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

SECT. LIX.

R. B. You must now in reason expect, that infants Church-membership being thus established, partly in the law of nature, and partly in the fundamental promise, what is after this spoken of it should not be any new establishment, but confirmations and intimations of what was before ⟨p. 115⟩done, rather giving us the proof that such a law and promise there is that did so establish it, than being such first establishing laws or promises themselves. And from hence I may well add this further argument. If there be certain proof in Scripture of Infants Church-membership, but none except this before alleged that makes any mention of the beginning of it, but all speaking of it as no new thing, then we have great reason upon the forementioned evidence, to assign this beginning which from Gen. 3. we have expressed. But the former is true, ergo, the later. You confess that Infants were Church-members once. You only conceive it began when Abraham was called out of Ur. Your conceit hath not a word to support it in the Text. The right to such a blessing was then new to Abraham's seed, when Abraham first believed: But when it began to belong to Infants of Believers in general, no Text except this before cited doth mention. Nor doth that promise to Abraham intimate any inception then as to the Church-membership of Infants, but only an application of a privilege to him that in the general was no new thing.

R. B. YOu must now in reason expect, that infants Church-membership being thus established, partly in the law of nature, and partly in the fundamental promise, what is after this spoken of it should not be any new establishment, but confirmations and intimations of what was before ⟨p. 115⟩