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

R. B. The next Institution of Infants Church-membership, was at the first proclamation of grace to fallen man, or in the first promise of redemption to sinners, in Gen. 3.15. [And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.] I will prove that this fundamental Covenant of grace or promise doth declare it to be the will of God that Infants should be Church-members: And to this end, let us first consider what the words expressly contain, and then what light may be fetched from other Texts to illustrate them. It being a known rule, that an Expositor must not turn universals into singulars or particulars, nor restrain and limit the Scripture generals, where the word it self or the nature of the subject doth not limit them, I may well conclude that these things following are comprehended in this fundamental promise. 1. That the Devil having played the enemy to mankind, and brought them into this sin and misery, God would not leave them remediless, nor to that total voluntary subjection to him as he might ha•e done: But in grace or undeserved mercy would engage them in a war against him, in which they that conquered should bruise his head. 2. That in this war the Lord Jesus Christ, the principal seed, is promised to be our General, whose perfect nature should contain, ⟨p. 82⟩and his perfect life express a perfect enmity against Satan, and who should make a perfect conquest over him. 3. The Lord Jesus is promised to do this work as the woman's seed, and so as conceived of her, and born by her, and so as an Infant first, before he comes to ripeness of age. So that here an Infant of the woman is promised to be the General of this Army, and Head of the Church. This is most evident: By which God doth sanctify the humane birth, and the Infant state, and assure us that he doth not exclude now that age from the redeemed Church, which he admitted into the Church by the laws of creation. For the first promise is of an Infant born of the woman to be the Head of the Church, and growing up to maturity, to do the works of a Head. Had God excluded the Infant state from the visible Church he would not have made the Head first an Infant. Where note, 1. That Christ is the great exemplar of his Church;

R. B. THe next Institution of Infants Church-membership, was at the first proclamation of grace to fallen man, or in the first promise of redemption to sinners, in