More proofs of infants church-membership and consequently their right to baptism, or, A second…

If this be your meaning, I pray you be so just and impartial as to accept of the proof which I shall give you of Infants Church-membership before Abraham's days, if I make it appear to be as strong as this call of Abraham from Ur.

If this be your meaning, I pray you be so just and impartial as to accept of the proof which I shall give you of Infants Church-membership before Abrahams days, if I make it appear to be as strong as this call of Abraham from Ur.

If you should mean that some one of these comprehended acts should of it self make any Infants Church-members, then it must be any one; for you no more assign it to one of them than to another, (only say [chiefly the bringing them from Egypt:] ⟨p. 63⟩But surely some of these acts particularly cannot do it, as the leading to Padan Aram, the removal to Canaan, to Egypt, placing, preserving there, settling their Army, &c. Did any one of these make Infants to become Church-members?

If you should mean that some one of these comprehended acts should of it self make any Infants Church-members, then it must be any one; for you no more assign it to one of them than to another, (only say [chiefly the bringing them from Aegypt:] ⟨p. 63⟩But surely some of these acts particularly cannot do it, as the leading to Padan Aram, the removal to Canaan, to Aegypt, placing, preserving there, setling their Army, &c. Did any one of these make Infants to become Church-members?

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