proceedeth meerely from the confounding of the duty as such
and the condition as such And you proceed ex non concessis to charge me with this confusion taking it for granted in the words that follow that a Covenant which is also a Law as well as a Covenant may by the preceptive part constitute much more duty then shall be made the condition of the promises In which I conceive there is a double mistake 1. That a Covenant properly so called of which we speak can be a Law in the proper acceptation For a covenant is of 2. parties either of both concurring to the constitutioÌ„ of it if it be a Law both parties are as well Law-givers as Covenant-makers A Superiour may impose a condition as by a Law but that is but one part of a Covenant 2. That there is any duty in a Covenant that is not also of the Condition of it I am sure in the Covenant of Grace there is nothing duty which is not a condition Faith and Repentance are conditions and if you can tell me of any thing else which is matter of duty taking Repentance in its due latitude viz. to cease to do evill and learne to do well it will be a piece of a new Catechisme with me These you grant are conditions and this the all of a Christians duty Whereas you say If you will speak so largely as to say All who break the preceptive part of the Covenant are Covenant-breakers then no doubt God accepteth of many such and none but such for Whether we say say you that the New Law commandeth perfect obedience or not yet except you take it exceeding restrainedly it must be acknowledged that the precept is of larger extent then the condition having appointed some duties which it hath not made sine qua non to salvation Answ I think God accepts of none that break the preceptive part of the Covenant in the sense as the preceptive part of it qua Covenant is to bâ— understood as interpreters usually give as the meaning of it God accepts that I know none to speak de adultis but those that walk before him and are sincere He neither accepts of profanenesse nor men of hypocriticall dissimulation I know sincerity hath its latitude as perfection strictly taken hath not An upright heart in temptations hath many a great shock but if you can say that the duty of the Covenant is so laid aside that the heart is not right in the sight of God as Peter of Simon Magus which must be said if the precept of sincerity and uprighthnesse be broke then I do not know that there is any acceptance Simon Magus must be in another frame before the thoughts of his heart be forgiven him And this I am confident is the thoughts of my learned friend whom you mention if I do not as I think I do not mistake the man And I have my reason for this confident opinion And as I wonder at your distinction betwixt the duty and condition of a Covenant so I no lesse marvail at your Simile You tell me If I send my Child a mile of an errand and say I charge you play not by the way but make hast and do not go in the dirt c. and if you come back by such an houre I will give you such a reward if not you shall be whipt He that plaies by the way dirties himself yet comes back by the houre appointed doth break the preceptive part but not the condition Your distinction is between the preceptive part and the condition in a Covenant and here you talke of a precept that is no part of the Covenant but if I put all within the Covenant and say Come again within an houre not playing or dirtying your self if he either out stay his houre or play or run in the dirt he forfeites his reward and is at mercy for a whipping according to Covenant You speak afterward of a mans breach of some particular Covenant which a man may do in a temptation and yet as to the Covenant of grace be sincere 3. I said Then it will follow that as none can say They have so answered the command of the Law that they have never failed So neither can they with the Church make appeale to God that they have not dealt fasly in the Covenant Psal 44 17. Every sin according to this opinion being a breach of it and a dealing fasly in it You reply This charge is as unjust as the former I confesse it and you giving no further reason I shall sit down with the former answer 4. I said Then the great promise of mercy from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him and his righteousnesse unto Childrens Children to such as keep his Covenant and to those that remember his Commands to do them Psal 103.17 18. only appertaines to those that keep the Law that they sin not at all against it You answer It follows not If they sincerely keep the Law they fulfill the conditions of the Covenant though not the precept And I say the precept of the Covenant goes no higher then sincerity And I had thought you had fully concurred with me That Christ say you as the Mediator of the new Covenant should command us not only sincere but perfect obedience to the moral law so hath made it a proper part of his Gospel not only as a directory and instruction but also as a command I am not yet convinced Adding My reason is because I know not to what end Christ should command us that obedience which he never doth enable any man in this life to performe Aphor. 