falling with it In your first Proposition I only allow the Spiritual essence of the Covenant to descend upon believing Gentiles but that the additaments and appendages being variable things and separable from it do not necessarily descend with it As I have elsewhere at large evinced unto you In your second Proposition I allow that the Seed of believing Gentiles that have the benefit of Abraham's Covenant and to whom it is made are under an equal obligation unto those proper duties and services now required of them as Abraham was himself understanding it of the adult believing off-spring and not the infant Seed of believing Gentiles In your third Proposition I allow that the believing Gentiles are obliged to dedicate themselves and all that is theirs to God as Abraham was But inasmuch as there is a double dedication the one by Baptism and the other by religious Education and fervent supplication this latter dedication I allow the former as it respects our infant Seed for the Reasons I have elswhere given you I deny In your fourth Proposition concerning a two-fold Holiness External and Internal absolute and relative arising from the Covenant though I grant that so it was under the former Administration yet I have elsewhere proved that as for any External or Relative Holiness then arising from the Covenant it is now abolished And as I have already also demonstrated that the 1 Cor. 7. 14. doth not at all prove the continuation thereof in the Gospel day so neither is there any other Scripture that I know of that can be pertinently alledged for the justification of such a notion though I grant that there is an external and internal holiness now arising among Gentile Professors the latter from the Covenant the former from a meer pretension to it In these four Propositions lies the main strength of your New Argument for Infants Baptism And Gen. 17. where the Covenant God made with Abraham is recorded is the only Text you bottom upon the grounds of Infant Baptism according to you being to be found there or no where That they are not to be found there will appear I suppose in the issue That they are not to be found in the New Testament your self have confessed to me in these words of your first Letter p. 62. where you tell me That we are not to expect any New Commands in the Gospel Dispensation for duties settled of old on lasting and immutable Reasons and more expresly you tell the Reader in your Epistle p. 10. That in the New Testament no new Rule is given either by Jesus Christ himself or by his Apostles and Followers about the subjects of the sign of the Covenant which sign now is Baptism And therefore certainly say you it leaves us to the Grounds and Reasons of the Old Testament Now I suppose your self and all will grant that if a Rule for Infant Baptism is not to be found in Gen. 17. it is not to be found in any other Old Testament Text. And if it be to be found in that Text it is incumbent on you who assert it to prove First your three parties in the Covenant there mentioned Secondly your two Signs Thirdly that Abraham represented the carnal Seed only in Circumcision and Isaac the Spiritual Seed in Baptism though himself the Head and Figure of Gentile Believers was never baptized nor the ordinance of Baptism instituted for many hundred years after his death Your proofs for all these Assertions or rather ungrounded hypotheses come in order to be considered after I have traced your more general discourses At present all I shall say is only this That it is apparent unto me at least that there is an absolute necessity to keep close unto New Testament Commands about New Testament Worship that Text in Genesis you insist on as far as my Eyes do serve me having no fellowship with the present Argument or cogency to evince the Justice of the present practice And therefore though it may be good to argue thus It is Gods mind therefore it is to be done yet it is too much for us to argue this should be and therefore God hath appointed it inasmuch as no Reason of ours in positive Worship such as Baptism is but Gods will alone gathered by some express command or example in the New Testament can acquit an action so performed from the guilt of Will-worship Doctor p. 54. If I thought it could be denied that Baptism is the sign of the Covenant of Grace I should think it easie to evince it But I take it for granted that Baptism is now as Circumcision was the sign of the Covenant in the Evangelical Administration because it is the Restipulation and Answer of a good Conscience to God And because it hath the same use now that Circumcision had viz. to be the right of Matriculation and our Assignation And because else which is hard to think there is now no such Sign and Token of the Covenant whereas if in Circumcision Gods sign in Baptism the name of God is put upon us to mark us for his And taking it for granted and allowing the Grounds which I have laid you may see the Reason why in the Primitive times whole Houses were baptized it is on the same account and for the same Reasons that Abraham's whole House was Circumcised Thus it is said Act. 11. 14. that Peter should tell Cornelius words by which he and all his House should be saved And Act. 16. 