Selected quad for the lemma: kingdom_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
kingdom_n	belong_v	heaven_n	infant_n	1,954	5	9.6894	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A96113	A scribe, pharisee, hypocrite; and his letters answered, separates churched, dippers sprinkled: or, A vindication of the church and universities of England, in many orthodox tenets & righteous practices. Whereunto is added a narration of a publick dipping, June 26. 1656. In a pond of much Leighes parish in Essex, with a censure thereupon. By Jeffry Watts B.D. and Rectour of Much-Leighes.	Watts, Geoffrey, d. 1663.	1657 (1657)	Wing W1154; Thomason E921_1; Thomason E921_2; ESTC R207543	280,939	342

of all the good ends effects benefits of an Ordinance they are not to be forbidden to come or to be kept back from it as being a good and valid Ordiance to such But Infants and little Children are capable of all the good ends effects and benefits of the Ordinance of Baptism Therefore Infants and little Children are not to be forbidden to come or to be kept back from it it being a good and valid Baptism and beneficial to them The first proposition is clear from the 1 Cor. 4 15. 1 Cor. 9.1 already cited to which I add Matth. 19.14 which clears it as to this particular The second proposition is not questionalbe that they are capable as having reasonable souls belonging it may be to election and so having the Spirit and Grace as before and the Letter of the Text sheweth it For theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven c. Except ye become as one of these little ones ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven To shut up this reason the sum and result is this That Infants of baptised parents are in capacity to partake of the ends effects and benefits of Baptism and of the inward Graces of the same and many of them are actually and really partakers of them as well as grown persons who are visible professors and there being in us no infallible ground of certainty but of Charity that either the one or the other have those inward Graces yet they may be accordingly baptised And the visible right to the Covenant and the many promises made to the seed of the faithfu added to their Capability of the Graces of it are as good evidences to ground a baptism of Infants as the external professions of grown men can give yea and to ground a judgement of their partaking of the invisible Graces like as the others And Experience hath and doth shew it that of those that have been baptised in their infancy our Ministry of the Word afterwards following upon our Ministry of Baptism sweetly winning upon them and drawing them to grow in Grace and to bring forth other fruits and duties of the Covenant to which they were bound by Baptism as the Jewes were by their Circumcision to be obedience of the Law Gal. 5.3 there have been as humble and meek as mortified and sanctified Christians both Men and Women as any amongst you to say no more not to say more sound in the faith sorrowful for sin zealous in love fervent in prayer religious in their houses and devout in the house of God sincere in their dealings grave in their behaviour modest in their attire exemplary in their lives mourniful in Spirit and vexed in Soul for to see the unclean conversations and the erroneous courses of others as well as you nay far better than any of you in many of these are or do Now though it be so that God sometimes doth bring good out of evil as light out of darknesse at first yet usually and ordinarily God doth it not and therefore in a visible constituted Church where he proceeds ordinarily he doth not from a false Ministery and an unlawful Baptism produce such good effects and lightful converses I do not mean your new light so full of darknesse the which let it be to the stopping of the mouths of all gainsayers with whom nothing is more rife and frequent than to revile our Ministery and Baptism as false and Antichristian evil and unlawful A word more from hence to you Parents That if you regard the above-named good ends effects and benefits and now know your Children capable of them and desire indeed they should be partakers of them bring them to Baptism a means to those ends a work to that effect an office to such a benefit So whom God destinates to an end he destinates to the means whom 〈◊〉 appoints to an effect he appoints to a work whom he designes to a benefit he designes to office What moreover and above are you not willing your Children should have the privilege to be accounted as belonging to the family and houshold of God upon earth That they should have an obligation upon them to bind them to the duties of the Covenant of God as they grow of capacity to perform them that they have a good Title afterwards to that other Seal of growth and nourishment in spiritual Graces Why then do you with-hold them from Baptism are you not desirous they should as members of the visible Church have a place in the Communion of Saints and a share in those prayers that are put up to the throne of Grace for the welfare of the Church and particularly for a blessing upon the Ordinances thereof and that they should have a Seal to plead not only in the persent day of their initiation but throughout all their life time as to the Covenant for all those good things whereof it is a Seal so to the Condition for fulfilling the good duties and so gaining the answer of a good Conscience