To your second answer. That we are to deliberate the terms and count the cost, with respect to those duties, which are in order to the participation of the full end of the covenant in glory : by which 1 suppose you mean self-denial, perseverance, &c. I have no con- troversy with you about that. Our question is. Whether there be no deliberations required of, or to be performed by men who are not yet in Christ by justifying faith, but under some preparatory works towards faith .'' And whether at the very time of their clo- sing with ('hrist, there be not a consent of the will unto those terms required of them .'' If you say there be, (as by the places I alleged it evidently appears there are) then you yield the point I contend for. If you say they are not before, or at the time of beheving, to consider any terms, or give their consent to them by word or writing ; such an answer would fly in the very face of those scriptures I produced : for then a man may be in covenant without his own consent ; he that deliberates not, consents not ; 7ion consintit, qui non sentit. And therefore you durst not speak it out (for which modesty I commend you) and so leave me with half an answer, not touching that part, viz. Afftecedent dehberations, which were concerned in this argument. And now let your most partial friends judge, whether from this performance of yours, you have any just ground for that vain boast which concludes your an- swer, viz. ' That the covenants themselves, which those privi- ' leges are bottomed on ; are now repealed, and that there is no ' room left for any other argument to infer the baptism of infants : at least, I shall wiUingly commit it to the judgment of all intelligent and impartial readers. Whether Mr. Gary hath any real ground in this performance of his, for such a thrasonical conclusion, such a vain and fulsome boast ?
I find that with like confidence he hath also attempted a reply to Mr. Joseph Whiston, a reverend, learned, and aged divine, who hath accurately and successfully defended God's covenant with Abraham against Mr. Cox, and doubt not, if Mr. Gary and his party have but confidence enough to expose it to the public view, and to adventure the cause of infant-baptism upon it, the world would quickly see an end of this long-continued and unhappy controver- sy, which hath vexed the church of God, and alienated the affec- tions of good men ; and that the wisdom of Providence hath per- mitted and over-ruled this last attempt to the singular advantage of the truths of God, and the tranquillity of good men, whose concernment (at this time especially) is rather to strengthen their
540 VIN-DICIAEUM VINEEX.
faith and heighen tlieir encouragements from God's gracious cove- nant, than to undermine it when all things beside it are shaking and tottering round about them.
And now, Sir, for a coronis to all those things that have been controverted betwixt us about the covenants of God, and the right of believers' infants to baptism, resulting from one of them which I have asserted and argued against you in my first answer, and you have silently and wholly passed over in your reply, hoping to de- stroy them all at once, by proving God's covenant with Abraham^ Gen. xvii. to be a pure Adam's covenant of works ; 1 judge it ne- cessary, as matters now lie between us, to give the reader the grounds aud reasons of my faith and practice with respect unto the ordinance of infant baptism, and that as succinctly and clearly as I can in the following Thesis ; which being laid together by an un- prejudiced and considerative reader, will, I think, amount to more than a strong probability, That it is the will of God that the infant seed of believers ought nozv to be baptized.
V fil (\9 -^"^ h^re I must remind the reader, and beg him to ' ■ reviev/ v, hat I have said before in the third Cause ofer- rorsy That to arrive to satisfaction in this point, requires a due and serious search of the whole word of God ; with a sedate, rational, and impartial mind ; comparing one thing with another, though they lie scattered at a distance in the scriptures ; some in the Old Testament and some in the New. Bring but these things to an in- terview, as we do in discovering the change of the sabbath, and we may arrive unto a due satisfaction of the will of God herein. This I confess, calls for strength of mind, great sedulity, attention, and impartiality ; and yet what man would think all this too much, if it were but to clear his children's title unto a small earthly inheritance ^ I intend not to give the reader here an account of all the arguments dra^^Ti from seVeral scripture-topics by the strenuous defenders of infant's baptism ; but to keep only to the arguments drawn from God's covenant with Abraham, Gen. xvii. which is the scripture mainly controverted betwixt us : You affirming boldly and dange- rously that covenant to be no other than an Adam's covenant of works; and I justly denying and abhorring your position upon the grounds and reasons before given, which you neither have, nor ever will be able to destroy. Now that the reader, who hath nei- ther time nor ability to read the larger and more elaborate treatises on this subject, may, wg si/ ru^w, in one short view, see the deduction of believers' infants right to baptism from this gospel covenant of God with Abraham, I shall gather the substance of what I contend for, and lay it as clearly as I can before the eyes of my reader in the following Thesis ; which being distinctly considered as to the evident truth of each, and then rationally compared one with the
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Other, he will see how each fortifies another, and how all together do strongly confirm this conclusion. That the infants of believers under the gospel, as they naturally descend from Abraham's spiri- tual seed, are therefore partakers at least of the external privileges of the visible church, and therefore ought now to be baptized.
Thesis 1. It hath pleasedGod, hi all ages of the world, since man was created, to deal with his church and people hy way of covenant ^ aud in the same way he will still deal with them unto the end of the world.