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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
spirit_n	flesh_n	sin_n	soul_n	7,400	5	5.2096	4	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A41792	Truth and peace, or, The last and most friendly debate concerning infant-baptism being a brief answer to a late book intituled, The case of infant-baptism (written by a doctor of the Church of England) ... whereunto is annexed a brief discourse of the sign of the cross in baptism, and of the use of the ring, and bowing at the altar, in the solemnization of marriage / by Thomas Grantham.	Grantham, Thomas, 1634-1692.	1689 (1689)	Wing G1550; ESTC R41720	89,378	100

Ends of Baptism They have Remission so far as they need it and Eternal Life upon other Terms even the free Mercy of God in Christ Rom. 5. 18. And the good will of God towards them Mat. 18. 14. And if Infants are uncapable of these as they are the Ends of Baptism so they will be uncapable of all other Things which are annexed to Baptism as the Ends of that Ordinance As we will propose two viz. the washing of Regeneration and incorporating into Christ Infants are capable of neither of these as they are the Ends of Baptism For Baptism is but demonstrative or a sign of the New Birth because God will have those that come to be baptized therein to testify that they have and therein symbolically do put off the Body of the Sins of the Flesh which Work had its Effect from the Word and Spirit of God. And 2. to be incorporated with Christ as it is an End of Baptism does necessarily presuppose a being taken out of the Tree that is wild by Nature or out of our degenerate Estate and planted contrary to that Nature by a willing resignation of Soul and Body to Christ in that solemn ministration of Baptism And how incapable Infants are of this all Men must needs see To be short if it could be proved by the Word of God or found true by Experience that Infants are capable of any Good or that the Will of God was wrought by baptizing them I could yield to the Doctor but the Truth is they are capable of none of the Ends of Baptism as God hath annexed them to Baptism and therefore his Argument must come to nothing And how easy were it to turn this Argument against him in the Case of the Lord's Supper but that may be more sitting in another place But the Doctor says p. 28. That Infants are capable of all the Ends of Baptism as Baptism is instituted for a Sign from God towards us to assure us of his gracious Favour and to consign unto us the Benefits of the Covenant of Grace Now if this Doctrine be true then either Baptism is a sure Sign of all these Things to all Infants or to some few of them only The former the Doctor will not allow and yet he cannot but know when Christ said Teach all Nations baptizing them he makes no difference between one Person and another all are equally to be taught and baptized equally upon the same Terms And if the Doctor will have some Infants only to have an Interest in the Benefits of the Covenant of Grace and therefore but some only have right to Baptism which consigns the Covenant of Grace we shall desire him to prove this well and therewithal to let as know how he knows one sort of these Infants from another He says indeed That Infants may be Members of a Church their Childhood notwithstanding as well as of a Family c. But to be of a Family is equally natural to all Infants so that if this Argument prove any thing it proves all Infants Church-Members as much as any Nor saith he does Childhood hinder or incapacitate them for being adopted the Children of God more than the Children of any other Person But God is not like Man to adopt or receive into favour some poor Infants and let all the rest perish without favour We affirm that God has in Mercy taken care of all Infants as we have proved But this does not teach us to do that to some of them which he never commanded and to reject the rest as if God had no Mercy for them These Notions are so partial and so uncertain that no solid Comfort can be taken from them And let my Infant whom I confess I have not baptized but only devoted him to God's Mercy and Protection by Prayer and the Doctor 's Infant whom he has crossed and sprinkled be laid together I am perswaded the Doctor would tremble to say this Infant is an adopted Child of God and in his Favour that Infant is rejected and out of God's Favour And truly I cannot but think such Discourses as these proceed not from the bottom of the Heart but Men please themselves to dream waking of I know not what Favour Almighty God has for their Infants above what he has for others The Doctor 's next way is to make use of Similitudes as thus Should a Prince adopt a Beggar 's Child and incorporate him into the Royal Family and settle a part of his Dominions upon him and to solemnize and confirm all this should cut off a bit of his Flesh or command him to be washed with Water who would count this an insignificant Ceremony or Solemnity or say that the Child was not capable of the Sign when he was capable