place though he doth not drop out o th' clouds or slide down thither from the moon that worthy friend and beloved Brother under which name I the rather own him here because I had a letter from a prime one of your Party that speaks somewhat scoffingly of that compellaton and besides though with Dr. Featly and his faction he is one of the Clergy of Laicks and an Apron Levite yet as his name is Temple-man so I take him to be a better Church-man then many a one who for not troubling his people with too much truth goes under the Denomination of a good one this man I dare say as far as he said he came by accident so farre he came by accident as he said and this proves your hearsay for its like so you had what you here say to be Heresie if an erring from the truth may as I know not why not be so stiled in civill matters as well as spirituall And this conducts me to another figment wherein you father as false a thing upon my self as any of those you feâ—…ned of me before which is at the bottom of that discourse which you record as passing between your selves and him concerning justification of Dying infants whether it be by faith or without it in which discourse though the folly of your opinion in that point and truth of his which is also mine namely that dying Infants are justified without faith I shall shew in due time and place yet I cannot but take notice by the war before I speak of that which more concerns my self of some Legerdemain and illogicall dealings of yours with him Report Reporting him asserting thus viz that there may be justification which is not by faith you report your selves replying thus page 9 that it is the grossest piece of Popery to hold â—…ustification by works and not by faith onely and the greatest controversie between them and Protestants Reply What shameful Sophistryâ—…ave â—…ave you shewn here in foisting in a foolâ—…sh phrase and term that was neither used nor touched on by him in any of his fore-going speeches nor yet in that which your reply most immediately relates to viz. Iustification by works whereas you know well enough even as well as he and I and the rest that were there for your wits could not be so far gone a wool-gathering as to need Hellebor here that he neither spake nor meant of Iustification by works whether without faith or with it but of the Iustification of Infants without either faith or works neither of which as your selves confess they are in infancy capable to act although you say but if a man will not believe you he may chuse for there 's neither Scripture sense nor reason for it they have the habit this I say again you know to be the sence of such as you call Anabaptists witness your selves in two places viz. p. 8. where you give account of our opinion thus viz That way of the presentment of the righteousness of Christ without faith is a figment of the Anabaptists also p. 15. thus the adversaries are put to theirshifts to find out a new way for the salvation of infants dying in their minority viz. the presentment of the satisfaction of Christ without faith in both which places you give the world to understand that you know our opinion to be that infants are justified by neither works nor faith which is a work but if at all by that which your selves hold is the material cause of the justification of men that act faith and of whom they being capable to act faith it is required as instrumentall viz. the righteousness of Christ secondly you know that this opinion is farther off and more flatly contradictory to that Popery that holds Iustification by works then yours can possibly be found to be for the very Iesuits may have some colour for saying that you say the same with them whilst their Tenet is justification by works yours by faith which say they and truely too is a work theirs by faith and works concurrent yours by faith that hath works concomitant and necessarily consequent thereunto between which two doctrines neither of which need be so much condemned each by other for ought I find as they are provided that all merit on our part be cashiered for there Rome errs besides us all for you will find them both true in the end viz. that both are instrumentally subservient and not either of them alone to the justification of not Infants but men and women of whom both as well as one are required in order unto life beâ—…ween which two I say there 's not so vast a difference as you deem there is much less so great as is between these viz. Iustification by works and faith both which is that of the Papists and Iustification without either faith or works which is that of ours when we speak of justification with reference to infants only for between these there 's not the least colour of coincidence yet this was that justification that Inquirer spake of viz. of Infants by Christ without faith or any other work either which you know is no part of Popery yet first you reply besides the business which he spake to and define it gross Popery to hold justification by works as if he had held it yea secondly which is worse and down-rightly injurious you are not ashamed to tell-tale him to the world in the words below that he fell into this popery and that for asserting of a Iustification of Infants so farr as they need any neither by faith nor works but Christ without either so much as instrumentall on their part then which you see nothing more fully contradicts it if ye were blind indeed you had not fin'd so much in this but sure you cannot but see how you shuffle therefore without repentance your sin remaineth Another thing I take notice of by the way as I travel toward that fiction I mention above as referring to my self is this Report That when the quere was put to you by the inquirer as you call him what need infants have of being justifyed at all since they have no original sin which whether it were put for satisfaction in the thing or meerly to hear how readily you would resolve it I cannot say you bring in one of the Ministers in the name of the rest crying out as before of Popery so now of Pelagianism and that he had not heard so much Heresie in so few words that the inquirer should take heed how he vented himself in publique hereafter for it became him to suspect himself least God had given him over to the Spirit of error and to another that out of the body of the Congregation replyed That that way which you the Ministers called Heresie so wershipt they God you go on still in the old tone thus that you were sorry to hear him profess himself a Papist and a Pelagian in saying he worshipt God that way and
liberty to out-stand or anticipate the eighth day at your pleasure hence the birth day is as warrantable with you as the eight yea in case of imminent danger of death in which case circumcision might not alter ti 's a learned question among some Infant-sprinklers whether the mid-wife may not sprinkle it before it s born i. e. while is hangs yet between the womb and the world but too soon is too soon in all conscience and again when it fits better with your plum-cake occasions the tenth twelfth or eight and twentyth day must be as acceptable to God as the eighth yea when it seems good to the wisdom of the Church i. e. the Clergy it may be deferred for no less than two or three hundred daies together witness the old Rubrik which saith that in old time baptism was not ministered but at two times in the year viz. at Easter and Whitsontide but that custome being grown out of use for many considerations I know not any but the Clergies good will and pleasure cannot now well be restored Thus you ride people to and fro as you list and run manie miles from your own rules as well as Christs for if Circumcision be your Rule for the time of Baptisms administration keep punctually to the particular time of the eighth day as well as to the generall time of Infancy or else you may tell me the eighth day is a circumstance not to be regarded whilst I tell you'tis such a substance that Moses was like to be slain for overslipping it yet by your favour Sirs and by the same reason that you take an inch I 'le take an ell yea if you can acceptably go a fingers bredth besides the rule of Circumcision I may go an hundred furlongs and by the same Authoritie that you delay the Dispensation beyond the eighth to the tenth twelft or the hundreth day I may delay it unless belief withall the heart do ingage to it before to the ten thousandth day or more nor can you question me why do you thus Secondly whereas for my undertaking to rectifie you in your gross misapprehension and reduce you from the misconstruction I saw you make of my speech which leaves you without excuse in this rude recording you record me as recalling what I said I protest against that as another of your sigments which you had need both to recant and repent of there was but one thing recalled all that day that I know of viz. that Iohn Baptist spake so soon as he came out of the womb that being rashly uttered by one in a Black coat was indeed as readily recalled as for my self what I said then I was so far from recalling that I 'le give you the advantage of saying the same over again hear therefore you deaf that you may understand bring me the children of three or four years old not instructed only for so the wickedst heathen may be but instructed to conversion and profession of faith not verbal onely for a Parret may be taught to prate but real as may seem at least and to desire baptism In Christs name yea more bring me the Infants of three or four daies old thus truly discipled and blame me for ever if I be not as forward to baptize them as your selves are to rantize them undiscipled This is the sense I then spake in the Lord knows my heart to whom I appeal ultimately to judge between us I have spoken it thus over again you have now my mind more fully among you mistake it not but take it dexterously and make your best on 't Report Next you relate and that most fictitiously that I having asserted circumcision to be a seal of the righteousness of faith to Abraham only and not to his posterity and being urged to shew any Scripture that did import a change in the signification and told that such a change must needs intimate that the same covenant was not made with Abrahams seed that was made with himself I was so foundered that though you ingaged to become Anabaptists if I did it yet I answered nothing that carried any sense or reason to the purpose Reply This I say is another of your your sigments for first to let pass the Sophisticall terms you used whilst you askt how or wher Circumcision ceased to be a seal of the righteousness of faith even to Abrahams posterity as if I had granted that Circumcision was once a seal of the righteousness of faith even to Abrahams posterity as well as himself and then was changed ceased left off to be so wheras I told you then that though 't was so to Abraham himself yet it never was so to them at all do also tel you now that when a man saies of a thing that it never was so it is but an illiterate kind of quere to ask him again when it ceased to be so Secondly confessing that I then affirmed and also still affirming the same viz. that Circumcision was a seal of the righteousness of faith to Abraham only and not to his posteritie I profess thirdly before the world appealing to your own consciences to witness that as it is most plain in the Scripture so I then made a most plain discoverie of it from the Scripture that there were other ends uses and significations of Circumcision to Abrahams own person though in some respects there were also the same then those for which it was dispensed to his seed and that notwithstanding many things which were promised to Abraham were promised to all his seed together with him yet there were somethings also promised to Abraham in the Covenant of Circumcision which his seed had no promise of at all as namely First That he should be the Father of all Believers This I am most certain I then instanc'd in and according to your then demand cleared by Scripture even that very Scripture which was then quoted by your selves Rom. 4. 11. and repeating the whole verse whereof you for your own ends mentioned but a part I told you t was evident even thence that Abraham had one preheminence and priviledge that none of his posteritie had ever after him which he obtained of God by his preheminence in believing viz. the Fatherhood of the faithful of which eminent faith of his which was imputed to him for righteousness as well as of that eminent prerogative the Fatherhood of the faithful which God gave him upon that great faith Circumcision was given him as a seal in such a sence as t was never given to his seed a Seal I said for it was a sign only but no seal to his posteritie to honor the greatness not to strengthen the weakness of his faith i. e. to confirm him that was so great a believer even beyond hope in that honorable title which God put upon him therfore I told you it runs thus viz. he received the sign circumcision i. e. circumcision which in its ordinary use was a sign a
seal to him in this special sense i. e. as a seal of the righteousness of that eminent faith which he had that he might be i. e. to that very end and purpose as to ratifie him in that royal title The father of all that believe to this purpose I then spake shewing withall that in the same sense in which the father is said to seal the sonne Iohn 6. 27. to be the giver of that meat that endures to eternall life 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 him hath the father sealed i. e. authorized to that business honoured with that office and as Pharoah honoured Ioseph with the sole Dispensation of all the Corn and Government of his Kingdome and as Kings under the Broad seal do seal men to i. e. honour them with and settle them in great Places Trusts and Titles c. in such a sense is God in that place said to give Circumcision to Abraham whereby to seal him up and settle him for ever in that glorious title viz. the father of all that believe in which sense Circumcision though a sign of some things in common to him with his posterity was never given to any one of Abrahams posterity at all this as it is clearly held forth in that place so was so clearly held forth to you from that place of your own naming at that very time that as I wondered you could be ignorant of it then so I much more admire that you are not ashamed to bewray such dissembling in the recording of it as you do and such wretched ignorance of it still besides I know not whether I instanc'd then in any other but I am sure as shy as you seem to be of it there were divers more promises made and priviledges made over to Abraham under the great Seal Circumcision which were neither made nor given much less confirmed by Circumcision as a seal thereof to all his posterity viz. that his seed should inherit Canaan this though it was made and made good to Abraham and that seed of his to whom it was promised yet not to the seed of all his seed for many of his posterity as Ishmael who was circumcised and his children by Keturah also and their whole race had none of all this seal'd to them by Circumcision Again that Christ should come out of his loyns that in his seed all Nations should be blessed these were made to Abraham and were as the rest also great Priviledges to the honour of which he was sealed yet though 't was signified to all his seed by Circumcision that Christ should come of him after the flesh all of them had not that priviledge by promise that Christ should come of them after the flesh by all which it undeniably appears that the same Covenant of Circumcision in every of those respects in which Circumcision was given him as a seal of it was not given to all the Iews and their children and that fore-named place speaks of Circumcision onely in reference to Abrahams person and in that sense and respect in which it was given to him only as a Seal of his faith i. e. that strong faith he acted and gave glory to God by Rom. 4. 20. for which God also gave that great glory and dignity to him viz. the father-hood of the faithfull All which notwithstanding and much to the same effect that was uttered then to shew that Circumcision had more ends and relations to Abrahams Person then to the Persons of his seed yea and though your own paper which lastly I appeal to doth testifie that I I multiplied words that is to say spake much about other ends of Circumcision to Abraham then to his seed yet you both be-lie me and give the lie to your selves so far as to say I was extreamly foundered which to say and yet to say in the very same line that I multiplied words about other ends of Circumcision the very point your selves had urg'd me to speak to if it be not at once to say and unsâ—…y then verily I know not what is for these two are contradictory to each other but perhaps you think to salve all with this that being call'd to speak punctually to that end viz. whether Circumcision were a seal of the righteousness of faith to Abrahams posterity at all or not or if not to shew it I answered nothing to that particular that carried any sense or reason in it but really Sirs I said no less to that very end but rather much more then I have said a little above which whether it have any sense or reason in 't or no yet was it both sensless and reasonless in you however to leave it wholly out and you had dealt far more ingenuously and judiciously in your own Account and in every rationall mans also had you set down what I answered and so put your Reader into a capacity of discerning whether it were to the purpose yea or no but that its like you were very loath to do least as nothing as it was to your purpose it should have been more serviceable then you desire it to be to ours As for that ingagement whereby how wisely a fool may see you bound your selves to become Anabaptists in case I made discovery of what I did abundantly discover I freely dis-engage you from that double performance and shall accept much more of your single submission to that ordinance it being no matter of rejoicing to to me to see any man translated from A-no-baptist to be an Anabaptist for that is from one extream to another Report Next you relate p. 5. that I said I did not deny but that little children might have the holy Ghost and these texts of Scripture viz. Mar. 10. 14. Mat. 19. 14. Luke 18. 16 2 Cor. 13. 5. did seem to intimate as much but that it could not be made appear that they had it to the making of them subjects of baptism Reply To this which is another 〈◊〉 falsity and connterseit resemblance I reply thus first that 〈◊〉 children might have the holy spirit if God please extraordinarily to infuse it I might then possibly not deny nor dare I yet deny but that possibly they may but it 's more then God hath manifested if they have to either us or you nor will this grant either prove the propriety of your Position who down-rightly declare they have it or warrant your baptizing them thereupon so long as still 't is unapparent to you that they have it for first à posse ad esse non valet consequentia it follows not because it may be therefore 't is yet such Country-clearing of things is seen now and then among you Countrey Clergy-men that if from may-be to must-be may not pass for good reason there must be no more given at all witness the yery last Argument us'd by the first opponent at this Ashsord Disputation whereby to prove infants to have the spirit who having urg'd the example of Iohn Baptist whose
