them first Students then Graduates all these are very useful and beneficial not onely as the present aliments and encouragements of those Arts and Sciences but those Arts and Sciences and Languages are good fortifications of the understanding and the enabling of Reason yea and of Faith too to encounter with Atheists Hereticks and Schismaticks strong preparatives to the expounding of the Text of Scripture being written in two of those Languages and a fuller qualification unto the work of the Ministery to do it so as not to be ashamed through ignorance and say the book is sealed and he cannot read Sect. 3. But particularly for the learning of the Greek and Hebrew Tongue did not Jesus lay down that a man I mean an interpreter and dispenser of the Scripture should learn them he laid it down in the whole Scripture for that he caused the whole Scriptures to be written in those original Languages besides that the Title and Superscription which Pilate wrote and put on the Cross Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews was writen in Hebrew and in Greek and in Latine John 19.19 20. guided therein even by Jesus and confirmed in it that what he had written he had written and would not alter And again for the learning of Philosophy and the Arts and going to the Universities to do so and that in order to the Ministry did not Jesus lay it down in Scripture when as Saul for so he was then is called by Jesus a chosen vessel to bear his name before the Gentiles and to the children of Israel and in praevison of and provision for that calling was by the same Divine mercy ordered to be trained up from his childhood in the famous City and Vniversity too of Tarsus where he learned both Languages fitting him to bear the name of Christ to both Nations the Jews and Gentiles and likewise the Arts as Philosophy and the rest enabling him to disputation with and confutation of all the learned Philosophers of the Stoicks and Epicureans of another famous Vniversity of Athens Yea and Paul himself maketh it as an honourable mention of himself that he was beth born in Tarsus a City in Cilicia where there being also a University he learned the grounds and principles of Arts as also brought up in the City of Jerusalem at the feet of Gamaliel a Doctor of the Law and taught according to the perfect manner of the Law of the Fathers Acts 22.3 I shall desire the learned Readers patience a while not much caring for your or any others impatient ignorance that I may here also bring in a short Historical proof of University-learning from the persons and practice of the ancient Fathers and Divines in their times and successions as I have done before produced their practice and custome for Infant-baptism in their dayes and ages I will select out of them but some the most remarkable and that briefly Fulgentius an Affrican by birth was brought up first by his mother in the knowledge of the Greek and Latine Tongue wherein he was excellent and after though but young got to be admitted into a Cloyster or Monastery of which Faustus a French Bishop had the oversight and there lead a Students life a good while and being driven thence by the Vandals persecuting the Christians he got into another Cell where one Felix governed and driven thence by the Barbarians he went to Rome and into Sardinia where he setled himself and taught and instructed Christians resorting to his Cell in great store But Faustus the Bishop called him from that his privater life and made him Priest and not long after Bishop of Ruspa a great and populous City Once for all I shall say that Monasteries and Cloysters were such as our Vniversities and Colledges are for use I mean where many Bishops had their Seats and the oversight of them for the training up of Students in the Arts and Sciences and so also Divinity and Theology Augustine an Affrican also by birth was singularly well learned in the liberal Arts so that he taught Grammar in his own City of Thagasta and Rhetorick in the head City Carthage after going to Millain he was appointed to instruct the Emperor Valentinian being the fifth of that name and being somewhat tainted with the Heresies of the Manachees he by the wisdom of Ambrose Bishop there and by his Sermons and Disputations in publick of which he was a diligent hearer was converted from it and Baptized by the said Bishop and after he was ordained a Priest by Valerius Bishop of Hippo and so after a while with the consent and desire of Valerius being old was in the life of Valerius created Bishop of the same Hippo. Chrysostom a Graecian born at Antioch was brought up in humane learning under Libanius the Sophister or Philosopher spent some time in secular affairs and after entred into the Priesthood at Antioch was made Governor of the Church there and upon the death of Nectarius was made Governor or Bishop of Constantinople The Historians say of him that Holiness and Scholarship were joined in him that he was excellent and powerful and judicious in Morals or moral learning Gregory Nyssen a Graecian brother to the other Gregory Nazianzen addicted himself much to the study of Rhetorick and was eminent therein above all of his time who for the furthering of himself in the study of the Arts and all learning embraced a Monastical life highly respected in the Ancient times for the cause above mentioned that he might also join Theology to his other knowledge and after he was made Bishop of Nyssa of which City he took his name and even after that also addicted himself much to his former study of the Arts especially Rhetorick until his brother Gregory Nazianzen in an Epistle to him reprehended him for so long sticking upon the same Ambrose a French-man by birth was brought up at Rome then a Nursery of the Arts and learning where he gained wonderful knowledge in the liberal Arts that place being then as the Academy of the world giving himself to that study Probus then Praetor taking notice of him and the same of his learning made him Governour of Insubria Liguria and Emilia after going to Millain and Auxentius an Arrian Bishop deceased He was cryed up both of the Arrian faction as well as the Orthodox to be and was created or made Bishop there Epiphanius a Phoenician born learned the Hebrew Tongue of one Tryphon a Jew and was put to School to Hilarion to learn the Arts proved acerrimus haereticorum oppugnator and was made Bishop of Salamine Gregorius Nazianzen a Greaecian born was bred up in Humane literature at the Vniversity of Athens and spent thirty years in those Studies proved a great Philosopher and the most eloquent Orator of his time and was surnamed also of the Graecians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Theologus or the Divine He was Bishop first of Sasima then of Nazianzen both in Cappadocia and lastly of
upon it for the strengthening themselves in their own opinion of Infant-Baptism Origen the Schollar and Disciple of Clemens Alexandrinus For the year 204. so forward a Schollar that at eighteen years of his age he set up a School and taught others in his fift Book to the Rom. 6. c. the Church hath received the Tradition from the Apostles even or also to little Children to give Baptism because in them as in all are the Genuine or ingenerated filths of sin the which ought to be washed with water and the Spirit Somewhat more of this there is in his eighth Book upon Levit 8. Homil. and upon Luke Homil. 14. Tertullain whom Cyprian read so diligently and esteemed so highly For the year 195. that in all matters of doubt he would have recourse to him saying Give me my Master meaning Tertullian in his Book of Baptism chap. 18. According to the Condition disposition and also age of every person the delaying of Baptism is more profitable especially in and about Infants for what necescessity is there if it be not so necessary to bring the suerties into danger of not performing their promise and whether this be meant of the Children which were not born of Christian Parents as some will or of the Children of believing Parents as others say its evident that Baptism was administred in all ages and he intimates the Custom and practice of the Church in his age to Baptize them even Children as well as others Though he seems not to be so well pleased with it and yet again the words import no other then that he denyed the Necessity onely of Baptism to them being out of danger of death not simply the Baptizing of them rather as in another place he doth imply they ought to be Baptized if there be danger or fear that afterwards they may not or cannot be Baptized in his Book of the Soul Chap. 39. and 40. where he saith that Infants of believing Parents or one Parent have such a Sanctity and that from the Privilege of their Birth not the discipline of their bringing up as gives them a Right to Baptism Therefore Tertullain calleth the Children of Believers The designees or destinates of Holiness or as elsewhere the Candidates of Holiness and so here is an evidence for that Birth Holiness or foederal Holiness of which I shall speak anon out of the 2 of Acts. Irenaeus 2 Book For the year 170. Chap. 39. He came to save all by himself I say all who are born again by him into God Infants and little ones and Children and yong men and old men c. The intention of the words is of Christ Jesus who as it followeth there went through every age to Infants made an Infant Sanctifying Infants to little ones made a little one sanctifying those of that age but you see there is an expression of Infants of whom he saith they are born again into or unto God that is Baptized for so Baptism is usually stiled by the Ancients especially the Greeks a Renascence or New Birth or Palingensy as might be shewed out of Athanasius and Basil who took it from the Apostolique manner also of speaking Tit. 3.5 as before I mentioned I can go no higher for Irenaeus was the Schollar and Disciple of Polycarpus and Polycarpus was the Schollar or Disciple of John the Evangelists and to you see I am come up to the very skirts and thresholds of the Apostolique Churches and Primitive Times with the Custom and Practice of Baptizing Infants Some go yet higher to Justin Martyr quaest resp ad orthod qu. For the year 130 90 60 56. and so to Clemens the Roman Bishop in his Apostolical constit lib. 6. cap. 15. and to Dyonisius Areopagita in his Eccles Hietarchy Ch. last And indeed there are pregnant places in them for Baptizing Infants if the Authors were Legitimate they are so good and sufficient against the Papists who own them and maintain them for true and Genuine but with us they are held to be suppositions and spurious and though many good and true things are in them as Infant-Baptism c. Yet they are not belonging to such venerable Names as those I have rchearsed and therefore not of that Antiquity with them and so impertinent to my purpose Onely one thing I must ad to satisfie the Reader why on this side of Augustine towards the Apostles I have mentioned no more of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church seeing there were many more or what were they discrepant in their opinion about the Baptism of Infants no sure the reason must needs be this they all lived long before Pelagius came out from the Brittish Seat and gathered to himself a Sect of Locusts which spread over the world and troubled the Churches with this matter for one they denying the Traduction of originall sin in Infants Therefore those Ancient Fathers of the Church having no occasion to intermeddle with any such matters about Infant-Baptism kept close onely to such controversies and questions as were on foot in their dayes save onely that Cyprian as I touched before was questioned hereabouts the silence of those Fathers that touched not upon it gives consent to the Practice as unquestioned by them but God would put words of it it to the mouthes of some of them to be witnesses unto posterity of the Antiquity of Infant-Baptism and the Churches Practice The like answer may be given why in those two General Councels the Nicene and the Constantinopolitan and some other Provincial ones which were before Augustine nothing is touched upon in their Canons about Baptism of Infants except that of Cyprian and his 66 Colleagues before mentioned because it was at a thing never in question amongst them never opposed by any and yet that was a very sruitful age of haeretical weeds springing up in those purer times witness the Munichees Arrians Donatists Macedonians Aaerians Eunomians Luciferians c. amongst all which not an Antipaedobaptist not any that so much as made scruple at it which sure some or other in malice or envy to the Church would have done if they could have found how to have shaken that as they did all other Foundations of Christinaity But after Augustines time when Pelagius arose Then the Councils came in against him thick and threefold as the Milevitane or Council of Carthage in the year 402. 418. Canon 11. and the Gerundense Council held in Spain 518. Can. 5. and the Bracarense Council the 2. 572. Can. 7. And so the Fathers and Doctors of the Church are ever and anon storming of Pelagius and his adhaerents And now Sir I know all this Labor is lost as to you who are and desire to be but a man of to day and for ever but for yesterday or Antiquity there you will leave even Christ and his Church and go no farther you are none of the old Martiald Souldiery but the New Modell'd Militia and yet you may remember how you began
you have done fighting with the Papists that we are agreed about them two to be but one and the same baptism I could tell you that the Apostle here writing to the Hebrews alluded to their old Legal Washings Ablutions and Baptismes minding them of thens but wishing them withall to lay them by and mind the one Evangelical baptism and the sprinkling of Christs blood the which they did but typifie or look at So still but one baptism I could tell you that the baptismes here meant are those I must speak three words more of Human Latine for the words sake because of the elegancy of them Fluminis Flaminis Songuinis But I will turn them into divine English words for yoru sake of Water Fire Blood For there as I said before is an outward baptism which is the washing of the flesh with Water by the Minister and there is an inward baptism which is washing of the Soul with the blood of Christ by the Holy Ghost these are baptismes indeed and here meant but in all Gods true Children they meet in one baptism and they come from God as one baptism entirely made up of these two sorts the outward and inward for that baptism which is of blood mentioned by Christ and mentioned to his two Disciples are ye able to be baptised with the baptism I am baptised with and resolved for them ye shall indeed be baptised with such baptism Matth. 20.22 It is nothing but a constant suffering and conflicting in Christs cause even unto Blood and the suffering of Martyrdom for his sake But I will call in again for Beza whom as before I stiled an interpreter of Luke and that Text Acts 19.5 according to his heart Though he confessed he learned the interpretation of Marnixius so here also I may stile him an interpreter of Luke again and of this Text Heb. 6.2 according to his heart the which interpretation also he learned of Calvin who saith to this purpose an interpreter of those Apostles and Prophets he commented upon according to their hearts though here Beza doth not acknowlege so much There was a right and Custom in the Church Primitive of administring many baptismes upon certain set dayes which set dayes were after appoynted to be Easterday and Whitsunday especially when many Catehumens and New Converts were wont to meet together for baptism These therefore were called Dayes of Baptismes as appears out of the writings of the Antient both Greeks and Latines so still it was but one and the same baptism was conferred upon every one though called baptismes because so many received baptism together upon one day like as sometime in London six seaven and more Children partake of baptism together at one time And now Sirs are you Masters in Israel and know not these things are you Dippers and know not these Baptismes and wheras for the time ye ought not to be Teachers for that ye have need that one Teach you which be the first Principles of the doctrine of Christ learn that this doctrine of Baptismes is the third of them the principles and that it containeth nothing of two Baptismes our baptising Christians born in their infancy and your baptising Christians born in their grown age and least of all for your rebaptising our baptised Infants when you have made them your Proselytes upon a confession of Faith What though our Children be baptised in ignorance of God they are yet baptised in Covenant with God if that be a reason with you they must be dipt again and rebaptised when they come to knowledge why were not the Apostles so when better instructed who were ignorant of the Messias and his kingdom the death the resurrection of Christ will you put your self Sir or your learned Dippers themselves upon the tryall and if you be found ignorant of divers principles of the doctrine of Christ and even fundamental poynts will you be instructed and Redipped Alasse Sirs if as often as God shall shew you the errors of your Minds and the enormities of your lives you must be dipping redipping dripping redripping every Year Moneth and Day No there is another baptism to be used in these cases eyē the washing the soul with the tears of repentance dip re-dip drip re-drip in these and renew your repentance dayly With what a bold face high hand dare you Sir be either dipt your self now twice as I hear or be a dipper of others again as you intend of those whom you have inveigled seduced away into your Scism Heresie being before rightly validly baptised is not this a multiplying so a vilifying of that ōe baptism What example have you in all the Word of God of any Infant Jew re-circumcised when he came to an ability of professing Faith and will you tempt God to put a yoak upon the neck of the Disciples of Christ which neither our Fathers nor we were able to bear Telling us it is needful to baptise baptised Christistians again when they come to be believers whē it was not needful yea sinful to circumcise Jewes circumcised when they came to be the like Even when Ziphorah a Woman had circumcised her child Exod. 4. Moses himself allowed it for good and lawfull and never did he or any other iterate that circumcision in present or afterwards upon the profession of its faith and when any went over from being Samaritans who worshipped they knew not what as who knew not Jesus Christ to become Jews John 4. or came over to Christ and to the faith of him none of them were ever baptised again as Beleevers Your duplicate of baptism doth not only oppose the one and single baptism of the Apostle but brings Christans under a Tax and layeth a new yoak upon their necks as I said before Besides To be baptised is to be born anew into the Church no man naturally can be twice or often born every Nicodemus can say Can he enter the second time into his Mothers Womb and be born Iohn 3. Why then twice baptised being once baptised sufficiently and truly By baptism Children are admitted into the heavenly society of Saints and no man civilly can be adopted often into any ones stock or family Genesis 48. Ephraim and Manasses were but once adopted and assumed by Iacob into his stock for his Children and why then twice baptised When of Married Persons one forsakes another returns again into Love both are reconciled they do not enter into a new conjugal Covenant by any solemne Celebration of new espousals because the first conjunction stands firm the reconciliation made The baptism of Christians is as the celebration of the Contract betwixt them and Christ the Bridegroom when such a one through open abnegation or other hainous sins departing away from Christ returns again with and by a serious repentance there will be no need of being baptised again and so a new sealing of that Covenant which being once entred into is still
