only as removing an obstacle to the beneficial workings of God's Spirit through the Sacraments. The modern school, in that they held the children of Christian parents to be "holy in the root," to be "holy and faithful" before Baptism, regarded as the benefits of complying with this ordinance; 1st, obedience to God's command: 2ndly, visible incorporation into the Church; 3dly, increase of grace already received; 4thly, strength and confirmation;—whereby the peculiar graces of Baptism are presupposed as already given, then only to be enlarged and confirmed[1]; so that Baptism hardly occupies the place which in the Ancient Church was assigned to confirmation. If, again, a parent, (not through mischance, for this was almost always allowed for in the early Church, but) through wilful neglect should fail to bring his child to baptism, and it died without Baptism, then the child was consistently held not to be in the state of a heathen child, (which, in fact, though born of Christian parents, it was,) but was assumed to have all the privileges of the Covenant[2]; nay, it was used as an argument[3], why "regeneration should not be supposed ordinarily to be imparted at the same time as Baptism:" that, "so the carefulness of such parents as brought their children betimes to Baptism, would accelerate their regeneration and the benefits consequent thereon, their negligence would retard it; and so the influence of the Divine grace would ordinarily be determined by the carefulness or negligence of other human beings." On this ground it ought, consistently, to follow that Infant Baptism had no benefits at all, since, whatever they are supposed to be, they are obtained through the carefulness and faithful obedience of others; the Word of God ought to have no power upon the soul, since on the carefulness or negligence of parents evidently depends the time when our children become ac-
- ↑ Witsius, l.c. § 57 sqq., states the same, in part involuntarily, in the very language of Calvin. P. Martyr's statement, Loci 4. 7. 4. is yet lower.
- ↑ E.g. Calvin Institt. 4. 16. 26, &c.
- ↑ Witsius, l.c. § 76, and many others: e.g. Taylor on the Epistle to Titus, p. 645, "What an unequal thing were it, that if parents should neglect to bring children seasonably unto baptism, the child, not offending, should, for the parent's fault, be condemned!"