and in which case it is said to save Why then bring them forth present them unto Baptism Be not like unto the Ostrich in Job 39 16. She is bardened against her young ones as though they were not hers her labour is in vain without fear because God hath deprived her of Wisdom neither hath he imparted to her Vnderstanding which leaveth her eggs in the earth and warmeth them in dust and forgetteth that the foot may crush them and that the wild beast may break them it needs no application but this Be not so hard hearted to your Children as to leave them in the earth and dust of their natural Generation so every foot they may be crushed your seed not onely bru●sed of the Serpent but broken but bring them out to the water and it may be the fire of Baptismal Regeneration The Apostie tels you and you are I beleve very expert in that Lesson and experienced in that matter that if any provide not for his own and specially for those of his own house and kindred he hath denyed the faith and is worse than an infidel but if you provide not for your own Flesh and Children and their Spirits not only giving them bedily provision but not giving them also such provisions as God hath made ready for their Souls you leave them as bad as infidels in a manner unbaptised denying them a means of faith and the Seal of the Covenant I say no more but what Man is there of you whom if his Son ask Bread will be give him a Stone or if he ask a Fish will be give him a Serpent as Psalm 147.9 The young Ravens cry to God for their food to be given them So your young infants methinks cry to you and in their crying and weeping seem to call to you for their Water of Baptism as their milk of the Brests to be the one the relief unto their Souls against original guilt and misery as the other against

Mothers armes and so might be lesser Children than these But the word in the original for little Children is the same in both Chapters the like also in Marke 10.13 and its acknow ledged by all that both in Mathew 19. and Marke 10. Little Children in age and stature are meant and besides such little Children in age and stature were fittest to be examples of Humility and Innocency the thing intended to the Apostles than either greater Children or grown men who many times are stubborn and harmfull And though in Verse 6. where they are said To beleeve in me little ones be mentioned without little Children it is to me an exegesis or further explication of the word Children that they were little ones and small oner though such as could come to Christ upon his calling of them which maketh no difference in point of the one or the others beleeving in him Lastly when Christ saith Who so shall receives one such little Child in my name receiveth me But who so shall offend one of these little ones c. The very Antithesis or opposition sheweth that he speaketh not of divers sorts of little Children but one and the same And so forewarneth in this 18th Chapter his Disciples that they should not be as he foresaw they would be in the 19th Chapter offensive unto suchdd little Children who were so notwithstanding But if this be not a Text evident enough for their Faith as I will not be contentious but subject my Spirit to the Spirit of the Prophets let another witnesse speak Acts 18.8 Crispus beleeved on the Lord with all his house If there was any Infant there or youngling as most likely it is said to beleeve Yet our Saviour Christs singling out of Children to be examples of Humility and Innocency his accepting of savor shewed to them as done to himself his prohibiting any offence to be done to them all in this 18th of Saint Matthew together with his checking and rebuking of his Disciples for forbidding them to be brought to him or to come to him his taking them up in his Armes laying his hands upon the● and blessing them Do not all these shew a great deal of Complacency that Christ had and took in them and that these little Children pleased him very well and therefore sure were not unbeleevers For without faith it is impossible to please God Heb. 11.6 Besides that he pronounceth that of such also little Infants in age and stature is the Kingdom of God but the Kingdom of God is not of unbeleevers Sure some of these little Children nay more some of our little Infants dying before they are baptised are saved and received of God into his Kingdom whither no unbeleever nor unclean can come or enter Lastly I read of two Examples one in the old Testament of Jeremy 1.5 Of whom the Lord saith Before thou camest out of the VVomb I sanctified thee and I ordained thee a prophet Another in the new of John the Baptist who being but a Babe in the Womb of Elizabeth leaped for joy of the approach of Christ then also in the Womb of the Virgin which joy thereof was an act of the Spirit in him Add hereto Jacobs holding of Esau by the heel which the Prophet Hos 12.3 interpreteth to be a kind of striving with him for the Grace and Blessing We cannot think these in the Womb were in Christ and so sanctified one way and when they came to years of understanding by another way If Chidlren of Beleevers may thus have the Spirit of Grace and Faith and that before the Seal of the Covenant then they are not unbeleevers but beleevers Howsoever there are some things extraordinary in these two examples yet I have shewed that the Spirit of God is an internal ordinary Agent and means in the Church of God and as to the Infantile nature