N00206:23
A brief answer to a small book writtenA brief ansvver to a small book written
A brief answer to a small book written by John Norcot against infant-baptism. This answer is written by John Eliot for the sake of some of the flock of Jesus Christ who are ready to be staggered in point of infant-baptism by reading his book.A brief ansvver to a small book written by John Norcot against infant-baptisme. This answer is written by John Eliot for the sake of some of the flock of Jesus Christ who are ready to be staggered in point of infant-baptisme by reading his book.
Boston: printed by John Foster, 1679
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.
Rom. 11.16. If the first fruits be holy, the lump is also holy, if the Root be holy, so are the branches also. A Believer and his Children are but one lump, in his Church station, the believing Parents sanctify the whole household, who are under the Parents tuition, a Believer and his Children are but one Tree in the Church or Vineyard of the Lord, and when the Root is holy, the whole Tree, all the branches are holy, this is the Ecclesiastical state of all believers. Hence therefore we ought to receive all the Infants of believers unto Communion in the Church, according to their Capacities. Now Infants are capable of Communion with the Church in Baptism: which doth most evidently appear in the Church of the Jews, where they were capable of Circumcision, and were ever admitted into the Communion of the Church therein, and the Apostles were wont to baptize all the Household, when the Parents believed. The Lord doth account them visible Believers that are branches of a believing Root, and giveth that Testimony of them. And God who appointed it, best knoweth what is acceptable to himself. The present administration of Baptism to Infants is a present exercise of Faith, love and duty in all the Church, and especially in the Parents, and ⟨p. 5⟩it is an after exercise of Faith, love, and duty in the Child, when he is grown up to years of capacity, and as long as he liveth his Baptismal Covenant christianly improved upon him, doth very powerfully by the assistance of the Spirit oblige him to walk as becometh a child of the Lord, and prepareth him for confirmation, in laying hold on the Covenant of God by his own choice, consent, and act. There is a passive reception of Christ and his Kingdom, which Infants are capable of: in which act of grace adult up grown persons must humble themselves to become like Infants, Mark. 10.15. whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child shall not enter thereinto. If then God knoweth how to have, and exercise such spiritual Communion with Infants, who are we that we should keep them from him when he calleth for them? and hath instituted an Ordinance for that use and end, Mark. 10.14. I return to this Text where Christ saith, suffer little Children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of God.