157 158. How these can be reconciled I know not I think none is inabled through grace to be more then sincere and then the precept of the Covenant according to you requires no more You further say They keep the precept in an improper but usuall sense as keeping is taken for such a lesse degree of breaking as on Gospel grounds is accepted Answ They keep it if they be sincere in the sense as Christ the Mediator of the Covenant gave it in as proper a sense as they keep the conditions 5. I said Then our Baptism-vow is never to sin against God and as often as we renew our Covenant we do not only humble our selves that we have sinned but we afresh bind our selves never more to commit the least infirmity To this you answer We do not promise in Baptism to do all that the precept of the Covenant requireth but all that is made the condition of life and to endeavour the rest I desire to know where you find this distinction as applied to our Baptism-vow You say pag. 79. of this Apology that Baptized ones are to renounce the Flesh the World and the Devill and that this abrenunciation hath been in the Church ever since the Apostles daies qâ—oting Tertullian Cyprian and all antiquity for it I would know whether Tertullian Cyprian or any other eminent in ancient times help'd it out
with your distinction that we engage to renounce them not as duty but as a condition to obtaine Salvation This privative part of duty holding out the terminus à quo in our Christian motion implyes a positive work which also was expressed in our English Leiturgie constantly to believe Gods holy word and obediently keep his commands and confirmed by the Apostle to be our duty Ro. 6.4 Buried with him by Baptism into death that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father even so we also should walk in newnesse of liâ—e This we vow and I desire to know what more in any Gospel-precept is required 6. I said then the distinction between those that enter Covenant and break it as Jer. 31.32 33. and those that have the Law written in their hearts and put into their inward parts to observe it fallâ— all standing equally guilty of the breach of it no help of grace being of power to enable to keep Covenant To this you answer When sincere obedience The precept and the condition in the Covenant of Grace are one and perfect obedience are all one and when the precept and the condition of the Covenant are proved to be of equall extent then there will be ground for the charging of this consequence I marvail how the first part of the answer came into your thoughts That Text of Jeremiah speaks to sincerity and not to perfection For the second sincerity is the precept and sinceâ—ity is the condition sincerity is one and the same and therefore precept and condision are one and the same That which we are to renounce and that to which we engage is our condition But that which we renounce and that to which we engage is thâ— Gospel or Covenant-precept The precept and condition are therefore the same Faith and new obedience are the precept Faith and new obedience are the condition The precept and condition are therefore one and the same So that your distinction falling as I doubt not but it do's all my arguments after the first to the last eo nomine stand You go about to evade them all with this one distinction which I leave to the judicious Reader to determine whether it be not without a difference But before I undertake your next I have to thank you for that which you have transcribed out of Robert Baronius pag. 401. of your Confession Treating in an Appendix of the possibility of fulfilling the Law of God considered according to Gospel lenity you tell us what his second assertion is pag. 122. which I desire the Reader to peruse either in your book or in the Author himself Where he may see 1. That the Gospel is below the Law as to the degree that it requireth As to the one there is a possibility of fulfilling according to him and not so to the other 2. That the obligation of the Law yet remains so that all failings are transgressions 3. That it stands as a Rule for us to affect and with our best strength to endeavour after 4. That the Gospel requires a certain measure of obedience on pain of eternal damnation This doubtless is that which is the condition of it 5. That this obedience thus required is necessarily to be as high