A39697:56
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
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.
You direct your Solemn Call to all that would be owned as Christs faithful Witnesses.
Here you are too obscure and general; Do you mean all that would be owned by you, or by Christ? If you mean that we must not expect to be owned by you, till we renounce Infants Baptism, you tell us no news; for you have long since turned your back upon our Ministry and Assemblies; yet methinks 'tis strange, that we who were lately owned as Christs faithful Witnesses under our late Sufferings, must now be disowned by you, when we have liberty to amplify and confirm our Testimony in the peaceful improvement of our common Liberty.
Here you are too obscure and general; Do you mean all that would be owned by you, or by Christ? If you mean that we must not expect to be owned by you, till we renounce Infants Baptism, you tell us no news; for you have long since turn'd your back upon our Ministry and Assemblies; yet methinks 'tis strange, that we who were lately own'd as Christs faithful Witnesses under our late Sufferings, must now be disown'd by you, when we have liberty to amplifie and confirm our Testimony in the peaceful improvement of our common Liberty.
But if your meaning be (as I strongly suspect it is) that we must not expect to be owned by Christ, except we give up Infants Baptism; then I say it is the most uncharitable, as well as unwarrantable, and dangerous Censure that ever dropped from the Pen of a sober Christian, 'Tis certainly your great evil to lay Salvation ⟨p. 3⟩it self on such a point as the proper Subject of Baptism, and to make it Articulus Stantis, vel cadentis Religionis, the very Basis on which the whole Christian Religion, and its Professors Salvation must stand. I hope the rest of your Brethren are more charitable than your self; but however it be, I do openly profess, that I ever have, and still do own you, and many more of your Persuasion, for my Brethren in Christ, and am persuaded Christ will own you too, notwithstanding your many Errors and Mistakes about the lesser and lower matters of Religion. Nor need your Censure much to affect us, as long as we are satisfied you have neither a Faculty, nor Commission thus solemnly to pronounce it upon us.