A26959:116
More proofs of infants church-membership and consequently their right to baptism, or, A second…
More proofs of infants church-membership and consequently their right to baptism, or, A second defence of our infant rights and mercies in three parts ... / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed for N. Simmons and J. Robinson, 1675
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.
Reply. Mark Reader, what an issue our Controversies with these men come to? [Men may be the covenanted people of God, and have the Lord engaged to be their God and to take them for his people, and be separated from the common and unclean, from the world, from strangers to the Covenant, &c. and yet be no visible Church-members] with them! Doth a dumb man signify his consent to the Covenant by any signs or not? If he do, that is visible covenanting. If not, how is he one of these covenanting and separated people? And do you think that Mr. T. knew not that I talk to him of visible covenanting and separation, and not only of a secret unexpressed heart-consent: What will make a Church-member then with such men?
Reply. Mark Reader, what an issue our Controversies with these men come to? [Men may be the covenanted people of God, and have the Lord engaged to be their God and to take them for his people, and be separated from the common and unclean, from the world, from strangers to the Covenant, &c. and yet be no visible Church-members] with them! Doth a dumb man signifie his consent to the Covenant by any signs or not? If he do, that is visible covenanting. If not, how is he one of these covenanting and separated people? And do you think that Mr. T. knew not that I talk to him of visible covenanting and separation, and not only of a secret unexpressed heart-consent: What will make a Church-member then with such men?
He next saith that [To be the circumcision is not all one as to be visible Church-members; Cornelius and his house were visible Church-members, yet not the circumcision].
Reply. Reader, dost thou not marvel to find him so plead for me against himself, or speak nothing ⟨p. 34⟩to the case? To be circumcised then, or baptized now, is not all one as to be visible Church-members: But sure all the Circumcised were, and all the Baptized are, invested in visible membership? Is it not so? And if Cornelius and more of the uncircumcised also were members, you see it was not inseparable from Circumcision. And whom is this against, me or him?