or can receive the Spirit, being to enter at the door of baptism;-it follows that infants also must enter here, or we cannot say that they are entered at all. And it is highly considerable, that whereas the Anabaptist does clamorously and loudly call for a precept for children's baptism; this consideration does his work for him and us. He that shews the way, needs not bid you walk in it: and if there be but one door that stands open, and all must enter some way or other, it were a strange perverseness of argument to say, that none shall pass in at that door, unless they come alone; and they that are brought, or they that lean on crutches or the shoulders of others, shall be excluded and undone for their felicity, and shall not receive help, because they have the greatest need of it. But these men use infants worse than the poor paralytic was treated at the pool of Bethesda : he could not be washed because he had none to put him in; but these men will not suffer any one to put them in, and until they can go in themselves, they shall never have the benefit of the Spirit's moving upon the waters.

Ad 15.-But the Anabaptist to this discourse gives only this reply, that the supposition or ground is true, a man by Adam or any way of nature cannot go to heaven: neither men nor infants without the addition of some instrument or means of God's appointing; but this is to be understood to be true only ordinarily and regularly: but the case of infants is extraordinary, for they are not within the rule and the way of ordinary dispensation; and therefore, there being no command for them to be baptized, there will be some other way to supply it extraordinarily. To this I reply, that this is a plain begging of the question, or a denying the conclusion for the argument being this, that baptism being the ordinary way or instrument of new birth, and admission to the promises evangelical and supernatural happiness, and we knowing of no other, and it being as necessary for infants as for men to enter some way or other, it must needs follow that they must go this way, because there is a way for all, and we know of no other but this; therefore the presumption lies on this, that infants must enter this way. They answer, that it is true in all but infants: the contradictory of which was the conclusion, and intended by the argument. For whereas they say God hath not appointed a rule and an order in this case of

infants, it is the thing in question, and therefore is not by direct negation to be opposed against the contrary argument. For I argue thus, wherever there is no extraordinary way appointed, there we must all go the ordinary; 'but for infants there is no extraordinary way appointed or declared, therefore they must go the ordinary: and he that hath without difference commanded that all nations should be baptized, hath without difference commanded all sorts of persons: and they may as well say, that they are sure God hath not commanded women to be baptized, or hermaphrodites, or eunuchs, or fools, or mutes, because they are not named in the precept; for sometimes in the census of a nation women are no more reckoned than children; and when the children of Israel coming out of Egypt were numbered, there was no reckoning either of women or children, and yet that was the number of the nation which is there described.

But then as to the thing itself, whether God hath commanded infants to be baptized, it is indeed a worthy inquiry, and the sum of all this contestation: but then it is also to be concluded by every argument that proves the thing to be holy, or charitable, or necessary, or the means of salvation, or to be instituted and made, in order to an indispensable end. For all commandments are not expressed in imperial forms, as, 'we will,' or will not;' thou shalt,' or shalt not:' but some are by declaration of necessity, some by a direct institution, some by involution and apparent consequence, some by proportion and analogy, by identities and parities, and Christ never expressly commanded that we should receive the holy communion, but that, when the supper was celebrated, it should be in his memorial.' And if we should use the same method of arguing in all other instances, as the Anabaptist does in this, and omit every thing for which there is not an express commandment, with an open nomination, and describing of the capacities of the persons concerned in the duty, we should have neither sacrament, nor ordinance, fasting, nor vows, communicating of women, nor baptizing of the clergy. And when St. Ambrose was chosen bishop before he was baptized, it could never, upon their account, have been told that he was obliged to baptism because though Christ commanded the apostles

y Exod. xiii.

to baptize others, yet he no way told them that their successors should be baptized, any more than the apostles themselves were; of whom we read nothing in Scripture, that either they were actually baptized, or had a commandment so to be. To which may be added, that as the taking of priestly orders disobliges the suscipient from receiving chrism or confirmation, in case he had it not before; so, for aught appears in Scripture to the contrary, it may excuse from baptism. But if it does not, then the same way of arguing which obliges women or the clergy to be baptized, will be sufficient warrant to us to require, in the case of infants, no more signal precept than in the other, and to be content with the measures of wise men, who give themselves to understand the meaning of doctrines and laws, and not to exact the tittles and unavoidable commands, by which fools and unwilling persons are to be governed, lest they die certainly if they be not called upon with univocal, express, open, and direct commandments. But besides all this, and the effect of all the other arguments, there is as much command for infants to be baptized, as for men; there being in the words of Christ no nomination or specification of persons, but only in such words as can as well involve children as old men; as, nisi quis,' and, 'omnes gentes,' and the like.