as grace enables to reach In which we see in the first place their distinction opposed that say That the Gospel requires perfection and accepts sincerity The Gospel according to him requires no more then it accepts and for which grace enables And in the next place your distinction of duty and condition is by him utterly overthrown according to him all comes within the condition which is matter of duty My last argument was Then it follows that sincerity is never called for as a duty or required as a grace but only dispens'd with as a failing and indulged as a want It is not so much a Christian's honour or Character as his blemish rather his defect then praise But we find the contrary in Noah Job c. To this you reply I will not say it is past the wit of man to find the ground of this charge i. e. to see how this should follow but I dare say it is past my wit If it had been said The Covenant commandeth perfection and not sincerity or the Covenant accepteth sincerity but not commandeth it there would have been some reason for this charge But do you think that sincerity is no part of perfection c Answ My wit is so low that I know not where the cloud lies I do not take sincerity to be properly a part of perfection but a degree towards it as Calor ad unum is a degree towards rather then a part of Calor ad octo So the lower degâ—ee of heat would remain when a higher is introduc'd and not be swallowed up in it And if the command looks no lower then perfection in degree the imperfect degree is not directly commanded though according to these it is in dulged It is said Matth. 12.20 that Christ will not break the bruised Reed nor quench the smoaking Flax. Is that feeble strength and remiss heat there look'd upon as a duty or rather is it not look'd upon as a defect or want Is it not Christ's indulgence rather then the obedience of his command that is there noted or pointed out My answer to the single argument so far as I have read or heard against that which I here delivered follows But seeing that your reply so far as I can judge is rather with me then against me as to the Position it self and your endeavour rather to excuse then defend those of the contrary opinion which very well pleaseth me for I wish that more were said for their honour so that the truth do not suffer I am well content to pass it by having a greater desire to defend you where you speak for truth then my self where not truth but my reputation is impugned And shall make it my business to look into that which Mr. Crandon hath against you in it Concerning the second that the Gospel doth require but sincere Mr. Crandons arguments answered not perfect obedience which is both your assertion and mine he saith What shall we think of those Texts in the new Testament which require us to be perfect 2 Cor. 13.11 Jam. 1.4 Yea perfect as God is perfect Matt. 5.48 reproving weakness and infirmity and commanding a going on to perfection Answ We are to think of them as Protestant Divines ordinarily do in their commenting upon them We deny saith Rivet that the perfection of which Scripture speaks either when it commands us to be perfect or gives testimony of perfection or integrity to some consists in a freedome from sin Exercit. 52. in Genes pag. 267. The Text quoted out of James serves well to explain the rest Let patience have her perfect work that ye may be perfect and entire wanting nothing whence we may argue 1. That perfection
which Christians may attain is the perfection that the Apostle calls unto This is plain in the Text he calls for perfection that we may perfect But Christians can reach no further a degree in perfection then sincerity Therefore the Apostle calls onely to sincerity 2. That is the Apostles meaning where he speaks of perfection that himself gives in as his meaning This is cleer he is the best interpreter of himself But he expresses himself by perfect there to mean entire or lacking nothing A perfection of entireness or integrality then he means a perfection of parts and not of degrees For that Text of Paul 2 Cor. 13.11 Finally brethren farewell be perfect c. let us compare with it that which he testifies of some in Corinth 1 Cor. 2.6 Howbeit we speak wisdome among them that are perfect that is those that have a right and more full understanding of Gospel mysteries put in opposition to the weakness of novices which perfection is according to the Apostle the way to unity of judgment As for the Text Matth. 