of the chief thing signified thereby Surely such flourishes as this may soon deceive those that rest upon them For 1. here is no qualification in this Child nor any required of it in this case but every Beggar 's Child is as capable of this Favour as this Child and consequently this makes no more for the Infant of an English Man than of an Indian God may be as kind to the one as to the other 2. Here 's the King's Act of Grace peculiar to this Child and to no other 3. Here 's the King's express Command to cut off a bit of the Child's Flesh or to wash it with Water And thus the whole of the Matter is begg'd but not any proof for Infant Baptism ministred from hence for we grant that the Things here supposed to be done do sufficiently capacitate the Beggar 's Child for the Mercy and Favour of the Prince but then it as much incapacitates other Children to whom the King has extended no such pity and concerning whom he has given no such order for should the Doctor now without any Order from the King fetch all the Beggars Children in the City and Country and pass all these Solemnities upon them that they all may be received into the Royal Family c. I suppose he would have but little thanks for his labour even so to cross sprinkle or dip all the Infants in the World and either all or none have right to it and to adopt them thus to be of the Family of Heaven without Heaven's Authority to make them capable of it and God's Direction in the Business of the Solemnity will not please God. We therefore content our selves to commit our Infants to his Mercy and Protection in the way of humble Prayer for his Blessing and for this we have his own Son our Lord to go before us who thus does suffer little Children to come unto him without rejecting so much as one of them The Doctor 's next Similitude proceeds thus Suppose a Prince should send for an attainted Traitor's Child and say You know the Blood of this Child is attainted by his Father's Treason by Law he has forfeited all right to his Father's Estate My Bowels of

the Law and to nail them to his Cross as we have shewed not to establish them in his Church But the Truth is whoever revives them pulls down his Church And it were the false Apostles that would have conformed the Church of Christ to the Platform of the old Jewish Church Acts 15. 5. But the true Apostles withstood them and decreed that the new Church should observe no such things but they establish what the Light of Grace and the positive Law of God had made necessary before to all Mankind Acts 15. 23 to 30. Gen. 9. 4. Thus far were the Apostles from building the Church of Christ with Jewish Materials That as the great Curcellaeus says The Apostle writ that Epistle to let the Gentiles know they were freed from Moses's Law lest by their hearing him read every Sabbath they might think they were bound to obey his Laws And it is strange that the Doctor should now make Christ and his Apostles Anabaptists as he does for he will have them to have been baptised as well as circumcised to initiate them into the Jewish Church and he will have that very Baptism consecrated by Christ instead of Circumcision to initiate into his Church sure he has little reason to write against Anabaptism when he is one of the greatest Asserters of it that ever was but more of this pretended Baptism anon St. Paul above all the rest rejects the old Materials and builds all with new Old things are passed away behold all things are become new 2 Cor. 5. There is verily a disannulling of the Commandment going before for the Weakness and Vnprofitableness thereof Heb. 7. 18. He calls the whole Mass of Jewish Ceremonies Beggarly Elements And is it like that he would build the Gospel-Church with such Materials much less with that supposed Baptism of Jewish Proselytes or of Jews themselves which the Doctor knows was at best but of Mans Institution Let us view the old Jewish Church and the new Gospel-Church in a few Particulars briesly The Members of the Jewish Church were Natural called natural Branches Rom. 11. that is they were the Seed of Abraham according to the Flesh The Members of the Christian Church are spiritual grafted contrary to Nature into the good Olive and born of God. The Circumcision of the Jewish Church was outward in the Flesh made with Hands The Circumcision of the Gospel-Church is that of the Heart in the Spirit made without Hands in putting off the Body of the Sins of the Flesh by the Circumcision of Christ Their Sacrifices were carnal carnal Ordinances Heb. 10. Our Sacrifices are Spiritual 1 Pet. 2. 2 3 4. Their Ministers were chosen of one Family or Tribe and did succeed by natural Descent and were Ministers of the Letter Ours are given by Christ as the Fruit of his Ascension into Heaven and are Ministers of the Spirit Ephes 4. Their two Sacraments served chiefly to seal their Right to the Land of Canaan and that the Messiah should come of the Seed of Abraham according to the Flesh and to commemorate their Deliverance out of Egypt Ours seal Remission of Sins by Faith in the Blood of Jesus and our Inheritance in the Kingdom of Heaven to all Eternity In short Their Services made nothing perfect Heb. 10. Ours present every Man perfect in Christ Jesus Col. 1. 