Ad 16.-But they have a device to save all harmless yet: for though it should be granted that infants are pressed with all the evils of original sin, yet there will be no necessity of baptism to infants, because it may very well be supposed, that as infants contracted the relative guilt of Adam's sin, that is, the evils descending by an evil inheritance from him to us, without any solemnity; so may infants be acquitted by Christ without solemnity, or the act of any other man. This is the sum of the sixteenth number. To which the answer is easy. First, that at the most it is but a dream of proportions, and can infer only that if it were so, there were some correspondency between the effects descending upon us from the two great representatives of the world; but it can never infer that it ought to be so. For these things. are not wrought by the ways of nature, in which the proportions are regular and constant; but they are wholly arbitrary and mysterious, depending upon extrinsic causes which

are conducted by other measures, which we only know by events, and can never understand the reasons. For because the sin of Adam had effect upon us without a sacrament, must it, therefore, be wholly unnecessary, that the death of Christ be applied to us by sacramental ministrations? If so, the argument will as well conclude against the baptism of men as of infants: for since they die in Adam, and had no solemnity to convey that death, therefore we by Christ shall all be made alive; and to convey this life, there needs no sacrament. This way of arguing, therefore, is a very trifle, but yet this is not as infants were not infected with the stain, and injured by the evils of Adam's sin, but by the means of natural generation; so neither shall, they partake of the benefits of Christ's death but by spiritual regeneration; that is, by being baptized into his death. For it is easier to destroy than to make alive; a single crime of one man was enough to ruin him and his posterity: but to restore us, it became necessary that the Son of God should be incarnate, and die, and be buried, and rise again, and intercede for us, and become our lawgiver, and we be his subjects, and keep his commandments. There was no such order of things in our condemnation to death: must it therefore follow, that there is no such in the justification of us unto life? To the first there needs no sacrament, for evil comes fast enough; but to the latter, there must go so much as God please; and the way which he hath appointed us externally, is baptism to which if he hath tied us, it is no matter to us whether he hath tied himself to it or no: for although he can go which way he please, yet he himself loves to go in the ways of his ordinary appointing, as it appears in the extreme paucity of miracles which are in the world, and he will not endure that we should leave them. So that, although there are many thousand ways by which God can bring any reasonable soul to himself; yet he will bring no soul to himself by ways extraordinary, when he hath appointed ordinary; and therefore, although it be unreasonable, of our own heads, to carry infants to God by baptism, without any direction from him; yet it is not unreasonable to understand infants to be comprehended in the duty, and to be intended in the general precept, when the words do not exclude them, nor any thing in the nature of the sacrament; and when they have a great

necessity, for the relief of which this way is commanded, and no other way signified, all the world will say, there is reason we should bring them also the same way to Christ. And therefore, though we no ways doubt but if we do not our duty to them, God will yet perform his merciful intention, yet that is nothing to us; though God can save by miracle, yet we must not neglect our charitable ministries. Let him do what he please to or for infants, we must not neglect them.

Ad 6.-The argument which is here described, is a very reasonable inducement to the belief of the certain effect to be consequent to the baptism of infants: because infants can do nothing towards heaven, and yet they are designed thither, therefore God will supply it. But he supplies it not by any internal assistances, and yet will supply it; therefore by an external. But there is no other external but baptism, which is of his own institution, and designed to effect those blessings which infants need: therefore we have reason to believe, that by this way God would have them brought.

Ad 17.-To this it is answered, after the old rate, that God will do it by his own immediate act. Well, I grant it; that is, he will give them salvation of his own goodness, without any condition on the infants' part personally performed; without faith and obedience, if the infant dies before the use of reason: but then, whereas it is added, that 'to say God will do it by an external act and ministry, and that by this rite of baptism, and no other, is no good argument, unless God could not do it without such means, or said he would not;'-the reply is easy, that we say God will effect this grace upon infants by this external ministry, not because God cannot use another, nor yet because he hath said he will not, but because he hath given us this, and hath given us no other. For he that hath a mind to make an experiment, may, upon the same argument, proceed thus. God hath given bread to strengthen man's heart, and hath said, that in the sweat of our brows we shall eat bread; and it is commanded, that if they do not work, they shall not eat: there being certain laws and conditions of eating, I will give to my labourers and hirelings, but therefore my child shall have none; for be you sure if I give to my child no man's meat, yet God will take as great care of infants as of others,