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

And I pray you tell me yet a little better, how an act can make a man a Church-member that was one long before that was done? You cannot here say, that it was before in esse morali, and had a moral causation. How then could your chiefest act, the bringing out of Egypt, make those Infants Church-members that were born in Egypt, and were Church-members before? Or how could it be any part of the cause? Did the bringing out of Egypt concur to make Moses a Church-member when he was in the basket on the waters? And when you answer this, you may do well to go a little further, and tell me, how such an act concurreth to make him an Infant Church-member that was dead an hundred or two hundred years before that act was done. For example, how did the settling of the Israelites Army, or Inheritance, or the Covenant on Mount Sinai, make Ishmael, or Esau, or Isaac, or Jacob Church-members?

And I pray you tell me yet a little better, how an act can make a man a Church-member that was one long before that was done? You cannot here say, that it was before in esse morali, and had a moral causation. How then could your chiefest act, the bringing out of Aegypt, make those Infants Church-members that were born in Aegypt, and were Church-members before? Or how could it be any part of the cause? Did the bringing out of Aegypt concur to make Moses a Church-member when he was in the basket on the waters? And when you answer this, you may do well to go a little further, and tell me, how such an act concurreth to make him an Infant Church-member that was dead an hundred or two hundred years before that act was done. For example, how did the setling of the Israelites Army, or Inheritance, or the Covenant on Mount Sinai, make Ishmael, or Esau, or Isaac, or Jacob Church-members?

I desire you also to tell me by the next, what be the nerves and ligaments that tie all these acts of 430. years at least together, so as to make them one fact? And whether I may not as groundedly make a fact sufficient for this purpose of the acts of an hundred or two hundred years only? And whether you may not as well make all the acts from Abraham's call till Christ to be one fact, and assign it to this office?