15. it is said but of Lydia That she believed but of her and her Houshold that they were baptized And Acts 16. 31. It is promised to the Gaoler That on his Faith not only himself but his Houshold should be saved Believe thou on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved and thy House * The Reader is desired to take notice That this last passage is now left out in the printed copy of the Doctors first Letter though he was pleased thus to express himself in the first edition of that Letter to me Where by the way take notice there is a visible Salvation on anothers Faith Believe thou and thy House shall bt saved And why the House on his Faith and how saved but externally because baptized And there are many Scriptures to like purpose Apothecary Whereas you tell me That the Reason why in the Primitive times whole Houses were baptized is the same upon the account of which Abraham's whole House was Circumcised That the reason is not the same is evident inasmuch as Baptism did not take place in the manner that Circumcision did For Circumcision was but in one Family singled out from all the Families of the Earth of the Males only whether in the Covenant of Grace or no Children or Servants elder or younger at eight days old by the Master of the Family or others in his stead But in Baptism it is clean otherwise and therefore the reason of the one cannot be the reason of the other
and but a taste of this harmonical Discourse In his Epistle to the Reader p. 18. he saith The Point in controversy is not a point of human learning Here for the main is no need of Greek or Hebrew or of the subtleties of the Schoolmen or of exactness of Criticism Analogically and Harmonically whereunto he delivers himself and that upon the main Point and very Hinge of the Controversy in these Words p. 88. If you say I am too Critical I say this is a Text that must be understood Critically The Apostle was as critical upon it as I or any Man can be when he observed it is said Seed as speaking of one and not Seeds and what he saith is the proper Key to unlock the Text. In his Epistle p. 5. he tells us He was concerned to see an Article of that importance as Infants Baptism is to hang on Wyres only and by Geometry And that he could not see it owner of sure and solid foundations unless it be as he here layes it Harmonical with which if that be to Harmonize is what he saith p. 79. Where he highly applauds Mr. Baxter's Arguments as abundantly proving the Church Membership of Infants The Wyres then on which Mr. Baxter hang'd it were it seems a solid Foundation or else an abundant proof is none In p. 122. He calls my Opinion an upstart Opinion or Novelty not of above an Age or Century In Harmony wherewith if that be so he saith to this purpose p. 74. That 't is probable those that would not suffer little Children to come to Christ were of my Perswasion If so my Opinion according to the Doctors own Concession is no late upstart opinion Having done with the Harmony I shall next reflect upon the Novelty of the Doctor 's Argument Wherein saith the Doctor in a Method wholly new New and wholly New are Charms as powerful as Analogy and Harmony 'T is the nature of Man saith Seneca magis nova quam magna mirari to admire things new rather than great and worthy But I must tell you Doctor that Innovators hear not well among the Judicious And that of all Men you should not scoff at New-light as you do without cause in many parts of your Discourse You have blessed the World with a new Light if your Argument have as much of weight as your Title Page and Epistles have of Pomp and Ostentation A Light which will alter many receive Schemes as you say Epistle p. 19. But how alter many why not all If your Argument be wholly new and the Doctrine of Infants Baptism hanged before but upon Wyres and by Geometry as you say it must alter All the former Schemes And this being the only solid Foundation it alters them deservedly For why should so great an Article as Infants Baptism hang any longer by Geometry as Mahomet's Tomb at Mecca is said to do When you have laid a solid Foundation for it 't is fit it should stand upon its own Basis hereafter This is a bold attempt a brave Word for the Cause you mannage brave indeed if it succeed well and that you convince the learned World by it That all former Assertors and Champions of Infant Baptism did but Wyre-draw the Scriptures and hanged all by Geometry But I must here mind you That the Licians suffered none to propose a new Law but at his own peril that if the Reason thereof were not approved he that offered it might pay for the novelty The Church of England together with all the Advocates and Asserters of Infants Baptism are more concerned in this passage than my self Let them look to the old Foundations I am principally at present at least concerned about this New one wherein I fight and indeed can fight against no other Party or Person in the World but Dr. Burthogge seeing I now oppose that which no man ever urged or asserted beside or before himself which is a good Breast-work for my security against all other adversaries Indeed you have chosen a New ground to fight upon not so much with such a Poultron as I am but all the learned that will stand by their old Arguments And thus Sir you have