to the washing the Leprofie of original sin and as the Waters of Bethesda to the healing of other diseases whatsoever even their actual sins also when afterwards committed It is true that your Children dying without Baptism may be saved by the Coverant and Promise of God and his Grace many are so all are so that are of the Number of Gods Elect Yea I confesse the hope of salvation doth no lie so much in the Seal as in the Covenant and Promise to which the Seal is annexed Indeed the Lord having made a promse to you beleeving Parents concerning your Children born in original sin That he will be your God and the God of your seed in this case you must beleeve this his Word and Promise But where he hath ordained a Seal for the confirmation of your Faith you must take heed how you neglect to apply it you must not as more than too many do in these days think it a superfluous and idle figure and some also hold it a superftitious and Idol-service That which I may and do plead with you for is this that you would so account of it as it is that there is a necessity lying upon you to baptise your Children born in original sin I mean a necessity not absolute but conditional in case your Children be prevented of Baptism by death you may well hope of the salvation of them by the Promise and Covenant onely as I said of God and his Grace and if after Baptism they be taken away from you by death you may better hope of their salvation from both Covenant and Seal also But if you be carelesse and negligent and do also it may be purposely and prophanely omit your duty to put your Children in Covenant with your selfs under the initial Seal thereof you will very hardly answer such your course either to God himself or his Church yea or to your Children and I think at laft to your own Consciences But in the mean time what blindnesse and presumption is this in you Parents to tempt God and to cast your Children onely upon the hands of his Spirit when he hath also appointed Water for their Washing and Regenerating this is as if you should throw up your Children unto the top of the Pinnacle of the Temple when as you have a Ladder standing and reaching up thither to carry them up by or upon upon this glosie God shall give his Angels charge over them so his Spirit order over them and in their hands shall they bear them up and on his finger shall he hold them lest at any time they perish and come to destruction bodily or ghostly What Prophanesse and impiety is this in you Parents to slight and refuse the outward ordinary means of your Childrens spiritual and eternal good as it may be the freeing of them from the Guilt Dominion and Condemnation of original pollution c. and to refer them over wholly to the inward ordinary means Christ Jesus and his Spirit when as these have appointed and dedicated the former to be used and applyed also What carelesnesse yea cruelty is this in you Parents to leave and let your Children lie in the pit and under the bondage of original and natural pollution into the which your selves have been accessary to their falling and not to suffer a hand of Gods ordinance to be reached out unto them which is Baptism for their raising up unto newness of Birth and Life And whereas God hath made a Covenant with you for your selves and your Children yea a joynt Covenant with you both to be your God and the God of your seed what ingratitude is this and ungodsiness to God what inhumanity or apparent imparentnesse is this to with-hold your Children from the Seal of that Covenant and so in a manner to disinherit them as much as in you lieth of their just and due Joynture and inheritance spiritual and eternal Well be it so your infants dying without Baptism may be saved and I pray God they may be saved through the Riches of his Grace but you have not delivered your own souls because you gave no warning to have them baptised as you ought to do seeing the evil come and more a coming upon them But suppose you with-holding them from their means of Baptism blow no Trumpet give no warning to have them baptised God should also with-hold his Spirit of Grace from your Children which God forbid and your Children be taken away in their infancy and minority They shall die in their iniquity or original sin But their-blood will he require at your hands for your negligence contempt you have broken his Covenant Gen. 17.14 Ezek. 33. A fifth warrant or reason is this If Baptism now under the Gospel doth succeed Circumcision under the Law Then are the Infants of covenanted beleeving Parents to be baptised like as Infants of the covenanted professing Jewes were circumcised this warrant is reasoned out or this reason warranted out of Collossians 2.11 and 12. Where the Apostle plainly sheweth that there is no need of their being circumcised who were baptised Jews or Gentiles because such baptised ones had received the Circumcision made without hands namely Baptism the better and great Circumcision as the Antients call it If you deny this you must affirm that the Churches of the Gospel and all the Gentiles converted to the faith of Christ of whom especially they consist are left without a Sacrament of Inititiaon or admission thereinto for their infants and so without one Seal of the Covenant of Grace which ought not to be nor is indeed For the Condition of Christians and their Infants is better at leastwise as good under the New Testament as the Old the Grace of God by the cōing of Christ into the world is more ample and clear as ample clear at leastwise to us living under the Gospel as to the Jewes living under the Law To deny these things were to cast foul dirt into the bright Sun and to shoot Arrows of Contumely Reproach into heaven against our Lord Jesus Christ by whom came Truth and Grace 1 John 17. as the Law was given by Moses and to grant these things is to yeeld Infant Baptism under the New Testament And whereas it is or may be replyed that in that Text above and others where Biptism is conjoyned to Circumcision as its substitute and successor there also are conjoyned with Baptism Mortification of the Flesh Newness of Life Faith and other Graces mentioned it s easily taken off though one of your most difficult Replies as thus 1. They are no more conjoyned with Baptism than Circumcision and therefore as their Infants were commanded to be circumcised So ours are commanded to be baptised notwithstanding their iuoability and incapacity of doing such acts or having such Graces which is equal and alike in both 2. In such Conjunctions if the Texts speak of Actual Faith Actual indeavoring after Mortification c. And require
of all the good ends effects benefits of an Ordinance they are not to be forbidden to come or to be kept back from it as being a good and valid Ordiance to such But Infants and little Children are capable of all the good ends effects and benefits of the Ordinance of Baptism Therefore Infants and little Children are not to be forbidden to come or to be kept back from it it being a good and valid Baptism and beneficial to them The first proposition is clear from the 1 Cor. 4 15. 1 Cor. 9.1 already cited to which I add Matth. 19.14 which clears it as to this particular The second proposition is not questionalbe that they are capable as having reasonable souls belonging it may be to election and so having the Spirit and Grace as before and the Letter of the Text sheweth it For theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven c. Except ye become as one of these little ones ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven To shut up this reason the sum and result is this That Infants of baptised parents are in capacity to partake of the ends effects and benefits of Baptism and of the inward Graces of the same and many of them are actually and really partakers of them as well as grown persons who are visible professors and there being in us no infallible ground of certainty but of Charity that either the one or the other have those inward Graces yet they may be accordingly baptised And the visible right to the Covenant and the many promises made to the seed of the faithfu added to their Capability of the Graces of it are as good evidences to ground a baptism of Infants as the external professions of grown men can give yea and to ground a judgement of their partaking of the invisible Graces like as the others And Experience hath and doth shew it that of those that have been baptised in their infancy our Ministry of the Word afterwards following upon our Ministry of Baptism sweetly winning upon them and drawing them to grow in Grace and to bring forth other fruits and duties of the Covenant to which they were bound by Baptism as the Jewes were by their Circumcision to be obedience of the Law Gal. 5.3 there have been as humble and meek as mortified and sanctified Christians both Men and Women as any amongst you to say no more not to say more sound in the faith sorrowful for sin zealous in love fervent in prayer religious in their houses and devout in the house of God sincere in their dealings grave in their behaviour modest in their attire exemplary in their lives mourniful in Spirit and vexed in Soul for to see the unclean conversations and the erroneous courses of others as well as you nay far better than any of you in many of these are or do Now though it be so that God sometimes doth bring good out of evil as light out of darknesse at first yet usually and ordinarily God doth it not and therefore in a visible constituted Church where he proceeds ordinarily he doth not from a false Ministery and an unlawful Baptism produce such good effects and lightful converses I do not mean your new light so full of darknesse the which let it be to the stopping of the mouths of all gainsayers with whom nothing is more rife and frequent than to revile our Ministery and Baptism as false and Antichristian evil and unlawful A word more from hence to you Parents That if you regard the above-named good ends effects and benefits and now know your Children capable of them and desire indeed they should be partakers of them bring them to Baptism a means to those ends a work to that effect an office to such a benefit So whom God destinates to an end he destinates to the means whom 〈◊〉 appoints to an effect he appoints to a work whom he designes to a benefit he designes to office What moreover and above are you not willing your Children should have the privilege to be accounted as belonging to the family and houshold of God upon earth That they should have an obligation upon them to bind them to the duties of the Covenant of God as they grow of capacity to perform them that they have a good Title afterwards to that other Seal of growth and nourishment in spiritual Graces Why then do you with-hold them from Baptism are you not desirous they should as members of the visible Church have a place in the Communion of Saints and a share in those prayers that are put up to the throne of Grace for the welfare of the Church and particularly for a blessing upon the Ordinances thereof and that they should have a Seal to plead not only in the persent day of their initiation but throughout all their life time as to the Covenant for all those good things whereof it is a Seal so to the Condition for fulfilling the good duties and so gaining the answer of a good Conscience and in which case it is said to save Why then bring them forth present them unto Baptism Be not like unto the Ostrich in Job 39 16. She is bardened against her young ones as though they were not hers her labour is in vain without fear because God hath deprived her of Wisdom neither hath he imparted to her Vnderstanding which leaveth her eggs in the earth and warmeth them in dust and forgetteth that the foot may crush them and that the wild beast may break them it needs no application but this Be not so hard hearted to your Children as to leave them in the earth and dust of their natural Generation so every foot they may be crushed your seed not onely bruâ—sed of the Serpent but broken but bring them out to the water and it may be the fire of Baptismal Regeneration The Apostie tels you and you are I beleve very expert in that Lesson and experienced in that matter that if any provide not for his own and specially for those of his own house and kindred he hath denyed the faith and is worse than an infidel but if you provide not for your own Flesh and Children and their Spirits not only giving them bedily provision but not giving them also such provisions as God hath made ready for their Souls you leave them as bad as infidels in a manner unbaptised denying them a means of faith and the Seal of the Covenant I say no more but what Man is there of you whom if his Son ask Bread will be give him a Stone or if he ask a Fish will be give him a Serpent as Psalm 147.9 The young Ravens cry to God for their food to be given them So your young infants methinks cry to you and in their crying and weeping seem to call to you for their Water of Baptism as their milk of the Brests to be the one the relief unto their Souls against original guilt and misery as the other against
and constant custom of the Primitive and the succeeding Churches throughout the several ages to Baptize the Children of believing Parents in their Infancy then it ought to be so still continued accustomed and practised This Warrant may be Reasoned out of the word or the Reason warranted out of Matth. 19.4.9 where Christ in case of a point of difference about divorce himself argueth and reasoneth from the Ancient times and the beginning of the Church of God So out of 1 Cor. 11.16 if any man seem to be Contentious we have no such Custom neither the Churches of God Where you and I may see the case there and here to be much alike The Corinthians had got up a fashion of their mens praying covered in their long Hair and their women praying uncovered in their shorn Hair you likewise have taken up a practice of baptizing onely believers when grown persons they make profession and have shut out Infants from their right to the Seal of Baptism being Covenanters with their Parents Saint Paul refuteth that their fashion by divers arguments drawn from the headship of man over the woman from the dishonouring of the head from the shamesulness and the uncomeliness of it from the Presence of the Angels from the light of nature five good and sound arguments and when he perceived for all those that they were contentious and quarrelsome with him about and for their fashion He clappeth upon them as his last argument this taken from the Churches of God that have been before us In like manner I have refelled your Practice by sundry Warrants and Reasons raysed out of the word from such Infants some of them having the spirit and faith in some degrees from their being in the same Holy Covenant of Grace with their Parents from the proportion and succession of Baptism unto Circumcision from Baptisme's being a remedy against Original sin especially from Infants capableness of the ends effects and benefits of Baptism five good and warrantable reasons out of the word and supposing for all this you will not be conquered though overcome but will still strive and contend contrary to 2 Tim. 2.24 Now I urge upon you in the last place this Reason which is the Custom of the Church both Modern we have such a Custom of Baptizing Infants of Believing Patents and we have no Custom approved or General of Baptizing onely Grown Believers As also Ancient Neither the Churches of God have had any such For so though Saint Paul argue N gatively onely the Reason is of as much force and weight affirmatively and the Custom of the Ancient and Modern Church's is good and pleadable both against the New Lights of late scismatical Innovators as also for the old Light of former and present Orthodex Professours As for the Negative the Not or No Custom Primitive and practice Apostolieal of Baptizing again at their growth upon Confession of Faith such as had been Baptized before in their Infancy I do reserve it for at other Place your Dipping Pond of which I shall speak at last onely here I shall bring in the Affirmative That the Ancient Prinritive Churchès succeeding the Apostles what the Apostles themselve did do and practied shall hereafter soon follow did hold and practice the Baptizing of Infants And though I think it will but disturb your Brain and cause you to stop your Nostrils and Mouth who small no sweet Savour or Odour of Antiquity as being one of the New Sent or unsent rather yet notwichstanding I shall and relate the Dictates of some of the Ancient Apostles succeeding Pastors and Fathers of the Church of old and I will do it for others sake who are Lovers of Antiquity but I will do it in English for your sake whom I am Instructing who are no lover of Languages more than you can speak I know you will not take this General Custom and Practice of the Church upon my bare word and present Assertion nor do I desire you should Therefore Remember the dayes of old consider the years of many Generations ask thy Father and he will shew thee thy Elders and they will tell thee ask now of the dayes that are past which were before wheâ—â—er there hath been any such thing as the Baptizing of Infants of Believers You shall readily find the same attested by the Reverend Fathers of the Church the Bishops and Doctors of the dayes of old and years of former Generations to have been so to be the Custom and Practice In a matter of Fact or Practice one Good and Creditable witness is sufficient and that I am sure I have Saint Augustine I mean not onely for the General Practice of Infant Baptism in his dayes and those present tim 's wherein he lived as might easily be shewed our of his Books of Original Sin Chap. 40. Third Book of the Merit of Sin and Remission Chap. 9. Third Book against Julian fourth Book of Baprism against the Donatists c. But also for the former and praeceding Churches up to the Primitive dayes For so Augustine who lived in the year after the Nativity of Christ 39â— and was Presbyter first and after Bishop of Hippo saith thus in his third Epistle to Volusian The Custom of the Mother Church in Baptizing little ones is in no wise to be despised not to be thought needless and were not to be believed but that it was as Apostolicall Tradition This is a very full and clear evidence of an Ecclesiastical Custom an Apostolical Tradition whether written or unwritten that infringeth it not according to that of the Apostle 2 Thest 2.15 hold the Traditons which ye have been taught whether by word or Epistle not to be despised but believed Nor did Augustine utter this suddenly but advisedly and therefore upon second thoughts saith it over again and the more Resolutely in his 15. Sermon of the words of the Apostle Let no man saith he buz or whisper into our eares any Doctrine to the Contrary This Practice of Baptizing Ghildren The Church alwayes had this it hath this it alwayes held this it hath received from the Faith or fidelity of our Ancestors and this it keeps Constantly to the end Therefore doth the same Father so often and so much press this Argument The Churches Practice of Baptizing-Infants upon Pelagius and his followers who were Contemporary with Augustine holding Infants were not taken or tainted with original Corruption and Sin by propagation but only contracted the same by Imitation as in his 150 Epistle unto Sixtus in his second Book of Marriage and Concup 18. Chap. in his first Book against Crescon the Grammarian cap 30. in his fourth Book against the Donat. c. 23. in his sixth Book against Julian one of Pelagius his Schollars or his opinions Now if this had not been truly and undeniably The Custom and Practice of the Church even up to the first and Primitive times as Augustine affitmed Pelagius and his Disciples would soon have fallen foul upon
him as the Pharisees did upon our Saviour and have said thou bearest witness of thy self for thy self thy witness is not true they would have given a check or denyal to such a Custom accused it of Novelty or but of Yesterday and so have turned off easily that Argument which of all other lay most heavily upon them the Ancient Churches Custom and Practice in Baptizing Infants But they never did that as who could not deny this And so that other exception against Augustine as if he should utter and urge this in Heat and Passion against Pelagius his Adversary in point of Baptizing of Infants and speak more of the Custom and Practice of the Church than was true falleth of it self For they differed not in that point of Infant-Baptism no nor in the matter of the Custom of the Church herein For so Augustine affirmeth both in his first Book of the Merit and Remission of Sin The Peloagians themselves do grant that little Children are to be Baptized as who cannot come in or stand up against the Authority of the Vniversal Church delivered without doubt or Traditioned by our Lord and his Apostles And again in the eleventh Book against Caelestius and Pelagius He affirms and cites that Caelestius in a Book of his written at Rome acknowledged that Infants in a Book of his wirtten at of sin according to the Rule of the universul Church and according to the sense and meaning of the Gospel and Therefore Pelagius not daring to deny though otherwise impudent enough the General Practice of the Ancient Church in Baptizing Infants as who then and that way might have slipt his neck out of the Collaror Yoke Augustine held him to was feign to shist off that Fathers Argument as well as he could but very poorly and pittifully That the Church Baptized indeed Infants but not for the washing away of original fin which he denyed in Infants but for the better bringing them to the Kingdome of Heaven which Christ said was of such as theirs And truly this makes a great Addition to the Truth of this The Custom and Practice of the Universal Ancient Church in Baptizing lnsants that Pelagius so great a Schollar and Travellour who had seen the Customas and Practices the manners and fasthions of the Affricane and Asiatiqne yea and Europaean Churches being also himself a Brittish born should not as indeed he could not make any denyal or take any exception thereto as who by his own eyes and experience saw found it to be most true and uniform and so I may say our Baptism of Infants is a true Baptism and the Ancient Churches Practice hereof is a true Practice even our enemies themselves being Judges as Deut. 32.31 〈◊〉 why then was not Augustine himself Baptized in his In … y who was such as strong Advocate for the Baptism of Infants the Reason is plain and makes nothing against our Infant Baptism or the General Practice of the Church for neither his Father nor Mother were Christians or Believers when himself was born and they continued so untill a little before their death Augustine himself was not converted from his Manichean Haeresies and other vices untill the 31. year of his age who two years continuing a Catechumen and in the mean time writing somethings to give proof and testimony of the truth of his conversion or of his conversion to the Truth was Baptized himself and his Son Adeodate together like as Ahraham was circumcised with Ismeal his Son on the self-same day These things may be seen in His Confessions I shall need to adde no more for the shewing Infant-Baptism to have been the Custom and Practice of all the former Ancient Churches Augustines Testimony of the same is to me instead of all and as Goliahs Sword to David there is none like that Give it me 1 Sam 21.9 I have taken it and I give it thee not as a single Testimony of one Father for it but as a Quadruple witness of the Universal Church and its Custom and Practice for the point of Paedobaptism being four times expresly deliveced though by one and the same Father Saint Austin Yet I may for more perspicuity sake follow up this General Testimony by one Father unto its Particulars I mean the Covattestations of other particular Fathers in their several ages You have heard what Augustine hath said and written as for that Century For the year 390. 384. and those years wherein he lived Hierom In his Epistle ad Laetam having told her that the good and the evill of little once are imtured much to their Parents he addeth in the middle of that Epistle unless perhaps you think the Sons of Christians is they receive not Baptism They onely are guilty of sin and that the wickedness also thereof is not to be referred or to redound to the Parents who would not give it especially at or in such a time wherein they could not contradict who were to receive it In his Book against the Pelagians towards the end he is for Infant-Baptism and confirms it by allerdging the Authority of Cyprian and his Colleagues In the same third Book against Pelag it is thus Crito i.e. Pelagian saith grant me thus much at lest that they are without sin who cannot sin speaking of Infants To whom Atticus i.e. Hieronimus Answereth I will Grant it if they have been Baptized in Christ and again They are without any Sin through the Grace of God which they have received in Baptism Chrysostom Arch-Bishop of Constantinople For the year 382. in his Homil. to the Neophytes is for the Baptism of Children and in his 40. Homil upon Genes calls Baptism our Circumcision His being not Baptized untill he was 21. years of age doth not prejudice here as whose Father and Mother were not Christians at his birth and who himself was brought up under Libanius an enemy to and a scoffer at Religion but after he was instructed in the Divinity knowledge by Miletus a Bishop and Baptized of him In his Homil ad Neoph having spoken of the Honours and Benefits of Baptism he saith a little from the beginning For this cause we Baptize the little Infants that they may not be defiled with sin that to them may be added Sanctity Righteousness Adoption Inheritance Fraternity of Christ That they may be all his Members and the Habitation of the Spirit In his 40. Homil upon Genes having spoken of Circumcision appointed to the Children of the Jewes and the pain of the Incision he addeth but our Circumcision or the grace of our Baptism brings the medicine without without such dolour and Innumerable benefits with it It hath indeed no definite time set down for it as that hath but it is lawful to receive both in the first and in the middle and in the last age this not made with hands Circumcision in which there is susteined no great pain but the weight of sins are put off and Remission of them is
