A26959:295
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.
SECT. LVIII.
R. B. Yet before I cite any more particular Texts, I will add this one argument from the tenor of the Covenant of grace, as expressed in many Texts of Scripture. According to the tenor of the Covenant of grace, God will not refuse to be their God and take them for his people, that are (in a natural or law sense) willing to be his people, and to take him for their God. But the Infants of believing Parents are thus willing, Ergo. The Major is unquestionable. The Minor is proved from the very law of nature before expressed. Infants cannot be actually willing themselves in natural sense, Ergo, the reason and will of another must be theirs in law sense, and that is of the Parents, who have the full dispose of them, ⟨p. 114⟩and are warranted by the law of nature to choose for them (for their good) till they come to use of reason themselves. The Parents therefore by the light and law of nature choosing the better part for their children, and offering and devoting them to God, by the obligation of his own natural law, he cannot in consistency with the free grace revealed in the Gospel, refuse those that are so offered. And those that thus come to him in the way that nature it self prescribeth, he will in no wise cast out, Joh. . . And he will be offended with those that would keep them from him, that are offered by those that have the power to do it, though they cannot offer themselves. For legally this act is taken for their own. Thus I have showed you some of the fundamental title that Infants of Believers have to Church-membership, and our obligation to dedicate them to God.
R. B. YEt before I cite any more particular Texts, I will add this one argument from the tenour of the Covenant of grace, as expressed in many Texts of Scripture. According to the tenour of the Covenant of grace, God will not refuse to be their God and take them for his people, that are (in a natural or law sense) willing to be his people, and to take him for their God. But the Infants of believing Parents are thus willing, Ergo. The Major is unquestionable. The Minor is proved from the very law of nature before expressed. Infants cannot be actually willing themselves in natural sense, Ergo, the reason and will of another must be theirs in law sense, and that is of the Parents, who have the full dispose of them,