relation to Ishmael for not Ishmael but he and his posterity were the promised seed which should inherit the old Canaan and such is Christ in the reall spiritual Evangelical and everlasting account in relation unto Isaac himself for not Isaac and his seed as they were Abrahams seed by Sarah though they were the children of the promise of the earthly Canaà n and a promised seed in respect of Ishmael but Christ who is the true Isaac and those that believe in him among whom siâ—…h Isaac was one he will inherit here also as else he could not these are the promised seed that must inherit heaven Rom. 4. 13 Gal. 3. 16. these children of the promise i. e. these that are of Christ by faith and so his seed after the faith are accounted Abrahams seed his sons and heirs of the world with him and of the eternal inheritance A cleerer illustration of this to be the true sense and meaning of the spirit in Rom. 9. you have in Gal. 3. 7. 9. where the Apostle uses this term viz. they which are of the faith to express no other then the very same persons whom he here stiles the children of the promise know ye saith he there that they which are of the faith i. e. which believe for none else are of faith that I know of the same are the children of Abraham and blessed with faithfull Abraham he saith not they which be of Abrahams flesh for such neither are accounted his children as to the gospel promise nor simply as such are heirs thereof with him muchless doth he say or mean that those which are born of the bodies of them that be of faith are Abrahams children and such as must be signed as his sonnes and heirs by baptism in such wise as his own fleshly seed were signed by Circumcision as heirs with him of the old Canaan yet these are your common sayings who raise such a sort of seed to Abraham at second hand or third remove as will never be able to prove their pedegree or descent from him either after the slesh or after the faith either till they believe themselves whilest they breath on earth as if because Abraham is the spiritual father of all that believe and walk in his steps and they his seed and sons and heirs with him by promise of eternal life therefore he must patrizare to all their natural posterity too and be the spiritual father not of their persons onely but of their off-spring also But Sirs let me tell you he is not so much as a father to his own seed in the Gospel sense neither can they stand his children or the children of God and heirs of the heavenly blessing and kindome because they come out of his loines unless they do as he did for though his fleshly seed as a type for the time then being stood denominated the children of God and holy in an outward sense and heirs according to the earthly promise yet that account is gone now and there 's no other way whereby the Iews themselves much less any generations among the Gentiles can be stiled the children of God or Abraham so as to expect the gospel portion but believing in Christ Iesus in their own persons Gal. 3. 26. 29. Ye are all the children of God by faith in Iesus Christ if ye be Christs then are ye Abrahams seed and heirs according to the promise Another place which cleers it that Abrahams own seed in the old Covenants account are not his own in the account of the gospel so as barely thereupon to stand in any title to either the priviledges or ordinances thereof or to fellowship now in his family is Iohn 8. where Christ being cavill'd at by the Iews for promising them the priviledge of the Gospel-freedom from sin to which they were slaves servants and bondmen for all that legal freedom they did so boast of upon faith and continuance in his words discovers so plainly that a man may run and read it the discarding of the Jews from all these three things which I am now proving that for want of faith they are perished from them since the gospel First from the repute and denomination of Abrahams children any longer Secondly from any share in the glorious or spirituall blessing of the Gospel Thirdly from any right of abiding longer in the Church which they were the children of before which Church as visible now as well as then and to the end of the world since Gods conferring the fatherhood of the faithful upon him is called the house or family of Abraham First they say in a snuff two or three times ore that they are Abrahams seed v. 33. that Abraham is their father v. 39. that they are not born of fornication meaning as Ishmâ—…el the Son of the bond-woman or servant to their mother Sarah was but they had one father even God v. 41. to which Christ replies not by denial of any of all this for 't was true every tittle in that sense in which they meant it i. e. the typical sense and meaning of the old Covenant yea they were Abrahams children and this Christ confesses in plain terms verse 37. I know you are Abrahams seed yea they were also the children of God by an outward and typicall adoption of them unto himself as his peculiar ones and heirs of that typical inheritance Ezek. 16. 8. c. but by telling them that Abrahams children are accounted of otherwise now then formerly viz. not as comming out of his loines but as doing his works as being like him and allied to him not so much after the flesh as after the faith whereupon they not yet believing he denies them to be and goes about to prove them not to be Abrahams children in the true and substantial sense in this Hypothesis verse 39. if ye were Abrahams children ye would do the works of Abraham to which do but add the minor viz. but ye do not the works of Abraham and the conclusion follows thus viz. therefore ye are not the children of Abraham you see Christ asserts them to be Abrahams children in the old account so as to stand members of the old house but denieth them to be Abrahams children in the sense of the new Secondly they say they are free men and were never in bondage to any man to which Christ replies by granting it was so indeed in the outward typical sense that they were free men and true heirs of that earthly glory that was promised to Abraham in that old Canaan but denies them to be freemen as to the gosspel with that heavenly fredom of the Ierusalem which is above the mother of all true believers Gal. 4. 26. yea in those spiritual respects in which the Son makes free indeed those that know and receive the truth and gospel they were but servants verse 34. and in bondage to sin which is the greatest slavery of all as also Paul sayes Gal. 3. 25. that Ierusalem was which was
not for the use and inâ—…ruction of infants in infancy in the way of life the Scriptures were given as a coppy of the testament and the will of God concerning men and women to declare to them what he requires of them and in what way he would have them to wait upon him in order to the attaining of that salvation he hath purchased by the blood of Christ and will freely confer on them for his sake viz. the way of faith repentance baptism supplication submission self-denial obedience both active and passive perseverance therein to the end and in a word attendance to the law of Christ the voice of that prophet that he hath now raised up in all things or else to have no part among his people from all which conditions and performances I say from every of them as well as any one of them from believing as well as obeying in baptism or any other part of his will or any other works of God under the Gospel among which belief is a chief one Iohn 6. 28. 29. little infants as being yet uncapable subjects to obey in any of these are universally exempred in their infancy otherwise I dare a vouch no dying infants in the world shall ever be saved for can they do any of these things in infancy so such as are to be baptized are called to do Act. 22. 16. and who ever so doth shall be saved and whoever doth not shall perish Ier. 10. 25 if the way wherein men are to be saved must be walkt in by all infants too in order to their salvation then wo to all infants that die in non-age for alas how shall infants call on him in whom they have not believed and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not yet heard and how shall they hear without a Preacher and who can preach to them before they can understand Rom. 10. 14. 15. so then they cannot believe for faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God some way or other outwardly as well as inwardly 〈◊〉 Babist The spirit here speaks de subjecto capaci onely viz of the way how men come by faith and not of the way wherein infants have it and t is confest that faith in adultis in them that are capable to hear and understand is begotten by this means of hearing but not so in infants who cannot hear the spirit is not tyed to work by means in little infants to the bringing of them to the faith as â—…e doth in men but without the outward hearing of the word he works faith in little children Baptist. This same that you now say fits us very well to you ward again when you say justification comes by faith for we grant that adultis to them that are capable to act faith justification comes by faith nor shall they by any means obtain it who are capable to believe and yet believe not but not so to infants who cannot believe the spirit is not tied to work by means in little infants to the justification or bringing of them to salvation as he doth in men but by the righteousnesse of Christ imputed without obedience in baptism or faith either he saves them in nonage and farther that they cannot believe which is properly as I shewed before not onely to have but act faith in Christ your selves tell us saying they have not the use the second act the exercise the fruit of it and so do not believe and so must according to your sense of Scripture if the word speak of them be cast into the lake of fire Rev. 21. 8. but further grant they could have faith in both the habit and act of it also yet can they not obey Christ in other things which are required necessarily to salvation in the word of the Gospel at least concomitanter et consecutivè as well as faith it self they cannot hear Christs voice in all things they cannot confess Christ before men nor to be come in the flesh they have not crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts of it they cannot deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Christ nor hate father and mother and life for him nor keep his commandments nor abide in his Doctrine and many such like things all which the Gospel saies as universally whosoever doth not as well as whosoever believes not cannot be his disciple Mat. 18. Luke 14. Is not Christs Gal. 5. 24. hath not God 2 Iohn 9. is a lyâ—…r and shall not enter into the holy City 1 Iohn 2. 4. Rev. 21. 27. 22. 14. 15. is a deceiver and an Antichrist 2 Iohn 7. shall be denyed by Christ yea punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of Christ for non obedience to the Gospel 2 Thes. 1. 6. so that if the Scriptures speaking of the waies and means of salvation be to be understood as the terms and conditions on which dying infants shall be saved as well as men and without which they must be damned then all dying infants must perish contrary to your sense of Mat. 18. 14. who take the little ones there for infants for it s said there it is the will of my Father that not one of these little ones should perish put the case therefore that infants could believe yet their case would be little the better as to salvation so long as still they must be short of shewing their faith by other good works without which faith is not saving nor worth a straw for what would it profit if infants could go so far as to say they have faith and yet have not works can faith save them Iâ—…m 2. 14. 26. no its dead and helpless for as the body without the spirit is dead so faith without works is dead also Therefore the body of Scripture is to be understood as spoken concerning men and women and the means and way of their salvation and noâ—… of infants Babist Yea when the word speaks of works of holiness self denyal suffering mercy c. as the way to life which infants cannot do it excepts them from the doing thereof as no capable subject and not from the salvation nevertheless nâ—…r yet doth it except infants when it speaks of faith Baptist. Is not faith a work as well as repentance and the rest yea the main and principal work of the Law of Christ i. e. the Gospel Iohn 6. 28. 29. Secondly is it not as difficult a work for infants to believe in Christ as to obey Christs voice in other things and are they not still as uncapable a subject to do that as to do any more things that are required why then not exempted from that for the sake of their incapacity as well as from other things Thirdly if the spirit doth go extraordinary waies to work at all about the salvation of infants as you must confess he must and brings them to it without and besides the ordinary means he brings men by why will you tie and limit
do while you do that at last cast which had you done at first you had saved your selves a deal of hurt which you have done your selves by circumlocuting so long in way of proving the very Minor proposition of that last Argument which Reason urged against you viz. that Christians children are not more inclined to actions of faith then those of infidels for at last you fall flatly as your safest way to deny that Minor and assert contrarily thereto that children of Christians are more inclined to holy actions then other children which if it be true First how grosly do you contradict that you say in the lines above where you seem to grant that there may be more inclinablenesse in infidels children and promptnesse to holy actions then in Christians Secondly I wonder how you come to be experienced in it for if you Clergie men be all Christians and so you are in your own account your children excepting some that by the breeding you give them grow up to the same stamp of Christianity you print upon them do for all their native holy inclinations not seldome prove the lewdest and rudest of any mens children in a Countrey for not onely through the Priests and Prophets own practise but from their posterity too oft times prophaness goes out into all the world or else the Popes had never filled it with iniquitie as they have done The next objection of Reason is as followes Review 7. Faith comes by hearing Little children cannot hear must lesse understand Ergo they have no faith They might also conclude they have no faculty of understanding neither for that comes by hearing but infants have an hearing the spirit opens their ears he must do it in adultis or for all their hearing they will never believe He is not tyed to means though we are without the outward hearings of the Word he works faith in little children The manner of his working is miraculous as it is in the conversion of every soul enough hath been said to that before nor ought it to be objected if miraculous then not ordinary for the work of the spirit in the conversion of men is both Re-Review Had Reason had the managing representing and writing of this Argument her self she would not have set it down in so weak absurd and silly a manner as Reasonlesse hath done it in in this place Reason never held such a thing yet as is asserted in this Minor viz. that children cannot hear much lesse understand for abstract hearing from understanding and take these two in sensu diviso as you do here and children can hear but in sensu composito they cannot it cannot rationally nor truly be said they cannot so much as hear much lesse understand but they cannot hear so as to understand or they cannot hear understandingly as those must that hear in order to believing and whose faith comes by hearing a hearing t is true infants have for they are not destitute of that sense more then of seeing and the rest Auriculas Asini quis non habet the same hearing that an Asse horse or other bruit beast hath which is only the sound of words without the knowledge of the sense who hath not save he that is deaf but the hearing they have is neither such as Paul speaks of there nor yet that heating you say they have viz. an inward hearing of the voice of Christ and the spirit opening their ears so as to make them learn things as adult ones do that is a meer figment of your own fancies besides if they had such an internal hearing as you dream of what were that to the matter in hand or to the answering the objection that is grounded upon the alledged Scripture which speaks not of an inward but an outward hearing the word of God preached as that by which faith is begotten and without which it cannot come out of which outward way and meanes if persons be brought to believe as usually as by it and so it must needs be if little infants believe by the understanding of certain secret whisperings and teachings within the spirit would not have spoken of it as such an unpossible case as he doth in saying how can they believe on him of whom they have not heard and how hear without a Preacher But say you that is the usual means by which faith is begotten in adult ones but the spirit is not tyed to meanes though we are he works faith in little children without the outward hearing of the word Is it so Sirs that the spirit is not tyed to work by means in little children in the same cases wherein he works by means in men and women I wonder then that you whose opinion this is should be so forgetful as to teach quite contrary to your own tenet for verily of all the men that are I know none that limit the spirit and tie him to means in his dealings with little infants like unto your selves As for us we own this position fully and to a tittle viz. that what God acts at all for infants he acts without meanes as to their salvation but as for your selves you own and disclaim this by turnes according as it seems to serve your own turnes so far as to hold it helpes to hold up your monstrous odd opinion of infants faith which hath no footing at all in Scripture you inwardly entertain it and outwardly proclaim it for undoubted truth but when you find it makes against you then t is no other then a figment of the Anabaptists for when we tell you there is no right to baptism without faith but infants cannot believe because faith comes by hearing understandingly the word preached which infants cannot do then such of you as Rantize infants on such a sottish supposition as their having faith in themselves excuse the matter thus viz. The spirit is not tied to means nor to the outward way of hearing the word so but that though he begets men to faith that way and by that means yet he begets infants to believe without it and such of you as ashamed to assert that the infants themselves have faith do Rantize them on the fathers faith without their own excuse the matter thus viz. The spirit is not bound to admit infants to baptism in that same way wherein he admits men viz. the way of faith but admits infants to have right to it without that outward means of believing But when we tell you faith and baptism are the way wherein and the outward means by which the spirit justifies and saves men and women but without this outward way of faith and baptism he can and doth save dying infants and that the spirit is not tied to the same means of belief and baptism in the justifying and saving infants through Christ by which and which onely he saves men then you plainly disclaim what you proclaimd for truth before viz. the spirit is not tied to means in infants but
croslie and contradictorily to what they were intended as yea and nay are one unto the other that children at three or four years old as your selves then affirmed may be instructed I granted and do still acknowledge with you but that I said at that age they might be baptized upon that account of bare instruction unless apparently effectual to their true conversion to the faith so that by Profession they give good ground to our consciences to believe that they believe I here disclaim it as either a mis-conception or rather a meer conception and birth of your own brains and profess it in the sight of God and all men to be that which in the sence you here insert it in came not so much as into my mind much less out of my mouth at that time and though I find you so un-ingenuous in your dealing that I wonder how you can wish me to deal ingenouusly with youâ—…s you do yet can I not conceive you to be so unjudicious as to conceive I confest as you have here accounted since my speech to all that were not dull of understanding was most plain to a very contrary purpose and tended to shew the utter unwar rantableness of baptizing at any age at all whether in Non-age Middle-age or Old-age unless it be found in the way of Faith and therefore of baptizing anie Infants in respect not only of their incapacitie to believe but much more to make profession of belief I shall therefore give you and the world too wherebie yours must needs appear to be a juggle a more true Account of the Dilation that was then between us on this wise it was I confess I granted for 't is the verie truth though not of a straws weight to your purpose that by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mat. 18. 3. was meant children in Non-age to which Christ saies his Disciples must be like although bie the phrase v. 6. viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I asserted then and see no occasion of saying otherwise to this hour that he means his Disciples whom he likens to the other and not little ones in age and bodily Stature in proof of which I referr'd you to Mat. 10 42. where under the self same greek phraise viz. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he expresses no other than his Disciples there being no little child then among them of which he could be imagined to speak moreover I shewing how that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 did properly signifie not such an Infant as you sprinkle which cannot speak called infans quasi non fans but a child capable at least to be instructed and so you are to seek still for Infant-baptism 't was bolted out bie you that at three or four years old many began to be instructed even in principles of Religion and that then at least they might be baptized whereupon I replyed that 't was neither this nor that age old or young gave right yea that no age could make a fit subject for Baptism but that wherein a person is apparently instructed to conversion and that when so instructed they were to be baptized whether old or young so that if you could so effectually instruct children at three or four years of age as to bring them to make such profession of faith as I could not but judge to proceed from the reality thereof within I could then for my part baptize them yet I thought it was a thing very seldome if ever at all visibly effected to this effect and much what in iisdem terminis did I then deliver my self yet so willingly were you mistaken in my meaning as downrightly to set me out for such a Childish Novice as met you before thousands to maintain the unlawfulnes of Childrens Baptism and held a Discourse of 6 hours to that end and yet confest the lawfulness of it so soon as ever we had well begun but Sirs suppose I had confessed as I did not that children of three or four years old because capable at that age to be instructed might without respect to the begetting of faith in them by that instruction even then and thereupon only be baptized yet will you not at last be ashamed think you of that ignorant assertion of yours namely that infants of a day old are as capable of baptism as they for grant it should be granted you as it is not that bare instruction without any success thereof to conversion is a good ground to baptize persons on at three or four years of age yet is it a ground whereupon to baptize Infants of a day old that are not capable of so much as that bare instruction a man may in much wisedom and some hopes if not of present yet of future conversion thereby begin to indoctrinate his children at three or four years old and instill the principles of truth into them as preparative to their obeying it hereafter and also to baptism it self in due time yet I judge him as very a Child as his Child that goes about to instruct and baptize it so soon as t is born yet after your own assertion by which you would make men believe I asserted that children of three or four years old are capable of instruction and consequently of baptism so young you second it with another more absurd and false than the former namely that children of a day old are as capable of it as they Say you so Sirs are infants of a day old capable of Baptism that cannot so much as be instructed in principles much less be begotten to the true Religion or if you say you hold not their right to baptism from a capableness of instruction from which you plead the other but upon other grounds upon what grounds I beseech you Sirs upon what grounds as you offered to shew them then so shew them now if you can for none of the Arguments in your Account can possibly prove such a thing What Infants of a day old I 'le saie it again that you may consider it for sure you did not consider what you said when you said it what children of day old fie for shame Sirs had you said infants of eight daies old it might have held some proportion with that grand ground you go upon viz. the Analogy between Baptism and Circumcision but this opinion doth not cotten at all with that for the subject of Circumcision which you all say though falsely is one and the same with that of Baptism was one of at least eight daies old and an Infant of one day only was not a warrantable subject thereof nor an infant of seven daies neither though likely to die before the eighth but as for you though your chief plea for your timely untimely rantizing Infants be grounded upon that timely dispensation of Circumcision yet as if you had a mind to proclaim your selves be-blinded so that you cannot walk by Christs Right rules nor your own wrong ones neither you take the
