Reply. Your meaning is, that these words [as many as the Lord shall call] are a limitation of the promise to them only, whether parents or children, that are actually called. Let this your interpretation be compared with, and examined by the scope of the text, which you confessed before to be a motive to persuade them and theirs to re- pentance and baptism, and see if it can stand before it, as ours doth. For if this be the meaning, then the apostle's argument must run thus: I exhort you, convinced Jews, to repentance and Christian baptism : for whereas you, and your children, have hitherto been an holy seed, and the promise formerly was to them as well as you : but now the case is altered : if you yourselves repent, and be baptized, you shall have the benefit of the promise ; but as for your children they shall be in the self-same case, and state, with the children of Pagans and infidels. Indeed if any of your children shall XiQVQsSiQv believe, the^
B62 A REPLY TO ME. CARY's SOLE3IN CALU
shall have benefit by the promise, but no more than the children of Pagans and infidels, which upon repentance shall be equal with them, " Repent ye therefore, and be baptized ; for the promise is unto you, and to your children.'' This, and no other, must the apostle's mo- tive be, according to your interpretation and limitation of his words.
We make the motive or argument to run thus: * God hath now remembered his covenant to Abraham, in sending that blessed seed, in whom he promised to be the God of him, and his seed ; yea, and of all believing Gentiles, as well as Jews and their children : do not you therefore, by your unbelief, deprive both yourselves, and your dear children, of the mercies and privileges of so great a promise ? " Re- pent, therefore, and be baptized ; for the promise is unto you, and ta your children," &c. Let the impartial reader j udge both, and the ac- knowledged scope of the place determine the matter. And as it can- not stand with the scope of the place, so neither (as Mr. Sydenham* hath plainly evinced) with the grammar of the text, nor rules of logic, by which according to your exposition, the word [children'] must be re- dundant and superfluous, as being neither comprehended under Jews or Gentiles, those that are near, or far off: into which two classes, or ranks, the text distributes the whole world ; but must stand out of the text, as a party by themselves, though expressly mentioned in it, as those to whom the promise belongs. But enough of this.
(6.) Having vindicated Acts ii. 38, 39. which confirms our fourth assertion, viz. the identity oi the promise the Jews were, and we are under; we proceed next to vindicate Col. ii. 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, where- by we prove the succession of baptism to circumcision^ and vindicate it from that foreign sense you force upon it, to the great injury of the text, as well as of our infants, whom you exclude from any con- cernment therein.
Without any representation at all of the grounds on which we proceed, to prove the succession of this ordinance to that, you (as rashly as confidently) call it a groundless inference; which, whether it be or no, let the impartial judge, when they shall see the grounds on which we build that assertion.
(1.) It is out of controversy, that the scope of this place is to take off the Colossians from ciixumcision, and other Jewish rites and cere- monies, which the false teachers at that time earnestly endeavoured to reduce them to ; as appears ver. 4. to be his plain design : " And this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words." And he saith it with great concernment of mind, as appears ver. 1.
(2.) It is as plain, that the argument by which he establishes them in the truth of the gospel, and secures them against the danger of returning to those Jewish rites, especially circumcision, is drawn from their completeness in Christ without it; ver. 9, and 10. And that whatsoever they had under circumcision, they now enjoy in as com-
* Infant B^tism, p. 44, 45.
A REPLY TO MB. CAR^'s SOLEMN CALL. 363
plete and full a measure and manner, as ever Abraham and his seed did. " And ye are complete in him,'' i. e. in Christ.
(3.) To evince this, he instanceth in the very case then under de- bate, viz. circumcision, ver. 11, 12. And first distinguishing of a two- fold circumcision, one made with, and the other without hands, which he calls the circumcishu of Christ: he tells them, as to both of these, (namely, inward circumcision of the heart, and the external sign there- of too) both are fully answered in baptism; " In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands ; in putting oft' the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, buried with him in baptism,'' ver. 11, 12. That is, look, as before inward circuincision of the heart was signified by outward circumcision of the flesh, as the proper, direct, and appointed sign of it ; so now, the same inward circumcision, or regeneration of the soul, is as really and fully signified to you, by the new gospel sign of it, which is bap- tism; and therefore you are as complete, in respect both of outward and inward privileges now, as ever Abraham and his seed were. Do but convert the proposition, and suppose the apostle's design had been to take them off from baptism, and bring them back to circum- cision ; and in order to it had said, " In whom ye are also baptized with the baptism of Christ, being circumcised with him ;" would not the substitution of circumcision in the place of baptism have been clear ? And why is not this as clear as that would have been ?
(4.) We further say, That except he had intended in these words to have placed baptism as an external ordinance, in place and stead of outward circumcision, he could never have pitched upon a worse instance than that of circumcision, which was so much valued by them : yea, from the very instance Ixe brings, he had put a strong objection into their mouths, against his assertion, ver. 10. That we are every way as complete without it, as the Jews were with it ; for then their children enjoyed an ordinance of great value, which ours are deprived of, having none under the gospel in lieu of it. Hence we argue :
Argument. If the ordinance of baptism now be appointed to an- swer the same ends that the circumcision did to the Jews, and to make us every way as complete in privileges as circumcision did them, then it comes in the place and room of it ; and our children have the same right to this, as theirs had to that.
But the antecedent is plain, from the scope and argument of the apostle in this text and context : Ergo^ So is the consequent.
The sum of your answer is, (1.) ' That circumcision in the flesh, is neither expressed nor meant here, but that of Christ in his own person. (2.) That if baptism had been intended to have come in the place of circumcision ; then it would follow, that females must be excluded from baptism.'