found even of all which are done throughout the whole life Ambrose the Bishop of Millain by whom Augustine was Converted and Baptized in his Book of Abraham the Patriark lib. For the year 381. 2. Chap. 11. writing upon those words unless a man be born again of water and the Spirit See saith he Christ excepts none not the Infant not the prevented by some necessity c. Every age is obnoxious to sin therefore every age is fit for the Sacrament So also in his Epistle ad Demetriadem Virginem he mention eth the Baptism of Children Epist 84. lib. 10. speaking in that Epistle against Pride and Boasting of some especially Hearetiques and shewing the evill effects thereof to the defending false opinions extenuating of evil and sin and the evacuating of some good gives these two Instances amongst others Hence the sin of Adam is affirmed to hurt his Posterity by example not by passage or transition into them Hence is that Evacuation of the Baptism of little Children as if they should be said to have Adoption given there but not to be absolved from their guilt and again Though little ones not Baptized may or should be saved yet great is the negligence of those that hindeed their Baptizing In his Book de vocat lib. 2. cap. 8. he mentioneth Baptism of Children three or four times and once thus They speak very ill and unjurly of little Children who say Grace hath there what it may Adopt but the water hath not there what it may wash away speaking of such as deoyed sin in little Children Paulinus Bishop of Nola in Camqania For the year 379. a man famous for Poetry and Eloquence Piety and munificence a good acquaintance of Augustine and Hierom betwixt whom and Him there passed sundry Epistles a great favorite and familiar of Ambrose whose life he wrote as also of Sulpitius Severus to whom he wrote 14. Epistles As the Beginning of the twelfe Epistle to the same Sulpitius Severus hath these two verses whhich for your sake I must be fain to tranflate into English Thence from the Sacred Font the Priest did lead it The Infant white in body heart and habit Epiphanius For the year 376. In his first Book Haer. 8. The Figures were in the Law the Truth in the Gospel Circumcision which served for a time gave place to the Great Circumcision which is Baptism which Circumciseth us from sin and Sealeth us into the Name of God In His Book against the Cerinthians Circumcision had its time untill the Great Circumcision came that is the washing of the New-birth as is manifest to every one Surely he meant that which the Apostle calls so that is Baptism the washing or Laver of Regeneration and by calling Baptism the Great Circumcision he must intend Infant Baptism as Infant-Circumcision and speaks of them as of things manifest and wel-known the Carnal or fleshly Baptism as Circumcision In the end of his work calls Baptism and other mysteries observed in the Church which are brought out of the Gospel and setled by Apostolique Authority Traditions and then in his Time Baptism was ministred to Infants and observed Gregory Nazianzene For the year 375. In his 40. Oration of Holy Baptism largely speaketh of it the brief is in the Question and Answer What say ye of those who are of tender Age and perceive neither dammage or Grace shall we Baptize those Yes surely if any danger be it is better to be Sanctified without sense and feeling then to depart without the Seal and Initiation Circumcision bearing in a manner the figure of Baptism was offered to them who were void of Reason c. calleth also Baptism the Seal or Signet to such as enter into the Race of Life Basil the Great For the year 372. Bishop of Caesarea 1 Tom. Exhortation to Baptism wherein though the Baptism of Infants is not named yet I find these words There is a proper and peculiar time for this and that as for sleep for watching for warring the Time for Baptism is the whole life of man which he proves at large and again without Baptism there is no light to the Soul and then adds the Jew was compelled or forced to Circumcision because every soul which was not Circumcised the eighth day was to be cut off wilt thou defer the Circumcision not made with hands which is performed by Baptism in the putting of the flesh When wilt thou be a Christian Athanasius Q. 91. For the year 325. Of the Sayings and Interpretation of Scripture We dip or put the Infant thrice into the water and thrice bring it out insignification of the death and resurrection of Christ upon the third day I shall also here set down an answer of his Quest 2. to Antiochus because it confirmes what I have writ before of Infants having the Holy Spirit How shall we know that the Infant was truly Baptized and received the Holy Ghost in Holy Baptism when it was a Child but the answer is long and shall not need because I would be short The Question is enough to the purpose and sheweth both that Athanasius held both Infant-Baptism and therein affirmed them to receive the Holy Spirit the very question makes it unquestionable as to him Again in his Treatise of the Sabbath and Circumcision Hee calls Circumcision a type of Baptism Cyprian Bishop of Carthage and a Martyr For the year 247. The higher we go the cleerer the light shines for the Baptism of Infants for now here Cyprian with 66 Colleagues all Bishops do in a Councel at Carthage decree for it and so Certifieth his Friend Fidus in an Epistle to him third Book of Epistles Ep. 8. Yea that whole Epistle written by Cyprian and his 66 Colleagues sitting in Council with him The Title of it is of Infants to be Baptized and the subject of the whole Epistle is to justifie the Baptizing of them and answereth the objections of Fidus. As to the Cause the Baptism of Infants we all have judged that the mercy and Grace of God is not to be denyed to any Child born of man c. and that there is the same equallity of grace for the young Infant as the Elder God is no respecter of personages nor ages Yea he gives divers reasons why Infants and the rather and the sooner because Infants should be Baptized which for brevity sake I leave out here as who am onely upon the shewing having proved the Baptism of Infants before the Custom and Practice of Antiquity herein This Epistle also is owned and avouched both by Hierome Au-Augustine to be the true Epistle of Cyprian by Hierom as above is said and by Augustine Epistle 28. unto Hierome saying Cyprian did not here devise a New decree but kept and observed the true Faith or the faithful Practice and Custom of the Church Yea this Epistle of Cyprian was a very strong ground for them both to stand upon and they very much relyed
in your first Leaf with the good and old way of the Baptism of believers stand now therefore in the way and see ask for the old pathes where is the good way and walk therein such a one I have shewed you without your asking even this the Baptism also of Infants walk therein and ye shall find rest for your Soul as there it followeth but if ye say still as there it followeth also we will not walk therein then I shall look upon you as Saint Austins myracle and wonder that I may end with him with whom I began this who believed not when the world believed Practice not when the world Practiseth Seeing then you care not for looking behind you to Antiquity look before you and see the Reformed Churches in France Dutchland Scotland why not England if Infant-Baptism be not now in present the practice and Custom and so hath been of old of these and other Reformed Churches what then is your Church if you have any but a deformed one but a New upstart one who oppose this so General Custom both Ancient and Modern and have quite cast it out of your doors introducing instead thereof and setting up the Man-Baptism and Infant Rebaptism crying out daily for these your Great little Nothings Diana's of the Ephesian first love and first Baptism forsaking Anabaptists Let the advise you to lay your hand upon your mouth and cease declaiming and clamouring against this infant-Baptism for therein you reproach God and his Church God for appointing Infant-Circumcision and his Church for using Infant-Baptism yea to lay your hand upon your heart and in love to the Truth to return unto your First Love and Truth to enter again into Communion and fellowship with your Mother-Church of England and those other her Sister-Churches of the Protestants giving unto us the Right of Fellowship who are ready to reach forth the same to you and also to embrace you And if this be any Blook you stumble at in the way to our Churches that there are Rents and Divisions still amongst us whom may we thank for them even about this infant-Baptism I answer you in a word that our differences are not about Baptizing Infants but about Infants to be Baptized and so in the Point of Paedobaptism or Infant-Baptism we are all agreed and agrieved only at your Schism and Division which you have made in our Churches which are all against you therefore our care must be if we cannot hold fellowship with you to keep our Communion notwiststanding with all Christian Churches and if you will separate and depart from us and them we must let you depart a Brother or a Sister is not under Boadage in such Cases But God hath called us to peace peace as Christs Legacy left to his Church we are willing to have with all man so we may withall retain Truth And seeing whil'st we speak of peace you are still for dissention whil'st we propound truth you will still hold errors our care must be and shall be I hope in our particulars to maintain and preserve our peace and Truth and our Communion in both withall the Reformed Churches abroad in this point of Infant-Baptism which Churches as ours at home God hath blessed in this way with great increase of heavenly gifts and infinite numbers of renouned professours and Saints of those that have bin baptized in their Infancy And that knowing the time that now it is high time for you to awake out of sleep Ro. 13.11 to repent of those sinful Scismes and Rents and Separations you have made between your selves and us and other true Churches to give over your charging us and them with iniquity wherein we shew piety and your putting a divine restraint upon Infant Baptism wherein God hath given them and us liberty and in excluding Christian poor Infants those privileges and helps to heaven which Christ hath indulged them And thus I have answered your last Quaere shewing unto you what warrants we have out of the word for our Baptizing of Infants namely the six warrants reasoned out of the word which are six Reasons warranted out of the word Now joyn all these reasons together with the Scripture out of which they are deduced and will they not make that Analogy or proiportion of Faith as to this point of Infant Baptism according to which we are to proceed nay may they not all arise to a Tantamount Command or a virtual or implicite Command or a consequential Command of the same yea I have made two or three of them to be such in their particulars I have been so used to give you Commands out of the word for our former practices being called ever upon by you for such Commands which so ring still in my ears that though the word warrant do not put me upon such a hot service as a Command which I believe notwithstanding you meant your Tongue either out-running or short-running your wit I shall interpret your challenge or Quaere to aim at what Command out of the word have you for Baptizing Infants And first what Command have you out of the word against Baptizing Infants of Baptized Parents if none Then you deny Baptism to those to whom Christ denyed it not and so in a manner you deny Christ to be your Master and if you deny him you deny also him that sent him if none then you have no authority to infring or Counter-command the liberty of the Church herein ye take too much upon you Sone of Muncer Secondly What Command would you have out of the word for our Baptising Infants of Baptised Parents do you mean an express and praticular Command in calling for this you grant an explicite Command for it and a general one I am glad of this and will make much of it as to my purposes for as general propositions are enough to infer their particular all Children of the Church and in Covenant are to be baptised and therefore the Infants of Baptised Parents are to be baptised So implicite Commands which are but folded up and wrapped in good reasons or good consequences are sufficient for all true Subjects and Disciples of Christ to do a work and this of Baptising the infants of baptised Parents as if it had been more expressed The words intimation or a deduction from the Word is to me and ought to be to you the Words Expression and an injunction from the Word For if you be so streit girdled and queasie-stomacht or narrow throated that nothing will down with you or can be digested but onely expresse Commands in so many Words Letters and Syllables as Infant-baptism doth consist of Then I pray produce such an expresse Command out of the Word for Children of Beleevers when they are grown to be instructed and baptised upon the Confession of Faith or for Baptism of Believers onely in Christian Churches to use your own words or for Woemens eating the Passeover and receiving the Lords Supper or for the first
the Church of God which the family of Christ chiefly was in the Apostles times at the beginning of their preaching the Gospel to and throughout the world was much after the manner of the Family of Abraham which was then the onely Church representative As therefore Abraham in his family had both adult and Infants himself being circumcised at 100. years old Ishmael at 14. years the Proselytes at other several ages Isaac at 8. dayes and so taught Ishmael and the Proselytes of his house of this covenant and the Sacrament thereof before he circumcised them but forthwith baptised Isaac before without any foregoing instruction just so doth our Saviour Christ appoint to be done in his family the Church which was now to be raised in the greater part and gathered out of the Nations So as the adult Heathens aliens from the Covenant void knowledge were first to be taught before they were baptised but the Children of such taught and baptised Heathens were forthwith to be initiated by the Sacrament of Baptism before they were taught in the heads of Religion Now the condition of our Churches is a constituted and planted Church already formed and therefore according to the intention of this Text the baptising of Infants is to precede and the teaching them to follow when by reason of years and capacity they can hear the word 4. Christ indeed gave Command that whom his Disciples had taught they should be baptised but that none should be baptised but suchf as were first taught that is your Addition or Tradition wherein you resemble the old Separates of the Jewes the Pharisees as I have told you the name of a Pharisee is in English a Separate For as they transgressed the Commandements of God by their Traditions of the Elders Matthew 15. So do you corrupt this Commandement of Christ by your Additions and the inventions of your Youngsters But in vain did they worship God Teaching for doctrines the Commandements of men and in vain do you worry us bringing in for proofes the glosses and expositions of Children But look again upon the Text in Matthew and see if Teaching do not also follow close after Baptising and Baptising so goeth before Teaching thus with your own Argument retorted I have slain you as Goliah with his own Sword But sure our Saviour Christ being the God of Order and the Wisdom of God did not thus place the words and order them up and down to no purpose Yea I conceive that in so doing he purposed to give a full and universal Precept or Command for Baptism both to the Apostles and others the Pastors of the Church unto the worlds end that so when they ceased committing their converted Churches unto these succeeding them these might proceed where they left to build upon their foundations To Baptise and Teach where they had taught and Baptised And thus the words are very orderly placed and ranked the first file as I may so speak being of Teaching and Baptising where the Apostles wâ—â—â— as Ambâ—ssidours in Extraordinary Teaching the Cown Men and Women of the Nations and Pagans the Gratuital Covenant of God and baptising them or giving them the initial Seal thereof The next file or order is of Baptising and Teaching where went either they also as Pastors in Ordinary or other Ordinary Pastors Baptising the Children and Infants of such converted Nations and Pagans being in Covenant with their Parents and teaching them afterwards to observe whatsoever Christ commanded c. So that here seemes to be Christs Commandement in this Text both for Adult-Baptism and also Infant-Baptism or if you will for Parental-Baptism upon their being taught the Covenant and their embracing and professing Christ and also for Filial Baptism upon their being in Covenant as being Children of baptised Professors after which is to follow teaching and instructing of them as they are able which is punctually observed by us who do or should having baptised them by order Catechise them afterwards that so they may be fitted in due time for that other Sacrament the Lords Supper according to that of Hebrews 6 2. Where the Apostle speaks of Baptisms The Baptisms I mentioned which are plural or Two in respect of the subjects capable the grown men of the Nations converted and their Infants or Children but yet but one and the same Baptism as formerly I have shewed Baptisms I say and imposition of hands and alludeth to the practice then and since in use with the Church That such Children as were baptised in their Infancy should afterwards openly in their own persons and with their own mouth own the Covenant confirm an ratifie the promise and condition make Profession of their Faith and so be by imposition of Hands farther confirmed and admitted to the Lords Supper Now you Sir quite contrary to the order of these prinicples of the doctrine of Christ as they are called in the 1. verse of Heb. 6. You begin at imposition or laying on of Hands before Baptism or the laying on of Water and so do but impose upon us as the Children Impostor-like requiring first Confession of Faith from them before they have from you Administration of Baptism as if your Children born Christians had no more privilege were in no better condition than the Pagans and Nations Christ sent his Apostles unto 5. I shall tell you that the word translated Teach all Nations in which lyeth all the force of your arguing against Childrens Baptism it signifieth see your want of skill in and your folly in declaming and clamoring against University and human learning in the divine languages for so are the original ones signifieth in the original not onely to Teach but to make Disciples of the Nations to admit them to be Scholars to be taught This is the end wherefore the Apostles were sent out namely to make Disciples and the Actions whereby they were to attain this end were Baptising and Teaching and if it were not thus there would be found a Tautology in Christs words and you must read them thus Go teach all Nations baptising them Teaching them Such an Exposition as this would put you to your shifts Go ye make Disciples to me out of all Nations by Baptising and Teaching and such a one may do well enough very well against you who when you come to this or any Text do but shift up and down for your self but sift not at all for the sense And therefore to puzzle you a little for there is no farther hopes of any of you I fear I will tell somewhat more that our Divines have added to justifie this Exposition Christ saith not go make Disciples and baptise them but make disciples baptising them implying that by baptising them they made them Disciples Like as it is said that John did baptise in the Wildernesse and preach as though he did baptise first and then preach So all Israel is said to be baptised into Moses not as already taught but to be taught by
