21. How may it be shoivn that this visible church is identical under both dispensations, and what argument may be thence de- rived to prove that the infant children of believers should be bap- tized ?
1st. The church, under both dispensations, has the same na- ture and design. The Old Testament church, embraced in the Abrahamic convenant, rested on the gospel offer of salvation by faith, Gal. iii., 8 ; Heb. xi. Its design was to prepare a spiritual seed for the Lord. Its sacraments symbolized and sealed the same grace as those of the New Testament church. Thus the passover, as the Lord's supper, represented the sacrifice of Christ, 1 Cor. v., 7. Circumcision, as baptism, represented " the put- ting off the body of the sins of the flesh," and baptism is called by Paul "the circumcision of Christ," Col. ii., 11, 12. Even the ritual of the Mosaic law was only a symbolical revelation of the gospel.
2d. They bear precisely the same name. EKKX^oia kvq'iov, the church of the Lord, is an exact rendering in Greek of the Hebrew " )™ Vrij? translated in our version the " congregation of the Lord/' Compare Ps. xxii.,22, with Heb. ii., 12. Thus Stephen called the congregation of Israel before Sinai " the church in the wilder- ness." Compare Acts vii., 38, with Ex. xxxii. Thus also Christ is the Greek form of the Hebrew Messiah, and the elders of the New Testament church are indentical in function and name with those of the synagogue.
3d. There is no evidence whatever furnished by the apostolical
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records that the ancient church was abolished and a new and a differ- ent one organized in its place. The apostles never say one word about any such new organization. The preexistence of such a visible society is everywhere taken for granted as a fact. Their disciples were always added to the "church" or "congregation" previously existing, Acts ii., 47. The Mosaic ritual law, by means of which the Abrahamic character of the church had been administered for about fifteen hundred years, was indeed abolished. But Paul argues that the introduction of this law, four hundred and thirty years after, could not make the promise of none effect, Gal. iii., 17, and consequently the disannulling of the law could only give place to the more perfect execution of the covenant, and develop- ment of the church embraced within it.
4th. There is abundant positive evidence that the ancient church, resting upon its original charter, was not abolished by the new dispensation. (1.) Many of the Old Testament prophe- cies plainly declare that the then existing visible church, instead of being abrogated by the advent of the Messiah, should thereby be gloriously strengthened and enlarged, so as to embrace the Gentiles also, Is. xlix., 13-23, and lx., 1-14. They declare also that the federal constitution, embracing the child with the parent, shall continue under the new dispensation of the church, after " the Redeemer has come to Zion," Is. lix., 21, 22. Peter, in Acts iii., 22, 23, expounds the prophecy of Moses, Deut. xviii,, 15-19, to the effect that every soul which will not hear that prophet (the Messiah) shall be cut off from among the people, i. e., from the church, which of course implies that the church from which they are cut off continues. (2.) In precise accordance with these prophecies Paul declares that the Jewish church was not abro- gated, but that the unbelieving Jews were cut off from their own olive tree, and the Gentile branches grafted in in their place ; and he foretells the time when God will graft the Jews back again into their own stock and not into another, Rom. xi., 18-26. He says that the alien Gentiles are made fellow-citizens with believing Jews in the old household of the faith, Eph. ii., 11-22. (3.) The covenant which constituted the ancient church also constituted Abraham the father of many nations. The promise of the covenant was that God would "'be a God unto him and to his seed after him." This covenant, therefore, embraced the " many nations"
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