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scripture_n	apostle_n	church_n	religion_n	2,366	5	5.7896	4	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A89563	A defence of infant-baptism: in answer to two treatises, and an appendix to them concerning it; lately published by Mr. Jo. Tombes. Wherein that controversie is fully discussed, the ancient and generally received use of it from the apostles dayes, untill the Anabaptists sprung up in Germany, manifested. The arguments for it from the holy Scriptures maintained, and the objections against it answered. / By Steven Marshall B.D. minister of the Gospell, at Finchingfield in Essex.	Marshall, Stephen, 1594?-1655.	1646 (1646)	Wing M751; Thomason E332_5; ESTC R200739	211,040	270

whether that signified Baptisme or no which by the usuall language of the Grecians I have made good against your exception and so I passe from your examen of this Author and follow you to the next In the third place you come to sift Origens testimony Where first you question the authority of the booke secondly you say if it be Origens yet hee calls Paedo-baptisme but an Apostolicall tradition and from thence you draw forth some conclusions In all which I hope to manifest your mistakings and so to discover the weaknesse of your premises that they shall not in any indifferent man his judgement be able to draw these conclusions after them First you question the authority of these passages cited out of Origen whether they are his or no and you call the Author of them supposed Origen It had been your part before you had so branded them first to have made it manifest by some undenyable evidence or other that they were not Origens you question but prove not and I am not the first that hath produced these testimonies to prove Infant-Baptisme many learned men handling this question have done the same before me You seek also to weaken the authority of these testimonies by the Censures of two judicious men Erasmus and Perkins the former of them who was vir emunctae naris in giving judgement of the writings of the Ancients saith that when a man reads his Homilies on Leviticus and on the Epistle to Romans translated by Ruffinus hee cannot be certaine whether he reads Ruffinus or Origen Yet Erasmus saith not that these Homilies set forth under his name were Ruffinus his Homilies and not Origens If Ruffinus had wronged Origen in that point now in question why should not that have been laid in his dish by some of the Antients discoursing on this question who no doubt would have been forward enough to have taken notice of it to Ruffinus his prejudice as well as other things which they object against him To this you adde Reverend Perkins his testimony who puts his commentary on the Romans amongst his counterfeit works as being not faithfully translated by Ruffinus It may be Origen might suffer by his Translators for Translations are various some affect in their Translations to follow their Author 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to trace the very footsteps of the words they translate other Translations are metaphrasticall or by way of paraphrase they expound as they translate thus severall men have their severall fancies though they adhere to the Author which they translate even when they keep not in all things to his words Hierom gives instance in the Septuagint Translators whose testimony I need not name to you Ruffinus acknowledges in translating Origens Homilies on Leviticus that hee added some things to what Origen said and what they were hee expresses ea quae ab Origene in auditorio Ecclesiae ex tempore non tam explanationis quam aedificationis intentione perorata sunt the things which were spoken by Origen to his auditory he translated them by way of explanation or did more fully lay them forth in a popular way and therein Ruffinus dealt candidly telling us what were the things hee added in this Erasmus acknowledges his faire dealing But as for his Commentary on the Romans Ruffinus confesseth se hoc opus totum ad dimidium traxisse there was no addition of Ruffinus Erasmus here blames him for cutting off what Origen delivered more at large but neither doth Ruffinus confesse nor Erasmus challenge him here for any addition to what Origen said I shall onely desire the Reader to take notice that none of the testimonies by me cited out of Origen are denyed by Erasmus to be Origens neither can they be conceived to bee any of the additions mentioned before by Ruffinus therefore your exception is not proved by Erasmus nor Perkins testimony You adde in the passages which I cite there are plaine expressions in them against Pelagians which makes you thinke they were put in after the Pelagian heresie was confuted by Hierome and Augustine though they make against the Pelagians yet who can necessarily inferre that all these Homilies in which these passages occurre were written after the Pelagian Heresie was broached Iust Martyr maintaines the Divinitie of Jesus Christ yet we know hee lived long before Arius the ring-leader of that cursed Sect which denied it can any man conclude that Iust Martyr did not beare witnesse to the divine Nature of Christ because hee lived before Arius started up Then you tell us Origen calls Infant-baptizing an Apostolicall tradition according to the observance of the Church This cavill I prevented when I quoted the testimony which seemes to have some weight in it for you grant what I said about Traditions which is warrant enough to me to adde no more to justifie it otherwise besides the testimony of Scripture which I named in 2 Thess 2. 