A26892:6270
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.
Answ. Election is Gods act and not mans; and therefore may be an Antecedent but no Condition, required of us. And man is not called to make Profession that he is Elected, as he is to make profession of his faith and consent to the Covenant. And God only knoweth who are his by Election, and therefore God only can baptize on this account.
And what is the probability which the objectors mean that many of the Infants of the faithful are elected? Either it is a promise, or but a prediction: If no promise it is not to be sealed by baptism. If a promise, it is absolute o• conditional. If any absolute promise [As, I will save many children of believers] 1. This terminateth not on any singular person, as baptism doth, and 2. It is not the absolute promise that baptism is appointed by Christ to seal. This is apparent in Mark 16. 16. and in the case of the adult. And it is not one Covenant which is sealed to the adult by baptism, and another to infants. Else baptism also should not be the same. But if it be any conditional Covenant, what is it, and what is the condition?
And what is it that baptism giveth to the seed of believers, if they be not justified by it from original sin? You will not say, that it conveyeth Inherent sanctifying Grace, no not into all the Elect themselves, which many are many years after without. And you cannot say, that it sealeth to them, any promise, so much as of visible Church-privileges. For God may suffer them presently to be made Janissaries, and violently taken from their Parents, and become strangers and despisers of Church-privileges, as is ordinary with the Greeks Children among the Turks. Now God either promised such Church-privileges absolutely, or conditionally, or not at all? Not absolutely, for then they would possess them. If conditionally, what is the Condition? If not at all, what promise then doth baptism seal to such, and what benefit doth it secure? God hath instituted no baptism, which is a mere present delivery of possession of a Church-state, without sealing any Promise at all. True baptism first sealeth the promise, and then delivereth possession of some benefits.