The plea of the children of believing-parents for their interest in Abraham's covenant, their…

First, The Anabaptists require of us an express Command from Christ to the Apostles, to baptize Infants. This was put upon me in the Congregation: Now it is meet the Anabaptists should be honest men, ⟨p. 53⟩buy and sell by the same measure. If they require of us express Scriptures, we may well require of them the same.

Secondly, All the Arguments which the Anabaptists draw from Scripture against Infants Church-membership, and Baptism, do strike at the Grace and Wisdom of God in his Covenant with Abraham and his Seed, and his Constitution of the Church of the Jews, as if the Lord had not done wisely, but they will teach him how to Constitute Churches better. We shall hear their Arguments anon.

Thirdly, The holy Page tells us, how much weight the Jews and false Teachers put upon Circumcision, what a stir it made in the Churches, while the Apostles laboured to remove it, though it was a painful bloody Ordinance. We read Acts 21.21. This was the great Objection against Paul, and this was 21 years after Paul's Conversion: I am apt to think till the Temple [the head of all the Ceremonies] was utterly demolished; the believing Jews did Circumcise their Children; But had Paul told them, the Reason was, that Christ is come, and now the Covenant with Abraham as to his Seed, is repealed, and their Seed are all cast out of the Church, and therefore they must not Circumcise ⟨p. 54⟩their Children: Should we not have read the Jews Clamours and Out-cries against the Apostles, in the Acts, and in every Epistle, and what a bar had this been against the reception of the Gospel; I appeal to the Consciences of the Anabaptists. But though we read of Circumcision in several places, both in the Acts and the Epistles, there is not one word of this.