A39697:66
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.
Ay Sir, You are sensible of the Advantage, no less than a complete Victory you shall obtain by it; and therefore being a more hardy and adventurous Man than others, put desperately upon it (which never any before you durst attempt) to prove Abraham's Covenant, ⟨p. 7⟩which stands so much in the way of your Cause, to be a mere Covenant of Works, and therefore now abolished.
Ay Sir, You are sensible of the Advantage, no less than a compleat Victory you shall obtain by it; and therefore being a more hardy and adventurous Man than others, put desperately upon it (which never any before you durst attempt) to prove Abraham's Covenant, ⟨p. 7⟩which stands so much in the way of your Cause, to be a meer Covenant of Works, and therefore now abolished.
My proper Province is to discover here, that part of the Foundation (I mean Abraham's Covenant) whence our Divines, with great Strength and Evidence, deduce the Right of Believers Infants to Baptism now. Next, to evince the Absurdity of your Assertions and Arguments you bring to destroy it: And lastly, To reflect briefly upon the Answers you give in the beginning of your Book, to those several Texts of Scripture pleaded by the learned and judicious Divines you oppose, for the Justification of Infants Baptism.
(1.) Those that plead God's Covenant with Abraham, Gen. 17. as a Scripture Foundation for Baptizing Believers Infants under the Gospel, proceed generally upon these four Grounds or Principles.