onely to the truth but your selves also for you give out in the next page but one before that I denied Circumcision to be a seal of the Righteousness of faith which in your own sense is as much as of the Gospel-Covenant to any of Abrahams posterity and that I multipli'd words in proof of the contrary and yet here in relation to that very Relation of your own in the weak wilfulness of your memories you give out that I had confessed Circumcision to be even to Ishmael the seal of the Gospel-Covenant that is with you still of the righteousness of faith thus for your own ends fathering your own false-tenet upon me ye have not lost all by the shift for you have fastn'd the fault of forgery upon your selves and this puts me in mind of another of your mis-reports which because t is so suitable to this I 'le give you some little sense of it here though I find it farre off hence in your Review p. 13. l. 1. 2. where looking or rather lacking over all your arguments again as somewhat rude and deform'd in their first delivery and among the rest this from Circumcision of infants to their baptism you positively affirm thus that the Adversaries confess baptism to be the seal of the Gospel-Covenant whereas if by Adversaries you mean your friend my self among others besides what else shall elsewhere be produced in proof of my dissent from you in this point your selves can bear me witness or if you will not a thousand others will that on the very day of Disputation when the Clergy-man of Kenington stiled baptism an initial seal I deni'd it to be a seal at all and am sure it would have found you all more work then you are aware of to have made good that un-gospel like expression of it though I grant it to be a sign of the Gospel-Covenant Report Another as flat a falsiâ—…y as ever fell from the mouths or pens of men who pretend to truth is that clause which lies in the last line of the seventh page and first line of the eighth wherein consider it with the words before you say I confessed that the spiritual seed of Abraham and their children had under the Gospel as good right to the seal thereof which is baptism as Ishmael who was that carnal seed of Abraham had right to the seal of the Gospel-Covenant Circumcision Reply Whereas besides my constant denial of Circumcision to be a seal to any but Abraham as I said immediately above and as your selves testifie of me and besides my denial of baptism to be a seal at all I either did deny the children of the spiritual seed i. e. of believers to have right to baptism or else to what purpose did you oppose me for this was the very question between us which as you affirm'd so I from the beginning to the end of the Disputation all along most inalterably deny'd Indeed I confessed ore and ore again that Abrahams spiritual feed i. e. believers have right to baptism but that the natural seed of this spiritual seed of Abraham are Abrahams spiritual seed as so born or that believers children quà tales are semen fidei as well as their parents is a most silly saying of your own page 14. but that which all the day long I most strenuously stood against much more that they were the subject of baptism yet you say here in the Preter-plu-perfect tense that I had confessed their right to baptism as good as Ishmaels to Circumcisâ—…n which me thinks if I had done so would have been exprest some where or other in the foregoing part of your true Account or else it is not so true as 't would be taken for but sith it is not to be found that I confest such a thing in all your Relation of the most materiall things that past among which this had it been confest as you here say had been the most materiall of all for it had been the full giving you the cause and saving you the labor of more Disputing we 'l take it for granted if you please rather then charge your true Relation of the most materiall things as not relating the most materiall of all that this your Testimony of my confession of this matter is most prodigiously false and abusive Sirs I wonder you are not ashamed so palpably to speak contrary to what you have here recorded I know not well what you mean by so many foul mis-reports unless as a certain great Benefactor to the Romish religion perceiving it unable to stand by the Scriptures bestowed a Legend of lyes towards its support which is call'd Legenda aurea so you supposing your Infant-baptism uncapable to be maintain'd any longer by principles of truth and reason have thereupon been so bountiful to the cause as to give in this golden-leaden-legend Another sorry tale and strange story you tell is not of me but of one of my side as you are pleased to speak and this me thinks if I be not mistaken with a kind of Emphasis of the Featlean strain as if it were some presumption for a Russet Rabby or secular Artizan to climb so high and slutter and file so neer the pulpits and pompous Belconies of the Priests and as if he were a man Sacerdotalis ambitionis loving the uppermost Room and chief place in the Synagogue more to be taken notice of himself then that the truth should be taken notice of by the people in which things if you muse as you use yet know Sirs that we have no such custome nor the Churches of God of whom you say thus Report That having plac'd himself on the highest of the pulpit stairs to be seen of all and craved the liberty granted by the propositions to ask questions and receive satisfaction he profest himself a stranger and to come thither by accident though both afterwards appeared contrary Reply Though both will yet appear to be contrary to what you would have them appear to be if you could tell how viz. a couple of untruths for verily he was a stranger and so I then told Mr. Prigg who askt me of him that had not been long in the Countrey and was unknown both by face and name not to my self and some others yet however to most of that Auditory in which I believe not one of many could say who or whence he was as to his coming thither by accident so he did too i. e. unappointed and unsent for in which sense I 'm sure some of you came not by accident but as specially bespoke in the name of a great Patron of your Party both to be there and undertake the business and appointed if not primarily yet secondarily or upon their refusal for whom some too confidently undertook they should undertake it who yet say of your selves page 3. you were not the men appointed to undertake it if by accident you mean thus as well you may for a man may come by accident enough to a
righted it rather a little too much in reckoning on it as more then it is worth or at least not setting so slightly by it as well we might But t is as usual a fashion among you Clergy men to count your selves scandaliz'd disparaged disgrac'd vilified undervalued c when you are but either found out in your falsehoods or slandered of a matter of truth as t is for you under one vile name or other to scandalize the Saints most falsly and slander the truth it self yet if your repute be at reparations more then justly through our occasion when we know it we shall make you satisfaction by submission and amends by amendment mean while have patience with us and in due time and Christs strength I trust we shall pay you all Pre. The men which were our Adversaries and their driving was known before c. Post. Were it in respect only to your Infant sprinkling that you did so frequently stile us thus we are no less then many hundreds of its old acquaintance who thinking once as you do that we did God service to be friends to it could now freely answer to the name of Adversaries but we are the best friends in the world to the Truth and your Persons could you once see wood for trees and no further Adversaries to your cause then as we are well assured you can never make it good while the world stands by all the shifts you can devise from the law of Christ whose cause you call it As for our Driving were it like that of Iehu the son of Nimshi it would excuse it self the better sith t is only against the house of the Woman Iezebell that hath sate as Queen over the Nations and stirred up Ahab the Kings and Powers of the Earth to commit fornication with her and to do abominably and to shed the blood of Saints if you be not she then our driving is not towards you but if you be as I dare not be sworn that you the C C Clergy throughout all Christendome are not then wo to your house indeed not as from us but from the Lord who yet a little while wherein space is given you to repent and if he cast not you and your lovers into a bed together and into great tribulation except ye repent so that all the Churches of Christ shall know that t is even he that searcheth the heart and tryeth the reins and giveth to every one of you according to your works then the Lord hath not yet spoken at all by me Pre. It is no new thing with them to bespatter those Arguments with their tongue which they cannot unty with their teeth c. Post. It is an old new thing with your selves for it hath been of old the custome of the new Clergie though never of the true by common councel to cry down as Heresie what truth soever was too hard for them as for us it is no new thing with us indeed for it is one of those old things which were in use among us while we were all one with you but since we sincerely sought the truth are past away so that I cannot but clear those men that say it is no new thing with us as speaking no other then the truth and must needs condemn those who condemn us of it now as men condemning us of a meer new nothing Pre. Thou hast here a true though short Relation of the most materiall things that passed c. Post. I was musing a while what of the Ashford-Disputation this True Account could be truly counted a True Account of for I found that it mentioned neither the number nor the names of the Scribes that scrap't it nor the Disputers that disputed it nor the Arguments of more then one of those disputers not all his Arguments nor half the Respondents Answers nor many more things that should be in it by right nor many of those things rightly that are in it by wrong at last I had resolution here that 't was A True though short Relation of the most materiall things that passed Yea Sirs I assure you a good whipping is fitter for that disputation then a printed Account of it to the world unless on purpose to be laugh't at that lasted â—…o less then six hours whereof five and an half past away mostly in Immaterials and the odd five an half too in such Immaterials as these you have here accounted for and if these are the most material things that passed how Immaterial may the world well think were the most Immaterial that passed in the Disputation they surely were not worth one quarter of the while they past in Moreover that your Relation is Short yea far short of the Disputation Related I dare not deny but dare you say it ore and oâ—…e again that 't is a true one how true it is is so apparent by the preceding Ezamen of your Account that I need not here so much as assert it to be false I shall therefore say no more but thus viz. Had you said false where you say true both here and in your title page where your c. is stiled A True Account A True Relation you had then said true without all question but your saying true in these two places where you should have said false hath made you speak falsly in both indeed Pre. The adversaries answers being rendred to his best advantage c. Post. As for example sometimes his answers are altered and translated into a clear contrary form sense meaning then he ever spake in somtimes added to somtimes defrauded of such clauses as would have given every body to understand his intent to be directly opposite to what its here represented sometimes invented as it were de novo somtimesrendred not at all but only related to be nothing in the least measure satisfactory nothing that carried the least shew of sense or reason to the purpose c. and all this if men would believe you and if they do not I dare say 't is because they have neither sense nor reason whereupon to believe it to your Respondents best advantage but t is utterly against your wills surely Sirs besides your intentions and in some such way as you never meant it if it be for 't were a wonder if you should mind my advantage so much as to render my answers the best way in order thereunto and 't is a chance had you intended my best advantage but that you might have helpt me one lee-tle dram more then you have done what not one syllable not one scruple not one minits matter more of all that store that lies a smothering wherewith to mend the case of your Adversary whom you seem so to pitty too that if 't were possible even for old emnities sake for old truths sake which he strives to tell you you would do all to his best aduantage facile est invenire baculum ad caedendum canem you can easily pick a hole in his
of baptism to which if it were baptism indeed you must admit if not all then not at all in time of infancy or else your absurdities are unsuffrable Sirs suffer me to come cross to you and hit you home with your own cross interrogatory p. 18. are those infants of infidels between whom and those of believers you objectors will admit no comparison inclinable to acts of holiness or not if the former it presupposes then that infidels infants have the habit also as much as the other and so the working in them and those born of believing parents may be one and so their holiness and faith and spiritualness and baptism be one too which all your Disputation doth deny if the latter I freely confess these are not inclinable nor yet the other neither These premised the Answer is in your own very words pag. 18. That unless it could be certainly presumed what children have the habit i. e. of faith holiness what have not the working of the spirit is not known to us he is neither bound nor barr'd there can be no conclusion made and therefore Quis nisi mentis inops c. how justly may they be concluded by themselves as well as by others to have hand plus cerebri quam cimax sanguinis and no more understanding then those whose right eye is utterly darkned who premising these sentences themselves do for all that make this conclusion viz. that these infants have faith Holiness the Spirit and thereby right to baptism above all others Or secondly Sirs do ye mean by it some Negative holiness consisting in their being without sin and having yet no wickedness and prophanness the thing which and more properly by farr you stile innocency in the next words though yet o curious criss-cross you will not hold them guiltless neither if so for my part I give you in my assent to it that infants are innocent but I cannot help it if it do you no good in your cause for first are infants of believers any more innocent in time of infancie then the rest how so not by birth for they are all alike born in sin secundum te not in life for it cannot appear that the one have more blurr'd themselves or barr'd themselves by any actual sin from baptism if innocency be that which intitles to it then the other But secondly to say the truth Sirs so far is baptism from being intailed to innocents and holy ones only as their only right that it belongs rather only unto sinners for though Christ for examples sake and for other ends submitted to it who yet had no sin of his own but he had ours by imputation yet the most proper use of it to all else that submit is to signifie the remission of their sins Mat. 3. 6. Luk. 3. 3. Act. 2. 38. Act. 22. 16. If believers infants therefore be so righteous holy i. e. innocent c. as you make them and I dare not deny but that they are nor dare I saie otherwise for the world of other infants in infancie having more charity than your selves even so much as to presume unumquemque bonum nisi constet de malo they are so little inrighted to baptism thereupon that till they sin they are much rather exempted from it for if baptism be a sign to signifie to him who submits to it the remission of his sinnes in plurali as Acts 2. 38. and in all other places it seems to be thenits utterly usless to such and therefore to infants as being yet under no Commission of sinnes need yet no sign of Remission of them Secondly Matrimonial holiness I call that which arises from the conjugation of two viz one man and one woman only into one flesh according to Gods holy ordinance and institution the subject of which holiness is not onely marriage it self and the marriage bed which is said to be honourable among all men and undefiled or which is all one to be holy Heb. 13. 4. but also the married persons of what rank quality religion soever when once come into that conjugall relation whether both or either or neither of them be believers and the seed or infants that are born of them in that condition which are called by God himself Mal. 2. 15. a seed of his own seeking a godly seed or seed of God which he owns as truly lawfully honestly holily begotten according to his own holy appointment and not basely beastly trecherously adulterously nor corruptly as those are which arenot begotten in the bed Opposite to this holiness these holy ones I mean the married couples and their holy seed are all the lusts of concupisence objected on strange flesh uncleanness 1 Thess. 4. 7. adultery fornication and unclean agents i. e. adulterers and the unclean issues of the adulterous bed viz the adulterous brood or the seed of the adulterer and the whore Isa. 57. 3. This kind of holiness I dare say you do not mean yea the most of you will hardly be perswaded that there 's any such kind of holiness at all or if you be it makes nothing for your purpose for what if infants of believing parents be as infants of unbelieving parents also are when begotten in lawfull wedlock holy in such a sense doth this tend at all to prove them to have the holy spirit which is the thing in hand yet this even this and no other is all the holiness meant by Paul 1 Cor. 7. 14. where he saith else were your children unclean but now are they holy that very place which your selves so often send us to for proof thereof when we deny your Antecedent in this consequence viz. Infants of believers are holy therefore to be baptized This that I say as 't is not deni'd to my knowledge by some that are for infants baptism so is it most undeniable to any that will but plainly and impartially consider the direct drift of the Apostle in the verse which is not any such matter as to shew that there 's such a sanctity in the unbelieving husband or wife of believing yoke-fellows for these are there said to be holy as well as the children with the same holiness and in their children also as inrolles them all viz. the unbelieving parties and the children as well as the believing parties in the Covenant of grace or in any such outward Church covenant as inrights them to baptism membership and fellowship in the Congregation but to shew such a sanctity or holiness as clears both their conjunctions and conceptions to be pure and guiltless such as frees their bed from the account of baseness and their brood from the account of bastardy both which in the sight of God and men would else be unholy i. e. utterly unlawful and un clean his scope is I say to convince them of the lawfulness of that state i. e. of a believer and unbelievers being man and wife together by the lawfulness of the seed that proceeds from them and by both