5.48 Be ye therefore perfect as your Father which is in heaven is perfect If it be streined to the highest it calls for a divine increated perfection Mr. Crandon then must yield that there is a sicut similitudinis non aequalitatis in that place And if the context be consulted we shall find that it is opposed to that half-hypocriticall righteousness which was found in Scribes and Pharisees which all must exceed that enter into the Kingdome of heaven In Heb. 6.1 a novice-like imperfection in knowledge is reproved and a further growth towards perfection is called for Mr. Crandon goes on If perfection were not the duty of a Christian and unperfectness and infirmity his sin why doth the Apostle groan and grieve under the remainder of his natural infirmities and press on to perfection Rom. 7.14 to the 24. Phil. 3.12 14 The conclusion here is granted the one is a duty the other is a sin and because of failing in the one and the burden of the other the Apostle groans Foreseeing that this would be yeelded him he addes by way of objection Or is such unperfectness a sin onely in reference to the rule of the Law and not the Rule of the Gospel or that the Law doth but the Gospel doth not call for perfection Answ There is not one rule of the Law as I have demonstrated at large and another of the Gospel seeing the Gospel establishes the Law onely the gospel-Gospel-Covenant calls for those sincere desires which grace works to conform in its measure to the Rule of the Law He addes This is both contrary to the Scriptures alleaged and doth withall make the Gospel to allow imperfections But both of these have been already answer'd What he further addes answers it self save onely his great pains to pump out your meaning But I shall leave you to be your own interpreter and forbear in this to interpose between you Thus I have passed through Grace assisting those things wherein our judgements differ as also those in which we agree in one Some other things there are which both of us problematically enquire into which Sect. 56 57 58. You treat of under this title Of the life promised and death threatned to Adam in the first Law In which neither you nor I as I think see any important difference and in them I must confess that you deal with much candour though there be some things in them to which I might speak my differing thoughts yet I shall forbear further to be the Readers trouble and leave all to enjoy their own judgement SECT IX The conclusion of the whole with an enquiry into the judgement of Antiquity about severall things in reference to justification AS you have saluted me in a Prologue so you are pleased in your close in a particular addresse to take your leave In which among other things you wish me not to suppose that you judge of all the rest of my booke as you do of this that you have replyed to Telling me tha you value the Wheat while you help to weed out the tares I am glad that I have your approbation in any thing and I hope you will not be offended that I mind you that in this work of weeding out Tares you stand in danger to weed out the Wheate also It is said by some that the tares in those parts carried so near resemblance with the Wheat that they could hardly be distinguished I am sure that if I had judged the least nature of a Tare to have been in any of that which you have gon about to weed out it never had been sown there and I did believe that I was rather weeding then sowing Tares when I was upon the work you examine I dare not brand all that seed with the name of Tareâ— which is not pure Wheat In a Corn field there are seeds of a middle nature Not pure Corn nor yet such that like Tares are dangerously prejudiciall to overtop and destroy the Corn whether they be Tares or Wheat or other seed of a middle nraure we must both leave to the judgement of the Mastâ—r of the harvest You speak of a Pardon in the next place for your onfident concluding me in an error and your self in the truth In which I have all reason if that must passe as a fault needing Pardon to be facile seeing I need it from you as well as you from me Though I am not in expectation of like credence as you your name with some being enough to put in ballance against all the Arguments that another hand can produce yet I believe that I am as far above scruples As I have not heard that your elaborate replies to those learned friends that in private have given in their animadversions have given them such satisfaction as to change their judgements so I confesse it fares with me And when either of us stand this way opinionated no other course can be taken then that which you mention either to leave the other and both of us all others to judge by the evidence of arguments on both sides with what part the truth rests I have made it my businesse in most poynts of difference to enlarge my self further with arguments then before I judged to be needfull I doubt not but they will undergo different censures I shall not much matter what on the suddaine will be voyced but shall rather weigh if God prolong life what after a few years will be more generally thought Neither shall I in the meane time assume the boldnesse to charge you with any error you have herein forestalled me in the preface of your Confession in your enumeration of those qualifications which you expect in any that shall attempt it 1. That he be a man of a stronger judgement and of a more discerning head and not one of those that Nazianz. describes Orat. 1. and after Pag. 453. think themselves wise enough to be
