Rationalist objections, and those for which Scripture authority is pleaded.
1. Of the first, it was said that "we would not see that any change took place in infants," that "the child remained apparently the same as before," that "it was incapable of grace," and the like. This is so much rationalism; a dull-hearted and profane unbelief, which even in the things of God would not "any science understand, beyond the grasp of eye or hand:" it is making our reason a measure of God's doings, and denying His operations, because we are not cognisant of the effect. It would also obviously be an argument, not simply against the regeneration of baptized infants, but against baptizing them altogether: for if baptized infants are incapable of regenerating grace, or the full benefits of Baptism, whereas the new-birth is the grace conferred through Baptism, then, by baptizing infants, we should be robbing them of their birth-right, and be guilty of the blood of all the souls whom we thus mocked with the mere semblance of Baptism: and so the universal Church would have erred in interpreting their Saviour's command to "suffer little children to come to Him, for of such is the kingdom of Heaven." This the more consistent Predestinarian writers well saw. "If any man shall so do," says[1] one of them in reply, "he must grant that elect infants do receive but a piece of Baptism, the shell without the kernel, the body without the soul. And if this be true, to what end are they baptized?"—"To say[2] that Baptism admits them to the outward means, is to say just nothing to the purpose. May not an infant unbaptized come to hear the word read or preached? Anabaptists do not shut their children out of the Church, when the word is preached, but only exclude them from the Sacraments. If Anabaptists might as freely show themselves here among us, as they do in other countries, this doctrine of Baptismal grace would be better entertained by such as now oppose it without consideration of this sequel."
The answer was variously worded; but it was in substance this, that since God had, in His ordinary dealings, annexed this
