A59660:13
The church-membership of children, and their right to baptism according to that holy and…The church-membership of children, and their right to baptisme according to that holy and…
The church-membership of children, and their right to baptism according to that holy and everlasting covenant of God, established between Himself and the faithful ... cleared up in a letter, sent unto a worthy friend of the author ... / by Thomas Shepard ...The church-membership of children, and their right to baptisme according to that holy and everlasting covenant of God, established between Himself and the faithfull ... cleared up in a letter, sent unto a worthy friend of the author ... / by Thomas Shepard ...
Cambridge: printed by Samuel Green, 1663Cambridg: printed by Samuel Green, 1663
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
Might I have had mine own choice, and desires granted, some other should have performed the task of a Preface to the following Treatise of my precious and much Honoured Father; but being put upon it, by divers worthy friends, whom I knew not how to deny, I shall therefore humbly premise a word or two, in tenderness to the Truth, and out of unfeigned love to those especially of Christ's poor sheep (how ever feeble, or diseased) that either have been, or may be in danger of going astray from so great a Truth, as is the subject of the ensuing discourse: being sincerely desirous, that they may be restored, and from thence returned unto the Shepherd, and Bishop of our Souls, and may in nothing be made a prey to him, who is our great adversary, the Devil, who walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. For we should not be ignorant of his devices.
M•ght I have had mine own choice, and desires granted, some other should have performed the task of a Preface to the following Treatise of my precious and much Honoured Father; but being put upon it, by divers worthy friends, whom I knew not how to deny, I shall therefore humbly premise a word or two, in tenderness to the Truth, and out of unfained love to those especially of Christ's poor sheep (how ever feeble, or diseased) that either have been, or may be in danger of going astray from so great a Truth, as is the subject of the ensuing discourse: being sincerely desirous, that they may be restored, and from thence returned unto the Shepherd, and Bishop of our Soules, and may in nothing be made a prey to him, who is our great adversary, the Devil, who walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. For we should not be ignorant of his devices.
The enmity put by the Lord between the seed of the Woman and the seed of the Serpent, Gen. 3.15. soon began to work, even in the infancy of the Church, in the family of our first Parents, as we see Gen. 4.8. by the Martyrdom of righteous Abel. No small portion of that fixed hatred, and hostility of the old Serpent, hath ever since been discovered against the young ones of Christs little flock. The multiplication of the Children of Israel, is the occasion why Pharaoh deals so wisely as we read; endeavouring first by the Midwives, secretly to destroy the male Children: and after that, more openly by an Edict, to drown them in his Egyptian waters; for which what ever his pretence might be, alleged