15. many other out of Antiquitie may be added where Tradition is taken in that sense Epiphanius calls Baptisme and other mysteries observed in the Church which are brought forth out of the Gospell and setled by Apostolique authority 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 where by the way you may see that hee grounds the Baptisme then in use in the Church and even then Infants were Baptized on the Scriptures and authoritie of the Apostles as well as other mysteries of the Christian Religion But I follow you Because say you in neither of these places taken notice of by mee Origen cites any Scripture for baptizing Infants therefore it must bee understood of an unwritten Traedition had it appeared as a new notion not heard of in the Church before then had it been fit he should have confirmed what he said but it being a position which as he sayes the Church observed hee needed not to prove it Ignatius presses upon Hiero to attend to reading and exhortation and cals those things 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 traditions yet addes no Scripture to confirm what he sayes because they were things well known to the Church to bee consonant to the Scripture So Origen tells us Infant-Baptisme was generally observed by the Church and had any appeared to plead against the lawfulnesse of it he would no doubt by Scripture have maintained it as well as affirmed it to come from the Apostles which he did These are your premises which now being answered your conclusions infer'd from thence of themselves must fall to the ground for if Infant-baptisme came from the Apostles and was generally observed in the Church in Origens time then you have no reason to challenge it as a thing not known before his time nor delivered over to the Church in his time albeit he exprest it under the name of an Apostolicall Tradition The last Greek Author alledged by me was Gregory Nazianzen who cals Baptism signaculum vitae cursum ineuntibus against which testimony you have nothing to object onely whereas I

the same right which the infants of the Jews had and your Arguments fight against the Infants of the Jews as much as against the Infants of the Gentiles for to apply your own words spoken of beleevers now to the Jewes then Though it may bee granted that the infants of the Jews were for the most part under the election and Covenant of grace and so in the visible Church yet it will not follow that every infant of a Jew in as much as hee is the child of a Jew or a beleever is under the Covenant of grace because we have Gods expresse declaration to the contrary Rom. 9. 6 7 8. and all experience proves the contrary is not this as much against the one as the other To what I said the Jewes Infants were graffed in by Circumcision therefore ours are to be ingraffed in by Baptisme You answer by demanding whether in good sadnesse I doe thinke the Apostle here meanes by graffing in baptizing or Circumcision or incision by outward Ordinances for if that were the meaning then breaking off must be meant of uncircumcising or unbaptizing To which I reply that in good sober sadnesse I do think that graffing in is admission into visible membership or visible communion with the Church of Christ and that the externall seale of their visible graffing in was Circumcision and of ours Baptisme and yet it follows not that breaking off is onely uncircumcising or unbaptizing but breaking off●●● a casting out from that visible membership whereof this Sacrament is a Symbole But to you it seems that ingraffing here is meant of the invisible Church by election and faith I Reply if it be meant of the invisible Church onely and that all who are graffed in in the Apostles sense whether Jews or Gentiles are onely electones I will solemnly promise you never to plead this Scripture more for any Infants either of Jews or Gentiles no nor for visible Professors of either of them provided onely if you cannot make that good you will as indeed you must yeeld that some are to be reputed visible Church-members though not elect whether Jews or Gentiles and that our graffing in is as theirs was they and their children we and our children and if you please let us a little try it out The Text is plaine some of the branches were broken off such branches whose naturall growing in the Olive yeelded them that priviledge which they now partake of who are graffed in in their stead were these broken off from the invisible Church you dare not say so if then the Olive from which they were broken off bee the visible Church I have enough and I wonder that any but an Arminian should make any question that the Apostle speaks onely of rejecting the Nation of the Jewes from being the visible Church and taking the body of the Gentiles in their stead to be Gods visible Kingdom in that it is meant of such an ingraffing as may be broken off which cannot bee from the invisible Church But let us see how you seek to evade this and how you prove that it must bee meant of the invisible Church Abraham say you bad a a double capacity one of a naturall Father and another the father of the faithfull in respect of the former capacity some are called branches according to nature others wilde Olives by nature yet graffed in by faith and when it is said that some of the naturall branches were brokin off the meaning is not that some of the branches of the invisible Church may be broken off but onely such as were so in appearance according as our Saviour expresses it Joh. 15. 