who offer him, or who minister, but 'except he be born again of water and the Holy Ghost.' The water then exhibiting without, the Sacrament of Grace and the Spirit working within, the benefit of grace, loosing the band of sin, restoring good to nature, do, both together, regenerate in one Christ, man, who was generated of one Adam." And Luther says[1] well, "That Baptism may be assured in us, therefore God doth not found it upon our faith, since that may be uncertain and false, but on His word and institution."
Else, also, if the regeneration of the child depended upon the holiness of the parent, then, since, according to the views in question, those who are regenerated are finally saved, all the children of believing parents, and they only, would be regenerated and so saved: whereas, as one of their own writers says[2] "all children saved are not of believing parents: yea, we may in charitie presume of some, perhaps, without the Church, whom the Lord mercifully saveth out of most wicked progenitors for many generations." Not, manifestly, as if the faith and longing desires, and yearnings, and prayers of the parents for the child
- ↑ Sermo De Baptismo. A. 1535.
- ↑ Taylor, on Ep. to Titus, p. 643.
plains the relations of the Sponsor to the Church, (Unreasonableness of Separation, p. 3. c. 36. §. 2. where also he well sets forth the difficulties of the supposition, which would make the benefits of Baptism depend upon the actual living faith of parents or any other.) "If the parents be supposed to have no right, yet upon the sponsion of God-fathers, the Church may have a right to administer Baptism to children. Not as though the sponsion gave the right, but was only intended to make them parties to the covenant in the child's name, and sureties for the performance. The administration of Baptism is one considerable part of the power of the keys, which Christ first gave to the Apostles, and is continued ever since in the officers of the Church. By virtue of this power, they have the authority to give admission into the Church to capable subjects. The Church of Christ, as far as we can trace any records of antiquity, has always considered children capable subjects of admission into the Christian Church; but, lest the Church should fail of its end, and these children not be well instructed in their duty, it required sponsors for them, who were not only to take care of them for the future, but to stand as their sureties, to ratify their part of the covenant implied by Baptism."