father and children as the promise and seal Circumcision were to the particular families of Abraham father and children and so here came the Nations to be blessed in Abraham and Abraham here began to be the father of many Nations The which may be yet made more to appear if the time be looked upon when the Apostles were sent to teach or disciple these Nations just when Circumcision lay a dying as I may so say and expiring or ceasing to be a seal of administration unto the Jewish Church a very fit time the very time for the Lord to appoint Baptism and to enlive it for the seal to come in place of the other and perform the same office in the Churches of the Gentiles as the other did in the Churches of the Jews namely to let in the believing parents with their children Look again into Rom. 11.23 24. these Gentile and Pagan Nations were to be taken into the place of the Nation of the Jews now upon this their cutting off and casting out and these wild olives were to have the same engraffing into the good Olive as the natural branches had but they and their children were graffed in and now they and their children are cut off so these and their children of the Nations here were in the like manner here engraffed and implanted into Christ and therefore baptized Rom. 6.5 like as the other circumcised Lastly what a great change would there have been else in the heart and love of Christ if now he who rebuked the Apostles for hindring the little children of the Jews to come unto him yea who embraced them in his arms laid his hands upon them and blessed them should now himself in this commandement unto his Apostles to teach disciple and baptize the Nations not minde them the children of these Nations in the like manner as to Baptism as he did the children of Abraham as to Circumcision but leave them out or forbid them to come or be brought unto him as if he had now no delight or took no pleasure in the Infantry of the Gentiles whereas himself long before spake of this very time Isa 49.22 Behold I will lift up my hands to the Gentiles and set up my standard unto the people and they shall bring thy sons in their arms or bosoms and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders But why did not Christ here put in baptize the Nations and their seed as he did in the first administration Circumcise the Jews and their seed The Answer is made in the very Question Because he did it in the first administration of Circumcision there was no need of doing it again and besides children having once a right to be accounted as belonging to Christs Church and to be reputed visible Members thereof and no forfeiture made thereof on their part or bar put In by Christ or any other person of authority they are alwaies so to be reckoned of yea they are here put in again and mentioned in the discipled Nation and comprehensively included in Them baptize them the Nations discipled which consist of parents and their children which make them up Again if the children had not been included here in these Nations what a great change had here bin made in the latitude and extent of the Covenant as to the subject thereof I mean this particular of children and that without warning given whereby some other provisions or course might have been sought for and supplicated at Gods hands for the good of their souls for by this your rule of shutting out children from Baptism by the power of this commandement according to your interpretation if a Jew should convert to Christ and become a Christian and believe in Christ come in the flesh he should be in a worse condition as to his child than before as who may not be baptized whereas before he might be circumcised and the parents faith in Christ will be a loss and prejudice to his child and both parent and child may think it to be a worse Covenant than the former whereas it is but one and the same and therefore when he was a Jew his child was circumcised so when he becomes a Christian his child is to be baptized And thus I have out of this Text of Matthew 28.19 wherein your party glorieth so much though I forgate to tell you that herein is not described the primary Institution of Baptism but onely an enlargement of the Apostles Commission I have evinced a commandement for baptizing of Infants of Believers you perhaps looked for a command exprest in so many letters and syllables Go baptize the children of Believers but is it not good and effectual it ought to be if included in the sense and meaning of the words are not Magistrates and Ministers too by your leave meant in that commandement Honour thy Father are not envie and hatred likewise comprised in that command Thou shalt do no murder yet neither those nor these are expresly literally or verbally commanded where is the Bishop of Rome mentioned in the Revelations yet he meant and his universal headship by the Beast there and his mark I could give you many more instances And why not Infants also comprised in this command Disciple the Nations and baptize them though not set down there by name amongst the Nations and Disciples to be baptized But I have writ enough of this Point before I will onely as formerly now also for a conclusion of this Point leave with you another Syllogism supposing that now having been used to them Syllogisms I mean you will not be much afraid of them though you think them the bug bears of the Universities and limbs of humane Arts and Sciences fear not for unless you come nigh them which I believe you will not or dare not they will not bite you otherwise they have teeth in their mouths The sixth Syllogism is this The discipled or taught Nations and so brought into Covenant are commanded by Christ to be baptized Mat. 28.19 But the Parents and their children are the discipled or taught Nations and so brought into Covenant Therefore the Parents and their children are commanded to be baptized The first Proposition is the letter of the Text as is said The second is largely proved before and who need doubt but that children are included in the word Nations being a part and a great part of them and comprehended in every administration of grace and mercy especially And now leaving the commandement of Christ for Infant Baptism I proceed to the second kinde of Warrants you call for namely the example of Christ and his Apostles for so these two you yoke together in your Quaeres and impose upon my neck to bear up and carry out in this and all points Commands and Examples when your self as a Bullock unaccustomed to the yoke neither do nor can shew either of the two for your wild untamed and untaught opinion As for the example of Christ it is
unto the Church For which you may see Acts 2.39 41. because you give me no Text here which I wonder at of which I have your consideration in particular to peruse anon Onely I shall add a word or two about Sureties in the Baptism of Infants because I do not remember that hitherto before now you have made any mention of them and for that I see you are here in an errour about them and you would put a slur upon us and a kinde of slander upon our Church as if Infant-Baptism stood upon account of faith in the Parents and Sureties although say you they have none for themselves I will adde somewhat although they have more than your self I may say the one as well as you say the other Know then Sir that the costom of having Sureties at the baptizing of Infants hath been very ancient in the Church when Truth was in its prime light and Primitive purity though thereupon it is the less liked because the more unlike to the new upstart and out-staring novelisms of these later Ages and last declining times and their office was as to bear witness of the birth of Infants of Christian Parents and therefore were called Attesters or Witnesses as at this day so to answer for the faith and take upon them the education of the baptized Infants and for this they were called Sponsors or Susceptors Hereupon the Infant to be baptized although he did not profess himself to be Believer with his own mouth nor could yet being asked and interrogated as the manner was Doest thou believe he answered in the mouth and tongue of his Sponsors or Sureties or the very Parents or they which is all one answered in stead and place of the Infant I believe And without such profession of faith Infants publickly were not baptized in the Church Thus in and by the judgment of charity the Ancients held and judged the Infant to believe and that if it could speak with its mouth it would answer that it believed and because it could not they appointed as before Sponsors and Sureties in the name and place of the Infant to answer I believe And in this sense also besides others I have given were Infants of Christians called of old Believers because they did in some manner profess faith in and by the mouth and words of their Sponsors Sureties and Parents True its uncertain and unknown to the Church or man whether the Infant doth believe or not but unless the Church had so judged by the judgement of charity which saith the Apostle believeth all things hopeth all things the Infant to believe she would not have appointed Sureties and Sponsors in the name and place of the Infant so to asnwer and unless the Infant it self had so answered in the words and mouth of its Sponsors and Sureties she i.e. the Church would have forbid it to be baptized Thus I have told you of the ancient manner of the Primitive Baptisms with Sureties and Sponsors you must not now here call upon me for proof hereof out of the plain and direct Scripture for I acknowledge this ancient Custom and many a one in use amongst the first Christian Churches is not expresly prescribed in Scripture for then it might be concluded absolutely necessary for all ages and persons to follow so neither is it forbidden explicitly in Scripture and therefore not utterly to be rejected as unlawfull to be used as which was for the good of the Infant and hurs of none as having neither impiety nor iniquity in it so also it was for the provision and better education of the Infant the edification of the Church and the demonstration and exercise of Charity to and charitable judging of others Insomuch that as those venerable Names and Lights of the Ancient Church Tertullian and Auguâ—tine have related and delivered that Custom of baptizing with Sureties and Sponsors so other Reverend Names and Lights of these Modern reformed Churches as Luther Zanchy Beza have allowed approved and commended the aforesaid Custom as fit to be retained still From all which it now appears that you Sir are much out when as you talk and tattle of the Churches baptizing Infants upon account of faith in the Sureties although they have none of their own for you see it was not upon the account of the faith of the Sureties which the Sureties had of their own that Infants ever were baptized but upon the account of the faith of the Infant which the Infant had of its own testified and professed in their name by the Sureties appointed by the Church which judged charitably of the Infant to beleive that the Infant was baptized But now before I proceed to the next I will call upon you to consider That your Doctrine of baptizing actual Believers onely and thereupon not baptizing the Infants of Believers until they have actual faith and can and do make confession of it doth rather overthrow as much as in you lieth the nature of the Covenant of Grace and the whole Gospel of Christ at leastwise to the Seal thereof all the while from their birth that such Infants are kept by you from the same Seal of Baptism for you cannot keep them from their Covenant though you do shamefully ingratefully ungraciously yea and unnaturally keep them from the Seal The thing is evident enough if you do but remember this is the nature of the Covenant and Gospel of Christ the Promise of God to be the God of the believing Parent and his Seed joyntly therefore also of his child as soon as it s born yea before when it is his Seed and soon after its birth Gods will is declared to have this Covenant executed and confirmed by an initial Seal of Circumcision upon Infants in the Old and of Baptism upon Infants in the New Testament now who overthroweth this Covenant we who put our Infants under the Seal of the Covenant soon after their birth it being their birth-right or you that with-hold it from your Infants until they come to be of years to make profession let God himself be judge and that his Word Genesis 17.14 He hath broken my Covenant who the child whose flesh of his fore-skin is not circumcised so also he whose flesh is not washed with the water of Baptism which latter if not done or ordered to be done by you who are Parents to the Child the breach and overthrowing the Covenant lieth upon you and not upon the child to answer for You have broken the Lords Covenant and the Lord may break in upon you as he did upon Moses for neglect of circumcising his Seed Exodus 4.24 Consider of it it s the Lords mercy you are not broken and consumed let the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long suffering lead you to repentance the Covenant Gospell Christ being the same under both Administrations God will look and justly may and must that his Covenanters or covenanted with even Instants shall be now partakers of
baptized or unbaptized is saved she hath no judgement of certainty but only of charity and this may have though there should be none of those particulars saved 4. That inward saving grace doth not alwayes attend the Covenant largely and comprehensively taken of which before nor the Seal but only in such as belong to the election of grace Yet the Church may in charity think so as to particulars in Covenant and under Seal till the contrary appear though she have no certain knowledge of it 5. Elect Infants Baptized and dying in their Infancy have no outward means of Salvation but their Baptism the Seal of the Covenant but there is an inward invisible grace which the Holy Spirit before in at or by Baptism doth truly really and actually impute or impart to them applying Christ in his Justifying and Sanctifying vertue unto the souls of such Infants This the Church holdeth not only as of Charity but as of certainty 6. Such Elect Infants Baptized and so dying are capable of and do attain to such saving inward graces not by the usual and ordinary way of Believing upon hearing and conceiving for such actual Faith is not of absolute nececessity to all Gods Elect but only to those to whom God affords the means of it it is the application of Christs Righteousness that justifieth them which is done to them either by some habits of Faith infused of God into their hearts or by Gods Spirit in a secret and unknown way to us supplying all defects in them and doing all things on their parts and this he holdeth most in charity with some though not full of certainty because it is secret 7. Such Elect Infants Baptized and living to the Use of Reason and Understanding the seeds of Grace and Faith infused before or in Baptism do grow up by the ordinanry means unto an actual apprehension of Christ and his Righteousness yea areall possession and comfortable fruition of Christ and all his benefits which were in Baptism truly and effectually sealed before unto them whensoever they should be capable to make use of them and this she affirmeth both out of certainty and charity 8. Because the Church and all this while I speak of the Church of old England hath no certain knowledge of particulars who are Elect Infants and who not but only a charitable opinion of this and that and so every particular one born in the bosome of the Church for that she not only charitably holdeth but certainly knoweth that all Infants born of Christian Parents are also inexternal and professional Covenant of God together with their Christian Parents Therefore she is carefull as she ought that all such in convenient time and with the soonest may be Baptized and receive the Initial Seal of the Covenant so as none as much as may be depart out of this life without Baptism not as if she certainly thought Infants having been true partakers of Baptism must needs without doubt be saved but because she will not be wanting in her charity and duty to God and such Infants which being once baptized and dying soon after she thinks them saved in her judgement of charity in which she thinketh the inward grace may accompany the outward Ministration but for any judgement of certainty and verity herein she disclaimeth and referreth the same to the God Omniscient Now to what end you add these last words Jesus saith Ye do erre not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God Mat. 22.29 I am the God of Abraham of Isaac and Jacob God is not the God of the dead but of the living Verse 32. unless it be to shew a kinde of fatality of errour falling upon you and following you wheresoever you go not knowing but pretending ever the Scriptures which still you cite as heretofore and speak words against your own life the life of your Cause and cut your own throat with your own knife or run your self thorow with your own Sword even the Sword of the Spirit the Texts of Scripture as you cite and apply them as here For by virtue of Abraham's saith which God so well accepted of did not God enter into and make a Covenant both with Abraham and his Seed Isaac and Jacob and all other both Jews and Gentiles who should be followers of Abraham's faith and God being the God not of the dead but of the living Abraham liveth still in the children of Abraham who are of the same saith with him and so the Covenant made with Abraham lives still in all believing Parents for themselves and their children In that saidest thou truly John 4.18 And for your last words hereabouts Consider these things with a single eye aiming at Gods glory and thy Neighbours good and answer these Considerations by plain and direct Scriptures if you can or eise leave off wresting the Scriptures to your own ends if not your destruction I have done it you see considered your Considerations which I wish you had better considered of that so they might have been truly Considerations and that not onely with a single eye as you speak but with a twofold eye so I must if aiming at both Gods glory and my Neighbours good even your good also as well as Parents and their children whereas your Considerations did neither but rahter obscured Gods glory in his Covenant and diminishing your Neighbours good the good of Infants especially which God hath enlarged to them And God hath enabled me for I can do nothing of myself to answer your Considerations by plain and direct Scriptures and Reasons drawn from them yea and such Scriptures as you have wrung wrested and wronged I have vindcaged by explaining them and directing of them to their right end and construction And so I shall not need to leave off that I never began But truly it is time for you to give over that which you have practised all along your Letter to me the wresting of Scriptures and that to your own ends if not destruction yea I must tell you though you may wrest the Scriptures to your own destruction unless you see your errour and repent you do not wrest them to your own ends I am sure for they do not come up or attain either to your own end the destruction of our Infant-Baptism or to your other end for both these are your own ends the justification of your Adult Baptism of persons before baptized I will not be my own judge herein but refer it to the indifferent Reader if any shall peruse this my Answer I proceed to that which followeth of yours An Exposition according to the minde of the Holy Ghost in that Scripture 1 Cor. 7.14 For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the believing husband else were your children unclean but now they are holly holy or clean which is opposite to uncleanness What a Mountebank are you alwaies thus to mount up your low bank and to elevate
marriage of the Parents then why was not were not all the sons and daughters of Solomon Rehoboam Jeroboam Nadab and others of the kings of Israel and Judah saved seeing they were all lawfully married according to there their Laws and Customs and why are not drunkard drunkards swarers swearers and other prophane persons saved whyle while they so lived and so died seeing they are in our experience of tymes times the children of lawfull married people according to the laws of the land and why was Jeptah Jephthah saved seeing he was a bastard How now Sir is all the ado for this I looked for Grapes from your mouth and you bring forth wilde grapes I looked for judgement and behold oppression or a scab and for righteousness and behold a cry or a lye In a word I looked for an answer and behold more questions and nothing but questions and those nothing to the purpose for 1. whereas you said before Some will affirm that sanctification of holiness in children such as is the way to heaven and salvation is here spoken of do you affirm if you can of some that say or ever said that it came from the lawfulness of the marriage of the Parents Here you are like Don Quixot who imagined wind-mills in the air before him and ran a tilt at them so you set up images and imaginations in your way to question them thereby to keep your self in breath and your pen on paper 2. Suppose some had affirmed it that childrens sanctification of holiness for as long as I am about your work I shall use your words and when I have done that I shall leave there for I like them not cometh from the lawfulness of the marriage of their Parents doth or may then rationally or religiously follow thereupon such a question as Why then were not all the children of all married Parents in the Church for I pass by your great reading in the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel and Judah and their Genealogies so impertinent here and why not drunkards and swearers which are in your experience of times the children of lawfull married people you seem to be a man of great experience of times and a diligent observer of childrens births and their Parents marriages and are a fit man to be the Register of your Parish and to keep the Book why say you were they not all saved and why was Jephthah saved seeing he was a bastard and not the child of lawfully married Parents what a consequence or rather as I said before a non-sequence of a question is here from a supposition like unto this the qualification of coldness in the water cometh from the confluence of showers into the pond why then are not all the drops and handfuls fetched thence sweet and distilled Sanctification of holiness in the children cometh from the lawfull marriage of their Parents why then are not all their children and issues saved Sirs can you forbear smiling They say when one Almanack-maker looketh upon another they smile both to think how they delude simple people with their vain and false Prognostications certes when you Sectaries see one another you cannot but laugh out to remember how you deceive silly people with your irrational and inconsequent argumentations offer it now unto thy Governour thy God will he be pleased with thee and thy Question Why not all saved he will tell thee that thy and their destruction is from themselves but thy and their help or salvation is in me saith God not in or from any other Parent or not Parent married or not married lawfully or not lawfully you and they are saved by the free grace of God and not by the sanctification of holiness in the one or other Yea do you not answer your self why drunkards and swearers who were children of lawfull married Parents are not saved Why they so lived and so died drunkards and swearers how could they But what is all this to our business which is not of salvation but sanctification Here is another of your absurd and inconsequent questions sanctification of holiness in children if it come from the lawful marriage of the Parents why then are not all sanctified so you should have said would if you could have told how to keep to the Question then you might have answered your self or needed not have made such a question seeing even the wicked children born of lawful married Parents in the Church are in a way which I shall anon shew you sanctified and this their sanctification is a way also unto Heaven and Salvation and all those whom you name were in this way and I suppose you know I shall not need to tell you what fell out in the way that they were not all or any of them saved It is one of your grosse mistakes and Reasonings from every kinde of sanctification of holiness to conclude the salvation of souls when as to go no farther the unbeliever is here said to be sanctified in and by the believing and their children are said to be holy from whence who can infer their salvation these arguings are rattles for boyes to play with not Reasons for men to bring forth But what 's the business why Jephthah is here named It is confessed He was saved because the Scripture beareth witness of it in Heb. 11.32 and also that he was a bastard Judges 11.1 But seeing he was a bastard you ask why he was saved why to teach you that base birth is no obstacle to free Grace nor hindreth the salvation of any believer no more than lawful marriage of Parents so much talked of or rather as you should have spoken the legitimate birth of children doth further the salvation of an unbeliever But in the mean time this Example named by you and produced doth accuse you of inconsiderateness in your Consideration for we are both considering as you will have it of the sanctification of holiness in children whose Parents are one of them an Infidel or unbeliever and you come in with your Jephthah neither of whose Parents were unbelievers though sinful in that act and so its impertinent as not comming within the compasse of the Corinthians doubt and Quaere or the Apostles answer and Argument and so you are besides the Matter and out of the Cause and Case here questioned in all your Questions being nothing to the purpose But now lastly tell me one thing did you not once but a while ago hold the Apostles meaning here of childrens being holy to be noching else but a legitimation of their birth from Parents in lawful Wedlock or Matrimonial holiness or chastity which you also or yours make to be the very sanctification of the unbeliever to or by the believer How then can you and with what constancy can you now here argue against the sanctification of holiness in children as comming from the lawfulness of the marriage of the Parents who before make legitimation of their birth and nothing else to be their