baptized and inchurched also upon their yoke-fellowes faith being sanctified thereby as well as the Infants therefore is it not rather think you a Civil and Matrimonial then an Ecclesiastical faederall sanctity Your usual evasion is this Babist The Parents are sanctified by the faith one of the other not so as to be in covenant themselves by their sanctification nor yet so as to be baptized thereupon but they are sanctified as a holy root so as to bring forth a holy issue that hath by vertue of its holiness a right to the Church Covenant and Baptism Baptist. Then it seems the unbeliever is with you a holy root as well as the other and gives holiness to the child and makes it holy as well as the other parent yea so holy that by that concurrence the child is in covenant and to be baptized First do you not say somtimes that the child hath its holiness from the believing party onely as if there were no influence passing from the unbeliever towards its holiness why then do you say sometimes again that from a holiness which is in both they are co-contributers of holiness to the Infant which of the two is most undoubtedly true for the holiness what ever t is is such and such it could not be if it were any but Matrimonial as is in and equally flowes from the unbelieving parent as much as the believing to the infant Secondly if the Root be holy are not the branches so and if the branches be holy is not the root at least as if not more so in the same sence with the holiness of the same kind which it conveyeth to the branches and if so then must not this unbelieving parent being a Rooâ—… have the same kind of holiness the child hath is he not as holy as the child is and so as capable of being baptized and in covenant thereby sith you all agree that Nil dat quod in se non habet and Quodcunque efficit tale id est propriè est magis tale whatever is a proper efficient to make another so or so must be more so it self so that if the unbelivâ—…g parent be as holy with your very covenant holiness it self as his child must he not as well by vertue thereof be admitted to the same priviledges having though no more faith then his child yet somewhat else viz. That holiness that with you intitles to baptism yea it is more eminently in him than the other either therefore deny those old received Axiomes and that I think you need not do for they are truths or else deny that which is so commonly asserted by you viz. that the unbelieving parents are sanctified so as to be holy Roots to their children by the faith of their believing yoke-fellows as well as the believing yoke-fellows are by their own and this you will be very loath to do for you will hardly coin such a handsome shiâ—…t as that is in hast again if you let it go or else deny that the unbelieving husband and wife is sanctified or holy at all but that you cannot do for the text saith they are hallowed as well and in the same sense as their children and believing companions are in being married to them what sense soever that is or else grant us they are holy with the holiness we stand for as that onely which is meant in this place viz. Legitimacy freedome from the least tinâ—…ture of uncleanness and baseness in their cohabitations generations and issue and this I believe you must do when all is done but then you lose such a supporter of your practise that let go one more viz. Act. 2. 38. 39. which must be handled also hereafter and Iachin and Boaz the two prime pillars that stand by the entry into your Temple i. e. Infants sprinkling which is your entring ordinance will be removed a matter of no small tendency to its ruin or else le ts see in you rejoinder for I put these things upon you by way of quaere expecting to see if by silence you give not the cause how well you will distinguish your selves out of the briars which your opinion upon the place brings you into and how well you will wind your selves out of those many absurdities which you are led aside into from the way of truth by the extravagancies and cunning concavities of your crooked logick lane Thirdly let it be considered that the holiness here predicated of the unbelieving parent and the children is not such as is the result of the faith and faederal holiness of the believing parent as is so frequently asserted among you but of the marriage Covenant which being holy by institution and honourable among all and undefiled gives the denomination of civil sanctity to the unbelieving couple and their seed as to a couple of believers and their seed as also the denomination of honourable in an unbelieving magistrate and master a rises not from any praise worthy qualification in their persons much less in the persons of the Correllatives as you say the holinesse of the unbeliever doth from the faith of the believer but from Divine ordination which constitutes them as holy in their places this will be evident First if you consider the manner of speech here used by the Apostle who saies not thâ—… unbeliever is sanctified in the believing wife and believing husband but in the wife and in the husband i. e. in her being his wife and his being her husband and howbeit its true which is commonly return'd to this viz. that 't is the believing wife of the unbelieving husband and the believing husband of the unbelieving wife when the marriage is between believers and unbelievers yet the believing party is not here preferred before the unbelieving parent as to the conferring of this holinesse upon the issue but they are said to be both and that by your selves who confesse they jointly make one holy root equall in this influence and are sanctified not one by the faith of the other as you suppose the unbeliever to be by the faith of the believer but both by the ordinance of God viz. their marriage each of other so that they both alike do sanctifie the issue Secondly if you consider the true genuine proper direct tendency and weight of this Relative particle else which if you allow it a right reference relates not to the faith or believing of either but to their being true man and wife to the lawful wedlock of them both for that which is the ground of your error about this place is the forcing of this particle else the wrong way for Else i. e. say you if one of the parents be not a believer then the children are unclean wheras the sense of it runs thus vix else i. e. if you be not holy in your copulations if you be not sanctified one in to and by the other as lawful man and wife by your union formerly contracted notwithstanding your now disunion in
Religion then your children are unclean and this is truth for so the children are in this civil sense if begotten and born out of matrimony whether the parents be believers or no buâ—… the other is not truth for whether both or but one or none of the parents believe the infants for that cause alone and without respect to matrimony are in no sense ere the more holy or unclean Thirdly and this will yet appear more plainly if you consider that faith alone in either one or both the parents begetting out of wedlock cannot sanctifie the seed so begotten with this civil holiness here meant no nor with that faederall holiness you plead for nor could it do so even then when that holinesse or birth priviledge you talk of was in force as now it is not viz. in the daies of the law for if two believers came together then out of marriage their seed were not onely base born and so unclean in this our sense but also to the tenth generation uncapable to be admitted into the congregation and so consequently unclean even in your own Deut. 32. 2. whereupon how Pharez and Zarah were dealt with it matters not sith they were born before the law was given Ieptha was exempted from any inheritance with his brethren because he was the son of a strange woman Iudg. 11. 2. and Davids unclean issue by Bathsheba that in the wisdome of God was taken away by death on the seventh day might not surely without breach of the law have been accounted holy and of the congregation if he had lived beyond the eighth whereupon your selves also are much fumbled about the holinesse of bastards and the baptism of base-begotten babies so that you scarcely know how to behave your selves about it though the parents sinning be believers at least en-churched in your Churches yea it s generally known saith Mr Cotton that our best Divines do not allow the baptism of bastards and though he is pleased to say they allow it not sine sponsoribus without Sureties yet I wonder sith Deut. 23 〈◊〉 2. Gods denial of such of old is made the ground of their denial of such now to enter into the Congregation as unholy that our Divines dare take on them to admit cum sponsoribus and so to go besides their own Rule viz. the order of things under the law wherein God gave no such allowance but to let that tolleration pass which they take to themselves you may learn thus much of your selves if you will that though wedlock without faith make a holy seed in our sense yet faith without wedlock in the parents can make a holy seed neither in our sense nor in your own nor any at all for the infants of the married are holy but believers bastards are both civilly and federally unclean inso much that your selves see cause to refuse as federally holy the spurious seed euen of those whose lawfull issue you unlawfully sprinkle Fourthly if you more seriously consider that the holinesse in the Infant here must needs be the fruit and result of that and that must needs be the cause of the holiness here spoken of in the infant quo posito ponitur sanctitas sublato tollitur which being in the parents a holinesse must necessarily be thereupon which not being in the parents a holinesse cannot be in the seed for positâ causà ponitur effect us sublata tollitur abstract the cause and the effect cannot be suppose the cause and the effect cannot but be now that which if it be not in the parents the holiness is not but being in them the holinesse is consequently in the infants 't is not the faith but the conjugal or marriage Relation of the parents for as for the first of these viz. faith it may be in one yea in both of the parents and yet no federal holinesse at all be in the infants witness Ishmael the seed of Abraham the father of the faithful and his Sons by Keturah also born of him after Co venant made with him and his seed in Isaac and Iacob and yet neither of them in that Covenant witnesse the base born children of true believers among the Jews suppose David and Baâ—…hsheba which for all the parents faith could not by the law be admitted in thâ—… Congregation nor have that birth-priviledge to be reputed holy which from the parents faith you universally intail to the infants moreover this birth-priviledge and Covenant-holiness by generation which did inright to Church ordinances which once was but now is a non-entity and out of date might be then when it was in being in children in whose parents faith was not found at all for most of the Iews were unbeiievers yet all their legitimate children were holy federally therefore faith in the parent cannot be the cause of such a thing yea if you will believe Mr Blake himself the strictest pleader for a birth-priviledge of federal holiness in Infants that ever I met with and that from this very place he condescends so far as to contribute one contradiction to himself toward the helping of the truth in this case viz. That faith in the parâ—…nt is not the cause of this holinesse whilst making the holinesse in this text to be a birth priviledge or Church-Covenant holinesse and to be the fruit and result of the faith of the believing parents and consequently their faith to be the sole and proper cause of the same he confesses flatly elsewhere page 4. that a loose life in the parent and mis-belief which is as bad in some cases worse then unbelief for which is worse to believe false things or not to believe true yea Apostacy from the faith which all if they be not inconsistent with faith I know not what is do not divest nor debar the issue from having that holiness which himself saies is meant in this text Babist Perhaps he means not by faith strictly the parents true believing but in generall his being in the covenant and faederally holy himself and so a cause of this federal holiness in the issue Baptist. First Paul means true believing here in 1 Cor. 7. 14. whether Mâ—… Blake do or no. Secondly what will he get as to the point in hand by his Synonamizing faith and faederall holiness for still neither the one nor the other is made here the cause of the holiness of the seed for the holiness here spoken of may be where neither of them is and may not be in the seed even where they are both in the parent as for example in Ezras time Ezra 10 3. we find abundance of the Jews both Priests and people that were in the faith or at least in faederall holiness yet the children were put away as unholy as well faederally as otherwise because their marriage was unlawfull and that bed adulterous wherein they lay with strange wives Ezra 10. 3. and that both parents possibly may be faithful and faederally holy and yet their seed be in all
8. Gal. 3. 7. 9. there is but one way of becoming Abrahams spiritual seed or the children of his faith so as thereupon to be signed by baptism as heirs with him of the Gospel-promise and this is not by being the fleshly posterity of a believer though it should be of believing Abraham himself for even his own fleshly were not his spiritual seed but onely as they believed with him but by bringing forth fruits of repentance doing his works treading in the steps of his faith you belike have found more wayes to the wood then one whereof when ones failes you in the fight you commonly take your flight by the other and with you there 's two wayes whereby persons nay which is a greater mystery whereby the same persons even believers infants in their very infancy may and do become Abrahams spiritual sons and heirs viz. first by their own walking in the steps of Abrahams faith i. e. believing themselves which though it be the true way of becoming Abrahams spirituall seed yet infants are not capable to walk in it Secondly by being the natural progeny of believing parents which though infants are capable of it yet is none of the way whereby to be canonized according to the sense of Scripture the Spirituall seed of Abraham But it seems the terms upon which persons become heirs with Abraham of Gospel-promises and stand in true title to Gospel-ordinances are not uniform but mulâ—…form in your imagination for those on which persons in the capacity of parents are privilâ—…dged with the title of Abrahams spiritual seed and title to Gospel-ordinances and enjoyments are their own believings not anothers but those on which others i. e. all that are in the capacity of children to those parents are thus highly priviledged are the believing of their parents whether they have any faith of their own yea or no and yet some count that the childs own faith which the parent professes for him But Genus et pro avos et quae non â—…cimus ipsi vix ea nostra voco Sirs what pretty intricate blind bo-beep Divinity is this of yours do the same priviledges and promises belong to the believing parents and their children and yet though exhibited to them both alike in one and the self same phrase and form of speech for saith Peter the promise is to you and your children and to them that are farre off yea even as many meaning of you and your children and of them that are far off as the Lord shall call do they belong upon such various and different grounds viz. to the parents upon their own faith to the children upon the parents faith my father then it seems what ere his fathers were must prove his pedegree from Abraham by his doing as Abraham did or else he can be no gospel-son nor share at all in any gospel-priviledges and immunities but if he were a believer I his son may prove mine at easier rates by farr viz. by going no further then the faith and faederation of my father But Sirs will this hold a triall think you by the word is there any such manglements as these to be found there is it to be found there that now under the gospel-Covenant since that outing of the old Covenant and that fleshly seed that were heirs of it and all the tipical pertinencies thereof the faith and faederation of fathers inrights and enrouls all their fleshly seed as Heirs with them of salvation without any evidence of their believing themselves then tell me why the fleshly seed of those great believers Abraham Isaac and Iacob stand excommunâ—…cated from all Gospel-priviledges participations of ordinances promises c. even from the beginnings of the Gospel Church and first administring of baptism to this very day will you plead your own right above theirs to stand his children in the Gospel-Church by saying we had holy men and believers to our fathers but their fathers believed not the Gospel therefore worthily are they cut off with them I reply thus were not Abraham Isaac and Iacob their fleshly fathers and though remote ones yet were they not their true fathers after the flesh still as much as ever did Iohn Mat. 3. and Christ Iohn 8. and Peter Acts 2. deny them a standing in the Gospel house and admission unto baptism and membership without repentance and belief in their own persons and doing the works of Abraham did they I say put such off from all Gospel-expectations and priviledges who offered themselves thereto with this plea viz. we have Abraham to our father and dare you admit such without faith or repentance for whom you can make no higher pretence then this viz. they are the children of believers me thinks if meer birth-priviledges and fleshly descent must carry it still without faith in the seed themselves are not the Iews infants to this day higher born then any Gentiles infants in the world whose parents are believers for they verily can say no less then this we are the natural issue of the father of all the faithfull yet may they not be own'd barely upon that account to gospel-ordinances and if the natural seed and that by Isaac and Iacob of Abraham himself the grand believer which seed could of old claim a room by right of birth from Abraham in the house of Moses cannot possibly carry it so high under Christ as by the same descent onely without faith in themselves to gain a standing in his house or so much as right to be stiled their own natural fathers children as to the Gospel I am amazed to see you Gentile believers to conferre upon your meer natural seed the name of Abrahams spiritual seed and denominate your semen carnis his semen fidei Baptist. The Iews though the natural seed of Abraham yet cannot have the account of the spiritual seed nor any right to Gospel priviledges because they believe not themselves which if they did they should have right to the Gospel as well as we who believe but sith they abide in unbelief they are cut off from all share in these things Baptist. Then learn once I beseech you this lessen from your selves which you will not learn from Iohn Christ and Paul viz. that the ground of standing Abrahams spiritual seed sons and heirs and Church-members under the Gospel is not the the faith and faederation of the parents by vertue of which you plead your childrens right to baptism saying they have believers as the Jews once to Iohn pleaded theirs saying we have Abraham to our father but faith it self in the particular persons so standing for so many Jews heathens infidels children as are of the faith of Abraham i. e. not born of faithful parents but faithful themseves as he was are incorporated incovenanted inchurched as Abrahams seed and Evangelically blessed with faithful Abraham but till even believers children yea Abrahams own believe themselves the parents faith cannot now possibly ingraft them the time of faith or standing by faith
and their seed were altogether alienated from that further then every individual of them did cut themselves off from a right of standing therein by want of faith in their own persons for as this covenant was never made with any men and their meer fleshly seed no not with Abraham Isaac and Iacob and their natural posterity so that a bare birth of their bodies doth ipso facto make them heirs of the heavenly inheritance promised therein nor give them a right as such only to be signed as true heirs thereof but only with Abraham and his spiritual seed i. e. Christ and all believers in him so no men and all their naturall posterity are outed from it together but as both they and their posterity do stand together in unbelief upon which account faith being the only way of standing heirs under the Gospel and the Iews Children proving unbelievers in all ages as well as their parents I confess they are broken off together and not otherwise for if the Children of the Iews did appear to have faith as in infancy they cannot and when they are grown up unversally they do not their parents infidelity could in no wise prohibit their standing and since neither in infancy nor at age they appear to be in the faith their parents in case they were never so faithful can in no wise intitle them to a standing for then the natural seed of those thousands of Iews which did believe in the Primitive times have a birth-priviledge and holiness to this day whereupon they may claim admittannce unto baptism as well as any specially if those words Rom. 11. 16. if the Root be holy so are the branches were to be taken in such a sense as you put upon them but we know that though they are branches growing naturally upon that holy Root as you call it of believing parents yet they are counted unholy by your selves because they believe not in their own persons yea if we should ask how the children of those Iews that at first believed did come to be such strangers to the Gospel Church your selves would answer vs because they believed not as their parents did by which you do no less than grant what we contend for viz. that the faith of Ancestors gives no right to their posterity to stand at all in the Gospel Church and Covenant but faith in the particular persons only so standing Well then they were broken off but why not because they had not believing parents for Abraham was the fleshly Father of all of them and the primitive believing Iews were the fleshly fathers of many of them and are to this day as much as ever if bare birth priviledge could ingraft them as it did of old in the family of the Iewish Church Nor was it because they wanted title upon which they might have stood still in the Iewish Church if that Church it self had stood to this day for they were Abrahams seed and that gave them capacity enough to dwell in the house before their own unbelief notwithstanding but because they do not believe themselves because the terms of standing in the Church which before Christ were these viz. We have Abraham to our Father we are the Children of such and such parents are now quite changed so that it boots not to say such a thing as Abraham is our father Mat. 3. unless we can also say we repent and believe the Gospel The Jews were broken off by unbelief and thou and thine o believing Gentile must stand by faith yet not thine by thy faith but thou thy self by thine and they by their own faith is that in which thou standing and not thy seed thou hast right to stand in the Church and not they in which they standing and not thy self they have right to stand in the Church and thou hast none Perpetuity in personall faith gives perpetual personal right to baptism and to Church-membership but not a perpetuity of the same right to any mans whole posterity there 's now no difference made at all as to Gospel interest by being either this or that by nature but in all the world any person Jew or Gentile male or Female seed of believer or of unbeliever Barbarian Scythian bond or free is capable both to be saved and signed as an heir of salvation by baptism upon personal faith but in no wise the progeny upon the faith of the parentage And yet to put it more out of doubt that the Covenant holiness and church-right of mens fleshly seed which was of old is not continuing under the Gospel but Ceremonial and so ended in Christ in whom your selves say Iudicialia sunt Mortua Ceremonialia Mortifera I will leave two or three consequences upon the file which either answer and that not invitâ Minervâ nor stretching your Genius beyond sense and reason rather than want somewhat whereby to prove your Iudaizing to be judicious or else by silence say you cannot I leave you to consult with them as you see occasion That holiness which sanctified the Iewes Land City Temple Altar all its untensils Priest-hood and the whole body of that people and all the pertinences of the first tabernacle and old Covenant was Ceremonial only and is now abolished and not abiding among believing Gentiles But that holiness that sanctified the Iewish seed was the same and no other then that which sanctified their Land City Temple Altar and its Utensils Priest-hood and whole people and all the appertenances of that first Tabernacle and old Covenant Ergo That holiness which sanctified the Iewish seed is now abolished and not abiding at all among believing Gentiles As for the Major I would wish you not to subject your selves so much to suspicion of superstition as you will do in these daies of light by putting me to prove it as to require proof on 't since no intelligent man or religious Christian save the Pope and Dr. Featley and the rest of their several fryes and fraternities will deny it or did ever in the daies of the Gospel attribute the same holiness to outward and inanimate things viz. places Lands profits Emolluments first fruits Tithes Oblations and other obventions Temples Altars Tables Lavers Chalices Vestiments nor yet to Priests and people that all these were denominated holy by under the Law for to me by the same reason that first fruits tythes and such like are now to be called holy the first born of every creature both of man and beast is still to be called holy also for even these were sanctifyed and holy Denominativè and Dedicativè as much as any of the rest Ezod 13. 2. yea as Paul did in another case viz. appeal to the Pharisees to judge between him and the Sadduces so may I to you of the Presbyterian Priest-hood to decide this matter between me and the Seducers of the Popish and Prelatick strain whose holy sandalls copes surplices and other superfluities viz. railes high Altars holy Tapers and
