Nay, suppose you mean that all these acts must concur to make them members, (and so that they were no members till many hundred years after the institution of Circumcision,) yet could not your Doctrine hold good: For some of these acts are of an alien nature, and no more apt to cause infant Church-membership, than a Bull to generate a Bird. What aptitude hath the settling of an Army to be any part of the causation of Infants Church-membership? None, I think; at least if it be such an Army as ours: For surely the settling of ours caused no such thing, as you well know. What aptitude hath the leading to Padan Aram, or removal to Egypt, to make Infants Church-members? Nay, how strange is it, that the removing of Church-members, and such as had been Infant Church-members, as Ishmael, Keturah's children, Esau, must cause Infant Church-membership? Sure it was no cause of their own. Keturah's children were Church-members in infancy: I enquire of you by what act they were made such? You say [by Gods fact of taking the whole people of the Jews for his people] whereof the act of removing Keturah's children was a part. Very good. It seems then that removing from the Congregation of Israel a people of the Jews, is a taking of the removed to be of that people: or else it is not only the taking that people, but also the removal ⟨p. 64⟩from that people that maketh Church-members, even the removed as well as the taken, both which are alike absurd.
Nay, suppose you mean that all these acts must concur to make them members, (and so that they were no members till many hundred years after the institution of Circumcision,) yet could not your Doctrine hold good: For some of these acts are of an alien nature, and no more apt to cause infant Church-membership, than a Bull to generate a Bird. What aptitude hath the setling of an Army to be any part of the causation of Infants Church-membership? None, I think; at least if it be such an Army as ours: For surely the setling of ours caused no such thing, as you well know. What aptitude hath the leading to Padan Aram, or removal to Aegypt, to make Infants Church-members? Nay, how strange is it, that the removing of Church-members, and such as had been Infant Church-members, as Ishmael, Keturahs children, Esau, must cause Infant Church-membership? Sure it was no cause of their own. Keturahs children were Church-members in infancy: I enquire of you by what act they were made such? You say [by Gods fact of taking the whole people of the Jews for his people] whereof the act of removing Keturahs children was a part. Very good. It seems then that removing from the Congregation of Israel a people of the Jews, is a taking of the removed to be of that people: or else it is not only the taking that people, but also the removal ⟨p. 64⟩from that people that maketh Church-members, even the removed as well as the taken, both which are alike absurd.
