Here you have two notable directions for your usage of the world. 1. Begin to renounce it betime, as it did Christ. As the world rejected Christ an Infant, so we in our Infancy must reject the world. This is to be solemnly performed in Baptism: where ⟨p. 25⟩as we are engaged to the saving Trinity, and Baptized into the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, so must we solemnly Renounce the damning Trinity, even the flesh, the world and the Devil: For so the Church hath ever done, and the nature of the thing doth manifestly require it: for the motus must have its Terminus à quo, as well as ad quem. Its a sad thing that so many well-meaning men should deny our Infant-capacity of this engagement; but much sadder that they should do it with such violent Church dividing zeal, as if the Kingdom of God lay in the exclusion of the seed of Believers out of it! If it be true that all our Infant-seed are excluded from the Church, I am sure it is so sad a truth, that me thinks men should not so eagerly lay hold of it, before they have better evidence to evince it. It was once a mercy for Infants to be in Covenant with God, and members of his Church; and I do not think that it is now a mercy to be out; or that the Kingdom of the Devil is the more desirable state; (and all men are in one of these.) Sure I am, they were once members of the Church by Gods appointment, and they that say they are cast out must prove it, and better then any that yet have attempted it, if they would have judicious, considerate, impartial men believe them. Whoever cast them out, sure Christ would not, that did so much to enlarge the Church and better its state, and manifest more abundant mercy, and chide his Disciples that kept such from him, and proclaimed that his Kingdom was of such. I am not easily persuaded to believe that the Head and King of the Church hath actually gathered a Society of a false Constitution so long and that he that is so tender of his Church, and hath bought it so dearly, and ruled it so faithfully, had never a true constituted visible Church till about two hundred years ago, among a few such as I have no mind to describe, and that we must now have a new and true Church-frame to begin, when the world is almost at an end;
Here you have two notable directions for your usage of the world. 1. Begin to renounce it betime, as it did Christ. As the world rejected Christ an Infant, so we in our Infancy must reject the world. This is to be solemnly performed in Baptism: where ⟨p. 25⟩as we are engaged to the saving Trinity, and Baptized into the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, so must we solemnly Renounce the damning Trinity, even the flesh, the world and the Devil: For so the Church hath ever done, and the nature of the thing doth manifestly require it: for the motus must have its Terminus à quo, as well as ad quem. Its a sad thing that so many well-meaning men should deny our Infant-capacity of this engagement; but much sadder that they should do it with such violent Church dividing zeal, as if the Kingdom of God lay in the exclusion of the seed of Believers out of it! If it be true that all our Infant-seed are excluded from the Church, I am sure it is so sad a truth, that me thinks men should not so eagerly lay hold of it, before they have better evidence to evince it. It was once a mercy for Infants to be in Covenant with God, and members of his Church; and I do not think that it is now a mercy to be out; or that the Kingdom of the Devil is the more desirable state; (and all men are in one of these.) Sure I am, they were once members of the Church by Gods appointment, and they that say they are cast out must prove it, and better then any that yet have attempted it, if they would have judicious, considerate, impartial men believe them. Whoever cast them out, sure Christ would not, that did so much to enlarge the Church and better its state, and manifest more abundant mercy, and chide his Disciples that kept such from him, and proclaimed that his Kingdom was of such. I am not easily perswaded to believe that the Head and King of the Church hath actually gathered a Society of a false Constitution so long and that he that is so tender of his Church, and hath bought it so dearly, and ruled it so faithfully, had never a true constituted visible Church till about two hundred years ago, among a few such as I have no mind to describe, and that we must now have a new and true Church-frame to begin, when the world is almost at an end;