strawed the Readers way with flowers of Rhetorick and charmed his ears with melodious sounds New and wholly New and not commonly observed Certainly this is every mans Money and I am confident would be so if your Book-seller Mr. Jonathan Greenwood's Shop at the Crown in the Poultry did but stand over against the New-Exchange at Athens if it be not New none will regard it and if not wholely New some body would share stakes with you when you come to divide the spoils in the Field of Victory And Social glory is but an half-Mooned honour All or None is the game for him that aspires to the reputation of a Non-such Doctor Epistle to the Reader p. 5 The Argument I go upon as I do mannage it is not common and hath little Authority to make it good beside that of sound Reason good Sense and Scripture Harmony Apothecary That it is not common as you do mannage it is undeniable And that it hath little Authority to make it good besides sound Reason good Sense and Scripture Harmony you voluntarily confess And indeed if it have these three Vouchers it hath enough I value not other Authorities that shall come after these more than supernumeraries or a cast upon the full measure ex abundanti But then your three Vouchers must speak home to the point in plain and intelligible words for should these fail you too as I am much of the mind they will you are then by your own acknowledgment left utterly alone And Wo to him saith Solomon that is alone Those that err with a multitude of learned and grave Men will scape better in the crowd than he that stands single and naked as you do But Sir if your Argument be wholly New and the only solid Foundation of the great Article of Infants Baptism all others hanging it upon Wyres and by Geometry as you speak And that yours be as here you add supported by sound Reasons good Sense and Scripture Harmony such a poor smatterer in Logick as I am would be apt to inferr That certainly all the old Schemes which it alters must needs be irrational nonsensical and confused For I should think sound Reason removes or alters nothing but what is so far irrational as it alters it and good Sense nothing but what is Nonsensical nor Harmony any thing but what is confused and jarring For my Natural Logick teacheth me that Sense fights not with Sense but Nonsense Reason opposes not Reason but what is Unreasonable and Harmony nothing but Confusion and Disorder And verily Sir 't is matter of admiration to me and I believe will be so to your Readers how all the Sense Reason and Harmony came to be center'd within the compass of your Pericranium and that in so searching and critical an Age and in so
celebrated and long bandied a Controversie as this no Man should be so fortunate to light upon the solid grounds of sound Reason good Sense and Scripture Harmony before or besides your self Doctor Epistle c. p. 5. To the Question How I came to hit upon it Apothecary You have seasonably anticipated me I was just going to put the Question What benevolent and auspicious Star guided you to this New Discovery We know that little circumstances are noted by Historians as most memorable and famous things by which the renowned Adventurers such as Columbus Drake c. were first guided to or incouraged in their New Discoveries You may therefore well imagine as you here do that upon your first discovery of this Terra Nova all the amazed and admiring crowd would soon surround you and even tire you with this Question How you came to hit upon it How you did I do not know for my part I have viewed the Text Gen. 17. 9. where your New Discovery is said to be with the best Eyes I have and can see nothing more than what the old solid Interpreters that travel'd and searcht that spot before you or I were born have already discovered And I am sure they tell us of no such Sense as yours no not a Man of them as your self confess It is justly therefore a wonder to me How you came to hit upon it and it was very seasonable to put it in the place where you did for certainly it is a Question hanging by Geometry upon the lip of every man that reads you Isaac asked Jacob just such another Question concerning his Venison How camest thou by it so soon my Son and he said the Lord brought it to me 'T is like there is as much sincerity in your Answer as in Jacob's And I believe there is You insinuate that you were concerned to see such an Article as infant-Infant-Baptism hang but upon Wyres and therefore sought for a better and at last found it or digged it out of the Quarry of sound Reason good Sense and Scripture Harmony and so challenge the honour of the first Discoverer Ego primus inveni is no common badge of honour in my opinion it is no great matter who first found it but whether it be worth the finding Doctor Epist p. 17. I take it to have been a piece of vanity in him speaking of his present adversary to tell me as he doth that as he remembred one of the Schoolmen said c. Because I have reason to believe he understands the Schoolmen as little as Greek or Hebrew Apothecary The passage I referred to in the Schoolmen is very intelligible by any man that was never skilled in the learned Languages as well as by your self whose skill I hope is greater in the Tongues than it appears to be in the