A39697:279
Vindiciæ legis & fœderis
Vindiciæ legis & fœderis: or, A reply to Mr. Philip Cary's Solemn call Wherein he pretends to answer all the arguments of Mr. Allen, Mr. Baxter, Mr. Sydenham, Mr. Sedgwick, Mr. Roberts, and Dr. Burthogge, for the right of believers infants to baptism, by proving the law at Sinai, and the covenant of circumcision with Abraham, were the very same with Adam's covenant of works, and that because the gospel-covenant is absolute. By John Flavel minister of the gospel in Dartmouth
London: printed for M. Wolton, 1690
A REPLY TO Mr. Philip Cary's Solemn Call. › Section 3 › Argument 5: Argument V.
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.
(8.) You wish your Testimony rise not up at last as a Witness against us. Sir, we do not apprehend any Cause we have to fear your Testimony against us, or severest Censures of us, whilst we are ⟨p. 131⟩satisfied, that as you neither have a Faculty or Commission to be our Judge, so neither is there any convincing Evidence in your Reply to our Arguments. But I think you have much more Cause to fear, lest those Arguments should come in at last as a Witness against you, who deny and contemn them; when mean time you are put to most lamentable Shifts, even Contradictions, and somewhat worse, to escape the Point and Edge of them.
(8.) You wish your Testimony rise not up at last as a Witness against us. Sir, we do not apprehend any Cause we have to fear your Testimony against us, or severest Censures of us, whilst we are ⟨p. 131⟩satisfy'd, that as you neither have a Faculty or Commission to be our Judge, so neither is there any convincing Evidence in your Reply to our Arguments. But I think you have much more Cause to fear, lest those Arguments should come in at last as a Witness against you, who deny and contemn them; when mean time you are put to most lamentable Shifts, even Contradictions, and somewhat worse, to escape the Point and Edge of them.
(9.) To conclude, You tells us we must not expect the special Presence of Christ to be afforded to us, without our compliance in these Points with you.
Sir, We never yet deserted the Judgment or Practice of Infants Baptism, and yet have had (blessed be Jesus Christ for it) great and manifold, sweet and signal Proofs and Evidences of his Presence with us: He hath owned and blessed our Ministry to the Conversion of many; and there are some, and those not mean or few, of our Spiritual Children, now in your Societies in England, who have acknowledged us to be the Instruments of their Conversion: The Lord lay it not to their Charge, who now desert