28. But let us come to this pretended Insant-Baptism among the Jews which is so much made use of by the Doctor as if it were the very thing that must give Life to Insant-Baptism in the Christian Church And indeed Dr. Hammond from whom this Doctor seems to borrow much makes the Jewish baptizing of Proselytes the Original and ours but the Copy That our Saviour should thus highly approve of a Jewish Ceremony as to consecrate it to be the initiatory Sacrament into his Church is no way to be believed For he condemned all such Ceremonies of their own devising to be but vain Worship Mat. 15. 9. and will he then establish this their Tradition if indeed they had any such The Baptism of John was that which he established both by his own Submission to it and Divine Testimony concerning it Matth. 3. 15. 21. 25. Nor did John take up his Baptism from the Jews as many Learned Men of the Church of England do teach of late For he was a Prophet immediately sent of God to baptize with Water John 1. 33. And he that says John's Baptism was originally of the Jews as this Doctor and Dr. Hammond do teach denies John to be a Prophet and does dissent herein from many Learned Protestant Writers whose Testimonies I will therefore here bring against them who with one Mouth bear witness that John's Ministry and Baptism was Evangelical and not Ligal Jewish or of his own devising Diodate on John 1. 6. Divine Light being now extinguished the Son of God himself came into the World to light it again by the Gospel whereof John the Baptist was the first Preacher And on Matth. 11. 13. John's Prerogative above the precedent Prophets is they have only foretold and described things to come but he declared the present Salvation and in him began the Evangelical Ministery and the Legal and figurative Ministery ceased This could not be true had he taken his Baptism from the Jewish Church Dr. Willit in his Synopsis John preached the Baptism of Repentance for the Remission of Sins which was all one with the Baptism of Peter Act. 2. 38. And it is absurd that Christ the Head and the Church the Members should not have the same Baptism And that John ' s Baptism was not of John ' s devising but of God's Appointment Dr. Fulk on Mat. 3. Dr. Fulk John by his Doctrine and Baptism prepared a way to Christ not to the Baptism of Christ for he preached not his own Baptism but the washing away of Sins by Christ Therefore he also was a Minister of the Baptism of Christ This new Device of founding the Christian Baptism upon Jewish Baptism is dangerous opening a Gap to the Quakers and other Notionists to contemn it as a Legal Ceremony Yet the Doctor boldly tells us That Christ was obliged to lay by Circumcision and consecrated this Ceremony used by the Jews instead of it The Enemies of Christ durst not say as Dr. Hammond and this Doctor does say that the Baptism of John was of Jewish Original They knew such a Speech must deny John to be a Prophet And yet these Learned Men have not Learning enough to consider this We know the Pharisees were very zealous for the Traditions of the Jewish Church but it 's certain they had no Zeal for the Baptism of Repentance for they rejected it against themselves Luke 7. 20. And here this holy Ordinance is expresly called the Counsel of God which shews it was not originally a Rite or Ceremony of humane Institution or Jewish Ceremony But now let us see whether the Doctor may not possibly be mistaken in asserting that the

communicate there and that this Custom continued 600 Years yet it was laid aside as unwarrantable and we shew there is equal reason to lay aside the Custom of baptizing Infants But we have more particularly shewed these things in our Animadversions upon Dr. S. his Digressions about Infant-Baptism Wherein also the Substance of this Book of the Case of Infant-Baptism is redargued and indeed this Book seems to have been added as an Enlargement upon those short Notes of Dr. Stillingfleet though done perhaps by another Hand I shall therefore say no more at present to the Doctor 's Conclusion nor shall I take notice of Mr. Philpot's Dream he was doubtless a good Man yet that he did dream waking as well as when asleep is evident enough to all that will consider how extreme weakly he goes about to prove Infants to be Believers c. But let us not trouble the Dead we shall ere long be with them where all our Mistakes will be made manifest and all our unavoidable Infirmities will be pardoned But if any Man sin presumptuously the same reproacheth the Lord And happy is the Man who sincerely seeks for Truth and faithfully walks up to his Light tho through unavoidable Weakness he may err in many things For our God knoweth our Frame and whereof we are made and remembers that we are but Dust and like as a Father pities his willing tho weak Son even so the Lord pittieth them that fear him To him therefore be Glory for ever Amen An APPENDIX concerning the Sign of the Cross in Baptism BEcause there is bound up with the Case of Infant-Baptism a Treatise called The Case of the Sign of the Cross in Baptism We shall take so much notice of it as to ask in Tertullian's words Vnde venisti Whence comest thou And to this the Author seems to give answer Ab Antiquitate from Antiquity Tradition c. And quotes for it Tertullian Origen Basil and Cyprian and gives as good ground from Antiquity and Tradition for it as our Doctor has done for Infant-Baptism And he has a clearer Text for it too if Jerome say true than any which has been yet alledged for Infant-Baptism viz. Ezek. 9. 