consequence as this in hand and therfore I will wave it here yet not so as to decline the discourse of it with you upon occasion any more then of the other well then that they are not all Reprobates it is asserted by you and us too but what is this at all to your purpose For First is there no Medium between being a reprobate and a present having the holy spirit there were twelve Disciples at Ephesus which had not so much as heard of the holy spirit so far were they from having it yet yet dare you say they were all reprobates there were many men and women that believed the things spoken by Philip pertaining to the Kingdome upon which the holy spirit had not yet fallen were they all reprobates because they had not yet received it or those thousands Peter promised the holy spirit to were they all reprobates because they yet had it not when he spake to them yea millions of men ly yet in wickedness and so far from having that at present they rather scoff at the holy spirite yet dare you not say they are all reprobates for some of them may turn at Christs reproof for ought you know therefore what consequence is there from not being reprobates to a present possession of the holy spirit Secondly do you know so precisely which infants are Elect and which Reprobate as to take upon you to distinguish them by baptism or are all infants of unbelievers reprobate so that you may accordingly denominate them for such by whole sale as you do Do not the infants of unbelievers very often prove believers and so elect and precious and as ordinarily believers infants when they come to years I mean prove reprobates were not Asa the son of wicked Abia and Iosias ofâ—… wicked Ammon elected both when Ishmael and Esau the sons of Abraham and Isaac themselves were in Scripture secundum tâ—… o Accountant p. 13. both branded for reprobates Lastly to the plain perverture of the words of the the text you quote to your own ends instead of Iesus Christ between whose and the spirits being in men there is no small difference for Christ may be in us by faith I mean we may be in the faith when yet he is not in us by his spirit I mean before the spirit is yet given witness all the disciples that believed and were baptized with water some while before Christ gave them the holy spirit Act. 8. Act. 19. instead of Christ I say you insert the spirit of God you also wholly pervert the sence of the Apostle in that place 2 Cor. 13. 5. who speaks it not to infants nor of them neither but of persons that could both know and prove and examine their own selves of all which infants were uncapable by your own confession he wrote it of them to whom he wrote it and so indeed though you are slow of heart to consider it the whole Gospel was written viz. de adult is adultorum officiis of grown persons whether parents or children and their duties but not for the use of infants in infancie at all In the next place upon occasion of my denial that it can be made appear that infants have the holy spirit to the making of them subjects of baptism you argue it on thus Disputation The report of Scripture concerning them and the necessary consequences of the former Arguments do make it more plainly appear to any one that will not deny Scripture and reason then the Profession of any particular person who perhaps may be an hypocrite as Symon Magus can make it appear of himself Gods testimony being to be preferred before mans ' Disproof Here is one of the most prodigious pieces of absurditie and contradiction of your selves as you speak in other places that was ever discerned to pass from men that cried out so loud as you do for libertie to reason logically since the art of Logick was found out In that you here call the consequences of all your former Arguâ—…ents necessary consequences which is as much as to say such as conclude the thing in hand i. e. that infants have the holy spirit necessarily universally and infallibly for that and no other were you so well skilled in Logick as you would seem to be is a necessary consequence which proves the matter concluded certainly so to be yea certo it à esse nec alitèr sâ—…abere posse a necessary consequence is when there is tam necessarius nexus indissolubilis dependentiâ—… c. such infallible dependence between the subject and the praedicate that the conclusion must be universally and perpetually true whereas your conclusion which is this viz. That little Children have the holy spirit as it followes not so much as probably nor possibly from all that you have here premised toward the proof on it witness all the Disproof made of your Disputation hitherto so much less doth it follow from them necessarily to be true for then it must bâ—… at least truly denominated de omni i. e. universally true concerning all little children that they have the bospirit de omni being the very lowest degree of necessity but this for shame you cannot say that all little children of every sort have holy spirit no nor yet so much as all of that sort of whom you so peculiarly assert it viz. the little children of believers among whom when they are at years there are as many destitute of the holy spirit as are indued with it And in further evidence hereof that it follows not necessarily from any thing you have said that those little infants you sprinkle have the holy spirit I appeal from your selves to your very selves for howbeit you here affirm as also p. 16. â—…ch necessity in the consequences whence you conclude that infants of believers have faiâ—… and the holy spirit yet to the utter confutation of your selves herein you elsewhere confesse that at the best your proof can be no more then probable viz. p. 18. where you write concerning the infants of Christian parents having faith and the spirit as if notwithstanding all that was said before to prove the certainty of it you could not now tell well what to say to it for as in p. 16. you acknowledged that all infants have it not so these are your own words p. 18. viz. the spirit is not bound to work it in all the children of Christian parents nor barr'd from working it in any of the children of infidels so that no judgemâ—…t of science can be passed till the acts themselves be seen and examined for a poâ—…ori onely and yet by the way be it known unto you that every necessary consequence demonstrates a priori the discovery of habits it made that unlesse iâ—… could be certainly presumed what children have the habit what have not for tâ—…w â—…ing of the spirit is not known to us he is not bound nor yet bard thâ—…re â—…a conclusion made In which words
the true dispensation of it to believers yet that it is so much as a sign at all to infants in infancy or when grown to years either if dispensed in infancy I absolutely deny and affirm that the very nature use and office of it as a sign to its subject is totally destroyed by such immature administration for a sign specially propriè dictum that is properly and not improperly so called in reference to that person whose sign it is is some outward thing appearing to the senses through which some other thing some inward thing is at the same time apprehended by the understanding This is the most true and proper difinition that your Divines give of a sign in general but in special of these signes viz. baptism and the supper so Pareus and Kekerman both do define a sign out of Austin and so do you all define these signs viz. in oculis incurrentia signa but such a thing baptism cannot be to infants in their infancy nor after their infancy neither if dispensed while they are infants the sign and thing signified being not possible in that way to be ever apprehended both together as they must be viz. the sign by the senses the thing signified by the understanding and that at the same time when the sign appears to the senses or else the sign is a meer Nullity and of no use and benefit as a sign at all for though infants may have the sense of the thing so as to see and feel if they were dipt in infancy yet have they then no understanding of its meaning and though when they come to years they are capable to gather the meaning of things or from an appearing sign to conceive what is signified thereby yet then the sign it self is fled out of sight and so far out of the reach of their remembrance that as ther 's nothing now presented so neither ever was there any thing for ought they can conjecture any more then by meer human hearsay objected to their senses at all when the Jewes required a sign of Christ they required something that might be seen what sign shewest thou that we may see and believe A sign then must be some memorandum some object obvious to the senses of that person to whom t is a sign properly taken either continually or at sometime or other even then which the understanding drinks in the thing signified else if there neither is nor ever was any such sight or sense of the sign as from the then or now present appearance of it while the understanding of the party whose sign it is is lively acted on the thing then to that person the sign unlesse improperly and improper signes the sacraments are not can possibly be no sign at all this Pareus teacheth us to the life p. 35. 7. where desining baptism and the supper to be signa in oculos incurrentia hoc est visibilia signs that are or once were to be seen by him whose signes they are even at that time while he is to learn something by them he further backs it as I have set down in his own words in the margent and for the use of the unlearned Englished thus viz. for they ought to be such that they may signifie things invisible for if they ought to be helps to our faith they must be perceived by the external sense whereby the internal sense is moved for what thouseest not is no sign to thee he that makes an invisible signim plies a contradiction and makes the sign not a sign at all they are invisible things not signes otherwise also the signes could not so much as signifie the things much lesse confirm them because an uncertain thing would be confirmed by a thing as uncertain as it self hence the antients define a Sacrament thus a sacrament is a visible sign of some invisible grace So then we see that according to your selves a sign is no sign at all to him that is never seen all by him who is to observe it and that too at some time or other after he comes to observe what is meant by it whereupon I testifie that what was done to us in infancy had it been the true sign of Christs own institution viz. baptism as t was rather a sign of meer mans institution viz. the sign Rantism and the sign of the crosse neither was nor is nor ever will be any sign at all to you or me if at any time it be a sign to vs it must be either while we are infants or when grown to years but not while infants for then we apprehend not the thing signed nor when at years for then we apprehend not the sign How mighty your memoties and how exquisite your apprehensive powers are to bring these two I mean the sign and thing signified together in your thoughts I know not but I plainly acknowledge notwithstanding Dr Channels councel to the Auditory at the Dispute at Petworth Ian. 5. 1651 to remember and call to mind what was signified to them in their infant baptism that as in infancy I perceived not to what purpose I was signed so now save what I have by hearsay I perceive not nor ever did of my self to my best remembrance that I was then so signed at all As for that true baptism which I have since submitted to some 4 or 5 years ago as it then preached so far as a sign may be said to preach most precious things to my understanding so it lively appeared to my senses and left such impression upon then and such an Idea thereof in my mind that me thinks I both see and remember it still and so shall I hope have good cause to do whilest I live I conclude then that to signifie things to infants by baptism in infancy is a meer blank and utter nullity a silly cypher that stands for nothing and is of no use to them at all Yea as it would be thought no better then meer mockery or witless wisdom for any Priest to stand talking and making signs over one a sleep while he is understandingly sensible of nothing and then after he is awake and as little a ware of any thing as before begin to make the application and will him to divine both what was done to him by whom and why and to take cognizance and clearer evidence of such and such things by the same token that they were told him and signified to him by what was done while he was asleep by certain signs which he never saw yet nor never shall so is it to me to baptize meet infantâ—… or as it were no better than flat folly for any father in a serious and not lusory way to shew the form of the City Ierusalem to his infant iâ—… infancy by the figure and draught of it in a Map saying look here child this stands for the Temple this signifies and sets forth the manner of Mount Sion and and all this is shewed thee now
examine himself and so let him eat because there 's that required in order to eating there viz. self examination discerning the Lords body and blood which infants cannot do Baptist. T is very true they are excepted from all these as you say implicitly and in effect though not expressely but then let it be considered is there not as fair and as clear an exception of them from baptism as from any of these or in particular as from that service of the supper in as much as theres that required in order to baptisme which infants can no more do then they can do what 's required to the supper viz. to believe with all the heart Act. 8. 37. and to be discipled i e to be taught and to learn the Gospel Mat. 28. 19. If any should ask this question what hinders why I may not eat the supper you would answer thus if thou examinest they self thou maiest eat of that bread and drink of that cup so when the Eunuch enquired of Philip what hinders why I may not be baptized he answers him in the very same viz. if thou believest with all thy heart thou maiest for whoever shall say these answers viz. let a man examine himself and so he may eat let a man believe with all his heart so he may be baptized or if thou examinest thy self thou mayest eat or if thou believest with all thy heart thou maiest be baptized are not the self same in sense and signifification shall never go for a wise man more with me and whoever shall say that the phrase of Philip to the Eunuchs question what hinders why I may not viz. if â—…hou believest with all thy heart thou mayest be baitized is as not exceptive of infants from baptism as that phrase of Paul let a man examine himself and so let him eat is exceptive of infants from the supper can seem no other to me then one whose reason is basely captivated to some carnal interest or other yea the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Act. 8. 37. doth ful as much if not more imply an unlawfulnesse of their admission to baptism that believe not with all the heart as the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1 Cor. 11. 28. doth imply an unlawfulnesse of their admission to the supper who do not first examine themselves what ever exception therefore ye can find in the word of infants from the supper the self same will I find of infants from baptism and what eâ—…er ground of admission to baptism you shall find there for them the same will I bring for their admission to the supper Babist Those places where it s said if thou believest thou mayest he that believeth and is baptized repent and be baptized go teach and baptize imply onely an unlawfulness of baptizing persons at years without instruction belief and repentance and are phrases that relate to such onely and not to infants who may notwithstanding any thing to the contrary there exhibited be baptized without any of these Baptist. So you use to say still indeed of these Scriptures that they speak of persons at age and not in non-age and so say I too but I wonder then where are the Scriptures that speak of infants baptism if all the places of Scripture that speak of baptism at all speak onely of the baptism of adult ones and so you are fain to confesse they do when we come to examine them one after another yea I remember that at two publique disputes when we have put you to assign what Scripture infant baptism is commanded in Mat. 28. 19. hath bin nominated as your warrant out of which when it hath been plainly proved that Christ commands no more in that place to be baptized then such whom he commands also first to be instructed reply hath been made to this purpose viz. that Christ there requires that such as are capable of instruction should be instructed first but that hinders not why infants may not be baptized before instruction but if so I say I wonder still where that place is that warrants it that infants may be baptized at all siâ—…h you are fain to confesse that that phrase go teach and baptize yea even you your selves sometimes who just before assigned it as the warrant for infant baptism that it speaks onely of persons capable to be taught and not of infants As you say therefore that these places speak of the baptism of men and women onely that are capable to learn believe and repent and not exclusivly of infants because they are not capable to do those things who yet may be bapâ—…ized for all that so I say of these words let a man examine himself and so let him eat they imply an unlawfulnesse in men and women only to eat the supper without self-examination but not in infants who being not capable to examine themselves may any thing to the contrary there notwithstanding be admitted to the supper without it t is men and women onely and not children who upon non-examination of themselves are excepted As you argue therefore that every administration to an Nation includes infants as well as men unlesse the be excepted and therefore they must be baptized I conclude the same from those premises concerning their right to other ordinances viz. therefore they must be preacht to therefore they must eat the supper two administrations given to all nations from which infants are no more excepted then from baptism As therefore you take it for an implicit exception of infants from the supper in that they cannot perform what is required in that place to the receiving of it i. e. not examine themselves nor discern the Lords body though by name they are not excepted so if you be not partial your own consciences will compel you to take it for at least as implicit an exception of infants from baptism in that they are no way capable to perform those things which are required of persons in order to their admission to baptism in other places viz. nor to believe with all tbe heart nor to confesse â—…in nor amend their lives nor repent nor call on the name of the Lord all which were required of adult ones that come to baptism as we see Mat. 3. Act. 2. Act. 8. Act. 22. and also in the Rubrick where it being askt what is required of persons to be baptized answer is made thus viz. repentance whereby they forsake sin and faith whereby they stedfastly believe the promises of God made to them in that sacrament though by name they be not excepted in any of these places Your cui signatum ei signum nisi obstet c. your thredbare Argument viz. to whom the thing signified belongs to them the sign unlesse there be some impediment or in capacity to perform what is required in order to the receiving of the sign if it had one farthing worth of force in it to give infants accesse to baptism would equally avail to give them accesse to the