Birth-holiness and lawful marriage to be the unbelieving Parent his sanctification Thus usual it is with God to confound the opposers of his truth so as to contradict their own Tenets for as they heard only that he which persecuted the Church in times past now preacheth the faith which once he destroyed Paul by name Gal. 1.15 So we may see now that he which revileth the Church in times present now destroyeth the errours his own errours which once he preached and wrote but I will not name him and as they glorified God in Paul so we may glorifie God in this and say Great is Truth and will prevall vile is errour and will fall 2. If it come from the faith of the Parrents Parents or at least from the faith of one of them thenn then I pray tell me why Cayne Cain Esau Absolon and others were not saved seeing their Parents ware were all faithful and belevers believers and why was Rahab the Harlot saved seeing her parents ware Heathens or unbelevers neither ware the Parents of all those who were converted at the first preaching of the Gospel belevers Here it the same song again of the sanctification of holiness in children only to another tune the former was to the tune of the lawful marriage of their Parents and this is to the tune of faith of the Parents or at least one of them I have found or put the first song out of tune and I believe I shall do so to the second song especially in reference to the consort or consequence thereof Sanctification of holiness in children cometh not from the saith of Parents neither of them by way of conveyance causality or application as I have said before that is the faith of the Parent apprehending Christ and his righteousnes and holiness doth not cause convey or apply the same unto his or their child thereby to justifie and sanctifie it so it must if you will argue from it the faith of the Parents or one of them to the salvation of their child and therefore all that follows even your consquences are thus blasted and blown away But yet there is a sanctification of holiness in children that comes from the faith of the Parent or either of them by way of declaration relation or impetration that is the faith of the parents Covenanted with God and baptized into Christ doth relatively and declaratively sanctifie their child even unto the same holy seal of the Covenant with themselves and may impetrate holiness and salvation for him though not impart or derive the same to it unless it be in a foederal way which is a way also to salvation like as if the root be holy so are the branches But all this may be but without any necessary or infallible consequence of salvation hereupon though it is in the way and a way thereto as I said I must here tell you again of the same fault as I did before that our Discourse and Dispute is about childrens sanctification of holiness and you still run out to childrens salvation of happiness whereas this doth not alwaies or necessarily either Logically or Theologically follow upon that There needs no more or farther Consideration of this Paragraph but only of this that instead of proceeding in Dispute like an Academick and Scholar you conclude here like an Epidemick and vulgar Taking away the subject of the question the holiness of children from the faith of the Parents for you give instances of Rahab a Heathen whose Parents were Infidels she was saved from the Grace of God what is that to her being sanctified from the faith of Parents the like is to be thought and said of those first converts Besides you are out of the text you undertook to expound according to the minde of the Holy Ghost for here the Corinthians second Quaere and the Apostles second answer which you are upon is about the living children of believers at least one of them and their childrens holiness you instance in Rahab a grown person as were also these first converts whose Parents were unbelievers it is likely both of them as to Rahab and you tell me of their happiness and salvation being now dead Well Sir if you were a young man or youth I would perswade you to go to one of the Universities for all this But I go to another even the last now of your Considerations and glad I am that I am come to the last end of your Considerations that so having gone through them I may return again to my Considerations of my latter and last end Deut. 32.29 and make ready to answer my last Enemy and Adversary which is Death 1 Cor. 15. 3. If it be a foederal holiness that the Apostle here speaketh of as Mr. Weinell afirmeth affirmeth and others likewise I would desire to know whether ever any of the seed of Abraham or David did enjoy any priveledg privilege of the Church upon any such account without or before they had a command for it ware were they Circumcised or did they eate the paskall paschal before they had a commaund for it And I pray shew me if you can any commaund in the Gospel for the Parrents Parents to admit any of there their children to any Ordinance of the Gospel without faith in there own persons or any commaund in the Gospel for any Minister of the Gospel to admit persons to any priveledg of the Church without faith in there owne persons or at least so far as the Ministers of the Gospel can judge Sir I thank you for your four last lines which being nothing but what you have Quaered before and I have answered before as you self or any Reader may see if you will review or remember I may save so much labour and passe by them with silence or only bid them farewell I see you begin to be weary as well as my self or to want new matter which makes you now here retrace and retract the old to requaere and require what formerly you have done I look upon them as a piece of Recapitulation as its usual at the period of a Discourse and I shall need to look no farther after them having made a long look before upon the matter of them As for the three first lines you are come now indeed to the Point your former its or suppositions were but circumferences or round-abouts It is now the second time you have named Mr. Weynell but not a Sentence or Argument of his do you mention much lâ—sse Argue against from first to last of this your Consideration upon 1 Cor. 7. The shortest and sweetest the finest and prettiest way of answering and confuting you have gotten that ever I met withal in any man I would you could or would teach it me I am not too old yet to learn any good thing of you your words in the beginning would have put upon him a false opinion even your own about the Matrimonial holiness of the unbeliever as if that were
you follow this better But some others whose opinion I rather think you follow than they yours they drive it on to another design as thus Because the Infants of the Jews did eat the Passeover as well as they were circumcised Therefore the Infants of Christians should eat and drink the Lords Supper as well as be baptized This structure is soon pulled down standing upon a false foundation even as the house fell built upon the slippery sand and therefore I shall but touch it and it sinks or slides Because the Infants of the Jews did not eat the Passeover but were onely circumcised Therefore the Infants of Christians are not to eat and drink the Lords Supper but onely be baptized So taking off the Argument against Infant-Baptism from its false and ruinous foundation of the Jewish children eating the Paschal Lamb you were best set it upon its own proper Basis and build Baptism upon the Lords Supper thus or rather pulâ— it down by the Lords Supper thus If Infants of Christians may be partakers of Baptism then also they may be partakers of the Lords Supper for why of one Seal of the Covenant more than another and if Infants may not be partakers of the Lords Supper why then not of Baptism no more of one Seal than the other besides they are capable of the spiritual part of the one Sacrament as well as the other So I have made the Argument as strong for you as I can if you can for t fie it yet more do it quickly for I am in haste to answer as desirous to make an end of these wearisom skirmishes as to my self and tedious discourses as to the Reader What! will you become of Antipaedobaptists now Propaedocoenists and grant Infants sometimes and sometimes deny them in Argument the Lords Supper that you may deprive the of the Lords Baptism You shall never do it by such ambidextrous inconsequences to which the Answer and Reason is very obviouâ— 1. Your own Reason and Answer will do it that from the one Seal ordered and appointed for Infants to another Seal not enjoyned or instituted for Infants the Consequence is vain and invalid the former I have largely proved and disproved the latter clearly let but the Argument rest till can can disquiet or disturbe it and I desire no more 2. From Baptism which is the Seal Initial and of Admission due to Infants to infer the Lords Supper which is the Seal Progressional and of nourishment to be also due in present and partaked of in infancy like as the other is as inconsequent an absurdity as to infer time to come from present or perfection from beginning or a man from a child and to joyn them in one moment state and age Can a man enter into his mothers womb and be born a babe again or as soon as he is born a babe can he run over the ages and become a man presently When I a child saith the Apostle I spake as a child and understood as a child I thought as a child but when I became a man I put away childish things I mean Infants may be initiated by the Seal of Baptism into the Church and are fitted to have the Graces and Benefies of the Covenant sealed unto them but that they are presently perfitted to have the nourishment and growth of the same Graces sealed and confirmed unto them by the Lords Supper passeth mine and your as much as their capacity It is true that both Baptism and the Lords Supper do seal the same and the whole Covenant and the Graces of the same but both in their place order and time so as the prime and main use of Baptism is to be the Seal of Initiation and Reception into Covenant and the Lords Supper is the Seal of Augmentation and Confirmation of the same as to the main and prime use of it so as that Baptism seals the Infants entrance and admission thereinto which the Lords Supper doth not properly and principally but onely by way of supposition and testification of a spiritual life and entrance such doth the spiritual food of the Lords Supper imply and require aforehand So also as that the Lords Supper seals the growth and nourishment of the same Graces of the Covenant which Baptism doth not properly and primarily but onely by way of infusion of a seed or laying a foundation of such growth and nourishment such doth the spiritual life of Baptism tend and proceed to afterwards Lastly Though Infanrs may and ought to be partakers of Baptism yet may they not nor ought to be partakers of the Lords Supper in their infancy because the Lords Supper belongs onely to such as can spiritually examine themselves and discern the Lords Body as the Apostle expresly and directly saith 1 Cor. 11.27 28 29. whereas Baptism belongs unto Infants of Christians by right of their being in the holy Covenant of God and birth of baptized Parents for more is required to the Lords Supper than unto Baptism of Church-members by nature and birth whereas of Aliens and Strangers more is required of them unto Baptism than of Church-members unto the Lords Supper a publick profession of faith is necessary for the admitting of a Heathen into the visible Catholick Church by Baptism and his entring into the Gospel-Covenant for himself and his Seed and he may presently after be partaker of the Lords Supper upon the examination of his faith for the confirmation of the same But Infants being in Church-Covenant by birth have a just Title and Right to all the external Privileges in the Church as being free-born to them all in due time and order as to Baptism in their infancy because born members of the Church so to the Lords Supper when by reason of full age and use they have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil and this their Covenant-right remains until it be forfeited by a renunciation of Baptism on their part or by excommunication from the other the Lords Supper by the Churches power when they are either wilfull violaters of the Conditions of the Covenant or hate to be reformed by wholsom Censures If any farther reply He must be a better replyer than you That the Infant baptized can no more discern the Lords Body and Blood in Baptism than in the Supper nor the sign it self in the act of Administration of either Sacrament and therefore Baptism is as vainly given it as the Lords Supper I re-joyn That our Infants can and do as well discern the Sacramental Sign and the thing signified in Baptism as well as the Jewish Infants did discern the same in Circumcision So that if our Baptism be in vain to ours their Circumcision was also in vain to their Children and the Replyer doth but open his mouth against Heaven and chargeth God himself with vanity and folly for appointing Circumcision of Infants and also Baptism of Infants whereas the Axiom is God and Nature doth nothing in vain or foolishly As
persons in the Church holy and so reputed by the Apostle to be by their being in and under the holy Covenant of God or by being children of a believing Parent or Parents in Covenant may and ought to have the holy Initial Seal of that Covenant which in the Gospel is Baptism But all infants in the Church of believing Parents are such persons holy and so reputed by the Apostle to be by their being in and under the holy Covenant or by being children of a believing Parent or Parents in Covenant Therefore all infants in the Church may and ought to have the holy initial Seal of the Covenant which in the Gospel is Baptism You will now Sir of your self I shall not need to urge or advise you being experienced and practised often before therein now the eighth time with much facility deny the conclusion For the first Proposition you cannot deny it being grounded out of that Text Act. 10.47 where Peter saith Can any man forbid water that those should not be Baptized who have received the holy Spirit and as is largely explained and proved before as also upon this Reason deducible hence that where holiness is the Spirit is and where the Spirit is Christ is and where Christ is the Covenant is and where the Covenant is the Seal initial namely Baptism may and ought to be For the second Proposition you cannot deny it being the expresse affertion of Paul here But now they are holy namely their children And whereas I have put in my whole Discourse all these my eight or nine Arguments into the form of a Syllogism I have done is the better to inform you to which you pretend to be willing in the close of your Letter I hope you will taste it now at last the better though savouring much of our University Arts and Humane learning as consonant and agreeing subservient and conducing to the Divine wisedom and of good use for the understanding and Expounding of the Scriptures written in the learned Tongues and Languages and often referring to Moral and Phylosophical matters of which I have spoken largely before and should not have mentioned again but that you have another fling at the same in the close of your Letter saying that it appears that the most learned by Humane learning want the learning of the Spirit to interperate interpret Scripture It is true that some of the learned by Humane learning may and do want the learning of the Spirit to interpret Scripture but do not more of the ignorant by their Humane ignorance much more want the same yet none of the learned and much less of the most learned do by humane learning as you must mean though you point not your words with any Comae's or Colons for want of Humane learning by Humane learning I say want the learning of the Spirit seeing the Spirit of God hath both taught it at first as the Author of it and made much use of it practising some of it in the Scripture and as Hagar and Sarah may dwell together in the same house humane learning as you call it and the learning of the Spirit may keep together in the same head-house so long as Hagar is an obedient handmaid to her Mistris Sarah and Humane learning humbly submits and is servant or subservient unto the learning of the Spirit and the Misteries of it But of this matter there is enough written before and how it should now at the last appear to you that the most learned by Humane learning do want the learning of the Spirit to interpret Scripture if you mean it of those who interpret the Scriptures for Infant-Baptism against you it is marvelous to me for I will instance but in this one and last interpretation of 1 Cor. 7.14 But now they are holy We interpret it holy federally as who are born in Covenant with God and of a believing Parent or Parents in Covenant with God and so are not unclean as the Gentiles out of Covenant but you interpret it holy legitimally as who are lawfully born of Parents in wedlock according to the Law and so are not unclean as bastards born out of wedlock now do you remember your words four times repeated in one of your pages I will repeat them once more for you but to you Judge you but judge you righteous judgement for God will judge you I say whether of the interpretations savours most of Humane learning or the learning of the Spirit yours or ours doth it not clearly appear to your eyes that your interpretation is a meer Humane natural carnal political interpretation and such as you can bring no word or example for from the learning of the Spirit the Scriptures where holy are called or meant legitimates and unclean bastards and therefore it is a meer Humane learning and not agreeable to the learning of the Spirit nay repugnant to it for by the learning of the Spirit all bastards are not unclean nor all legitimates holy But our interpretation is a very Divine gracious spiritual Ecclesiastical interpretation and such as I have brought both word and example for from the Scriptures the learning of the Scriptures where all in Covenant with God or born of Christians or one Christian Parent are stiled holy and all childeren born out of Covenant or of Parents both Heathens are called unclean and therefore ours is the very learning of the Spirit to take your words now out of your mouth and put them into ours as justly I may according to the minde of the Spirit as who declared unto us in the Scriptures and we from it to you that all Covenanters born of Covenanters with God are holy and all out of Covenant and born of such as are out of Covenant are unclean And so now by this as indeed by all or most of the Scriptures that you have made use of throughout your whole Letter which rather you have made an abuse of it will appear yea doth that your self is one of them the most learned by Humane learning certainly Sir for all your talk against it you have been at the University and gotten up some Humane learning and are a great Practitioner therein as appears by this and your other interpretations yea I take you to be a man if not a Master of Arts and Humane learning more than of the learning of the Spirit though pretending to this more a better Humanist than Divine or rather an Alchymist who can extract out of the Spirits holy in Scripture the spirit and flesh to a child lawfully born and out of spirits unclean the quintessence of a bastard Do you call this the learning of the Spirit to Interperate Scriptures with all for so you write and shew your self to be good at expounding as you are at spelling your Orthography and Orthodoxy being both alike do you interpret the Scripture by your learning of the Spirit no sure you Interperate interpret Scripture rather by the ignorance and illiterature of