4. Set a Mark upon the Foreheads of the Men that sigh He tells us that by several of the Hebrew Versions this mark is supposed to be by the Hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Tau which Jerome says was in the Samaritan Character like our T and so made the Figure of the Cross It seems these two Cases Infant-Baptism and the Sign of the Cross in Baptism stands much upon the same bottom and will stand and fall together Howbeit we shall not do much more about this case than to be the Remembrancer of this Generation with what Testimony has formerly been given against this piece of Superstition by learned Protestants themselves even such as were our Opposites in the other case who to this Plea of the Church of England that they receive not the sign of the Cross as from the Papists but from the Fathers of the Primitive Church gives them this Answer 1. The Fathers can be no Vizard for a Rite whereof the Pagans Jews or Hereticks were the Fathers and first begetters It was the Fault of one Alexander that he sang the Psalms of Valentinus It is ours that we use his Cross I call it his because he was the first that used this Sign the very first that made account of it as appears by Irenaeus lib. 1. c. 1. And he did wrest the Scriptures to the Crosses Commendation He termed him Crux to shew a purging Power in him because he held the Cross a Purger of Man's Sin. And that he was drawn into this Opinion by the same means that Papists are drawn into it by a supposed Dedication of it in the Blood of Christ not considering that by this conceit Men may adore every Thorn-Bush because the Holy Head of Jesus was embrued with Blood by that Crown of Thorns wherewith he was crowned And Valentinus does confess his A●on was without a Figure until Christ by his Death upon the Cross gave him one and till now we never read of any that used the Figure of the Cross before him or made any account of it And therefore he it is for ought we know even Valentinus that first brought it into Request and Reckoning And who then will suffer us to say we borrow it from the Fathers and not from him See we not then that to say we follow the Fathers in the Cross Valentinus the Heretick being the first Deviser of it we are forced to fly like Eutropius to the very same Sanctuary which we have denied and shut up to others The Fathers can be no Vizard for a Ceremony which has been abused since or what though from the Fathers we take this sign This helpeth not till the Fathers use be justified which will never be He that readeth the Fathers Writings will meet indeed with such a Chaos as will make him afraid I say not to fall into it but even to behold it Who can brook the Efficacy which Tertullian gave it The Flesh is signed that the Soul may be defended The Necessity which Cyprian gave it in Baptism Vngi necesse baptizatum baptizati signo Dominico consumantur The Fathers call this sign Spirituale Signaculum to wit because it bringeth the Spirit for which one place may serve our turn Sequitur spirituale Signaculum quia post fontem superest ut perfectio fiat quando ad invocationem Sacerdos Spiritus fanctus infunditur And in the opinion of the Fathers the Water of Baptism is nothing worth without the Cross In the opinion of the Fathers the Cross is the Terror of the Devil and an impregnable Wall against him so that they used the Cross themselves when in any danger In the opinion of the Fathers the Cross is Insigne Regni et clavis Paradisi Last of all in the opinion of the Fathers the Cross is so necessary as that it is to be made coming and going sitting and standing even ad omnem incessum at every stop and ad omnem actum in every Action that we do And to shew the Superstition of the Cross from Tertullian take a View of it as set down by the Author of the case of the Cross Vpon every motion saith he at their going out and coming in when they put on their Garments or Shoes at the Bath or at Meals when they lighted up their Candles or went to Bed whatever almost they did in any part of their Conversation still they would even wear out their Foreheads with the Sign of the Cross And is not this a sad Story yet our Author brings this in Favour of it Mr. Hooker is brought in as drawing Mr. Goulart as it were by the Hair of the Head to clear the Fathers from the Superstition of the Cross which he doth not save in comparison of the Popish Merit and Enchantment which afterward