and condition which from the two former examples appears to be capable of it doth where it pleaseth infuse Faith and other Graces as before Humility Meeknesse Innocency Patience whereof little Chnildren were also set for examples by our Saviour Christ I do not say that any Infants now have the Spirit and Graces of the same in so ample and large a measure as those above named as who were sanctified and consecrated in a more speciall degree for a more speciall work nor do I say that all Infants now under Covenant have the Spirit and this Grace of Faith and other but that they who are the Elect of God and ordained to eternal life of which there are many have Faith and the Spirit so far forth as is sufficient for their Salvation Acts 13.48 But I will fall upon this poynt more closely and if as I have in part already out of the Texts all ged I can evince this of Infants-Faith I mean and so must you of Infants in speciality or in kind some of them such as he purposeth to save and not of Infants individually and in particular every one Infants Baptism must needs be also evinced As Paul saith to Agrippa about the Resurrection of the dead so may I to you Why should it be thought a thing Incredulous with you that God should give Faith unto Christian Infants They have knowledge and other Faculties of the Mind and the Soul and why may not they have supernatural Grace and so some seeds of the habit of Faith according to their modell and measure for the apprehending of Christ and so Faith it self in a kind and in a like kind unto that is in grown persons Faith wheresoever is alike and but one in kind the which how small soever sufficeth to Salvation What doth the weakness of the Organ of Body or Soul make it impossible for God to work supernaturally even in the little Children at least so much illumination of the Mind more than is ordinary for that age as may be fit to receive the Grace of Christ I shall tell you more Sir than I beleeve you know and I know you will beleeve Such Infants whom deceasing God taketh up into heaven for of such also is the Kingdom of Heaven as Christ said he filleth in a moment and at an instant with an inundation of knowledge and understanding of Christ for they come to sight and vision of him more than you and I have nay more than all the Prophets and Apostles had whilest they lived upon earth And now cannot the same God immediatly before sprinkle their Souls with one jot of the knowledge of Christ or one grain of Faith though but as Mustard-seed and make them to touch Christ though but with the Tip or Fingers and of that hand of the soul which is Faith whom they shall immediately have the full fruition of like as many as touched the Hem of his Garment were made perfectly whole But I remember me you must have plain direct Scriptures for this point one you have had and so you shall have more Scriptures out of which it may be

a Seal of the inward washing by his Spirit which is also called the washing or Laver of Regeneration Titus 3.5 Because the inward washing of the Spirit in Regeneration is sealed with the outward washing in Baptism Therefore I find it in the Ecclesiastick Histories That in those ages and places where and when the vilenesse of original pollution was best understood of Parents of Children as most preached of by the Fathers of the Church as in Augustins dayes what running there was od Parents with their Children in their armes to Baptism and why not there being no other visible ordinance appointed of God in the Church but Baptism for the washing away the guilt and filth of that Birthfin and pollution And was it not so of old wherefore did God command the Infants of the Jewes to be circumcised and wherefore were they so circumcised in the fore skin of their flesh but to shew tht the very nature was defiled which they received by carnal generation from their Parents and which they were like to traduce and conveigh to their Children and to testifie what need they had to have such original Corruption and uncircumcision of the flesh to be done away by the clensing and Regeneration Spirit of Christ sealed in their outward Circumcision And that Circumcision in the former as Baptism in the latter dispensation do both poynt at this one and the same thing the Cleming away of the pollution of the natural birth by the Spirit of Christ there is a clear Text Colossians 2.11 12 13. We now are fallen into those days wherein there have been not only shaken but rased many foundations and principles of the Doctrines of Christ especially two of those six in Hebrewes 6.2 Which are Repentance from dead workes a chief of which is original sin and the doctrine of Baptism and wherein a Spirit of Pelagianism hath entred into many and goeth about preaching unto Parents a freedom from original sin pollution in their Infants as derived from Adam and so proclaming a liberty from baptifing of them just as the impostors foretold of by Saint Peter whilest they promise them liberty they themselves are the Servants of Corruption 2 Pet. 2.19 It concerneth us therefore so much the more who are Master-builders in the House of God or but Repairers of the breaches to uphold and maintain these two foundations of the Christians Faith and to teach the people first that as themselves were so their Children are defiled with original sin and pollution by their natural birth and then next that there is no other ordinary way of clensing and washing