Page 111 Over much rigour in admission to Baptisme hinders the progress of the Gospell Page 112 The admission of some to Baptisme in prudence may be delayed Page 113 Papists expect not grace for but a convenient disposition to grace in the person to be Baptized Page 111 The restraint of right to Baptisme a breach in the Church of Christ Page 181 Baptisme a leading Church-privilege Page 161 In what sense Baptisme works what it figures Page 383 Babtisme engages to the first work of regeneration Page 369 The Bloud and Spirit of Christ are not alwayes applyed in it Page 381 Dangers attending the restraint of Baptisme to the regenerate Page 551 Baptized A man unbaptized is bound to believe in Jesus Christ for justification Page 144 The Author vindicated from a supposed assertion of the contrary ibid. Titles given by the Apostle to Baptized persons do not argue they were alwayes answered with inherent grace Page 149 Vpon what grounds Simon Magus was Baptized Page 160 c. Believers A title in Scripture not proper to the justifyed Believing What ordinarily meant by believing in the History of the Acts. Page 177 The distinction of believing Christ and believing in Christ groundless ibid. Bloud Faith in the bloud of Christ onely justifies Page 766 This assertion quit from danger Page 582 Bloud and Spirit may be distinguished but must not be divided Page 367 C. Call AN outward call asserted Page 169 Calvin Vindicated Page 118. 550 Catholick And universall in Authors use of them distinguished Page 155 Chemnitins His testimony for the instrumentality of the word and faith in justification Page 490 See Antiquity Christ The Covenant of works was without reference to Christ as Mediator Page 10 Whether the Covenant of works be made null or repealed by Christ Page 19 Faith in his bloud onely justifies Page 566 Faith hath respect to whole Christ to every part and piece of his Mediatorship Page 562 Interest in him interests us in all other privileges Page 458 Scripture speaks of receiving Christ and not of the Species of Christ onely Page 459 The healing of our nature and the removall of our guilt is his work Page 366 Faiths instrumentality in receiviug Christ being granted it 's instrumentality in justification cannot be denyed Page 441 Communication of titles between Christ and his Church Page 448. 449 Christians Vnregenerates are reall and not equivocall members of visible Churches Page 153 Humane authority vouched for it ibid. c. Christian a title in Scripture not proper to the justified Page 149 Church-Membership What gives right to it Page 201 102 Circumcision How Infants were saved before Circumcision Page 26 27 28 Severall propositions for clearing of the truth Page 24 Circumcision and Baptisme engaged to the first work of regeneration Page 369 The right of Circumcision implyed the propagation of corruption Page 368 Circumcision was no earnall badge Page 425 Cloud Whether two or onely one Cloud with Israel in the wilderness Page 521 No ordinary one but supernaturall Page 522 The motion of it guided by an Angell ibid. The form of it in appearance as a pillar ib. The use of it twofold As Israels guide Page 522 As Israels guard ibid. It was of the nature of a Sacrament Page 525 No standing Sacrament Page 526 Communicants The Lords Supper must be administred for their edification Page 199 Communication Of titles between Christ and his Church Page 448 Conclusions Desperate conclusions often inferred from right principles Page 579 Condition The great condition to which Baptisme engages is not a prerequisite to the essence and being of Baptisme Page 143 44 The Authors meaning cleered Page 145 In what sense faith is the condition of the promise of remission of sin Page 171 Actuall existence not necessary to the being of conditions in a Covenant Page 462 One and the same thing is not the condition of both parties in a Covenant Page 632 Confirmation Preferred by the Church of Rome before Baptisme Page 528 Perfects what Baptisme begins ibid. The matter of it Page 529 The form Page 529 The fruit Minister Ceremonies at consecration at administration Page 529 Arguments evincing it to be no Sacrament Page 530 The Apostles imposition of hands no proof of it Page 530 The ancient use of it degenerated Page 531 Consecration Respects not elements