A26959:182
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 were one individual fact of about 470. years long that made Infants Church-members, then they could not be Church-members till that fact was past, For the effect is not before the cause, or causality of the efficient; the relation cannot be before the fundamentum be laid: and it seems this long fact was the laying of the fundamentum: ⟨p. 62⟩But the consequent is certainly false; for Infants were Church-members before the end or completing of your long fact: For they were Church-members (you'll grant) when Ishmael and Isaac were circumcised. Ergo, it was not this long fact that made them Church-members.
If it were one individual fact of about 470. years long that made Infants Church-members, then they could not be Church-members till that fact was past, For the effect is not before the cause, or causality of the efficient; the relation cannot be before the fundamentum be laid: and it seems this long fact was the laying of the fundamentum: ⟨p. 62⟩But the consequent is certainly false; for Infants were Church-members before the end or compleating of your long fact: For they were Church-members (you'l grant) when Ishmael and Isaac were circumcised. Ergo, it was not this long fact that made them Church-members.
If you mean that it was not the whole, but some part of this long fact that actually made Infants Church-members, then you would have assigned that part, when that was the thing desired, and which you pretended exactly to perform; or at least you would not have told us it comprehended all these acts.
And if each particular act did make Infants Church-members, or lay a sufficient ground of it, then it seems that it was done before the institution of Circumcision. For Gods calling Abraham out of Ur was before it. So that the Children born in his house must be Church-members upon that; and a sufficient ground laid for his own to have been such, if he had then had a natural issue: And it seems then that Ishmael was born a Church-member many years before Circumcision.