A26892:6329
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.
VI. I do not find that remote ancestors that are dead, or that are not the proprietors of the children, are the performers of the Condition by which they have right to baptism or salvation. 1. Because God hath put that power and work in the hands of others, even the Parents, which they cannot nullify. 2. Because the promise of mercy to thousands is no supposition that the successors make no intercision. 3. Else the threatenings to the seed of the wicked would signify nothing, nor would any in the world be excluded from right, but all be levelled; Because Noah was the common Father of mankind: And if you lay it on dead Ancestors, you have no rule where to stop till you come to Noah.
VI. I do not find that remote ancestors that are dead, or that are not the proprietors of the children, are the performers of the Condition by which they have right to baptism or salvation. 1. Because God hath put that power and work in the hands of others, even the Parents, which they cannot nullifie. 2. Because the promise of mercy to thousands is no supposition that the successors make no intercision. 3. Else the threatnings to the seed of the wicked would signifie nothing, nor would any in the world be excluded from right, but all be levelled; Because Noah was the common Father of mankind: And if you lay it on dead Ancestors, you have no rule where to stop till you come to Noah.
VII. I conclude therefore that it is, elearly the Immediate Parents, (both or one) and probably any true domestic Owner of the Child, who hath the power to Choose or Refuse for him; and so to enter him into Covenant with God, and so by Consent to perform the Condition of his Right. For 1. Abundance of promises are made to the faithful and their seed, of which I have spoke at large in my Book of Infant Baptism. And besides the punishment of Adams sin, there is scarce a Parent infamous for sin in Scripture, but his posterity falleth under the punishment, as for a secondary Original sin or guilt. As the case of Cain, Ham, the Sodomites, the Amalekites, the Jews, Achan, Gehezi, &c. show. And 1 Cor. 7. 14. it is expressly said, Else were your children unclean, but now are they holy (of the sense of which I have spoke as aforecited).