N00149:160
A discourse concerning the subject of baptism wherein the present controversies, that are agitated…A discourse concerning the subject of baptisme wherein the present controversies, that are agitated…
A discourse concerning the subject of baptism wherein the present controversies, that are agitated in the New English churches are from Scripture and reason modestly enquired into / by Increase Mather, teacher of a church in Boston in New-England. ; [Sixteen lines of quotations]A discourse concerning the subject of baptisme wherein the present controversies, that are agitated in the New English churches are from Scripture and reason modestly enquired into / by Increase Mather, teacher of a church in Boston in New-England. ; [Sixteen lines of quotations]
printed by Samuel Green, 1675
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.
Argument 10. The Principles upon which this notion (of an impossibility of the continuance of a Membership received, in Infancy) is built, falls to the Ground, and therefore the superstructure built thereon cannot stand. There is little of Scripture alleged for this conception, but the grounds of it are principally two.
Argument 10. The Principles upon which this notion (of an impossibility of the continuance of a Membership received, in Infancy) is built, falls to the Ground, and therefore the superstructure built thereon cannot stand. There is little of Scripture alledged for this conception, but the grounds of it are principally two.
1. That there is a specific difference between the Membership of an Infant and of one that is Adult; this notion cannot hold water: Do but ask any Logical Tyro, of what sort the distribution is, when Church-members (or any other Members) are distinguished into Infants and Adult; he will answer you, that it is a distribution of the Subject from its Adjuncts, and therefore it cannot be a distribution of the Genus into its Species. Besides things that do Specifically differ can never be the same: as a Man and Brute can never be the same; Take a young Brute and keep it an hundred years, he will never be a Man, but keep a young Child so long, and he will become an aged Man, the reason is because there is a Specific difference between a Man and a Brute, but not between an old Man and a Child; So he that is now an Infant-member will hereafter be an Adult-Member, which could not be if these did Specifically differ. Again, things that are of the same nature do not Specifically differ for we do not in this Dispute take Species in the notion that Individual are Species but for the same with Genus) but so is the Membership of an Infant, and of a person Adult, Root and Branch are of the ⟨p. 63⟩same nature, as common experience proveth, James 1. 12. But the membership of the Child is as the Branches and the Parent is the Root; witness