but participants Page 58 Whether the word which gives being to Sacraments be Consecratorium or Concionatorium ibid. Contradiction The Author acquit from any Page 447 Conversion The Lords Supper with the word as an Appendant to it may be serviceable towards Conversion Page 200 Arguments evincing it Page 200 201 c. Whether the Lords Supper may be stiled a Converting Ordinance Page 211 Explicatory propositions ibid. c. The Lords Supper doth not necessarily suppose a through conversion Page 217 Covenant Law and Covenant are not to be confounded Page 598 Keeping Covenant failing in Covenant and forfeiture of it to be distinguished Page 392 The Covenant falling Sacraments annexed fall with it Page 18 c. Where God denies his Covenant there the seal must not be granted Page 20 The Covenant people of God the adaequate subject of Sacraments Page 74 All relation to God in tendency to salvation is founded in the Covenant ibid. Interest in Sacraments is upon the account of the Covenant Page 75 c. God enters a Covenant with his people exactly and properly so called Page 79 The word Covenant asserted ibid. The thing it self asserted Page 80 in the essentials of it Page 80 81 in the solemnities Page 81 Arguments evincing a Covenant between God and man in its proper nature Page 82 Covenant and seal are commensurate Page 120 Covenant outward and inward This distinction examined Page 83 The Author vindicated in it Page 124 The outward Covenant is most properly a Covenant Page 83 c. To it belongs the definition of a Covenant ibid. It usually bears the name in Scripture Page 84 Men enjoy privileges of Ordinances and interest in Sacraments upon account of the outward Covenant Page 86 Scripture characters of men in Covenant Page 115 Covenant God Gods Covenant with his people not equivocall Page 80 Men of a visible profession timely and really not equivocally in Covenant with God Page 128 Covenant of works Passe between God and man in an immediate way without any reference to Christ as Mediatour Page 10 11 Whether this Covenant be made null or repealed by Christ Page 19 Covenant of Grace Righteousness of faith the great promise of it Page 414 Duty and condition in it are one and the same Page 641 643 It requires and accepts sincerity Page 637 Arguments evincing it vindicated Page 639 Mr. Cramdons Arguments against Mr. Br. herein answered Page 645 Covenant absolute Conditionall Arguments offered against an absolute Covenant Page 626 Faith and Repentance are mans conditions not Gods in the proper conditionall Covenant Page 626 Covenant Old and New Sacraments under the old and new Covenant one and the
same Page 25 Disciple D. A Title in Scripture not alwayes proper to the justified Page 149 Discipline Church-discipline asserted Page 266 c. Objections answered Page 268 Dogmaticall Faith Is a true Faith Page 176 Entitles to Baptisme Page 103 The Authors Arguments proving That a Dogmaticall Faith or a Faith short of justifying entitles to Baptisme uindicated Page 120 121 c 17. Arguments added for the proof of it Page 161 Arguments from humane authorities against a Dogmaticall Faith examined Page 147 Dogs Dogs and Swine what they mean Page 260 E. Eldership ALlegations for the power of an Eldership in admission to the Sacrament Page 252 These taken into consideration Page 253 Ruling Elders uindicated Page 270 c. Grotius his testimony concerning them Page 171 Election And the Couenant of grace not commensurate Page 124 Elect. Restriction of the Couenant to the the Elect regenerate confounds the Couenant the and conditions of it Page 134 Exceptions against it answsred Page 135 136 Restraint of Couenant to the regenerate denies any breach of Couenaut Page 138 Exception against it examined ibid c. Elements No continuall holiness in Sacramentall Elements Page 324 Their touch or abode makes not holy Page 325 Engagement Answer to Sacramentall engagements necessary to Saluation Page 387 Arguments euincing it Page 389 Sacraments without spirituall profit to those that liued in breach of Couenant Page 18 Sacraments are meer shadowes and empty signes where conscience answers not to the engagements Page 389 c. Sacraments are aggrauations of sin and hightnings of judgements when conscience answers not to Sacramentall engagements Page 390 When conscience answers not to Sacramentall engagements men subscribe to the equity of their own condemnation Page 391 When it is that conscience answers to Sacramentall engagements Page 392 Equivocall Men of a uisible profession really and not equiuocally in Couenant with God Page 128 Gods Couenant with his people no equiuocall Couenant Page 80 Scripture language not equiuocall Page 140. 