interpretation of Scriptures They say That if the Workmans hand were his Rule he could never err in working I applyed it by saying That if your Glosses and Interpretations be as authentick as the Text you can never err in the Interpretation Did this grate I fear many passages will grate more though in none I design your exasperation before you and I have ended Did I deserve to be called John Duns his Scholar for this I had it not from John Duns alias Scotus though if I had I may as well say He was a dunce without dulness as one somewhere calls Naaman's sin a sin without guilt It is not the first time a pleasant fancy hath sported with the name of John Duns nor the first time it hath been well repayed for such wanton sport This subtle Doctor was once sitting at Table with Charles the bald Emperor and King of France and behaving himself a little rustically and homely as I do with you the Emperor jestingly asked him Quid interest inter Scotum Sotum What is between a Scot and a Sot He Answered Mensa the Table I dare not be so vain to say turn the Table with the story no no I acknowledge you a man of parts every way my superior being not worthy the name of John Duns or Dr. Burthogge's Scholar But you see the greatest men even Emperors as well as your self cannot so sport with impunity Doctor You conclude to the Reader thus Epist p. ult That you are much confirmed in the Grounds you have laid as to the verity of them by their undergoing one kind of Test without any loss yet before you advance them from being points of meer Opinion to be points of some degree of Faith you are willing they should undergo all others Apothecary 'T is unaccountable how so learned acute and perspicacious a man as you who have altered all Schemes that the learned of the Age have drawn in reference to Infants Baptism and adventured to call them Wyres and Geometry should be capable of Confirmation from such an illiterate soft-headed Dunce as you represent me in these your Letters to be What can I add to you but to be confirmed Ai and much confirmed in those your very Grounds by their undergoing my Test seems to be not only a plaister to heal my soft pate which you have often broken but such a Crown put upon it as I am ashamed to wear But whether your Dictates have passed my Test without any loss belongs properly to the Reader to judge 'T is possible he may think you have lost your design your own and his understanding too if he have but patience to trace you through your intricate involved and mystical interpretations and Paraphrases However this is a commendable strain of modesty That before you advance them from being Points of meer Opinion to be Points of some degree of Faith you are willing they should undergo all others It seems then all that you have so confidently argued for and concluded in these Letters is not yet in the least degree a Point of your Faith but meer opinion That 's modestly insinuated like a Man conscious of his liableness to mistakes and that his own Argument may hang upon Wyres and by Geometry as well as other mens But then I am stumbled as much at the back-door of your Epistle as I was at the fore-door of your gawdy Title page for I must ingenuously acknowledge I do not understand How the consent or approbation of your Readers is capable to advance your Argument from being a meer Opinion to some degree of Faith for should they all approve and applaud it which I am perswaded few will do yet when all is done your Faith relying upon humane Grounds could be advanced no higher than to a humane Faith except you ultimately resolve it into your Readers Judgment as the Papists do theirs into that of the Church And thus much for your splendid Title page and charming Epistle I now come to your Letters the occasion whereof you thus hint at and but hint in your first page Doctor Dear Sir I cannot believe my self obliged by the
And as to the bringing in of whole Families together it was but contingently so not always so nor constantly so according to any Promise or Prophecy and when it did so happen we find not any Infant baptized nor any intimation of baptizing Housholds in conformity to the administration of Circumcision but rather the contrary express notice being given of the Faith and Repentance of those admitted unto Baptism in the several Housholds recorded to have been baptized whereas all were to be circumcised that were of Abraham's Family both Children Servants Slaves and all whether making a profession of Faith and Repentance or no. And this may appear by taking a view of the several examples of Baptizing recorded in the New Testament which I have elsewhere spread before you Only at present as to that that concerns the example of Lydia it must of necessity be understood suitable to the other instances which when they express the baptizing of Housholds they express also the believing or receiving of the Word by the whole Houshold and by the frequent use of the Word which is to put the House for the people of growth in it As to that which concerns the Gaoler it doth not appear unto me from the Scripture you mention nor from any other That there is a visible Salvation grounded on external holiness or that any are saved by anothers faith as you would have it It being