A47591:339
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.
Furthermore, they might possibly plead the same Pretences you do, viz. The cutting off the Foreskin of the Flesh put the Infants to great Pain; nay, may be they might fancy it would cost them their Lives; nay, call it Murder, and therefore let pairing of their Nails serve: As you it seems fear dipping would endanger the Lives of Infants, and therefore make sprinkling to serve instead thereof. But to proceed.
2. I am in amaze to see these Men speak so fully and clearly to this glorious Truth, (i. e. that the great thing Christ ordained Baptism to represent, is his Death, Burial and Resurrection, together with the baptized Person's Death to Sin, and his rising again to walk in Newness of Life) and yet both those shameful Abuses amongst you and other Churches are not rectified, viz.
1. That Sprinkling, which doth not, cannot answer or represent those Gospel-Mysteries, should not be rejected.
2. That Infants should be once deemed the proper Subjects of Baptism, since nothing of a Death to Sin, nor rising again to walk in Newness of Life, can appear in them. For, as the Learned observe, Baptism is a Symbol of present, not future Regeneration: 'Tis an outward Sign of that inward Death unto Sin, which the Party baptized passed under then, or ought to have done, when (or before) he is baptized. They then professed themselves to be dead to Sin, i. e. even when they were buried with Christ in their Baptism; for the Argument of the Apostle lies in that respect: How shall we that are dead unto Sin, live any longer […]? Knowing that so many of […] who have been baptized into Christ, were baptized into his Death, both in Sign and Signification: And therefore, as Dr. Sherlock says, rising out of that watery Grave a new born Creature, denotes not only what they should be hereafter, but what they were actually at that time. So that as this Text, and Arguments drawn therefrom, utterly condemn Sprinkling as not being Christ's Baptism, so it excludes Infants from being