2. But I Reply I professe I understand not how this distinction gives you the least helpe for tell me I pray you were not these whom you cal naturall branches is truly in the Olive as they who being wilde by nature were yet graffed in in the stead of them who were broke off If they were how doth this distinction help you You say indeed That the Infants of beleeving Jewes were not in the Covenant of grace because they were their children if by this you meane they were not members of the invisible Church you say the truth but nothing to the purpose But if your meaning be that they had not a visible membership such an ingraffing as gave them a right to outward Ordinances you not onely contradict the Scripture but your selfe who plead this That it was a peculiar priviledge to Abraham that his children should have such a visible standing as ours have not plainly the Jewes were the naturall branches some of them were elect some not the body of them were the branches spoke of in this place many of these were broke off others of them kept their station yet Gods election failes not even so is it now the Gentiles were graffed in that is their visible faith gave them a visible ingraffing their invisible faith gave them who have it an invisible membership yea to me your selfe seem to say as much when pag. 63. you affirme incision may be either into the visible or invisible Church graffing in may be either by faith or profession of faith And pag. 65. It is true that our present graffing in is answerable to or rather for their casting out that is God would supply in his Olive tree the Church the casting away of the Iews by the calling of the Gentiles so much the Apostle saith ver 17. thou being a wilde Olive wer 't graffed in in ramorum defractorum locum into the place of the branches broken off if you mean it in this sense say you I grant it And truly Sir in these words to my understanding you grant not onely my interpretation of this place but even the question controverted betwixt us First you grant my interpretation that it is not meant of the invisible but the visible Church for I know you will not say that any of the elect Jewes were broken off and the Gentiles elected and put into their place It must therefore be meant of the visible and of the visible Church of the New Testament and that those Jewes who kept their station and we who are in the roome of those that were broke off doe make that Olive which the Jewes made before Yea secondly you by necessary confequence grant that our children are taken in as theirs were we are graffed in in ramorum defractorum loeum we supply in the Olive tree the Church the casting away of the Jews Now if we thus supply our children supply the place of their children which were broken off and beside we are one with the rest of the Jews who remained in this Olive and their remaining in the Olive did not I hope deprive them of that priviledge which before-times they had for their children and therefore we must have the same with them and a greater then they had for their children none of us ever pleaded though ours be clearer and a greater

A DEFENCE OF INFANT-BAPTISM IN Answer to two Treatises and an Appendix to them concerning it Lately published by Mr. Jo. Tombes Wherein that Controversie is fully discussed the ancient and generally received use of it from the Apostles dayes untill the Anabaptists sprung up in Germany manifested The Arguments for it from the holy Scriptures maintained and the objections against it answered By Steven Marshall B. D. Minister of the Gospell at Finchingfield in Essex The promise is made to you and to your Children Acts 2. 39. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Greg. Naztanzenus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Basilius Magnus Hoc viz. infantium baptisma Ecclesia semper habuit semper tenuit hoc à majorum fide accepit hoc usque in finem perseveranter custodit August Printed at London by Ric. Cotes for Steven Bowtell and are to bee sold at his Shop at the Bible in Popes-head Alley 1646. TO THE Reverend Assembly of Divines and Commissioners of the Church of Scotland now sitting at Westminster Reverend Sirs WHereas all of you in generall are concerned and some of you particularly named in the Booke I deal with the world might happily have expected a joint endeavour where there was a common interest That I therefore whilst you are otherwise fully employed should undertake this taske I desire may not bee imputed by you or any to an over weening conceipt of mine own abilities for had it fallen to some of your lots I should have hoped the Church of Christ might have reaped more fruit then it is like to doe by my poore and weake endeavours But my personall ingagement to assert that truth of God which I had held forth in a Printed Sermon which my Learned Antagonist passing by other bookes written by other men on the same argument was pleased to single out to combate with and to lay out his strength upon hath called me forth to stand up in this controversie not as your Champion but as an affectionate friend to the truth which we are all called upon earnestly to contend for in which conflict as I cannot but feare that you will easily discover my weaknesse so I cannot but hope that you will not finde me either so foiled by mine adversary or deserted by God whose cause I plead as not to have sufficiently answered that booke which hath obtained to bee called in Print The strongest Shield