how quickly it hath made you a right and perfect Scribe and taught you the art and skill and practice too of your master which is to pervert Scripture wresting it to your own ill intents and purposes and worsting it against its own good meaning and sense For all this that you have cited here The accusation of a new thing may justly and manifestly still lie against you for your dipping whilst there goeth along with them and their conquering the Revelation of a new song or that new song of the Revelation But I must remember that I have entitled this to be a word and work of Catechising the Dipper as I have Instructed the Scribe And instead of many Quaeres which I received I shall give but these four Questions 1. Was not the person dipping a new thing 2. Persons dipped a new thing 3. Place where a new thing 4. And the very Dipping it self for the 1. Action 2. Maner a new thing If either of them be such then let this be my first Catechistical Quaere to you of the person Dipping and tell me or shew me Quaere 1. What warrant you have from any precept or example in facred Scripture or succeeding Primitive Antiquity for one Lay-Breother no Minister called or ordained to be the Dipper or Bapitzer of another or any Paul indeed Baptized Crispus and Gaius and the houshold of Stephanas 1 Cor. 1.14 16. The same Paul baptized the jaylor and all his and a certain woman named Lydia Acts 16.14 33. Peter baptized Cornelius and his houshold Acts 10.48 So Ananias baptized Saul Acts 9.18 Philip baptized the people of Samaria and Simon the sercerer Acts 8.12 13. And the three thousand souls which were added unto the Church were baptized by the twelve Apostles with the assistance of the seventy two Disciples Acts 2.38 41. And so the Commission was given by Christ to the Apostles as of Preaching so of Baptizing Mat. 28.19 20. And so it was from the beginning The first Baptist was John who baptized all them of Judea and Jerusalem and Christ himself and his Disciples Now John I know and Philip I know and Ananias I know and Paul I know and Peter I know and the twelve Apostles I know and the seventy two Disciples I know and the seven Deacons I know that they were servants of the most High sent and appointed of God to shew unto us the way of salvation and to minister the holy Ordinances Acts 16.17 Acts 10.15 But who are ye Ye that go for Dippers And whereas it is said that Peter commanded them tob e baptized it seems that together with Peter some other Brethren also present there either assisted in bringing water or it may be in pouring on water or aspersing therewith the houshold of Cernelius but at the command and call of Peter and God chiefly who had baptized them before with the holy Spirit Besides they the Brethren were some such of the Disciples who had before an ordinary calling to such like work if not here they had extraordinary to this in present Thus John 1.25 the Pharisees I wonder how the Scribes hypocrites kept off for if as usually they had been here joyned then you and yours had been here fetcht in in their scrupling at John resolved the point saying unto him Why baptizest thou then if thou be not that Christ nor Elias nor that Prophet And at the 33. verse John sheweth his Authority namely his Mission He that sent me to baptize with water The Baptist was of Gods sending nay when Johns disciples came and told him saying Rabbi He that was with thee beyond Jordan to whom thou barest witness behold the same baptizeth and all men come to him John answered and said A man can receive nothing except it be given him from heaven John 3.26 27. So giving us a rule in general first No man can lawfully baptize except he be authorized from above that is sent of God So at 34. ver he applieth and expoundeth in the particular of himself as before so here of Christ He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God And thus the Author to the hebrews Chap 5. ver 4. giveth both the same Rule in general No man taketh this honor unto himself but he that is called of God as was Aaron Also maketh the application in particular to Christ ver 5. So also Christ glirified not himself to be made an high priest but he that said Thou art my son he said also Thou art a priest c. To circumcise was a ward of the Legal and to baptize of the Evangelical Keyes and they belonged onely to the Priests and Apostles and their successors in both admiministrations So then still I ask the Question Who are ye who take upon you I hope not to call over them which have evil spirits the name of the Lord saying We adjure you by Jesus yet to call over them whom ye think to have the holy Spirit The name of the Father the Son and the holy Ghost saying We baptize you in the name of these § 1. Your answer is They are Brethren set apart by fasting and prayer of the Church to administer holy Ordinances But if this would do it that they are Brethren and that they are set apart why do ye not all at times become Dippers for ye are all spearate Brethren there is but one letter less and as little literature in a brother separate then or as in a brother sot apart And if truly set apart to administer holy Ordinances why do they not give over as in ordinary their secular Trades and Laicall Callings and wholly or chiefly tend upon such Administrations unto which they are set apart for so is both the precept and example of the word you so much pretend to Separate me Barnabas and Sakl for the work whereunto I have called them Acts 13.2 Give thy self wholly unto them i.e. Reading Doctrine Exhortation and the Gifts given thee 1 Tim. 4.15 It is not meet we should leave the Word of God and serve Tables Acts 6.2 and much less Stalls § 2. If set apart by or of whom I pray by and of the Church you say and what Church do you mean sure your own small private company of Believers or be you a great publique multitude of them And now are you not again out of the good old way yes sure for Christ never gave unto such a Church no not to the whole community of people Believers as Believers any such power and authority to set apart a Brother or Brothers to admi-ister the Ordinances of Christ as Preaching Baptizing but onely to such as himself chose out of the Church and believers to be Guides and Pastors of the same So of old Ephes 4.11 He gave some Apostles and seme Prophets and some Evangelists and some Pastors and Teachers and it followeth for the Church its perfecting and edifying c. not to the Church to ordain and set apart the Authority is Christs to
3. The case of necessity in state of Person I scarce understand unless it be this When as he or she earnestly desireth and imploreth for the same whether by its speech or its need and there is no Minister to give it Baptism here the Lord will have mercy and not sacrifice and men are not to stand upon this ordination but the persons salvation Let but your Brother or your self stay and expect such cases of necessity before you or he dip any more or baptize again and then though you be not nor he set a part for the administring that Ordinance but are meer Lay men you shall hear nothing from me against the same I assure you But if in a well ordered and already planted and constituted Church and that when there are no such cases or states of necessity but that lawfully ordained Ministers may easily be procured you and your Brethren will go on still to dip and baptize and that publiquely being no better ordered or set a part then you have related I shall say though again Ye take too much upon you ye sons of Gad for I shall not hold you of the Tribe of Levi Num. 16.7 or Issachar rather couching down between two burthens Genes 49.14 your Laical and Ministerial Callings And it shall come to pass as Zacharias saith Zach. 13.4 5. that such Prophets shall be ashamed every one of his vision which he hath prophesied and every one of his Division that he hath made and set a partition yea of his Dipping also that he hath ministred and Baptisin and he shall say and confess at last I am no Prophet I am an Husbandman for man taught me to keep cattel from my youth God never ordained me to dip Christians from my birth Distinctly Take this a Presbyter or Priest in respect of his Ministerial Character and Order I mean onely a sacerdotal gift power and commission is primarily and principlally the publick and ordinary minister of Baptism A Deacon may baptize also and that publikely so it be at the appointment of the Bishop or Priest but a Priest by his own right may baptize ex officio as we say by vertue of his sacerdotal office even in the presence of a Bishop But a Layman may not baptize publickely but onely privately neither privately in the presence of a Priest or Deacon but onely in their absence neither alwayes in their absence but onely in case of necessity Then it hath been permitted according to the good old way and new way also of true Churches some such times to Laymen to baptize so he intend to do that which the Catholick Church doth in that kind of administration The second Catechistical Quaere is concerning the Persons Dipped Quaere 2. What warrant of precept or example have you from the Sacred Word or Prim tive Antiquity for your Dipping and Anabapâ—izâ—ng Christians washed before or members of the visible Church baptized once in their Infancy by lawful Ministers so as the two Women and Sisters were whom your Brother Dipped Ask now of the days that are past which were before since the day that God created man and woman upon Earth and commanded circumcision in the eldest Chruch of the Jews and appointed Baptism in the younger Church of the Gentiles ask from the beginning to the end of both whether there hath been any such thing as this that a person circumcised or baptized in their infancy were ever recircumcised or rebaptized at growth or yeras after when they could render a Reason or make confession of their Faith c. Instance in one if you can and be instant upon it as you will and is not then your dipping the formerly dipped a new business As for that example of Joshua upon Gods command Circumcise again the children of Israel the second time Jos 5.2 This doth not intimate any Repetition or Reiteration of that Sacrament in or to the same particular Israelitish person circumcised as if he should be now circumcised again but onely relates the Restauration and Renovation of that Sacrament unto the people of Israel in general amongst whom Circumcision was a long while intermitted and discontinued by reason of their frequeut yea continual journals and removings up and down as the 4 5 6 Verses do evidence the same As for that Acts 19.5 of St. Pauls practise the example of the Ephesian Disciples in the Acts it is abundantly answered in my Instruction of your Scribe to which I refer you and I add this for a plainer and shorter Resolution for you 1. That it maketh nothing for your Re-dipping and Re-baptizing 1. Because St. John's Baptism being there spoken of and you or your Sect being Popish in your opinion of Re-baptizing and so holding from hence that the Baptism of John and Christ are two different Baptisms and that in the substance and not onely in the Degree of their signification and efficacy Here was no iterat on of one and the same but the ministration of a diverse Baptism and so is not to your or my purpose 2 For that there is no Baptism of water spoken of much less there laid to be reiterated that the Ephesian Disciples had long before received from some of Johns Disciples but onely the Baptism of Fire i.e. of the Spirit and the miraculous gifts of the same is there mentioned which they confess they had not so much as heard of namely that they unsually as then accompanied the other Baptism of water And so that the former was that they were baptized with and was poured upon them there in the Name of Jesus namely the gifts of the holy Spirit which were miraculous If you shall produce as somewhat you must say for your selves the example of Saul Cornelius and the Eunuch baptized in their elder years upon their conversion to and cofession of Christ and the commands of God to Ananias Peter and Philip c. to baptize them thereupon All this and as much more which you might have alledged of the same sort brings no advantage to your practice no age to your new business of Rebaptising the second time for that the mentioned above were their first and onely baptizings they being some of them Pagans born others aliens from the Covenant of Christ adverse and opposite to ignorant at leastwise of the Christian Faith were then frist of all baptized upon their embracing of it and never after baptized again No not the Black Aethiopian amongst them was ever dipped the second time And what is all this to your Redipping of two Women baptized before in their infancy as being born Christians and within the Covenant of Grace and Christ Yea more if the Pope of Rome should come over into England and turn Protestant or become one of your Sect a separate nor we would nor should you of right baptize him again having been baptized before rightly as to the Element and Words of Institution Therefore the Ancient Orthodox Church never Re-baptized Hereticks themselves upon their
dipping you plead it for the good old way and reject my appeaching it for a new business Now there and then when Baptism was performed by immersion or dipping yet I make some difference 'twixt the words as I shall shew they stript their bodies of all their clothes and went into the water stark naked and were baptized naked even as Adam and Eve created naked were in Paradise as naked as ever they themselves were born into the world as Christ was crucified on the cross and as the bodies shall go to heaven or hell for by these patterns the Ancients expressed the maner of it and if you see any vail or such like about or over the bodies of any of these at the time of baptizing it is the Painters fancy it was not theirs the Ancients fashion I know you look for a proof of this old way this naked truth which I shall give you to the proof and reproof of your new business of clothed or cloaked novelty Cyril of Hier. Catech. Mystag 11. saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. When ye went into the water you put off your garments as a token of the old man put off c. and so being naked you were like Christ who being naked spoiled the powers and principalities and it was a wonderful thing ye were naked and were not ashamed as Adam And so other Ancients of the Greek Church do testifie the same whom I forbear to cite onely I adde Chrysostom Homil. 6. upon Col. 2. because he addeth the mysticall of this putting off the garment at baptism to be the putting off the old man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And Elias Cretensis upon the 4. Oration of Nazianzen because he makes an addition of certain officers and helpers appointed to undress them and take off the garments of those that were to be immerged or baptized to dress them and to put them on again afterwards Ad sacerdotem quidem is adducitur qui spirituali regeneratione donandus est ipse autem pedes ejus adhibita ministrorum eorum qui ad hoc constituti sunt operâ calceis nudat corpus universum detegit And for the ancient Latine Church Ambrose testifieth the Custom and urgeth from it against the covetous persons saying Thy mother brought thee forth naked when thou camest into the world the Church thy mother too received thee naked when thou camest to the Laver and wouldst thou go clothed and rich to Heaven I will transcribe the very words of Ambrose in his own eloquent language Ideò nudi in saeculo nascimur nudi etiam accedimus ad lavachrum ut nudi qucque expediti ad coeli januam properemus quam autem incongruum absurdum est ut quem nudum mater genuit nudum suscipit Ecclesia dives intrare velit in coelum c. And because I may have occasion anon and again to make use of it I will also set down Anselmus his witness and words upon the third Chapter of Matthew where twice he saith it amongst the reasons he giveth of Christ being baptized this was one and another this That none should disdain to be baptized of his inferiour as he was of John That none should be ashamed to be naked or denudated in the sight of men as he was before John and the rest of the company there baptized Plures causae quare Christus ad baptismum accessit primò ut exemplo nos invitaret nequis fortè in conspectu hominum denudâ—â—i erubescerit c. It seems by this testimony of Anselm that Christ himself as all those baptized of John were baptized naked If you think all this to make nothing against your new business because they speak of mens dipping and yours was of womens dipping I shall therefore because I see you minde not that of St. Paul that in Christ Jesus now there is neither male nor female no discrimination of sexes as to the Gospel ordinances shew you the same old way in use for women also so Chrysostom in his Epistle to Pope Innocent relateth that women also were baptized and immerged naked for there he relateth unto that Pope how when Theophilus a Bishop of Alexandria had raised a tumult for the ejecting of himself out of the Church this amongst other things fell out That the women who were there in the Church and had stript themselves naked as prepared for Baptism upon the noise and for fear of this sudden and cruel commotion ran away naked out of the Church and through fear had no time and leisure to provide for the shamefastness and modesty of that sex by putting on their clothes again I adde somewhat to the words but nothing to the sense of Chrysostom And he also relateth that there were women appointed of purpose by the Church not to shift off the better clothes in a chamber and put on worser to be dipt in as your course is to accompany them to the water and there to take off their clothes and so also for the more decency and that nothing of immodesty might appear or be occasioned the women were baptized naked by themselves apart from men as the men apart by themselves naked To which also Epiphanius attesteth Haeres 79. and Augustine 22. Book of the city of God 8. Chap. for Augustine there speaks de parte foeminarum ad Baptisterium a certain part and place about the Fonts or where the women stood apart from the men ready to be baptized like as Epiphanius doth of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. an order of Deaconesses appointed for the safeguarding of the womens modesty and shamefastness to undress them at Baptism And Cyril also in the place aforesaid The which Custom held on until Beruards time who was made a Monk in the year 1110. in whose dayes that old way was put by because of some scandall and offences were given or taken through haughtiness and wickedness on the one or other side which the innocency and honesty of the former Ages kept off and prevented By this time Sir I hope you see that your dipping of women in their clothes is a new business in the Church and hath no print or footsteps to be seen in the old way or amongst the ancient Writers and Fathers of the former Churches Yea this your clothes-dipping also is so new a thing that not much above fourteen or fifteen years ago your predecessours and primer Anabiptists the Virgins of Sion and the precious Sons of the same the Proselytes of those dayes did in the Evening resort and run together and went naked into the Rivers their Jordan and were there dipped and plunged in their naked bodies without clothes on them by their John-Dippers or Dipper Johns I cannot deny but that Infants also as well as grown persons were according to the old way undressed or taken out of their clothes and were baptized and dipt naked and presently clothed again and so carried to the
Bishop to be confirmed as Gregory the Great acknowledgeth in his Sacramentary in which is set down the order of baptizing Infants To which I shall adde the Testimony of another one Alcuine or Albine by name who lived in the Year 780. and so 220. years after the aforesaid Gregory and the rather I do because he was an English man born in Yorkshire and it may be thereupon called the other name Albine of Albion he was the scholar of our venerable Bede and the school-master also as friend and familiar to Charles the Great by whose advice Charles the Great founded the University of Paris and appointed four principall Heads and Presidents thereof Rabanus Alcuinus Claudius Johannes Scotus all the Scholars of our Beda so much is France beholding to England for their Learning and learned men but to the purpose the words of Alcuine are Postquam vestiti fuerint Infantes he is speaking of Infants after they had been baptized naked deportantur ante Pontificem ad confirmandâ—m who sate in a seat fixed somewhere in the Church or in Sacrario the Chancel or Vâ—stry for the same purpose whereby I conceive it was at the solemn times of Baptism twice in the year Easter and Whitsontide an evideut Testimony both for Infant-baptism and also for Infants baptized naked And it is true also that the old and late Liturgy of our Church of England mentioneth the Ministers taking the child to be baptized into his arms naming it shall as the Rubrick hath it dip it in the water so it be discreetly and warily done but whether in the cloaths or out of the cloaths it is not expressed In present I think and so shall until I be better informed that our Church meant a dipping of the Infant out of the cloaths and therein owned the Antiquity of the practise but yet shewed her authority in things of such nature for that she addeth if the child be weak it shall suffice to pour water upon it so indulging the health and welfare thereof and what child is not weak in these our Northern cold Clymates though not contradicting Antiquity which did so dip children naked in those Eastern warmer Countreys where they might more safely do it I am sure she meant not your new way of dipping in the cloaths over head and ears and the whole body What if she meant the dipping of the naked face onely or the naked forehead and head also in the water by such as hold still to the dipping there mentioned so doing as it crosseth not the Antiquity for the reason I gave but now so it favoureth not your novelty for the reasons I have given against the same all this while By this time you may see and hear how your dipping and baptizing bodies in their cloaths in a new busines and none of the old way I remember Justin Martyr in dial ad Tryph. gives the Pharisees that peculiar term and epithite of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because of their washing so many things as cups pots vessels and tables us are mentioned Mark 7.4 But these are civil or superstitious washings or ceremonial Your Scribes surpasse these Pharisees in dipping of cloaths and all in their baptizing and washings which are Eclesiastical religious and even moral with them and therefore may more justly be called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dippers or washers and in this sense Johns the Baptists I do look when you shall fall from this novelty in this Sacrament of Baptism to such another novelty in the other Sacrament and when you break bread give it into your proselytes hands with their gloves on I omit to open unto the Reader the packet of these other frivolous if not scurrilous Rites and Ceremonies which were used at this your dipping some whereof you relate and others for modesty I suppose you silence but are talked of by the spectators as ridiculous and infamous I question them not at all for they were all such questionless onely this I question How men of such sincerity onely should be thus full of ceremony also and wonder also how you who hate in others innocent and significant ceremonies in ministerial celebrations and abominate them as the abomination of desolation throwing them away as the rags and patches of Popery and rending them off as the fringes and laces of the whore should now be so far in love of them as to clothe and adorn your Dippal administrations in such offensive and sensless Rites and Ritual dresses so that your brother may be better called a master of Ceremonies then a Minister of Ordinances This one thing I shall question here why your brother was so quick of his words and so slow at his work for so it seems by the narration which is your relation that he spake the words according to the institution I baptize thee in the Name of the Father the Son and the holy Ghost before he dipped them in the water though but immediatly before The which I take to be another novelty if not more some vanity be not in it For our English Liturgy consonant to the ancient Liturgies of the Churches doth otherwise and better practise direct where as the Rubrick hath it the Minister naming the child shall dip it in the water saying I baptize thee c. And I conceive there is good reason for it that the dipping into or sprinkling with water and the pronouncing the words of administration I baptize c. should be done in one and the same instant of time as two conjunct Acts and not one before the other because the sign and the thing signified are two correlate parts and go together not one before the other If either may go immediately instantly before the other It is the dipping before the words as our Liturgy hath it Dip it in the water saying and not the words before the dipping as your Tympany doth it he spake the words before he dipped nay there is not verity or truth in it to say the words I baptize c. before the party be in the water or the water upon the party But your Dippers tongue dipt and tipt it may be aforehand for the better keeping out of the cold of water did run so fast in the pronouncing the words of institutution too fast indeed as which did run before it was sent and spake before the Lord opened the mouth of the man Numb 22.28 that his hands having taken such fast hold of the sisters by their clothes about the shoulders and loath to let it go or put them out of his sight till needs must he forgat the work action of dipping them putting them under the water at the same time or before the speaking of the words of Institution And so I may say as the Comaedian doth in a like dipping and tripping Neque lingua neque manus suum faciebant officium I may put in neque pedes as the Comaedian doth for his feet ran too fast to the Pond