must tell all you that so adhere to him and Mr. Marshall also who holds the same with him and Criticizes out of the Rabiniâ—… Doctors and Spanhemius saying that with them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is not as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 make Scholars learned by teaching but onely to admit them to be taught Non quia erant docti sed ut essent and that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies not onely to teach but to make disciples which is done saith he out of Spanhemius by these two actions viz baptizing and teaching I must tell you I say and them and their Criâ—…icks also first if their own woâ—…ds were never so true yet they make much more for us who deny infants to be disciples then you and are much more exclusive then admissive of such younglings as you sprinkle to the name of Scholars disciples foâ—… if it be but so as the Rabbies saie that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be onely to admit Scholars to be taught doth it not signifie much more then infants of eight dayes are capable of and were not he more simple then sober and well in his wits that being a father should enter his child or being a 〈◊〉 should entertain a child of 7 or 8 dayes old to be taught whilst he is yet and is long like to be uncapable of the least tincture of tuition and doth he deserve to be called a Scholar himself as to that particular how learn'd soever otherwise who both calls and contends to have persons called Scholars not onely before they have learned ever a letter but some years before they are capable to be taught a â—…ittle as for circumcision which was so timely dispenst its intent was not to admit the subjects to be taught as Mr. Marshal vainly contends saying that they were then discipled when circumcised i. e. then first initiated and admitted immediately to be taught but somewhat else as I have shewd above for when it was dispenst to infants it was set to a subject utterly uncapable to be taught and when to grown men that subject was to be instructed before it and as for baptism to which from circumcision Mr. Mâ—…rshall analogically argues the same that is not by intent and institution the first admission of persons to be taught though persons are to be further taught after it in other doctrines Act. 2 42. Mat. 28. 20. but it was one of these doctrines of Christ it self which was to be taught before dispensed and as it were a certain sermon wherein the person submitting is to be instructed and shewed many pretious things viz. Christ dead buried and raised while dispensed and though it is one of the six principles or first doctrines of Christ that is to be preached believed and practised by new born babes and I 〈◊〉 not in your sense but another by beginners in Christs School yet is it not the first among the six in order but the third to which two other Doctrines viz. faith and repentance ought to be Antecedent Heb. 6. 1. 2. 3. Act. 〈◊〉 38. Mark 1. 15. Mark 16. 15 16. And if it be so as Mr. Marshall saies Spanhemius affirms giving goâ—…d reason though it s but bald reason as I shall shew by and by for his Analysis viz. that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to mâ—…ke disciples doth not signifie simply to teach for theâ—… there would be fouâ—…d Tautology in Christs words because he repeats teaching again after baptizing but to baptize and teach both so as that Christs meaning is this as he saies viz. go and make me disciples out of all nations by baptizing and teaching and so as that this businesse of making disciples is to be accomplisht or attained by two and not under these two actions at least viz. baptizing and teaching as he saies t is then let all the world judge whether infants be not still by that opinion as uncapable to be made disciples as before for whether 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to make disciples be a matter or end attainable simply by that one action of â—…eaching onely or whether not under these two mediums viz. baptizing and teaching both still no men in the world are able to make infants of a few daâ—…es old disciples for howbeit they are capable to have one of these actions acted on them viz. to be baptized yet till they come to years they cannot be instructed or taught â—…ill when as Spanhemius sayes well the end of making them disciples is not attained By those very testimonies therfore whereby Mr. Marshall would prove infants to be disciples o how is the understanding of the prudent brought to naught that infants are not capable to be made disciples in Christs sense and present ' Dialect he hath in print proved it to the world and that for ever Moreover what if notwithstanding all that Mr. Marshal and his curious Criticks conceive his Rabinick phrases as he calls them viz. his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which are in sense the same be both found to signifie otherwise then his learned Spanhemius and reveâ—…end Rabbies do render them viz. not meerly to admit to be taught much lesse to disciple one barely by baptizing as Mr. Marshall would perswade us quite contrary to his own quotation out of Spanhemius in this very application of it for Spanhemius saies and so â—…e quotes him that to disciple is to baptize and teach both but he that baptizing onely is discipling I say what if they be found to signifie neither baptizing onely nor baptizing and teaching both nor admitting one by baptism to be taught or consecrating or initiating into Christs School by baptism or any such like thing as you Divines dream on but rather mainly if not onely the acts of teaching and instructing persons till they have learn'd what is taught them abstract from the acts of baptizing and admitting into the Church will it not appear much more plainly then that infants are not capable to be made disciples and yet to the contradiction of Mr. Marshal and all the rest Mr. Cotton declares this to be his opinion viz. that the true meaning of the word disciple is taught or learn'd or if Mr. Cotton may not be credited if Mr. Marshall will take Christs own word for it which is more worth then either Mr. Cottons or those Rabbies and from whose use of the word and not theirs its best to be understoodâ—… 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is to make disciples before baptism and not by it and though baptism is necessitate praecepti and for many ends viz. the visibility of the thing to others and fuller evidence of things believed to themselves â—…ssarily and immediately to follow after iâ—… to teach an instruct men in the Gospel for thâ—…re can be no other way of making disciples but this of teaching assigned as Antecedent to baptism and in proof that that phrase so signifies in Scripture see Iohn 4. 1. where it s said of Christ
sith tâ—…ey are no longer then while they have it but faith in Christ is according to your selves Habitus ad placitum a deo infufus only not innatus and is in them neither qua sic nor essentially nor universally in all nay but in a few infants by your own confession and you know not which neither for though you do altum sapere so fâ—…r sometimes as to conclude it is in infants of believers yet you do insipere so far sometimes as to undote that again and say the spirit is neither bound nor barred in his working of it in these or those so that till they are at yeares there can be no conclusion made p. 18. therefore me thinks you should blush at this illiterate and indigested assertion viz. that there can be no more concluding against the being of faith in them then their having reasonable souls Secondly if from their non declaring it there can be no more concluding against their having faith then against their reasonable souls then there is no more concluding against the being of faith in one infant more then its being in another or against its being in unbelievers infants than in those of believers for the reasonable soul is in all even in the infants of unbelievers as well as of believers Secondly if their non-declaring it be no ground to conclude against their having faith yet I am sure it is ground enough to bar you from concluding that they have it specially that this infant hath it more then that for though you confess there can be no conclusion made till you see the fruits of their faith yet that is the bold conclusion you undertake to make Fourthly whether we can upon its non appearance conclude against their having faith yea or no yet upon its non appearance we may boldly conclude against their baptism and admittance into the visible Church here on earth into which not an invisible habit of faith gives right but an outward appearance and profession to believe witness not my self only who am of little credit with you but Mr. Cotton also none of the least of your Champions that appear for infant baptism whose very words p. 48. 49. of his Way of the Churches in New England these are viz. It is not the seed of faith nor faith it self that knitteth a man to this or that visible Church but an holy profession of the faith and professed subjection to the Gospell of Christ in their communion Be ashamed therefore of such a monstrous position that persons not appearing to believe in Christ can conclude no more against their faith in Christ then against their reasonable souls Determination The seed of faith sown after discovers it self when the season comes Detection Yet so audacious are you that whilest it is but in the seed at most by your own confession as in infancy to attempt a discovery of it to all the world to be in these infants viz. of believers and not in those viz. of infidels before the season Determination The testimony of Scripture concerning their faith and the proofs taken from thence are equivalent to the best testimony and profession of any man concerning his own faith Detection O Sapientia as if the Scripture did as punctually personally and particularly testify concerning this and that individual infant which you sprinkle that it doth believe and those infants that you deny to sprinkle that they do not believe as men at years do to us by their words and works that they do or do not believe Secondly there is but one testimony of Scripture alledged by your selves where you say it s asserted of infants that they do believe viz. Mat. 18. 6. and that as I have shewed First speaks not of little ones in your sense but of little ones in Christs sense viz. believers indeed and his disciples whom he stiles little ones also a little above Matth. 10. 42. a place where we read not that any infant was among them Secondly that Scripture testifies of those of whomsoever it speaks in actu secundo that they do believe and so to do your selves yield is impossible for infants therefore it cannot be meant of them Thirdly if it did speak of little ones properly so called so as to say they do believe yet that they were believers and not unbelievers infants is a thing which a wise man may fumble himself 55 times over and become a fool before he once find it so to be Fourthly 't were but a Prosopopeia however Determination If it be further askt how faith is bread in them it is answered by the holy spirit whose waies are inscrutable who ties not himself to means works where he will and how quo magistro quam cito discitur quod docet saith Cyprian Detection And yet you scrue so farr into the inscrutable waies of the spirit in this matter as though he works where he will and how both to bind and bar him and to determine both where he doth and must work faith and where he doth not and must not viz. in believers infants not in infants of infidels else why do you refuse to baptize the one upon non-appearance of faith and yet plead for the baptism of the other as in whom it appears to you so clearly that by argument you say you make it more plainly appear to any one that will not deny Scripture and reason that they have faith then the profession of any one particular person that evâ—…r I baptized can make it appear of himself for thus you peremptorily conclude p 5. and then as prettily unconclude it all ore again p. 18. saying unlesse it could be certainly presumed what children have the habit of faith what have not for the working of the spirit is not known to us there can be no conclusion made why also do you say the promise is to believers and all their seed which is as much as to say God is bound upon his word and covenant unto these children not unto others and therefore must be as good as his word for I hope you all agree that God will not lie p. 14. though I confesse p 18. you unsay all this ore again and grant that he is not bound to work it in all the children of Christian parents nor bard from working it in any of the children of infidels O fine whisles Determination If it be inquired how faith can be said to be in them without their consent the answer is as well as originall sin to which they never consented and that Christ is more powerful to salvation then Adam to condemnation Detection That original sin is in infants so far as it is in them without their consent I do not deny it being a matter more imputative as I have shewed above then inhaesive and that Christ is more powerful to salvation then Adam was to condemnation is an undoubted truth which makes me believe otherwise then once I did viz. that whatsoever befel whomsoever meerly by Adams sin
conversion of children of christian parents or when they are first discipled cannot be known for the most part by either themselves or others whereupon he concludes that if we baptize them at age though never so punctually at the time of their profession of faith repentance and desire of baptism we cannot possibly baptize them when first discipled or immediately after conversion as we ought to do by the example of the primitive times wherein yet they did thus and no otherwise witnesse all the instances of his own alledging but those that baptize them without delay so soon as ever they are born they cannot do otherwise then jump just with the very time wherein they are first discipled according to the primitive pattern he himself produces wherein of all that were baptized whether Iews or Gentiles immediately upon their being discipled we read not of one infant And good reason why they must needs hit right upon their first being discipled or converted that baptize them in the first infancy for though the time of the first conversion or discipling of the children of Christian parents be not scarce possible to be conjectured at either by themselves or others yet to go round again it may so safely and surely be supposed and conjectured to be in the first of their infancy that they may warrantably be baptized then as then newly made disciples without any danger of aberration from either Christs commission or the primitive custom of baptizing persons when first discipled and professing themselves disciples O the wisdom he that being in the fire would not come out to hear how bravely Mr. Baxter brings about and about again his businesse in that 8 chapter of the second part of his book t is pitty but he should be burnt And lastly whereas Mr. Baxter queries so oft when Mr. Tombs would have such baptized the set time of whose conversion is not distinctly known leaving Mr. Tombs to tell him his mind as he sees good himself I tell him if he ask me the same question that in my mind such whose conversion is not known when it is as by his own confession the conversion ofChristians children some times is not witnesse that one in which he instances and as few as he knowes of that sort yet how many hundreds of the children of Religious parents among whom I my self make one do know when they were first truly converted such I say should be baptized as neer as may be upon the time of their conversion and becoming disciples and if it have been then foreâ—…owd it must be after as soon as it can but in no wise so many years before it as the priests unviversally do it and such of whom it is not known nec per se nec per alios when they first were discipled and converted but oh how do I fear that as he that never doubted never believed so many of those implicit converts Mr. Baxter talks on that never knew when they were discipled and converted were never yet truly discipled â—…or converted at all to the truth as it is in Iesus but as they had it more by tradition from their fathers then unfained search of Scriptures such I say of whom t is not known when they first were converted and discipled shall by my consent be baptized when ever it is first known that they are converted and discipled unto Christ by their own profession of their conversion and discipleship and desire of baptism and this not by my consent alone but by the joint consent of all these very Scriptures which Mr. Baxter himself hath coted for our example and warrant all which if as far as Christs own precept and practise and the primitive Churches example can do it they do not warrant the baptism of all and onely such persons as were first taught or made disciples by preaching or instructed till they both learnt believed and imbraced the Gospel and professed themselves disciples and offered themselves to baptism and consequently of no infants then for my part I le lay aside all sense and reason as no more to be heeded as a help to understand the Scriptures and turn a very Tom-fool and he that can Altobe logick these Scripture institutions and instances into plain Scripture proofs of infant Church membership and baptism Erit mihi magus Apollo for there 's no mention of infants either expressely or implicitly in any one of them Oh therefore to Eccho back to Mr. Baxter a little in much what his own words to us concerning those Scriptures p. 127 that those who are so inclinable to seperation from the primitive practise would consider the unfitnesse of infants to be admitted by baptism to be Church members under the Gospel Oh that they that inchurch whole parishes as if they because the Pope will have it so were all Churches and will have no trial at all and discoveries of the work of persons conversion before they admit them but take them all at hap hazard as they fall from the belly within the bounds of that parish where they are plac't and popified would but lay to heart all these Scripture examples and make more conscience of observing their rule and not presume to be wiser and holier then God when it was mans first overthrow to desire to be but as God though he did not attempt to go beyond him as the priests do in adding other Subjects to his ordinances then himself appointed which changing of his law will be mans last overthrow Isa. 24. doubtlesse those that Christ baptized by his disciples were Church-members but those were not infants but such as were first made disciples by preaching onely Iohn 4. and he that will go beyond Iesus Christ in strictnesse shall go without me I do not think he will be offended with me for doing as he did i. e. for baptizing none but such as believe and professe themselves disciples and as repent of their sins and desire to be baptized in the name of Christ for the remission of tâ—…m and so I have done with Mr. Baxter till we meet again onely since Mr. Marshal is pleased ponere obicem to object and bolt in here that we cannot say none in these places were baptized but such as did thus i. e. believe and professe themselves disciples p. 217. to Mr. Tombs because the word onely is not here I may well call it obicem or objectionem obularem a hint not worth a half penny and if he appeal to his own conscience it will tell him no lesse neverthelesse what ere he thinks I say again all that were baptized in the forenamed places were such as are there specified to be profest converts and believers and if there were any more let him assign and shew us whom and wee l believe him as for the housholds himself is in the sands whether there were any infants in them or no and I have shewd above that they that were baptized in them are exprest all by some
