A26959:178
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.
If it be only [past] actions which you call [transeunt] it seems your long fact which was so many hundred years in doing, was no transeunt fact till the end of all those years; and so did not (by your own doctrine) make any Church-members till the end of those years.
But, Sir, the Question is not, whether it were a transeunt fact that laid the foundation by legislation or promise-making; but whether the effect were transeunt, or the act as it is in patient: Whether the law were transeunt which was made by a transeunt fact? and whether the moral action of that law were permanent or transeunt? it being most certainly such a moral act that must produce a title, or constitute a duty. Gods writing the ten Commandments in stone was a fact soon past, but the law was not soon past, nor the moral act of that law, viz. obligation. There are verbal laws, that have no real permanent sign: and yet the law may be permanent, and the obligation permanent, because the sign may have a permanency in esse cognito, and so the signifying virtue may remain by the help of memory, though the word did vanish in the speaking.
But, Sir, the Question is not, whether it were a transeunt fact that laid the foundation by legislation or promise-making; but whether the effect were transeunt, or the act as it is in patiente: Whether the law were transeunt which was made by a transeunt fact? and whether the moral action of that law were permanent or transeunt? it being most certainly such a moral act that must produce a title, or constitute a duty. Gods writing the ten Commandements in stone was a fact soon past, but the law was not soon past, nor the moral act of that law, viz. obligation. There are verbal laws, that have no real permanent sign: and yet the law may be permanent, and the obligation permanent, because the sign may have a permanency in esse cognito, and so the signifying vertue may remain by the help of memory, though the word did vanish in the speaking.