of washing and nourishing spiritually By which may be put back what the aforesaid Hunnius objecteth as that we have no word of institution none for substitution and whatsoever is not of faith is sin all which are blunted by our keeping still to the minde and meaning purpose and intention of Christ as to the end and use of the elements in general though the particular elements themselves cannot be procured And whereas he puts a man so baptized under some perplexity of conscience and under the temptation of Satan for I will instance but in that see you are not baptized with water but with some other liquor which was neither sanctified by any Word of God to this use of washing away sin neither hath it any such promise in Scripture adjoined therto he may be taken out of the same tentation by this answer of a good conscience That water was sought out for and none could be gotten and he was in danger and extremity of life and in distresse and want of Christ and his blood to wash his sins away There being some wine in a vessel in the house a Minister affecting no innovation but his good and salvation and the sacramental application of Christs washing blood for his further confirmation and consignation which he so earnestly desired took wine when he could have no water and poured of it upon him using the words I baptize thee in the Name of the Father the Son and the holy Ghost and so he may hope ye doubt not but God hath accepted of him as rightly baptized and interressed in Christ If it be said what analogy in the Lords Supper is there of water to wine seeing this is made up of many bunches of grapes or in baptism of wine to water seeing this hath a vertue to wash and cleanse I reply such particular analogies though they may be profitably thought of where the proper Elements to each Sacrament may be possibly gotten which are not negligently to be omitted yet are they not so precisely to be urged and strictly pressed the one against the other in the times of the scarcity of each Though if so I can say That the water also is made up of many drops of Rain and the wine hath also a washing and cleansing vertue It is sufficient that there is here a general analogy for the testifying of our mutual Communion and spiritual ablution as here is in that we use the same kind of symbols as drink and meat also and washing which are common and usual amongst us in defect of the proper and special and specially in that we hold one and the same faith in conjunction with and sanctification by one Christ and Saviour If indeed though in a case of exigency and scarcity of water any should substitute or use such a matter as hath no power at all in it self to wash or cleanse off the filth of the body so not to signifie the blood of Christ which cleanseth from the guilt of sin it were to be disallowed as that Baptismus Arenarius spoken of by Nicephorus lib. 3. cap. ult how that a young man of the Hebrews being desperately sick and calling for baptism in want of water was superfused with sand and miraculously recovered immediately whom notwithstanding the Bishop of Ascalonia being consulted with thereabouts sent away unto Jordan to be truly baptized the former baptism being indeed as the house in the Gospel built upon the sand and could not stand I know no History of a sandy Supper of the Lord as I may so speak to parallel with that sandy baptism as it was called unless it be that sucacoena that dry Communion and Supper the Popish Priests do give to their people for they also as to the one material part of this sacrament give them not that which doth and should represent the blood of Christ and satisfie their thirst as who give them no wine nothing at all instead of it and is it not all one to give them nothing and to give them that which doth not nor can signifie the blood and satisfie the thirst I am sure nothing doth neither But why do I thus enlarge I return to you and your Pond water And here again I must tell you it was a new business for the ancient manner of the Church in the purest times was to baptize as out of the Church so in Wels and Rivers Floods and Fountains so Walafridus Strabo saith in the 26 Chapter of Ecclesiastical things For thus Christ and all the other multitudes of people were baptized of John in the river Jordan as is expresly said by the Evangelists two of them Matth. 3.13 and 6. Mark 1.5 9. and where it is said John baptized in water 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Beza noteth that Jordan is meant in that Story wheresoever it s mentioned in the singular number as there Matth. 3.11 And whereas John 3.32 John was also baptizing in Aenon neer to Salim because there was much water there either Jordan overflowed hither also and these were other rivers about Aroer and and by the river Arnon mentioned in the Books of Moses oft and meant here by the many waters like as Acts 8.36 they came to a certain water and the Eunuch said See here is water thereby is meant the river Eleutheras lying without the borders of Aegypt where Philip overtook or found the Eunuch and baptized him saith our learned Beza Yea and that Text Acts 16.13 and 15. that Lydia and her houshold were baptized by a Rivers side of the Apostle St. Paul Now tell me who of old as old the Gospel as the Acts of the Apostles was ever baptized or as you speak dipped in a Pond True in the 5 of John there is mention made of a Pond or Pool Stagnum a standing or pent up water whereinto whosoever after the moving or troubling the water by an Angel descending stepped in first was made whole of whatsoever disease he had but this being a special Pond of water extraordinarily assisted of God and miraculously for medicinal cures of bodily diseases maketh nothing for Ponds generally and ordinarily appointed and mysteriously used for baptismal washing of spiritual sins of the soul Where is now your zeal for Scripture examples and patterns that you so much pretend to make shew of How are you still taken tardy in those defaults as you make them in us of humane inventions is this your conformity to the Word is it not rather your difformity from it and its presidents and so indeed this people have committed two evils you have forsaken the clear Fontains and Rivers and Well-springs and have sought out muddy Ponds Pools and Well-springs and have sought out muddy Ponds Pools and standing waters to dip your proselytes in and so leaving the Scripture examples embrace your own inventions we our selves do not therefore baptize no not in Rivers or Fountains nor do we press the same For such examples are not we know left upon the record of
the Jaylor and the several housholds gave it and received and partaked of it It is confessed on both sides that the former baptized and the later were baptized both according to the good old way and in the right and true manner The which whether it was by Dipping and Immerging the body into and under the water or onely sprinkling and asperling or laying on and pouring the water upon some part that is the question for whereas the two mothers strove about the living child whose of the two the child should be here the two children dipping and sprinkling which I may call the twins of Rebecca or the Churches two manners of baptizing strive whose of the two the mother Baptism shall be The Church of England hath been now of a long time time out of mind mind of any man living in firm possession of baptism and practice of it by sprinkling or 〈◊〉 on of water upon the face and fore-head and gently washing and rubbing the same therewith and pronouncing the word of Institution In the name c. it is your part to bring the Writ of Ejection a word or the Examples of the word sufficient to dispossesse and eject us out of our baptism and to invest your self into the same by shewing your better title and plea of dipping and immerging the whole body in or under the water All that you can and therefore do produce for your dipping and immerging that ever I could read of are besides that derivation of the word baptism from an original word that so signifieth the three examples of John the Baptist Philip and Paul baptizing our Saviour Christ the Ethiopian Eunuch and Lydia But for that argument drawn from the derivation of the word Baptism you have heard enough already and I pray let me hear no more of it as not being of force or to the purpose unless you can shew that so it is always used in the Gospel and that wheresoever baptism was ministred there was dipping and immerging into and under the water otherwise words are of value as money is according to the esteem of men and the use of the time Nummus à 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and as the Poet hath it Si volet usus .. i.e. consuetudo loquendi Quem penes arbitrium est jus norma loquendi Both of which derivation and use or value of the word are for the aspersion and perfusion of water upon a part to be understood by baptism aswel if not better in sacred Writ then for immmersion or dipping of the whole body yea the word in its proper and genuine signification as well as in its derivation as I have shewed importeth but an ablution and washing with water which is ordinarily practised and performed in our good and old way of baptizing and which doth not necessarily infer or inforce your new business of dipping and immerging in and under the water the whole body cloathes and all But for your examples of Scripture for precept there is none in the Word Go and Baptise for the dipping I will set down what the Texts have and in order as the Evangelists report of Johns baptizing Christ Matth. 3.16 and straightway coming up out of the water He i.e. John saw the Heavens opened and the Spirit like a Dove descending upon him Luke 3.21 saith onely that he being baptized and praying the Heavens were opened so of Philips baptizing the Eunuch Acts 8.38 They went down both into the water both Philip and the Eunuch and he baptized him So of Pauls baptizing Lydia Acts 16.13 and 15. On the Sabbath he went out of the City by a Rivers side where prayer was wont to be made there Lydia hearing Paul preaching and attending was baptized All this that I hear is Text but where is that that is for your Tenet of dipping and immerging why do you not press it and argue from hence any of or all of the three Texts nay where is any intimation that any of these persons were dipped and immerged in any of these Rivers If you say there where it is said that Christ descended into the water I must tell you that 's no where expresly set down but onely by consequence because it is said He went up straightway out of the water I pray hereafter you and your brethren love good consequences better and stand not alwayes upon verbal expressions of the Scriptures for every thing It is indeed said of the Eunuch expresly That he went down into the water at his baptizing but of Lydia neither of both is said but onely that she was amongst the rest and that she was baptized by the Rivers side But what of Christs descending down into the waters If I shall argue for you and conclude hence it is onely this that therefore it was not now Harvest time when John Baptized Christ and others for Jordan overfloweth all his banks in the time of Harvest Jos 3.15 then they could not have either gone down into or have come up out of Jordan But you shall argue for your self and conclude hence if you will or can for I neither will nor can Therefore Christs body was all over dipped and immerged in Jordan under water over head and ears as you say that followeth not thence Therefore also in his cloaths tyed about him as you do nor that More probably if he was so dipt it was in his naked body and out of cloaths as before I alledged the opinion and saying of Anselme but most likely John did but either dip the head of Christ bending it downward and forward into the water not backward as you do the whole body or else with one or both his hands did pour water upon his head as he stood in Jordan which ran down and wetted his body and so for any thing I can see to the contrary John did baptize in the like manner and way all those other that came unto him And thus also Philip baptized the Eunuch in the River or Water and thus Paul baptized Lydia by the Rivers side And so this cometh up neer to our manner and way and so it will prove at last the good old way at first But did not John baptize in Aenon near to Salim because there was much water John 3.23 water enough as you think to dip and immerge all the bodies over head and ears this is but your vain collection look about the Text and you may see the drift and purpose of that How that there went out to him Jerusalem and all Judea and all the Region round about Jordan and were baptized of him Much water was requisite for such multitudes though but to lay and pour some upon every one or to sprinkle and asperse them all therewith Again if he dipped and immerged them over head and ears in their whole bodies cloathed as you do or uncloathed it must have been a tedious toilsome and over-burthensome work for one John Baptist to have taken them fast by the cloathes
or testified by others to Asperse or sprinkle In the Name of the Father of the Son and of the holy Ghost a little water upon the face fore-head of your child in the bed gently washing therewith by the moving of his hands with prayer and supplication before and after Thus doing both dangers may be prevented and this was that I with the Ancients even now called Baptismus Clinicorum How long halt ye betwixt two opinions and thoughts if the sprinkling or aspersion be baptism follow it but if dipping and immersion then follow it And the people with their Dipper answered me not a word I will but add one Testimony more and that is of Walafridus Strabo de rebus Ecl. cap 26. Notandum non solùm mergendo sed etià m de super fundendo multos baptizato fuisse adhuc pâ—sse baptizari It is a thing to be noted as it is notable that many have bin formerly and may still be baptized not onely bydipping and immerging but also by sprinkling and pouring water upon them and so he also maketh mention of the baptizing of St. Laurence out of a Pitcher or Pot of water which was by aspersion or perfusion and 〈◊〉 was often as he saith when as the bigness of the bodies of grown persons converted would not suffer them to be immerged and dipped in the Vessel their Baptisteries and Fonts being too little for them And so I have done my Task which was to be a Task-master unto some of the Egyptians who have bin and would be still Task-masters over the Israel and churches of God and give out their commands for the dipping and immerging of our children in Ponds or Rivers when and then onely they shall be of years of discretion and confession as to their faith and I have drawn up this my censure of it as an Ark you will presently say I know of Bulrushes and therefore I say so in present myself afore-hand to prevent you The which how weak and mean a thing soever you may think it through Gods providence may be a means to preserve a Moses and more children of Israel from your immergings and plun gings of them for the time little else then drownings especially the Ark being daubed with slime and pitch cemented and closed together with Scriptures Reasons and Antiquity moreover More plainly I have passed my censure upon your late dipping and immerging in my Parish for a new business as I called it once and ever shall and if I could stand so long about it and the Reader would stay the while as to gather them up together or take a review of the evidences I have brought in against it for a new business I do think there would be a full Jury and a grand Jury of them the which propounded and given up to any indifferent Judge besides your self he would not onely passe a censure of novelty upon it as I hove done but might crie once and again Novitas novitatum omnia novitas Yea and he would give out a Sentence of vanity also upon the same and say vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas The Person dipping and baptizing an ordinary man no ordained Minister the Persons dipped and baptized Christians born and baptized before The manner the dipping and baptizing them in their cloathes the circumstances or ceremonies I omitted because they were not onely new and vain but foolish and immodest and the action of dipping the whole body over head and ears in the cloathes and lastly the place a common Horse-pond and weyr Novelty of novelties all is novelty yea Vanity of vanities all is vanity I will say no more of it though more might be said of it then that it was a new and a vain busines yea a taking of the Name of God Father Son and holy Ghost in vain I will now onely add a Corollary or two touching the whole business betwixt us and so I shall give a Vale or Fare-well to it and to your Letter and my answer or censure rather for so I must call it to the end who so stiled it in the beginning Coroll 1. §. 1 Immersion and dipping in baptism especially thrice as also Aspersion and sprinkling or rather perfusion and pouring on of water though but once were both the good old way in the manner as they were done and administred by the primitive Doctors and ancient Fathers of the Church And to do the cause and the truth right their immersion was the older way I say not the better way and is some years older then their aspersion as many years as Tertullian lived before Cyprian which by computation is not above two or three and fifty years difference or distance betwixt their times Yea but I will recal that Verdict and do reverse that saying as whereby I do immersion and dipping too much right and aspersion and sprinkling too much wrong as to their Births Right and Originals for I do remember a testimony before cited by me out of Tertullian lib de poenit cap. 6. in these words which may be repeated here again without any Tautollogy being to several and different purposes and proofs Neque ego renuo divinum beneficium i. e. abolitionem peccatorum inituris aquam omnimodo salvum esse sed ut eò pervenire contingat elaborandum est Quis enim tibi tam infidae poenitentiae viro asperginem unam cujuslibet aquae commodabit where you read and see in plain and evident words that aspersion of the adult and grown persons was in Tertullians dayes also and I might also now passe the Verdict the other way and say that immersion and dipping is the yonger way some years yonger then aspersion and sprinkling as many years as Cyprian is yonger then Tertullian about fifty two or three The truth then is They were both of them as twins as Esau and Jacob in the womb of Rebecca Gen. 25.24 as two manners of baptizing in the Church of God born much about the same time and as also Esau and Jacob did they lived and walked together a while and sometimes lived apart and assunder and the one was used in one place and the other practised in another place according to the diversities of the Churches and difference of the ages and variety of customs in and amongst them and so it continued for an eight or nine hundred years But what and if as it may be immersion like Esau being indeed the more hairy rougher and harder manner and way of baptizing might get out first and come forth into the Churches practise it was but a very little while before for aspersion like Jacob being indeed the plainer and smoother and easier way and manner of baptizing soon followed after and at the heels Yea as Jacobs hand took hold on Esâus heel and after supplanted him of the blessing of his Birth-right so aspersion if behind overtook immersion and wholy supplanted it of its primogeniture and so got away the blessing from it to be the onely