and Buckler wherewith that cause was ever protected but in Salem God of old brake both Sword and Shield and if he hath done the like now the weake hand which hee hath made use of serveth onely to point at that mightie arme of his which hath gotten himselfe the victory Truth triumph and the Churches peace I have had in mine eye and have desired to carry meeknesse and love even to him whose opinion I fight with all along in my heart and pen what ever measure my former writing met with from him I have endeavored to looke upon his with a neither bloodshot nor loftie eye passion blinds the one and pride makes the other oft-times overlook that truth which a lowly eye seeth clearly at a nearer distance sure I am the wrath of man worketh not the righteousnesse of God whilst the meeke hee will guide in judgement and teach his way VVhat herein God hath inabled me to doe I willingly submit to the Churches censure and humbly present to you not as any way worthy of you but onely as a publick testimony of my reverence and gratitude for all the refreshings of spirit and that abundance of spirituall grace I have found from the hand of God whilst I have had the happinesse to sit among you for a yet more plentifull effusion whereof upon you to the happy setling at length of these distracted Churches in truth and peace is the prayer of Your unworthy brother and servant in the Lords work Steven Marshall Aprill 2. 1646. A Table of Scriptures vindicated and explained Gen. 17. 9. 10 14 p. 92. Deut. 30. 6. p. 128. Deut. ●3 2. vindicated p. 149 Esay 19. 24. explained 210. Esay 44. 2. p. 128 Esay 59. 21. p. 128. Malac. 2. 15. vindicated p. 156 Mat. 18. explained and answered p. 209 226 c. Mar. 10. vindicated p. 221 John 15. 2. p. 138. Acts 2. 38 39. vindicated p. 124. Proves Infant-baptisme by consequence p. 218. Acts 15. 10. explained and vindicated p. 217. Acts 19. 5. 6. vindicated p. 69. Rom. 11. 6. vindicated p. 134. 1 Cor 7. 14. vindicated p. 145 153 154 157 c. maintained against p. 148. Verse 17 p. 161. ver 34. vindicated p. 151. 1 Cor. 10. 3 4. explained p. 199. 2 Cor. 3. 10. vindicated 188. Gal. 3. 27 28. opened p. 189. Ephes 6. 1 2. explained p. 200. Coloss 2. 8 9 10. vindicated p. 169 174. Heb. 8. vindicated 188. 1 Tim. 4. 5. vindicated p. 152. INFANT BAPTISME NO LATE INNOVATION But cleared to bee as Ancient as is pretended SIR I Received your Book about the time mentioned by your self which when I had read over and thereby perceived how meane an esteem you had not onely of my Sermon but of all other things extant in defence of Infant-Baptisme and indeed of all Men whose judgement differs from your owne and how highly you value your own performance in this piece I concluded you would have no rest in your spirit untill it saw the light and the rather because you so earnestly presse mee To call in to my assistance all the rest who are ingaged in this Cause that so you might have an adversary fit to deale with that as a mighty man you might incounter with an Host But when after some friendly conference with you you declared to me that if you might enjoy liberty to exercise your Ministery in some place where you should not be put upon the practice of baptizing of Infants you could yea and intimated to me that you would keepe this Opinion private to your selfe provided onely that if any should preach in your Pulpit for the Baptizing of them you should take your self bound in the same place to preach against it otherwise Mens preaching or printing abroad should be no provocation to you In hope whereof my self endeavoured to help you in to the place where now you are desiring the Church might not lose the benefit of those good gifts which God hath bestowed upon you And thereupon I tooke no further thought of any present Examination of your large Treatise having my hands full of other employments because I verily thought you would have sate quietly down preached Christ kept your Opinion to your self and not have any further appeared especially at this time to increase the flame of our Divisions and confusions But since you think it necessary to deprive the Infants of Beleevers of that which wee conceive to bee their glorious priviledge yea and looke upon all other endeavours of Reformation as things which will come to nothing till this opinion of yours prevaile so dearely

Infant-Baptisme hath been perpetually observed in the Christian Church for there is no ancient Doctor that doth not acknowledge that Infant-Baptisme was constantly administred by the Apostles 4. That notwithstanding all this evidence I have brought from Antiquity yet I build as little upon Antiquitie as any other man I acknowledge what learned Rivet saith to be very true that Tradition is in most points uncertaine and therefore he that will build sure must build upon the Scripture Proinde necessario veniendum erat ad argumenta ex Scripturis quae si rem non evincant frustra traditionem advocabimus Animadv in Annot. Grotii in Cassandrum Art 9. Pag. 71. And I would have you and every Reader to remember that I doe not build my faith upon humane Traditions in this Argument nor did the ancients build upon humane traditions in this thing the very Pelagians themselves acknowledge it upon this ground Parvulos baptizandos esse concedunt saith Augustine of the Pelagians qui contra authoritatem universae Ecclesiae procul-dubio per Dominum et Apostolos traditam venire non possunt lib. 1. de peccat merit et Remiss cap. 26. Nay they were forced to their owne prejudice to acknowledge that