150 Equivocation What it is Page 139 Errors Reformers uindicated from a charge of four supposed great errors Page 438 Protestants uindicated from four supposed great errors Page 452 Erroneous Persons in an incapacity to receive any benefit from the Lords Supper Page 236 c. Evidence Men in grace often want assuring evidence of grace Page 190 Grounds laid down Page 190 191 c Eunuch His Baptism enquired into Page 176 F. Faith THe alone grace that interests us in the righteousness of the Covenant Page 432 All forein reformers make not faith a full persuasion Page 439 c. Whether the act or habit of faith doth justifie Page 442 These phrases to be justified by faith and faith justifies are one and the same Page 444 Faiths instrumentality in justification asserted by Scriptures ibid. The unanimous consent of Protestant writers in it Page 445 c. There is somewhat of efficiency in mans faith for justification Page 447 How Christ dwels in our hearts by faith Page 450 Faith doth more then qualifie the subject to be a fit patient to be justified Page 460 More then a bare presence of faith is required to justification Page 468 In what sense the Gospell through faith is efficacious for justification Page 481 Christians must bring their faith to triall Page 492 The absolute necessity of faith ibid. Manifold benefits of it Page 494. c. The humbled soul the proper seat of faith Page 498 c. Faith hath its seat in the will as well as in the understanding Page 504 It is hold out in words in Scripture implying affiance trust c. ibid. Faith defined Page 505 Faith far under-values all earthly things respective to Christ Page 510 Faith is against all whatsoever is against Christ Page 512 It suffers no lust to divide from Christ ibid. Faith in Christ quâ Lord is not the justifying act Page 554 The distinction of fides quae and fides quâ asserted Page 565 566 Protestant writers guilty of no cheat in it ibid. Arguments evincing that faith in the bloud of Christ onely justifies Page 566. c. Faith dogmaticall See dogmaticall Faith justifying See justification Faiths instrumentality See instrument Fathers And Councils often too rigorous in their Rules respective to Church discipline Page 112 Queres put touching the authority of the Fathers in Controversies Page 653 c. Mr. Firmin His Appendix as to the latitude of Infant-Baptisme examined Page 94 c. The Authhor vindicated Page 95 96 His Appendix as to admission of men of yeers examined Page 104 c. Advertisments given to Mr. Br. touching his undertakings for him Page 180 Their disagreement Page 180 c. Food Ordinary and quickening food differenced Page 218 The word as well as the Sacrament is food ibid. Forum Dei Mr. Brs. distinction of Forum Dei and Forum Ecclesiae examined Page 141 Form A precise form of words not of the essence of Sacraments Page 59 G. Gesture NO one Gesture of necessary observation in receiving of the Sacrament Page 310 God His great goodness in condescension to mans weakness in institution of Sacraments Page 52 c. He is the Author of all Sacraments and Sacramentall rites Page 63 He is to prescribe in his own worship Page 65 He alone must distinguish his servants in relation from others Page 65 66 He onely gives efficacy to Sacraments Page 66 He onely can seale his promise Page 66 67 His great goodness and the tender care of Christ in condescension to our weakness Page 349 His compassion to us should move us to compassionate our selves Page 551 Gospell Sacraments lead us unto Christ in his Priestly Office Page 567 Grace Papists speak doubtfully of any work of inherent grace infused in Baptisme Page 377 Protestants deny any such infusion of grace in Baptisme Page 378 The Fathers acknowledge no such infusion of grace in Baptisme ibid. Common grace is reall Page 132 H. Heresie IN the Parent divests not the Child from Church-privileges Page 99 Holiness Covenant-holiness must not be confounded with inward holiness Page 148 149 The doctrine of Covenant-holiness more antient then Zuinglius Page 117 Calvin and Beza not the inventers though the promoters of it Page 118 Mr. Humphreys His Treatise of a free admission to the Lords Supper Page 247 I. NAtural Idiots uncapable of benefit by the Lords Supper Page 229 Ignorance Ignorant In Covenant Parents divests not the Child of Church-privileges Page 99 Grossely ignorant ones in an incapacity of benefit by the Lords Supper Page 230 Ignorance distinguished ibid. Image An Image less like the Pattern is an Image Page 612 Impenitence And unbelief in professed Christians are violations of the Covenant of grace Page 622 Arguments evincing it Page 624 c. Infants Of confederate Parents put no bar to their Baptisme Page 95 They are uncapable of benefit by the Lords Supper Page 226 The different practice of Antiquity ibid. Schoolemen divided about it ibid. The present practice of the Church of