approved and practised way of bantizing in the Centuries succeeding For by reason of some scandals in processe of time given or taken at their maked immersions cloathed aspersions as I may so speak or perfusions of water got in took place of it and so the elder served the yonger I mean the elder gave place and both the Trine immersion and the immersion it self was laid aside and the yonger now as being the more worthy guest bidden is set down in that uppermost place I mean aspersion and pouring on of water is now altogether in request and practise especially amongst all the Western Churches of which ours is a part and branch in which the Gospel most flouriseth and the Ordinances of Christ the Word and Sacraments are most reverently and religiously and orderly observed and administred And so thus as I said in our purest and perfectest Western Churches for these five or six hundred years last past I think I am rather within then without my Compass there have bene none dipped or immerged no not in the old once good way of the former times publiquely authoritatively nay scarce presumptuously until those Affricane I will not say Monsters yet were they cruel but new men for Affrica semper aliquid apportat novi who were your Progenitors and Predecessors the first dippers and immergers in the West the very place whence they and you arose is another argument to prove their and your business of dipping a novelty and new thing as coming from Africa originally I say until those Africane new men those Egyptian frogs that love to be padling and dipping in Rivers and Ponds began to spread themselves and skip up and down and to bring forth Rivers and Ponds as the Rivers and Ponds brought forth them or rather to bring their Perverts to Ponds and Rivers to be baptized The which bold and presumptuous attempt against the constant and uniform custom of the Western Church began in the year 1524 and so is not above an hundred and two and thirty years sithence which is time enough and litle enough to make it Novelty in comparison of Antiquity Nay your Brothers dipping and immerging is not so old as theirs for your Ancient Fathers Nicholas Stork or Stock and Thomas Muncer did not dip in your manner nor is it as old as your elder Brothers who about 13 or 14 year ago ran about the Countrey for they did not dip in your manner in their cloathes but naked nor in Ponds but Rivers nor do I think it is elder then your selves were in the day that you and they practised it and begot it in the Parish of Much Leighs upon the bodies of the two Sisters you dipt and immerged in June last past and so is but a brat or brood of yours and theirs not a twelve moneth old yet by a good deal Coroll 2. §. 2. When they were both in use immersion and aspersion the Ancient Fathers their children had not any opinion of the necessity of either as if the one or the other were the onely lawful way of baptizing established by Christ or his Apostles but they ancounted of them as things customs indiffrent in themselves and Adiaphorous and therefore to be left unto the liberty of the Church to use or not upon just cause and occasion as may appear by some of their speeches and practices which I shall here set down though the proof both of this in part and chiefly of the former Corrolary in the whole hath been touched upon and even handled before Gregor lib. 1. Epist Ep. 41. ad Leandrum Episcopum Hispalensem Reprehensible esse nullatenus potest Infantem in baptismate vel ter vel semel immergere It is no way to be found fault worthy to dip and immerge the Infant in baptism either thrice or once Yea he giveth the reasons of both and sheweth cause why he thinketh fitting to have thrice dipping changed into once by reason certain Heretiques made an evil construction of the first custom of thrice dipping for that they divided the Deity into three Gods upon their thrice dipping i. e. in the Name of the Father 2. in the Name of the Son 3. in the Name of the holy Ghost for which cause Haeretici dogmatis usum as also vitandi scisma is scandalum which the Churches of Spain were distracted with some stiffly holding with the Trine immersion and some standing as stoutly for the once or siple immersion the fourth Councel Toletan or of Toledo Can. 5. grounding themselves upon the aforecited words of Gregory decreed for simple immersion and against the Trine immersion for the two reasons answerable to the two abuses 1. Ne videantur qui apud nos tertiò immergunt haeretciorum probare assertionem dum sequuntur morem Lest those that dip thrice should seem to approve the opinion whilst they imitate the fashion of the Heretiques 2. Ne dum partes diversae in baptizandis aliquo contâ—ario modo agunt alii alios non baptizatos esse contendunt least whilst parties divided in baptizing several wayes some thrice dipping and others but once they should say the one of the other they are not rightly baptized and so esteem each other scismaticks And that this liberty was kept and observed about this matter as also about immersion and aspersion in Augustines time is to be seen in his 74 Chapter de Eccles dogm Baptizandus saith he post confessionem vel aspergitur aqua vel intingitur The party to be baptized after confession is either aspersed and sprinkled with or dipped and immerged in the water and so long before him Cyprian lib. 4. Epist Epistola 7. ad Magnum whose words I have set down before sheweth his indifferency for either and rather his defenceof aspersion in baptism yet so as that he leaveth it in the Churches liberty and freedom What need I go farther then the Church of Rome whose Ancient practise was to dip thrice in baptism so their Gregory saith in the Epistle above cited Nos autem tertiò mergimus and that for reasons given before but now it is their maner in baptizing thrice to sprinkle or asperse for what reason they did before for none other they have given us so by their later practice reversing their former though their opinion be still the same that the Trine immersion is a nonscript Tradition of the Apostles having alike force of Piety with the Scriptures and necessary to be observed which if it were so why did they alter from it their own practice in changing of it and using their liberty doth refute their opinion of its necessity or being an Apostolical Tradition Seeing then there is no expresse precept for the one or the other nor Apostolical Tradition for the one more than the other He is not Basil the great and the true but Basil the little and the false or forged who speaks and writes of such a thing seeing also the true Ancient Fathers and Pastors of the Churches
some used the one in their Dioceses some the other manner of baptizing in their Divisions and both sorts with an opinion of indifferences of the thing in it self and with liberty of practise left each unto other as the affairs and the occasions of the Church required of changing and altering Who can justly challenge or rebuke our Church of England and the guides thereof for holding and retaining either the one or the other or both as she doth in some way and case but betaking her chiefly and most usually to aspersion and pouring on-water and that but once so leaving both the Ancient Fathers of old some of them and the younger Fathers of Rome all of them in the number of the Trin or thrice for that the Trinity is sufficiently enough set out in the very form of our baptizing In the name of the Father the Son and the holy Ghost why should any impose upon us or require of us either the Trine immersion at all or immersion at all constantly and continually considering we are not of the Eastern Churches where the Clymate being hot parties to be baptized might the better undergo the waters and be dipt but we are of the Church Western and our Church of the more Northerly side were the air waters clymate being cold the tenderer bodies of our infants cannot be immerged or dipt without evident danger to their healths and lives Have we not power to lay down and old custom as well as Gregory and Augustine and Cyprian or I onely and Barnabas the Ministers of the Church of England have we not power to forbear dipping and immerging especially where it may be sodangerous prejudicial What though some ancient Churches had such a custom of old we have no such custom neither the Churches of God now a dayes 1 Cor. 11.16 and when they had it it was but for a time Temporary it was but for an use upon an occasion Arbitrary it was not under a necessity for but with a liberty to other Churches It is a part of the former Gregory his words in the same Epistle worthy notice taking In eadem fide nihil officit sanctae Ecclesiae consuetudo diversa where there is the same faith and an unity in it a different custom in things indifferent nothing burteth or prejudiceth the Church of God as which hath power and authority to enact and to abrogate such things to be observed or omitted to all her Church children and members And therefore Sir I have not nor do censure and condemn you absolutely for the one and simple immersion nor for immersion simply and onely but for your immersion your simple one an immersion that hath almost nothing of Antiquity being such as is every way distant and different from the ancient immersion in all things but in this that your dipping was but once and simple and also for that it was a rash and presumptuous undertaking of a few private Plebeians and vulgar people without any Law or Licence or order of Church or State so far is it from any precept or prescript or President of the Word and Scripture I will be briefer in the next Corrollary for it is time to have done about this matter Coroll 3. §. 3 The nature of baptism is but this the cleansing and washing away the guilt and filth of sin by the application of waters according to the appointment of Christ signifying and exhibiting the blood of Christ that purgeth and purifieth that way and all the outward Sacramental actions thereof are but onely to represent and set out more lively the inward grace of baptism which is still but the ablution of sin This indeed ablution and washing of sin is necessary as being of the nature as I said and Essence of Baptism for this is called therefore the very washing of regeneration by which we are saved through the mercy of God Tit. 3.5 and so the washing of water by the Word with which Christ doth sanctifie and cleanse his Church Ephes 5.26 and so St. Paul tells the Corinthians 1 Cor. 6.11 Such were some of you soul sinners but ye are washed but ye are sanctified c. in the Name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God But the manner and way of washing and ablution of sin either that way by dipping and immerging the whole body into and under the water or by aspersion or perfusion or rather superfusion of water upon some part of the body this is not necessary but as I said Indifferent and Adiaphorous and Arbitrary and so not of the essence and form but of the accidence and formality rather or solemnity of Baptism so then if the ablution of sin washing off the guilt and filth thereof may be as well if not better represented by aspersion and sprinkling and pouring on of water upon some part of the body and gently rubbing on the same by the moving of the hand thereupon as by the dipping immerging and plunging of the whole body into and under the waters and holding it some while thereunder as it must be I add also if it the aforesaid aspersion or perfusion be as effectual to the good spiritual ends and purposes of baptism as the aforesaid immersion I see no reason to the contrary but that both the ancient and modern or present aspersion and perfusion or superfusion of water is as warrantable and allowable in baptism if not still more as the somewhat ancienter immersion dipping and diving in and under water for as for any such modern or present immersion dipping or diving under water as yours is I acknowledge it not we have no such custom nor the Churches of God as I said but now It is true the body must be washed and wetted with water in baptism either one way or another and that 's enough for the truth and nature of baptism now this may be and is done when we baptize with sprinkling and pouring water upon it or part of it and gently rubbing the flesh therewith as well as by dipping and immerging And therefore we do not speak falsly when but sprinkling and pouring on water we say we do baptize and do not dip that 's your false speech for though we dip not into the water we lay on water and wash and therefore do baptize Oh but were it not far better more agreable to Antiquity and the benefit from baptism more ample and large if the whole body were dipt and immerged then onely some part thereof the face forehead or head aspersed and washed This is answered already that our way of superfusion or aspersion with water is as significant as effectual as the other and as ancient within a sew years if any as the other way yea was in force and life amongst the Ancients when the other was dead and gone and besides we are freed from it where we will plead our freedom because we live out of the Hot Countreys where it was bred and born and was to be
kept and maintained in these Northern parts of the world where the Churches of God cannot practise or use it I speak of dipping and immerging with safety to our Infants healths and lives But to the other part of the objection or doubt I answer and that from Antiquity First I gave you but even now four several Testimonies out of four Ancient Fathers and Writers of the Church how in their times they poured water upon the heads of those who were baptized so I gave you good probabilities and more then so of John the Baptists manner of baptizing of Christ and Christs Apostles most of them if not all and the great multitudes that resorted to his baptism by pouring water upon their heads were not all those as amply and sufficiently baptized as those who had their whole bodies dipped and immerged under water and were they not as fully partakers of all the benefits and effects of Baptism In the Ark were the eight souls the Epilogue of the World and the Epitome of the Church saved by water The like figure whereunto even baptism doth now also save us 1 Pet. 3.20 21. Now then as the Ark being washed with water but in a part of it whether that which was immerged under the water or that which was aspersed with the rain that fell saved the Church then so baptism doth the Church now though but a part of the body as the head or face or fore-head be either immerged and dipped or aspersed and sprinkled with the water in baptism And good reason for it because by and from the Divine Institution the Baptismal-water is blessed sanctified and impowred of God and his grace to be the ablution and washing of the whole man body and soul though it be applied in the out ward Element but to a part onely of the body and so received but of a part it being so in this mystical as it is in some physical soveraign Doses and Receipts which being taken onely at the mouth and into the stomach diffuseth its healing vigour and vertue unto the whole body though not here in baptism by any natural and self-operation in this but a gracious and the spirits dispensation so then though the water which in baptism is poured onely upon the fore-head or face doth reach to or flow down to all the whole body in the external liqucur to wash and wet it yet in the internal vertue and efficacy which the same hath from the Institution and Benediction of God it extendeth to a total ablution of the party baptized so that it goeth over all body and soul too even to an internal ablution of the soul chiefly as being principal in sin and all this still by the force and vertue of the Divine Ordination of the water hereunto See it also from the Analogy that Baptism hath with Circumcision I know you are never willing to hear of that Circumcision but you shall hear of that whether willing or not In Circumcision there was but one part of the flesh the fore-skin was touched and cut off with the Knife yet it was and is so called the putting away the filth of the flesh the whole body and soul for that the vertue and efficacy of that which was done but to a part redounded also by Gods appointment to the whole even to the Circumcision in heart and ears and lips as the Scripture every where speaketh Now in Christ Jesus also we are circumcised with the Circumcision made without hands in puting off the body of the sins of the flesh Coll. 2 11. that is we are baptized with the baptism of Christ to the washing away the sins of the body and soul and therefore though but some one part and the fittest part the head or fore-head or face be onely externally sprinkled washed with the water thereof yet the baptism is valid and effectual to the ablution internally of the soul also and all the body also virtually some way according to his ordination Lastly I think not the meaner of our Baptism by reason of our but handful of water and our but sprinkling or pouring on of it upon the face and fore-head or the better of yours by reason of your Pond-full of water and your immerging and dipping of the whole body therein No Ordinance of God is to be esteemed more or lesse effectual for either the more or the lesse of the Instrument or Element for God usually and more usually saveth with a few then many 1 Sam. 14 6. with little then with great that so all power might be known to be of him so all glory might be to him Rom. 11.36 as who is the God of the Valleys as well as of the Mountains 1 Kings 20.28 This is true especially in mystical and spiritual Ordinances and proceedings which have his Inslitution and Benediction upon them as I have shewed in Circumcision and may do the like in the Lords Supper where a smal portion of bread and a little pittance of wine a morsel of the one and a spoonful of the other are as sâ—gniâ—cant as effectual to a spiritual and internal refection of the Communicant as if a whole loaf of the one and a full Cup of the other should be given and taken So also in baptism a few drops of water or a little handfull of it sprinkled and poured on the face or forehead of an Infant or other is as representing of and as working to a spiritual and internal ablution of the baptized as if a whole pailfull of water should be poured on or the whole body of the Infant dipped and immerged into a River full of water after the custome of the Eastern Churches I will onely add to this point a Testimony or two of Antiquity Chrysostom writing in his 6 Homil. upon the 2 Chapter of the Coloss and those words in the 11 Verse In whom ye are circumcised with the Circumcision made without hands in putting off the sins of the body c. buried also with him in Baptism He hath these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I shall not stand to English all the effect of all is this that both in Circumcision and Baptism though the hand in the one doth but cut off a part of the flesh as the fore-skin with a small knife and in the other pour on a little water but upon some part of the body as the fore-head the whole body of sin may be and in the Elect is cut off put off in the Apostles phrase and washed away in both Sacraments by a spiritual operation of Christ So also for the other Sacraent the Lords Supper it being one of the Popish evasions for their not giving the wine unto the people by reason of the great quantity of wine would be spent upon the numerous multitudes of them that would then the rather come and drink great draughts which should not have been thought upon here by them seeing at other ordinary seasts and banquets they stand not upon such
day of the week to be the Christian Sabbath or for divers other such things that I name not And yet I have something more to shew you than a Rational and Consequential Command for Infant-Baptism There is also an Analogical I had almost added Typical Command for the same our Infant Baptism For Go a Command to Abraham and the Jewes to circumcise their Infants the Seal then in force and for that time of the Law The same Command binds us Christians to baptise our Infants the Seal now in force and for this time of the Gospel binds us I say by the just Analogy and Proportion that is between the two Sacraments and Seals of one and the same Covenant especially the one Baptism succeeding the other Circumcision Suppose a Jesuit who is of late in many poynts Anabaptised like as you Anabaptis are in as many Jesuited should oppose you and deny your Baptism of Beleevers onely to be a Seal as indeed he doth so denies both your and our Baptismes and the Lords Supper to be Seals or Signes will you not look back to Circumcision in the Old Testament where it is called a Seal and Sign for in the New Testament they are no where called either and thence fetch an Analogical proof that ours are also Seals our Baptism ard their Circumcifion agreeing in the General-Nature of a Sacrament By the like Analogy being questioned by you for a Command of Infant Baptism in the New Testament if there be none there I may go over to the Command of Infant Circumcision in the Old Testament and thence prove ours also our Infant-Baptism to be commanded and us therein bound and obliged to put the Initial Seal of the New Testament upon our Children Once more Do you think that Gods Command to Abraham and the Jewes to train up their Children in manner of worship which was then in force doth also command and bind us Christians to train up our Children in conformity to such Ordinances as are now in force I beleeve you think so and therefore I think you will beleeve at last that Gods Command to Abraham and the Jewes to Circumcise their Children and to give them the Seal of Circumcision then in force is also a Command upon us Christians binding us to baptize our Infants and to minister unto them the Seal of Baptism now in sorce And so now this is the use I told you besore I was like to make of your answering That the Jewish Children were circumcised onely by vertue of a particular Commandent of God for the same I say this use I may and shall make of it that by Vertue or Vice of such you answer I infer also there from yea therein a particular Command for baptising Christians Children there being such an Analogy and proportion between the two Sacraments of one and the same Covenant in the Essentials of it and the Rationals of it unto the eternal good of Souls This might be good enough against you because it answers you in your kind and meets with you in your own way howsoever my self still hold that the Jewish Infants were circumcised Circumcision being the Seal thereof and so both inforced by a Commandement or Word of Institution as I have said before But romember this also that Gods Commandement being out for Circumcising Infants whose Parents were under the Seal and no farther by the same reasons you blame our practice of baptising Infants you blame God for such a Command which you plead for the Circumcising Infants because Infants of Jewes were as much under state of Nature as Infants of Christians are and Infants of Christians are as much under the state of Grace as the Infants of Jewes If God were wise and good in commanding circumcising of Infants then we cannot be evil and foolish in practising Baptism of Infants commanded also here But because you New-light men regard not much the Old Testament for that it holds forth the Old-light of the command for circumcising of Infants by the which walking there may be proportioned out or Analogised a command for Baptising of Infants I will set upon a Text or two of the New Testament and that famous one first wherein you much delighted of old and from whence you would seem to have your New light it is Matthew 28.19 and 20. Methinks I hear you saying already with Nathaniel Can there come any good thing out of 2 Nazareth John 1.46 7. Chap. any command out of these words for Infant Baptisms Come and see and hear and whilest I am as Philip bringing forth some good thing hence for poor Infanrs be you as Nathaniel An Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile and not an Ishmaelite indeed in whom there is nought but mocking at young Isaacks devotions and young Childrens Baptisms Gen. 21.9 1. I may safely say here in this command of Christ is nothing meant or minded by him about your taking Children of Beleevers already baptised in our Church where the Gospel is planted and your rebaptising them again after your teaching them and their professing For the Baptism here commanded and to be executed was onely of Nations where the Gospel was not yet planted to be taught and baprised once 2. I may as safely say That the state of those Pagan Gentiles being not the same in poynt of Religion as is the state of us Christian Gentiles as is said above how can their as yet untaught and ungospelised their uncovenanted unbaptised condition and be a rule and precedent to a Taught Guspelised Covenanted baptised Nation already So Christs command here doth not infringe or counter command our Infant-Baptism yes you may say for doth not Christ command all Nations to be taught before they be baptised He doth so all pagan Nations who were without Christ being aliens from the Common-wealth of Israel and strangers from the Covenant of promise Ep. 2.12 Without God in the world being carried away to dnmb Idols 1 Cor. 12. What is this to us but yet 3. I must tell you That this Commandement of Christ placing teaching before baptising doth not pronounce Christian Infants unbaptisealbe because unteachable if there be any such force of Argument from the order and placing of words I pray argue so out of Mark 1.1 Where Repentance is placed before faith and out of John 3.5 Where the Water is set before the Spirit Saint Peter will tell you that the Spirit goeth before the Water Acts 10.47 and you can tell your self that Repentance followeth after Faith as the fruit thereof again it is not to be read here first teach then baptise Christ doth not shew here which ought to go first and which last but leaves both to be done according to the condition of the Church for if it ba a Church planted and Christian as ours it then they are to be baptised and after instructed if a Church to be planted Heathenish then they are to be first taught then baptised Now the condition of