manifest by the following Words That those of the Gaolers Family were saved by their own Faith and not by the Faith of another For though ver 31. it was said unto him Believe thou on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved and thy House yet it is expresly told us ver 34. That when he had brought them into his House he rejoyced believing in God with all his House And that the Salvation here spoken of is not to be understood of a visible external Salvation because baptized as you express it is evident for that this would have been but a poor comfort to the poor trembling Gaoler of whom it is said v. 29 30. That he sprang in and came trembling and fell down before Paul and Silas saying Sirs what must I do to be saved Certainly he was now toucht with a sense of his eternal state the Reply whereunto must therefore of necessity be correspondent Doctor * p 55 56. Thus ran the Drs. first Letter to me thô this passage is now somewhat altered in the printed copy thereof It seems to me to answer exactly to the Promise given to the Church under the Messiah that magnificent one for so Jer. 30. 31. it should be rendred and not in the plural as we do read it To the letter it is not their Nobles as in our translation but their magnificent one or their Noble one shall be of themselves and their Governour shall proceed from the midst of them Now the Promise is that when this Noble and magnificent one the Shiloh should come out of the Loins of Judah and take the Soveragn Government and Power and have the chief administration of things in his own hand Then in that glorious and Evangelical Dispensation Their Children should be as afore-time their Children should be solemnly dedicated and given up to God and put into his protection and in token of it be baptized as in aforetime they were Circumcised Jer. 30. 20 21. Apothecary I am not convinced that this Scripture in the 30. of Jeremiah hath at all any reference to the present purpose and I presume the true sense and scope of it to be mistaken in your application of it I acknowledge that all the Promises precedent and consequent in that context relate to the happiness of the Church in the Kingdom of the Messiah when that Noble and Magnificent one should come and have the chief administration of things in his own hands amongst which this is one Their Children should be as afore-time But what then doth it therefore follow that their Infant Seed should be baptized in token of their dedication to God as in afore-time they were Circumcised was there ever such an inference drawn from this Text before Certain it is that there are many hundreds of places in the Scripture that might easily be alledged wherein Children are mentioned where yet Infants cannot be at all intended And it is as plain that as for the present Words according to the current exposition of the place it must needs be understood of the body of the Jewish Nation frequently in Scripture called the Children of Israel and that their being as aforetime only points back to the most prosperous state of that people and particularly to the reigns of David and Solomon at which time that Kingdom was at the highest exaltation of its prosperity and glory I desire you therefore to examine such Expositors as you have by you upon the place I suppose you are furnished with more than my self but I am apt to think among them all you will hardly find your own exposition Doctor p. 56. Well may the Children in the Gospel Dispensation be as afore-time since though the Jews are cut off the Gentiles are graffed in upon the same stock not indeed upon the legal Branch but upon the Root Olive which affordeth all the nourishment that either the Jews had or the Gentiles have Which Root Olive is the Covenant of Promise that was four hundred and thirty years before the Law Now into that state of things wherein not the Law but the Gospel preached unto Abraham did obtain God was a God not only to the Father but to the Children yea to all his Family And the Father of the Family did not only give himself but all his Children and even his Servants all his to God And so it is now your Children shall be as aforetime Apothecary As for the Root mentioned Rom. 11. to which I suppose you refer it is indeed variously conceived by Interpreters some understanding thereby the Covenant to be meant some Abraham Isaac and Jacob and some Abraham only For my own part I believe that Christ himself is thereby to be understood who is the only Root of the Church and that both in Abraham's time and before as well as since To this purpose himself tells us John 15. 5. I am the Vine ye are the Branches And to this purpose also Rev. 22. 16. he stiles himself The Root and the Off-spring of David It is indeed therefore the unspeakable blessedness of Gentile Believers to be graffed in upon such a Stock not upon the legal Branch but upon the Root Olive which affordeth all the nourishment that either the Jews had or the Gentiles have That Root Olive being no other than Christ himself who was indeed given for a Covenant of the people and a Light to lighten the Gentiles The Gospel of whose Grace was as you say preached to Abraham four hundred and thirty years at least before the Law was given But what then doth