so grossly as you as touching the genuine sense of the Agostle in that 1 Cor. 7. 14. When he saith to parents of two religions in one civil relation that their children are holy and to own a certain meer reputative holiness as there meant which is not to other children yet denying altogether that he held any such thing as that thereupon these children should be baptized for that is a fictitious conclusion of your own which follows not if such a reputative holiness as you wot of were there meant nor doth Tertullian so much as hint it in that place which Mr. Marshal is so brag off that he supposes he wounds us shrewdly by setting it down in words at length and not in figures which place will for all that never scare in any wise any wise man of our way though it be set down by Dr. Holmes in words at more length and not in figures i. e. in plain English and not as Mr. Marshal doth in unergâ—…hed Latine for what if some men think as for reasons above rendred I surely never shall from that place that the Apostle is willing to give way to faithful parents to hope well of their children and to count upon them till they see either that or the contrary as more hopefully then others holy and happy ones tam ex seminis prarogaâ—…v â quam ex institutionis disciplina as having some prerogative above others in being the seed of such who have prayed for them before they were born as well as in being more likely to be dis cipled into the way of holinesse and life by their godly education of them is there an necessity of their thinking consequently they must baptize them out of hand unlesse tbere were more command from Christ for so sudden administration of that ordinance to them then there is I trow not for a man may look upon his child as some way priviledged by being his seed viz. as a child of more prayers and hopes and future happinesse and advantages and present holinesse too then many others being ignorantly conceited as you are that some infants in very infancy are eithâ—…r really oâ—… reputatively more holy then some from that place viz. 1 Cor. 7. 14. and not think them fit as yet to be baptized or else if he do yet not find good ground in Scripture for that thought by beating the best brains his head piece holds either about that place or any other yea verily I my self who hold not that high birth priviledge of some infants above others as you do who by your mouth I mean Mr. Blake declare some by nature now as of old to be Children of God and Saints and some dogs and swine some holy i. e. in your sense in Covenant as the Iew of old and some unâ—…ean i. e. in your sense out of Covenant with God and sinners of the Gentiles which distinction is â—…ow destroyed much lesse that such prerogative of seed is intended by the Apostle in that text even I my self I say do look on all infants as holy in some sense as I have shewed before i. e. negâ—…ve as far as meer innocency and freedom from iniquity may denominate holy not couâ—…ing them to be in Adam and so impure but recounting them in Christ till by actual sin and a wicked life they take me off from that account and on some children also viz. those of Christian parents as having in some sense a prerogative of seed so far as they may be a seed of prayers more then othess and in some sense too not yours a holinesse above others i. e. as they may be sanctified to their parents as blessings as every thing else may be by their prayers whether good or evill in it self if yet what is blest to us may be properly denominated holy as every creature is said to be sanctified to the Saint 1 Tim. 4. and yet for my life dare I not baptize any at all and as for Tertullian though he mistaking Pauls meaning holds such are holy by a kind of prerogative of seed as Mr. Marshall speaks yet t is very questionable to me whether it be that so transcendent kind of birth holiness and prerogative you expound him of and howbeit Dr. Holmes and Mr. Marshall would fain fetch that father in by force of forged construction to witnesse as a God-father to their federal holinesse yet I cannot easily believe by his words that he hath respect to any more then a bare recounting and reputing these to be holy in a sense abstract from any reallity of their being holy by natural birth and in their childhood as the Doctor vainly descants on Tertullians phrase wherein he mentions them to be holy or till such time as they are holy indeed by that new birth from above and Mr. Marshal takes my part against the Doctor in this too saying they are in Tertullians sense designati sanctitatis i. e. as these words are expounded by the following witnesse the Doctor himself counted holy but not Sancti i. e. not holy till they be born of water and the spirit p. 36. much lesse can I ever believe that he counted them holy and priviledged above others so far as thereupon to assert them or so much as to allow them to be baptized for that 's an utter in consequence of your own from Pauls text 1 Cor. 7. 14. and from Tertullians text to who though he take Pauls speech of such childrens holinesse a little the wrong way yet wrests them not so far out of the way to the proof of such a popish practise as you do yea there is not a little in Tertullians testimony you so talk of that tends at all to testifie the truth of infant baptism indeed had the Epithet given by Tertullian sidelium filiis been so as that instead of that phrase wherein he saies they ought to be designati sanctitatis et salutis i. e. reputatively holy and happy ones he had said they should be signati sanctitatis salutis i. e. signed in your own phrase sealed ones of holinesse and happinesse there had been some hint towards baptism but as t is there is none at all of such a matter The Dr. draws neck and heels together to make Tertullian speak to his mind but t will appear he was of another mind then he as to the baptism of any infants when all is done for saith he Babist Tertullian shews childrens capacity of grace and salvation Baptist. And what then yea what if we grant you that they are capable of salvation yea the Scripture asserts it and we do not deny it therefore you need not trouble Tertullian for this testimony but what follows upon it what then Babist What then why consequently they are capable of the seal for the deeds and their seales follow the right of the inheritance Baptist. This is your inference Mr. Dr. from which inference of yours now we talk of inferring I le infer two things by
deponing of that position you ground all on viz. that t is apparent the infants you sprinkle do believe and so a serving of our turn as much as we desire and as for that little which seems not so directly for us though by reason of not the profundity for t is shallow enough but the darkness and muddiness of the matter it be hard to see clearly to the bottom of it yet if I do truly sound the sense of it and reach to the utmost of your meaning in it it seemes to speak as liâ—…tle for your selves You tell us first that an Argument from comparison is subject to many objections and cannot hold unlesse caeteris paribus be first proved whereby you subject the most of your own Arguments in the present point to exception for I appeal to your selves and all men to judge whether they are not mostly drawn from comparisons between the children of the Jewes and the children of Gentile believers the circumcision of the one and baptism of the other and yet caeteris paribus is not at all proved by you to this hour nor yet ever can be sith caeteris imparibus I mean disagreement almost in all things between Jewes children and Christians between circumcision and baptism is so manifestly made appear by us that there hardly appears any analogy at all between them Besides Secondly So far as to the freeing of this Argument from comparison between infidels and Christians infants so as that it may hold without any exception caeteris paribus is granted by your selves for if by this parity in other things you mean an equality of souls by creation your selves assert that parity but a page above viz. p. 16. where you say all souls are equall in their creation and so the souls of believers and unbelievers infants But thirdly If by parity in other things which you would have proved you mean an equallity in their natural capacities and endowments of wit and ingenuity then either there is such a parity in infants of Christians and infidels or else so far as disparity is the excellency may much rather of the two be supposed to be in the children of Christians in whom yet caeteris paribus suppose them to have the same education and instruction there is no more inclination to believe in Christ by verrue of any habit of faith infused into them in infancy above the other then there is in the children of Indians Next you tell us If the Objector had considered c. he would not have concluded thus as he doth The objector you say is Reason so that Reason belike was much besides it self in arguing so unreasonably against your fiction of faith in the Infants of Christians but what if Reason should consider the very same that you here wish it would must its conclusion against the belief of believers infants be thereupon ere a whit the more unconcluded and what though among children born of the same Christian parents under the same education one gives a better specimen not onely in acts of piety and religion but of knowledge also may not therefore the habit of faith be more groundedly denyed to be in one then the facultie of understanding can be denyed to be in the other What still Sirs still will you make the being of faith in the infants of Christians of equall necessity with the being of the principle of reason and facultie of understanding in infants the faculty of understanding is an innate habit necessarily to be concluded and that in the highest degree to be in all infants t is in omni per se quâ ipsum but faith in Christ is by your own confession but an infused habit and by your own confession as not in all infants so in you know not which and which not till you see them act it and yet by your own conclusion to go round again t is in such not in such viz. not at all in Turks and Pagans infants for they are all in a damnable condition with you but in all infants of Christians even such as yet give no specimen of it and that so necessarily that a man may as truly deny that which is naturall to them even the faculty of understanding as deny the habit of faith to be in them Next in order to a fuller and more direct answer you prepare the way by a pannel of six or seven positions which you say you must necessarily hold concerning two or three of which we may say it s no great matter whether you hold them or no for any undoubted and infallible truth that is to be found in them in the sense wherein you take them or at least for any great matter of assistance that acrues to your cause by them and as for the rest of which you say you must necessarily hold them you might have said rather you must necessarily yield them to us for indeed they are the giving up of your cause and no other then the drawing of a dash with your own pen over all that ever you say throughout the residue of your works as concerning that sufficient appearance of faith you assert to be in believers infants yea he is blind that doth not see you thereby perfectly blotting out again what ever you penned in that particular with your own hands First say you the habit of faith must be before it can work I know no necessity of holding this for truth neither indeed would you hold it but that you imagine faith to be another kind of habit then it is for there are more kinds of habits then one though you speak of habit by the lump all along as if you were aware of but one for here 's ore and ore again habit habit habit habit habit but not the least hint of what kind of habit you mean you are never the men that distinguish of habits whereas qui bene distinguit bene docet there being some habits acquired and obtained no otherwise then by acting and faith it self is such a habit as will hardly be proved for all your confidence in the contrary to be any other at least to be apparent in any one or visible to the view of others till some act thereof hath past the persons in whom it is neither is any one in the world that I know of habitually a believer in Christ till having heard of him or his word he doth actually believe Secondly whereas you say the spirit of God infuses this habit I grant he infuses it if you take the word infuse in a true sense i. e. for begetting it in persons by the preaching of the word other infusion of faith if yet that may be properly called infusion which is a phrase rather of your own coining in this case the word knows none God indeed gives it but he gives it in the way of hearing the word of faith in the way of hearing Christ preached in which way he never gave it to infants neither is it his
piece remarkable or worth recording of it self or in any other respect in the world save for this end onely as it was an expression of the malice that Saul who was afterward converted and called Paul did at that time bear against the truth for surely had there not been that good reason wherefore the laying aside of their clothes had not been worth our notice nor should it ever have been mentioned simply for it self sake but now there was no such weighty end as this nor any end or purpose at all in order to which it was needfull to mention the circumstance of their clothing and unclothing about the administration of baptism it is enough that we have recorded of the thing in the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 viz. that and how and why it was done but it would have been frustraneous and even every way endlesse to have minded us of such impertinent appertenances to baptism as the dressing and undressing of the disciples if any one tell me a story that such and such infants were sprinkled at such places is not that relation sufficient and compleat unlesse he tell me how the infants were drest in their blankets and what a fidling was made by the midwife and the minister about the unpinning and turning up of their face clothes is not the story of Naamans washing himself seven times in Iordan full enough to our use because there is no mention of his putting off and on Christ washt his disciples feet and wiped them it may well be supposed they put off their shoes first and put them on again yet there is no mention of that Mr. Blake thinks that among all the multitudes that were baptized there must have been some words about their unclothings and clothings and specially that there was reason that we should have heard that Paul had dry and warm clothes put on him after his baptism as well as mention of meat given him if he had been baptized by immersion because he had been weak but what crude conceits are all these it was related that he was weak through fasting three daies and that was but proper and answering to the other to tell how after he eat his meat and gathered strength but the other must have come in for ought I see without either sense or reason and sith he stranges that among so many baptized no mention should be made of their preparations viz. the seponing and resuming their garments I wonder what mention he finds of the accommodations that those multitudes had that were circumcised in Ahrahams family in one day and in the City of the Shechemits and those thousands in the wildernesse after the long cessation both before and after circumcision and yet that was such a tedious bloody sore and painfull piece of service as required no question ten times more attendance with clothes and other accomplishments till it was whole then this of baptism even in that so troublesome way to you wherein we dispense it Rantist But pray give me leave a little Now we talk of their Cloaths I remember that no sooner was Christ come out of the water but immediately the spirit drove him into the wilderness the spirit of the Lord caught away Philip and the Eunuch went on his way rejoicing Act. 8. whence I argue thus viz. if they put off their Cloathes they did not stay to put them on but went away naked 〈◊〉 they had them on then being as you say dipped over head and ears they must have worn them wet but the first had been unseemly the later prejudiciall to their health Baptist. Well argued Mr. Simpson again as sure as can be you have got his Arguments by root of heart for these also are Mr. Simpsons very words in that letter of his above mentioned Rantist Whose Argument this is it matters not I suppose it is past your answer and here is reason enough in it to disprove Christ and the Eunuchs total dipping as a meer groundlesse and reasonlesse conjecture and crotchâ—…t of your own coining or if you have any thing to say to it I pray let us have it out of hand Baptist. Reason say you it were well if there were so much as common sense in it for my part I suppose it a senselesse fancy but I am sure there is so little truth in the ground of it that its stark rotten at the very rooâ—… it is a dispute Ex falso suâ—…posit is t is taken by you for granted as necessary when it shall never be yielded to by us for so much as probable that Christ and the Eunuch were baptized either naked or else in the cloathes they ware immediately both before or after either for both Christ comming purposely to be baptized and the Eunuch though not thinking of baptism till Philip met him yet returning homeward from Jerusalem where he had been for some time were undoubtedly accomodated otherwise and with change sutable enough to such a businesse Secondly it supposes that both Christ Philip and the Eunuch posted all so immediately several waies from the water that they staied not so much as to cover themselves with other Cloathes then those they went with into and came up with out of the water whereas as nature it self â—…orbids us to believe they went in much more that they went away naked for common sense forbids us to take the word immediately in so strict a sense as to think they departed in such extremity of hast as was no way consistent with the shifting and so fitting of themselves for departure Immediately doth seldome sound forth such a suddennesse as admits of no intertime nor invening action at all yea sometimes it signifies no sooner then some howers some daies some years after according to the nature of the matter asserted in the sentence wherein it hath its use as Matth. 24. 29. nor doth it expresse any other in Mark 1. 13. where it is said Immediately the spirit drave Christ into the Wildernesse then within a while after his baptism as appears not only by Matth. 4. 1. where it is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which woâ—…d is there per act is praedict is ordinative of another story but specially by Luke 4. 1. where iâ—…s said plainly that he was returned from Iordan before it is said he was led into the wildernesse and had you or Mr. Simpson compared Scripture with Scripture or heeded the harmony of the Evangelists you had saved your selves the labour of all those lines and lost nothing by it but what is worth nothing viz. the Argument it self for as if I should say immediately after the child was sprinkled the Gossips and friends went along with it home it were absurd to understand me so as if I meant that they did not stay so long after as to wipe the childs face and put the face cloathes over it and lap it up again in the loose blanket to keep it warm
are all agreed in the grand reason why it was so then and why it may not be so now at any hand viz. the different temper of those climates wherein baptism first began and of ours wherein it now is practised theirs being so hot that there could be no danger by dipping in the coldest times ours so cold that it cannot but be very dangerous if not destructive to life and health I grant saith Dr. Featly that Christ and the Eunuch were baptized in the river and that such baptism of men especially in the Hotter Climates hath been is and may lawfully be used but the question is whether no other baptizing is lawfull or whether dipping in Rivers be so necessary to baptism that none are accounted baptized but those that are dipped after such a manner usitatior olim fuit c. submersion was more usual in Judea and other warmer Countreys saith Tilenus then aspersion notwithstanding sith submersion may prove prejudicious to the health specially of such tender infants as for the most part are baptized now a dayes we suppose the Church may use which she pleases and saies Mr. Baxter if it were otherwise in the primitive times it would be proved but occasionall from a reason proper to those Hot Countreys and saith Mr. Cook though it were granted that in those Hot Countreys they commonly washed by going down into the water and being dipped there whether in ordinary or ceremonial or sacramental washing that will no moee inforce on us a necessity of observing the same in baptism now then the example of Christ and the Apostles gesture in the sacrament of the supper ties us to the same which was leaning and partly lying which was their usual table gesture then now the ordinary table gesture which is usual among us is most fit so the usual manner of washing among us is most fit to be observed in baptism and that is by powring as well as by dipping so you see these men are all of a mind that is was or at least might be so possibly in the primitive times but if it were yet not so in ours in regard of the coldnesse of our climate Baptist. Then it seems we shall have it amongst you pro confesso that in the Apostles dayes the way was dipping for though Mr. Cook keeps a loof off in his hypotheticals saying though it were granted and Mr. Baxter who borrowes well nigh all he saies against dipping from Mr. Cook Cookes it out but conditionally saying if it were otherwise yet Tilenus takes our part plainly and the Dr. drawes neerer to us then so giving it for gone that in those Hot Countryes baptism in rivers was then used onely whether such manner of dipping in rivers be so necessary to baptism in all countreyes this we say saies he is false and so for ought I see you say all But Sirs first I pray tell me from the very bottom of your consciences whether you can conceive that Christ hath appointed two sorts of baptism viz. one kind of baptism for Iudea and those regions round about Iordan and another for England Scotland France Spain Italy and all the regions round about of the Romish Christendom whether he hath ordained two baptisms or rather two different dispensations whereof one is not baptism to be used in different places viz. baptism for the Hot Countryes and Rantism for the Cold or whether he hath not rather wild one onely baptism and that a true one to be used throughout the world Dr Featley Mr. Cook Mr. Baxter suppose the first but where 's Mr. Blake all this while their wonted Coâ—…diutor in the cause verily he leaves them a little here and lends us his hand who hold that Christ gave order and commission for no more then one way of baptism in all Nations for howbeit he finds in his heart to let Rantism passe for currant baptism among them that take the liberty to maintain and use it for fear of cold p. 4. yet whatever way of baptism the commission was given out for in those Hotter Countryes whether submersion or infusion for a spersion he ownes not to be it however the very same way and no other he holds the commission to be for in the coldest Nations under heaven and this will appear if what he saies in his 9. p. be considered where after he had used this argument to prove that total dipping was not the way of the primitive baptism viz. because the conversion of disciples and so consequently their baptism hapned sometimes to be when there was no season for dipping the element of water being over cold for that service he speaks thus in way of answer to an objection viz. if any object that in those Hotter Countryes there was no danger in the coldest times I answer saith he The Commission being for all nations disciples were made in all Countries how soon came the word to this nation c. In which words he is void of common sense that doth not discern Mr. Blake siding with us saying that the way of baptism should be one in all ages and places and asserting quite contrary to his fellow disputers against dipping so far as to confute them to our hands for whereas they all uno ore with one consent cry out that the reason why they baptized by dipping in the primitive time was because Judea and the regions round about were Hot Countryes but England is a colder climate and therefore we need not baptize the same way as they dâ—…d he Tells them plainly that the heat of those Countries could be no reason why they should use totall dipping then more then other nations because the commission for baptizing was one and the same to all Nations and disciples were then made in all Countryes as well as in Iudea in cold Countries as well as in hot yea how soon saies he came the word to England it self baptism therefore in his account should be the same in England as in Iudea not by dipping in Iudea more then in England because that was a hot Country and this a colder but the commission is a like in all places cold and hot this is the sense those words of his sound forth but if Mr. Blake were silent in this case the Scripture speaks loud enough that there is but one baptism for all Nations and no Rantism ordained for any for then the commission must include Christs willingnesse to dispense with colder climates in this point and in our understandings at least run thus viz. go and teach all nations baptizing them that live in hotter countryes and rantizing them that live in colder climates he that believeth and is baptized if he live in Iudea or any Hotâ—…er Countrey or is but rantized if he live in England or any cold Countrey shall be saved in which silly unsound sense to understand those Scriptures is to be silly indeed and without either sense or understanding and yet thus it may be understood if this be the
