A26892:6259
A Christian Directory
A Christian directory, or, A sum of practical theology and cases of conscience directing Christians how to use their knowledge and faith, how to improve all helps and means, and to perform all duties, how to overcome temptations, and to escape or mortify every sin : in four parts ... / by Richard Baxter.A Christian directory, or, A summ of practical theologie and cases of conscience directing Christians how to use their knowledge and faith, how to improve all helps and means, and to perform all duties, how to overcome temptations, and to escape or mortifie every sin : in four parts ... / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed by Robert White for Nevill Simmons, 1673
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
2. And if this were as you say, it would still overthrow Infant baptism. For either we must baptize all indifferently, or none, or else know how to make a difference. All must not be baptized indifferently: And Election is a secret thing to us, and by it no Minister in the World can tell whom to baptize; Therefore he must baptize none, if there be no other differencing note to know them by.
Obj. God hath more elect ones among the Infants of true believers than among others: And therefore they are all to be baptized.
Answ. 1. It will be hard to prove that much (that he hath more) if there be no promise to them all as such. 2. If he have more, yet no man knoweth how many, and whether the Elect be one of ⟨p. 811⟩ten, twenty, forty or an hundred in comparison of the non-elect: For Scripture tells it not. So that no Minister of a Church is sure that any one Infant that he ever baptized is elect. 3. And God hath given no such rule for sealing and delivering his Covenant with the benefits, as to cast it hap hazard among all, because it is possible or probable it may belong to some.