Infants were baptized secundum regulam universalis Ecclesiae Evangelii sententiam lib. cont Caelest Pelag Now that which was pressed from the scope of the Gospell was not pressed as a Tradition and that which was acknowledged by the Pelagians to be the practise of the universall Church according to the rule of the Gospell was not built upon tradition I will therefore close up my testimonies produced out of the ancient writers with that savoury passage of learned Calvin in his Instructions against the Anabaptists Caeterum minime peto ut in eo probando nos Antiquit●s ●●llo modo juvet c. I doe not desire saith hee to borrow any helpe from Antiquity for the proofe of this point any whit farther then the judgement of the Ancients shall be found to bee grounded on the Word of God for I know full well that as the custome of men doth not give authority to the Sacraments so the use of the Sacrament cannot hee said to be right and regular because regulated by custome PART II. HAving made good the practise of Antiquity for the Baptizing of Infants I follow you in that which you are pleased to make the second part of my Sermon which you call prejudices against Antipaedo-baptists from their noveltie and miscarriages Where first you blame me for seeking by prefacing and setting downe a briefe touch of the Anabaptists carriage in Germany to create prejudice in my Auditors To which I answer that I yet never learned that a briefe setting downe the Originall History and State of a Controversie or the weight and consequence of it thereby the more to ingage the Readers attention was against any Rule or Law of Art either divine or humane but in case it were a fault Quis tulerit Gracchos You who begin your booke with telling how nine moneths since you sent thus many Arguments in Latine drawne up in a Scholastique way c. and never yet received any Answer and in the end of your booke intimated that though you allowed me but a moneth yet I have kept your booke a whole yeere unanswered and throughout your whole Treatise strive to make an ostentation of reading and put abundance of scoffes and jeeres upon them who are of a contrary mind to you and seeke to loade the opinion you write against as if it carried all kind of mischiefes in the wombe of it All which things you know well enough are apt to take the people but have no weight with them who use onely to weigh Proofe with Proofe and Argument with Argument you I say of all other should pardon such a peccadillo and might very well have passed over what either my selfe or Dr. Featlies Frontispice or Mr. Edwards his expressions might seeme to bee lyable to of exception in this kind In your second Section you blame mee for two things first that I gave you no more light out of Augustine to know who they were that questioned Paedo-Baptisme in his dayes you have searched and cannot finde any the Pelagians you acknowledge opposed it not the custome was so universall and esteemed so sacred that they durst not oppose it All the further light I shall now give in a matter of no greater consequence is that if you cannot finde any in Augustines dayes who questioned it I am contented you shall beleeve there were none Secondly you blame me for making such a leape from Augustines time to Baltazzar Pacommitanus as if be were the first who opposed it where as you alledge many who opposed it 400. yeeres before his time To which I answer I sayd not hee was the first whose judgement was against it but the first that made an head against it or a division or Schisme in the Church about it It is possible men may hold a private opinion differing from the received doctrine and yet never make a rent or divide the Church into factions about it But let us examine your instances you alledge the famous Berengarius as one 2. The Albingenses 3. Out of Bernard you mention another namelesse Sect. 4. Petrus Cluniacensis charges the same upon the Petro-Brusians To all which I answer first in generall That these instances of yours having occasioned mee to make a more dilligent search into the doctrine and practise of those middletimes between the Fathers and the beginning of Reformation in L●●bers time I dare confidently think that you will have an hard taske to prove out of any impartiall Authors that there were any company of men before the Anabaptists in Germany who rejected the baptizing of Infants out of the confession of their faith possibly some private man might doe it but I shall desire you to shew that any company or Sect if you will so call them have ever denied the lawfulnesse of baptizing of Infants produce if you can any of their confessions alledge any Acts of any Councells where this doctrine was charged upon any and condemned in that Councell you know the generalitie of the visible Christian world was in those dayes divided into the followers of the Beast and the small number of those who followed the Lambe who bare witnesse to the truth of the Gospel in the times of that Antichristian Apostasie these were called by severall names Berengarians Waldenses poore men of Lyons Albingenses Catharists Petr-Brusians and severall other names as may bee seene in Bishop Vshers book of the Succession and State of the Christian Churches Now all grant that the Church of Rome even in those dayes owned the baptizing of Infants and so did all those persecuted Companies or Churches of the Christians for any thing I can find to the contrary Severall Catalogues of their confessions and opinions I finde in severall Authors and more