Certain disputations of right to sacraments, and the true nature of visible Christianity defending…

Arg. 5. According to the definition of most of our Divines, the outward washing alone without inward Grace, is not Baptism: Therefore if God give them right to the washing without the Grace, he gives them not right to Baptism: but this is but ad hominem.

I do but superficially touch these things. 1. Because (as I said) the Arguments to Mr. Blake are full. 2. Because I am informed that all this is granted with those Divines with whom I have debated this point, and that they confess that none but sound Believers have engaged God in actual Covenant to them, but only in the common conditional Covenant, and consequently it is not by Covenant grant that the notoriously ungodly have ⟨p. 261⟩right to Baptism, but by other ways which we are next to speak to. I am informed that this is all granted; but then I must add, that they yield that such men have no true proper right at all: for such proper right is of the nature of the debitum, the dueness of the Benefit. So that a man may thence lay claim to it as his due. And the right (between God and Man) we receive only by Gods moral Gift, which is by some promise or grant by his word or revelation of his Will de debito habendi; for this dueness or right is a moral thing, and must come by his moral act, such as among men we call political or civil.

I do but superficially touch these things. 1. Because (as I said) the Arguments to Mr. Blake are full. 2. Because I am informed that all this is granted with those Divines with whom I have debated this point, and that they confess that none but sound Believers have engaged God in actual Covenant to them, but only in the common conditional Covenant, and consequently it is not by Covenant grant that the notoriously ungodly have ⟨p. 261⟩right to Baptism, but by other waies which we are next to speak to. I am informed that this is all granted; but then I must add, that they yield that such men have no true proper right at all: for such proper right is of the nature of the debitum, the dueness of the Benefit. So that a man may thence lay claim to it as his due. And the right (between God and Man) we receive only by Gods moral Gift, which is by some promise or grant by his word or revelation of his Will de debito habendi; for this dueness or right is a moral thing, and must come by his moral act, such as among men we call political or civil.