them but by the regenerating and purifying Spirit and Grace of Christ Signified Sealed and Exhibited in andby the outward washing of Water in Baptism as pleaseth God Again I say not that Baptism doth all this from or by the deed done or work wrought which is their Popish phrase but as our Protestants say either as it is a means to give exhibite Christ with his benefits the which it doth by signification as a particular Certificate assuring forgivenesse of sins or as a token or pledge of the Grace of God confirming it Or as an instrument because in and with the right use of Baptism God confers Grace where and when he pleaseth for it is no Physicall but a Moral Instrument and sets his image or mark of Regeneration upon the party whence Baptisme is called the Laver of Regeneration God is at liberty and may when and how he pleaseth let his Grace accompany his ordinance of Baptism Which way soever God doth work these great things by or in Baptism Methinks it is a potent and invincible reason and warrant for the bringing Infants upon Baptism the onely outward ministerial remedy in the Church for the abating and abolishing the malady of original sin of which even Infants stand guilty born and conceived in it unlesse you would involve Parents in another guilt of neglecting the meanes and cure of that disease which they were instrumental to the bringing their Children into or else that you are of the opinion of the Pelagian Hereticks who held no original sin at all in Infants but actual which they also contracted by Imitation of other wicked whereupon all the Antient and Orthodox Divines urged and pressed them with the Baptism of Infants and made it a foundation and proof of original sin in Infants like as I now go the other way and urge and presse original sin in Infants as a proof and plea or warrant as you call it for the Baptism of Infants as being the only outward ordinary way to begin their cure and Rogeneration more briefly and syllogistically thus take it as I recollect it If Baptism be commanded of God in the Gospel for the washing away the guilt and filth of original and birth sin then all Infants who are Partakers of these are commanded Baptism But Baptism is commanded of God in the Gospel for the washing away the guilt and filth of original and birth-sin Therefore Infants who are Partakers of these are commanded Baptism The first proposition is not questionable the light of Nature and Reason commandeth the use of meanes and medicines to the end and for maladies the sick need the Physician c. Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden c. The second proposition is the matter of the Texts Rom. 6.3 and 4. and Acts 22.16 as hath been declared and so I have reasoned baptism of Infants into a command before I intended it Sirs I speak to you Parents are you willing your little pretty babes should be saved you should be very willing and desirous of it and the rather in that you have been means of conveighing into them a corrupt seed you should labour they might be born again of the incorruptible seed by the Word of God and the Seales thereof one whereof which is fit for them in their Infantile Estate is this Baptism I am speaking of and for If you would have them saved it must be either without or with Regeneration without Regeneration they cannot be saved For Flesh and Blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God That which is born of the Flesh is Flesh a degenerate sinful corrupt thing neither can corruption iherit incorruption Therefore they must be saved with Regeneration for except a man be born again of Water and the Spirit John 3.3.6 He cannot enter into the Kingdom of God That which is born of the Spirit is Spirit a Regenerate sanctified and clean thing If so the Sirs bring forth your Infants and Babes unto the Laver and means of Regeneration present them to the Water of Baptism and wati and pray for the Spirit of God that it would move upon the face of the Waters as it did in the first Generation and so form a spiritual Light out of or in a natural darknesse That the Baptismal Water may be effectual by and through that Spirit of God as Waters of Jordan were

him for the future 1 Cor. 10.2 But I will not stand upon this Discipling the Nations by baptising them and their Children Though the word disciple them be a general word comprehending in it both kinds of conversion both by the preaching of the word and the initiation of baptism This is that though which I can presse hence That all Disciples of Christ are to be baptised there is a Command for this Go Disciple the Nations and baptise them And that this discipling the Nations was a making them Scholars and Disciples of Christ not as taught but to be taught of him as before the force and energy of the word in the original importeth as much as may farther be declared in Matthew 27.57 Where Joseph of Arimathea discipled himself the same word is there that here is entred himself to be of Christs school and out of John 9.27 Where the blind man saith to th Pharises Will ye be also his Disciples and be initiated to learn of him and may be farther instanced from the manner of the Jewes amongst whom to become a Disciple was to be initiated into a Master to be taught of him and therefore the very day any one initiated themselves to learn they were called Disciples as Christs were and so called his Disciples from the first day he called them and said Come follow