N03796:102
An alarm to unconverted sinners. In a serious treatise: showing I. What conversion is…An alarm to unconverted sinners. In a serious treatise: shewing I. What conversion is…
An alarm to unconverted sinners. In a serious treatise: showing I. What conversion is not, and correcting some mistakes about it. II. What conversion is, and wherein it consisteth. III. The necessity of conversion. IV. The marks of the unconverted. V. The miseries of the unconverted. VI. Directions for conversion. VII. Motions [i.e., Motives] to conversion. : Whereunto are annexed Divers practical cases of conscience judiciously resolved. / By Joseph Alleine, late Minister of the Gospel at Taunton, in Somersetshire.An alarm to unconverted sinners. In a serious treatise: shewing I. What conversion is not, and correcting some mistakes about it. II. What conversion is, and wherein it consisteth. III. The necessity of conversion. IV. The marks of the unconverted. V. The miseries of the unconverted. VI. Directions for conversion. VII. Motions [i.e., Motives] to conversion. : Whereunto are annexed Divers practical cases of conscience judiciously resolv'd. / By Joseph Alleine, late Minister of the Gospel at Taunton, in Somersetshire.
Philadelphia: printed by B. Franklin, 1741
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.
Sol. I answer, it is not the end of Baptism, to regenerate, 1. Because then there would be no Reason, why it should be confined only to the seed of Believers, for both the Law of God and the Nature of Charity, requires us to use the Means of Conversion for all, as far as we can have Opportunity. Were this true, no such Charity as to catch the Children of Turks and Heathens, and baptize them, and dispatch them to Heaven out of hand, like the bloody wretches that made the poor Protestants (to save their Lives) to swear they would come to Mass, and that they would never depart from it, and then put them forthwith to Death, saying, They would hang them while in a good mind. 2. Because it presupposeth Regeneration, and therefore cannot be intended to confer it. In all the express Instances in Scripture, we find that Baptism doth suppose their repenting, believing, receiving the Holy Ghost, Acts. 8 37. & 2.38. and 10.37. Mark 16.16. And to imagine, that Baptism was instituted for an end of which not one of the first Subjects was capable (for they were all adult Persons, and supposed to have Faith and Repentance accordingly as they professed, and their Children were not baptized till after them, in their Right) were no little absurdity. Were this Doctrine true, Baptism would make Disciples; but we find it doth bespeak them such before hand, Matth. 28.19.3. Because Baptism, being but a Seal of the Covenant, canno• convey the Benefits, but according to the tenor of the Covenant, to which it is set.
Sol. I answer, it is not the end of Baptism, to regenerate, 1. Because then there would be no Reason, why it should be confined only to the seed of Believers, for both the Law of God and the Nature of Charity, requires us to use the Means of Conversion for all, as far as we can have Opportunity. Were this true, no such Charity as to catch the Children of Turks and Heathens, and baptize them, and dispatch them to Heaven out of hand, like the bloody wretches that made the poor Protestants (to save their Lives) to swear they would come to Mass, and that they would never depart from it, and then put them forthwith to Death, saying, They would hang them while in a good mind. 2. Because it presupposeth Regeneration, and therefore cannot be intended to confer it. In all the express Instances in Scripture, we find that Baptism doth suppose their repenting, believing, receiving the Holy Ghost,