grace to Baptism, no doubt that it was imparted to infants then, though we saw it not; but that it remained in them, as people would acknowledge that their powers of thought or reasoning do, which no one could deny them to have, although they did not see the present exercise of them. Or again, they argued[1] (reversing St. Augustine's method, since the opposite truth was now that disputed) whereas it was admitted, that "infants naturally are somewaise capable of Adam's sinne, and so of unbeleefe, disobedience, transgression, &c. then Christian infants supernaturally and by grace, are somewaies capable to Christ's righteousness, and so of faith, obedience, sanctification," &c. silencing rightly men's cavils "how can these things be," by reference to the corresponding case, wherein our ignorance was allowed.
This grace, they most usually called, by a sufficiently apt metaphor, (if not too closely pressed) a seminal[2], (or else an initial, or potential) regeneration; or again an habitual[3] (as op-
- ↑ Ainsworth, l.c. p. 48, add pp. 49, 50. "He made all things of nothing. He can make the dumb beast speak with man's voice (Numb. xxii. 28), He can make the babe in the mother's womb to be affected and leap for joy at the voyce of the words spoken to the mother, (Luke i. 44.); and can He not also work grace, faith, holiness, in infants? Hath Satan power by sinne to infect and corrupt infants, and shall not God have power to cleanse from corruption and make them holy? If we make doubt of the will of God herein, behold we have His promises to restore our losses in Adam, by His graces in Christ, as He sheweth in Rom. v. Wherefore they are but a faithless and crooked generation, that notwithstanding all that God hath spoken and done in this kind, do deny this grace of Christ to the infants of His people."
- ↑ The distinction was probably inherited from the Schoolmen: I find it in Pet. Lombard, Lib. 4. Dist. 4. c. 5. "Quidam putant gratiam operantem et cooperantem cunctis parvulis in Baptismo dari in munere non in usu; ut cum ad majorem venerint ætatem in munere sortiantur usum, nisi per liberum arbitrium usum muneris extinguant peccando; et ita in culpa eorum est, non ex defectu gratiæ, quod mali fiunt, qui ex Dei munere valentes habere usum bonum, per liberum arbitrium renuerunt, et usum pravum elegerunt."
- ↑ Davenant (Bp.) Ep. ad Col. "With regard to infants, since they are sinners not by their own act, but by an hereditary habit, it suffices that