me And like as men are called the Souldiers under such a Captain from the time of their listing them though they be not as then taught the skill of Armes Now then Sir are not Children may they not be called Disciples Acts 11.26 you may as well deny 〈…〉 be Christians as to be Disciples For I take 〈…〉 and Christians are Synonymas that is lest you 〈…〉 symony in that word words of the same name and 〈◊〉 fixation so that all Christians are Disciples of Christ and ano … Disciples of Christ they are Christians and howsoever Disciples were called Christians first in Antioch they may be so called after in any place and Christians wheresoever may be called and are Disciples of Christ In the mouth of two witnesses this word may stand to bear you down for Acts 15.10 Children upon whose necks those false Teachers would have put the yoak of circumcision are called Disciples I say they would have put it upon the Infants of beleevers as well as the beleeving Parents for they would have done it after the manner of Moses Law pressing it still to be of force And why not Disciples I pray do they not visibly belong to the family and school of Christ yea and his Kingdom and so why not subjects also are not the little Children of a kingdom subjects thereof though they know not the Lawes of the same is not the promise made unto our Children and the Covenant of God upon them and do not we Parents offer them to God giving up our Names to God both for our selves and all our Families and undertake for them and their instruction and education in christianity and will this work nothing to the declaring them Disciples I will shut up all these interrogatories with this Assertory that because if children of Christian discipled parents be also discipled why then they are within this commandement of Christ and may and ought to be baptized and so you have a commandement for their baptizing out of that word Go disciple the Nations our children are as capable of being Disciples Or if you will not go from your English of being taught as the children of the Jewish Parents were which if you yeeld unto as you cannot do otherwise then shew me some reason why our children are not as capable of Baptism without such teaching as the Jews children were of Circumcision without the same Besides that I will minde you of this that though they be not capable of receiving actual teaching from men they are not uncapable of Gods own teaching even in their infancy no more than children of the Jews were that hereupon you should debar ours from Baptism when as theirs were not kept from Circumcision upon any such account 6. The same or rather another Commandement for our Infant Baptism may be fetched out of those words Baptizing them for whom doth our Saviour design here for the Subject of Baptism or persons to be baptized why the Discipled or taught Nations Parents and Children they have a right to the Gospel preached as Nations but a right to Baptism Parents and Children as discipled taught and brought into Covenant So that when Christ commanded the Apostles to baptize the Nations so discipled and taught he did not look onely to the time then being but to the continuation of a Christian Progeny and Posterity of Believers upon earth So that as S. Paul saith 1 Tim. 1 16. For this cause I obtained mercy that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all long suffering for a pattern to them who should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting so these Nations obtained mercy that in them first Jesus Christ might shew forth Baptism for a pattern to them who should hereafter be discipled and taught of him in the everlasting Covenant namely that Baptism belongeth to them all other Nations so far forth as they consist of discipled Parents and Children Parents professing Christ in their own persons and their Children under their Christian Education both together make up a discipled Nation commanded here to be baptized as the proper and adaequate Subject of Baptism So that if I can shew that the Children are contained in the word Nations the work is done a commandement here is for their baptizing I shall do it briefly yea it is done to my hand already 1. It is a general rule in Scripture That children are alwaies included in every administration whether of promises or threatnings mercies or judgements privileges or burdens unless they be excepted and in the very constitution of it children make a great part of a Nation 2. In this particular of these all Nations here some think it to be spoken emphatically in opposition to the one Nation of the Jews and so it is in a sense this was the onely taught and discipled Nation but now go and teach and disciple all Nations I should rather or as well think it to be spoken in apposition and relation unto the one Nation of the Jews that like as the Nation of the Jews hath been a long time discipled and taught in the Covenant and circumcised the parents with their children so now all Nations are commanded to be likewise discipled and taught in the same Covenant and baptized the parents with their children the which S. Paul sheweth clearly Gal. 3.8 9. namely that the Doctrine of the Gospel delivered to Abraham in the nature of a Covenant was preached now to all Nations and so the blessing of Abraham's family was here conveyed to the believing families of the Nations and so the Promise and the Seal Baptism were here applied to the same families