A47535:265
Gold refined, or, Baptism in its primitive purity proving baptism in water an holy…Gold refin'd, or, Baptism in its primitive purity proving baptism in water an holy…
Gold refined, or, Baptism in its primitive purity proving baptism in water an holy institution of Jesus Christ ... : wherein it is clearly evinced that baptism ... is immersion, or dipping the whole body, &c : also that believers are only the true subjects (and not infants) of that holy sacrament : likewise Mr. Smithies arguments for infant-baptism in his late book entitled, The non-communicant ... fully answered / by Benj. Keach ...Gold refin'd, or, Baptism in its primitive purity proving baptism in water an holy institution of Jesus Christ ... : wherein it is clearly evinced that baptism ... is immersion, or dipping the whole body, &c : also that believers are only the true subjects (and not infants) of that holy sacrament : likewise Mr. Smythies arguments for infant-baptism in his late book entitled, The non-communicant ... fully answered / by Benj. Keach ...
London : Printed for the author, and are to be sold by Nathaniel Crouch ..., 1689
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Chapter 7: Proving Believers to be the only true Subjects of Baptism, from the Apostles Doctrine,…
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.
But if Believers were the only Subjects of Baptism in the Primitive Time, and this was according to the Commission of Christ and Practice of those days, how came this Order and Administration to be altered and changed, I mean by whose Authority? nay, and which is worst of all,1 if that Infant-Baptism may be deemed to be a Divine Rite, or an Ordinance of God, sith 'tis not recorded in the Scripture, nor practised in the Apostles Time, it renders not only the Gospel-Church weak and imperfect, but Christ himself unfaithful, or less faithful than Moses, who was but the Servant, and yet lest nothing dark or unwritten which God commanded him, but did do every thing exactly according to the Pattern showed him in the Moun•.
But if Believers were the only Subjects of Baptism in the Primitive Time, and this was according to the Commission of Christ and Practice of those days, how came this Order and Administration to be altered and changed, I mean by whose Authority? nay, and which is worst of all,1 if that Infant-Baptism may be deem'd to be a Divine Rite, or an Ordinance of God, sith 'tis not recorded in the Scripture, nor practised in the Apostles Time, it renders not only the Gospel-Church weak and imperfect, but Christ himself unfaithful, or less faithful than Moses, who was but the Servant, and yet lest nothing dark or unwritten which God commanded him, but did do every thing exactly according to the Patern shewed him in the Moun•.
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Nay, and by the same Argument (since Infant-Baptism was not instituted by Christ, no• practised in the Primitive Church) and yet may be admitted as a Divine Ordinance of Christ, and so practised by Christians why may not