A47591:1371
Light broke forth in Wales, expelling darkness, or, The Englishman's love to the ancient…Light broke forth in Wales, expelling darkness, or, The Englishman's love to the antient…
Light broke forth in Wales, expelling darkness, or, The Englishman's love to the ancient Britons [sic] being an answer to a book, intituled [sic] Children's baptism from Heaven, published in the Welsh tongue by Mr. James Owen / by Benjamin Keach.Light broke forth in Wales, expelling darkness, or, The Englishman's love to the antient Britains [sic] being an answer to a book, iutituled [sic] Children's baptism from Heaven, published in the Welsh tongue by Mr. James Owen / by Benjamin Keach.
London: printed by William Marshall, 1696
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.
3. We do not deny Infants the same privileges and place in the Covenant of Grace, which they ever had, no God forbid; our Children have every way (no doubt) like place in that Covenant which the Children of the faithful had under the Law, even them and all them of our Children, that have the saving blessings of Christ Merits, and of the said unchangeable and eternal Covenant, but we say they are not in the Covenant of peculiarity God made with Abraham's Natural Seed as such; and so partake not of the external Rites and Privileges of the Gospel Church, or New Creation, until they do believe or are called by the Lord according to that promise you cite, Acts 2. 39.
3. We do not deny Infants the same priviledges and place in the Covenant of Grace, which they ever had, no God forbid; our Children have every way (no doubt) like place in that Covenant which the Children of the faithful had under the Law, even them and all them of our Children, that have the saving blessings of Christ Merits, and of the said unchangeable and eternal Covenant, but we say they are not in the Covenant of peculiarity God made with Abrahams Natural Seed as such; and so partake not of the external Rites and Priviledges of the Gospel Church, or New Creation, until they do believe or are called by the Lord according to that promise you cite, Acts 2. 39.
4. What a noise do you make about your Infants great loss by our Opinion; alas you cannot prove or make it appear they have any real Spiritual loss, hereby, our Children have the same spiritual blessings now as ever, and God is as much the God of our Seed in a spiritual sense, as ever he was to the Seed of the Faithful; all that we say is this, that our Infants have no ⟨p. 248⟩right to the external Ordinance of Baptism nor any but believers only; and pray what wrong is this to them? Is there no hope therefore left us of the Salvation of our dying Infants? what is it to give our Infants as such, the sign, who have not the thing signified thereby, you would have them have the Shell that have not the Kernel, and because we will not give them the one, till God gives them the other, we are censured as uncharitable, What good did Simon magus his Baptism do him? Will Baptism save your Infants? and if all the Seed of the Faithful are (as you say) in the Covenant of Grace, they are safe enough whether they are baptized or not, we cannot bring them into that Covenant, nor cast them out of it.