1. 14 And sith he avers from his heart page 129. that for his part he neither knowes the day nor year when he began to be sincere no nor the time when he began to professe himself a Christian in which I believe him if he mean a Châ—…istian in Scripture sense I begg of him in the bowels of Christ Jesus that he would now begin to be sine cerâ a Christian indeed not by the halves but altogether for there is yet a mixture of much wax among his honey and of much antichristianism in his Christianity and as sure as he is ignorant when he began to professe to be a Christian so sure I am that he never yet began to professe to be a Christian in truth who knowes not that ever he was otherwise but hath and holds his profession as the Turk and Jew do theirs viz. for the true one at a venture because they were born and bred in it and received it by Tradition onely from forefathers And as he will prove himself to be what he professes to be viz. a hater of ignorant violence so I advise him to be a hater also of violent ignorance of which hateful quallity in my mind he hath as much as any of the greedy gang Gangraena it self onely excepted not excepting Dr. Featley Dr. Bastwick Mr. Bayliff Mr Pagit not any among the proud pack of Prelates that most perheminently prate against the Gospel And sith Mr. Ba. saies this much more that it is very suspicious and to him unsavory that Mr. T. should say no more but that it is not necessary that they be baptized naked as if he took it to be lawfull though not necessary and thinkes he should rather have given his Testimony against it as sinful and expressed some dislike if he do indeed dislike and judge it sinful and if he do not he dare boldly say he is very far gone let me say thus much more that then it is as suspicious and to me unsavory that Mr. Ba. should say no more but that it is a breach of the seventh commandement ordinarily to baptize the naked as if he took it to be lawful to do it sometimes but not ordinarily me thinks he should giue his Testimony against it as sinful to do it at all and express some dislike if he do indeed dislike and judge it sinful and if he do not I dare boldly say he is gone farther in filth then Mr. T. or any baptized person ever went yet save such as are gone quite off from the way of truth to the dishonour of it since they owned it whose sin yet the more shame for Mr. Ba. he in his next argument laies to the truths charge and theirs who both own and honour it by a biding in it who are lesse gladly and more sadly sensible of their sins and villanies then Mr. Ba. can be by how much by reason of their lasciviuos wayes which many follow the way of truth they walk in is as was foretold it should be 2 Pet. 2. 1. 2. 3. by Mr. Ba. and his admirers evil spoken of But if Mr. Ba. shall still say it is suspicious and unsavory for Mr. T. to say the one but not for himself to say the other and will none of the foregoing advice to repent and be baptized but rather reject the counsel of God against himself being not baptized because he hath experience by hearsay that we baptize females naked then a rod and a rod for the back of Mr. Baxter who pardons to himself the same defects wherein he holds others guilty who so slenderly takes up every tattle against the truth and proclaimes it for truth to the whole world for the simple believeth every word but the prudent man looks well to his going Prov. 14. 15 a prudent man foresees evil and secures himself but the simple passe on and are punished Prov. 22. 3. As for his next and last argument against us which he drawes from the judgments of God that ever follow us wherein he jumbles all kinds of sectaries into the name of Anabaptists as the Antibaptists use commonly to do witnesse Featley and others and makes them bear the burden of all the mischiefs that were ever perpetrated by all the mad braind men in all the world as Iohn of Leyden and all the rest of his ranting strain it is scarce current consequence to say Gods judgements are upon a people therefore that people are none of his for all things come alike to all none knowes love or hatred by what is before him here Eccl. 8. 14. and the 9. 1. 2. 3. yet sith he speaks of ruinating judgements let the consequence passe as valid but then his minor is utterly false for the Anabaptists are not all ruinated yet nor will be till the Clergy are quite cashiered as evident as it is that they have every where withered and suddenly come to nought heretofore and since he speakes of spiritual judgements e. g. that practise saith he hath never helped but â—…ndred the work of God where it comes nor hath God blest their ministry to conversion of soules as he hath other mens but rather they have been instruments of the Churches scandal and misery Secondly that hath been the inlet to most other vile opinions few stop at it but go much further God hath usually given up their societies to notorious scandalous wicked lives and conversations more then others that professe godlinesse and never prospered them so far as to have any established Churches which should credit the Gospel I grant that some of these are sad emblems of a people none of Gods onely Mr. Ba. hath here saddled the wrong asse for this way of baptism hinders onely the work of mans Tradition which would make void the commandement of God but being it self the work and way of God is hindred where ere it comes by Priestly malice preaching Gods fear after precepts of men nor hath God blessed the Nationall ministry to the true conversion of soules as he hath done theirs but to the conversion of them to a Gospel of their own making for repent and be baptized was the Gospel that Peter preached and that is it that is now practised by us and how many are converted and baptized accordingly is so evident that it needs no proof at this hour but repent and be not baptized is the Gospel the Priesthood preaches and if you call that conversion which indeed is confusion we confesse their converts are more more then ours such instruments of scandal and misery to the true Churches are the Priests in all places by their reproaches nor is baptism the inlet of any vile opinions any more then the same was in the primitive times wherein many that were baptized did turne hereticks when they had done as they do now but what wise man then imputed it to their baptism and yet some of those opinions Mr. Ba. calls vile will be proved to his conscience in due time to be
church before baptism whether they have right to be so or no which is another question if he chuse to say the first then he contradicts what he saies of entring the visible Church p. 343. if the 2d he contradicts all he saies of baptisms being the onely entrance if the 3d. that believers infants are not entred and so not in not visibly of the visible church before baptism then of these two things he must say one viz. either that all the infants of believers that dy before their visible entrance into the visible church by baptism are damned without hope which he neither will nor can say or else say that there is hope of dying infants salvation and that they may be seemingly and visibly in a state of saluation and yet not be visible members of the visible church and then what need any further witnesse or disproof for hee l confute the Minor out of his own mouth which I am to disprove and save me the labour For if they may be in a visible state of salvation and yet not be visibly in the visible church then t is so and there 's an end If to all this he saies that he meanes not more but that believers infants before baptism have right to be baptized and to be of it and to deny them that right to it denies them salvation I deny that infants dying without right to be of the visible Gospel church denies them to be in state of salvation and shall shew the contrary neverthelesse Mr. Ba. might have spoken more properly and plainly then to call a right to visible membership by the name of visible membership it self as he often yea all along does therefore we might wish him to mend his Minor before we meddle with it and also he must confesse to the contradiction of himself that there is a third state betwen the visible church of Christ and the visible kingdom of the devil in which infants must be supposed to be by himself viz a right to the church but not a present standing in it which kind of right and middle state I acknowledge unbaptized believers to have but as for infants though they are in a present visible state of and right to salvation as well as they unlesse living longer they reject Gods grace afresh which dying infants cannot do and so not in the visible Kingdome of the devil yet are they neither in nor yet in immediate right to the visible Church as men and women of years not yet baptized and yet believing are but in medio abnegationis together with them these things premised I come now to the disproof of his Minor in which I le take him in a fairer sense for himself then he expresses himself in and yet make no question but to disprove it in contradistinction unto which I say down my self thus Viz. That not only some men may be de facto no members but all infants de jure in no right to membership in the visible Church of Christ under the Gospell and yet both be possibly in state of salvation Now how far forth de facto persons may be out of an actual standing in the visible church and yet in a visible state of salvation I le not meddle much to examine because the question is though Mr. B. does not so fairly expresse it but I take it in the way that is most to his advantage whether denyal of the jus this imediate right to membership excludes them not from salvation yet thus much I shall say to that viz. if persons must be seemingly and visibly in state of salvation before they are to be admitted members they may be as yet no members of the visible church de facto and yet in a visible state of salvation This is evident not only by the singular case of the theif who never was actually admitted into the visible Church nor so much as baptized at all for want of opportunity and yet in a visible state of salvation but also if we instance in all others that ever we read were baptized in the primitive times who were first seemingly and visibly in a state of repentance faith and disposition to obey Christ in all things and therefore in a visible state of salvation Heb. 5. 9. and then after this added to the church Mvt. 3. Mark 16. 16. Act. 2. Act. 8. Act. 16. Act. 18. for a certain remote and conditional right all persons have thus de facto and now de jure that the denyal of persons present and immediate right to membership in the visible church doth not deny them universally to be in a visible state of salvation is evident also thus viz. If some persons both men and infants may appear to us to be in state of salvation and yet not in immediate present right to be joined to the visible Church then the denyal of persons present and immediate right to membership in the visible Church does not universally deny them to be in a visible state of salvation But some persons yea both men and infants may appear to us to be in a state of salvation and yet at the same time not be in so much as immediate and present right to be joined to the visible Church Therefore The first proposition is most clear the second I shall make as cleer First briefly concerning men Secondly More largely concerning infants because the question mainly is of them Concerning men I instance in all the believers in the primitive times of whom comparing Scripture with Scripture Act. 2. Act. 8. Act. 19. Heb. 6. 1. 2. its most evident they had not an absolute immediate right to visible fellowship in the visible church though converted to faith and repentance by the word and so in a visible state of salvation as the thief upon the crosse so far as with him visibly repenting believing till such time as they were admitted after baptism and â—…aying on of hands with prayer and of single disciples as they were before they were added and admitted in to the visible body till of single living pretious stones as they were before by their precious faith they were built up visibly into a house the whole building the whole body was fitly framed together fitly joined together as well as shaped before therefore they that were not actually added and joined were not of the body Ephe. 2. 21. the 4. 16. if the whole were compacted by joints and bands then all the parts were actually added and joined and those that were not joined were no part of the whole so Col. 2. 19. knâ—… together Mr. Bax. argues 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the Cart before the horse they must be first supposed to be visibly members in the visible Church before to be visibly in a state of salvation but it is undeniably apparent they must have visible right to salvation and that by faith too before visible right to membership in the visible church Mr. Bax. supposes persons must be first
of thus saying that by the Field is meant the Church not the World as we say and Christ himself interprets it in that place Secondly that the servants who ask whether they should pluck up the Tarts yea or no and are bid to let them grow together with the Wheat are not the Civil Magistrates but Christs Disciples who had nothing to doe to pluck them up and â—…o the civil Magistrate may do it no withstanding to this purpose I have been answered when I have askt in way of querie the sense of that place To which I say First that by the Field is most necessarily meant the World and not the Church First Christ so expounds it himself the field saith he is the World but say they the World is oft used to expresse the Church and so may here I reply first I deny that the word world in any one place of Scripture signifies the Church onely it signifies sometimes the fabrick of the Universe Secondly it signifies all man kind good and bad collectively Thirdly sometimes the wicked onely that lie in wickednesse 1 Iohn 1. 13. Iohn 17. abstract and in contradistinction to the godly and the Church but never at all the Church the godly the Elect alone abstract and as in contradistinction to the wicked and though I know how far forth to maintain their absurd doctrines in other cases some Divines divine such a matter yet till they shew more for it then they have ever shewed to me or I am sure can shew out of the word not denying but that there is a number electorum i. e. all that believe and obey Christ exmundo electus their Mundus electorum is haud mundus dialectus Secondly here it cannot be the Church however because it is vox secundae intentionis a speech that is expounded by Christ to be the sense of the other speech of fieâ—…d he used before for if the word world were ever used for the Church it must be by a figure synechdoche whereby a smal snip of it is signified by the whole and then Christ speaks figuratively again in his Exposition of the other figurative word field which were incertum per incertum to open one paraboricall ex pression by another as paraboricall as that which who can think Christ did to his Disciples to whom his intent was to speak more plain that they might understand him but understand him they could not well if while he spake figuratively at first he did not speak properly at last however for whereas he had told them the field was the World they had as much need to have asked again what the world was if they could not think he meant plainly as he said Thirdly the Church is exprest usually by the name of Christ's Garden Vineyard c. which are places more peculiar and sequestred as Cant. 4. 12. 16. Isaiah 5. 6. Ez. 15. and the world or part without the Church by the name of Field Forrest c. wherein Tares wild bores briars thornes as well as wheat and Saints may live Fourthly if by Field and World here is meant the Church then t will follow that sith the Tares i. e. false Worshippers Hereticks Antichristians are bid to be let alone untill the harvest that such as these may be tolerated not in the world or civil state onely with the Church but also in the very Church it self which toleration cannot be for God chides that Church that suffers Iezebel to teach fornication in her and if the P P Priesthood plead for such a Toleration as this as he had need considering how his Church is filled with tares more then he is either able or willing to root out then he is for a tolleration far more intollerable then that we plead for for we would have Hereticks and Schismaticks and Erroneous false worshippers and nominall Christians Antichristians no neerer the Church then in the world with them i. e. the same States Towns houses but not in one and the same Church-fellowship or Congregation but they would have them stand in the Church for which sure Christ gives no permission much lesse a strick Commission as here is that they should But say you Christ does not here mean that they shall stand as if none had to do pluck them up but onely forbids these servants who were his disciples from meddling with them to evâ—…ry of whom he gives not Authority to pass câ—…nsures and punish but some may have Authority for it for all that Some who are those I trow it must be then either the Ministry or the Magistracy not the Ministry for it is far more cleer that by the servants here that took notice of the tares to the housholder is meant the servants of Christ in the office of Ministers that would fain have been meddling as the false Ministry ever does to root 〈◊〉 all both out of Church and world too that is not of institution by Christ in their opinion and such a spirit may too much shew it self in the true too see the like Spirit in his own disciples the first Ministers Luke 9. 54. 55. Mat. 15. 12. 13 14. for which Christ gives them a check and tells them they knew noâ—… what spirit they were of and bids them let the false plants alone to the heavenly Father to pluck up in his time saying let them alone they be blind leaders of the blind and will both in due time fall into the ditch t is far more clear I say that t is his Ministry he here forbids then common disciples for why should not their Ministry complain of them as well as they yet he bids these let them alone which shewes too that t is the World and not the Church they are to stand in for it belongs properly enough and primarily to the Ministers with consent of the Church executively to passe the censure of putting them out of the Church Secondly not the Magistracy for if it were the Church as they say it is how miserably do they mope and yet so the Priest does that make him the highest officer in the Church to cast persons out of the Church who is though the highest officer over the Church and World too yet in truth no Church officer or Minister in the Chuch qua Church at all Besides lastly which puts all out of doubt the prohibition is to all men as well as some and sounds forth the mind of Christ to be that the tares shall stand in the Field till the harvest and not be pluckt up by any at all but stand till the harvest they cannot according to his will if according to his will either Magistrate or Minister might pluck them up out of the field what field ere t is that is here spoken of his will is not only that such shall not pluck them up but that they shall not be pluckt up until the harvest i. e. the end of the world till he sends his Angels to gather the tares all