VeR. 6.j SERMONS UPON HEBREWS XT, 83
dated tVoin tlie womb and from the conception ; as Jer. i. 5, ' Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee, and before thou earnest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and ordained thee a prophet to the nations ; ' partly, because to sense that was the first time of our exist- ence : and partly, because God's decrees do then begin to operate and to bring forth. God doth, as it were, then say, This is a birth I must look after ; this is an instrument whom I have pre-ordained to make use of for sjiecial purpose. Man's ordination is at grown years, but God's from all eternity. And because of the special care of providence, it is said to begin then when the child is in the w^omb, Gal. i. 15, 16, ' AVhen it pleased God who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen ; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood.' The apostle mentions three things as the ground of his min- istry: God's pleasure, or everlasting counsel, his separation from his mother's womb and actual calling. First. God determines from ever- lasting, and then the decree begins to break forth ; and there is a special care of God about the birth, and afterw^ard there is actual calliuir. All this is brought to prove that even children before they are born do not only fall under the care of providence, but under the special notice of God's decrees ; and tbat other opinion, that none is condemned for original sin, is also groundless and contrary to the scripture ; for we read, Eph. ii. 3, 'That we were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.' It is mercy, that God will say to any that are in their blood and filthiness, Live. Who can quarrel with his justice that he should damn any, though he see nothing but original pollution in them ? Among men we crush the serpent's eggs before the serpents be grown ; and might not God destroy us for our birth- sin ? I confess some among the orthodox think, that all infants that die in infancy belong to God's election ; so Junius, and so Mr Fox, upon Kev. vii. 9, where there is a distinction between the sealed and imsealed, which he applies to unbaptized infants both in or out of the church. But I answer, as for those that are born out of the church, we have no warrant to judge them, as the apostle saith, in somewhat a like case. 1 Cor. v. 12, 'What have I to do to judge them that are without ? ' So what have we to do with them that are without ? God's judgments are to be adored rather than curiously searched into ; yet this is manifest by the whole current and drift of scripttire, that there is a great deal of ditierence between those that are born in and those that are born out of the covenant. It is said to believing parents, ' The promise is unto you, and unto your children,' Acts ii. 39. I cannot apply that comfort to infidels. And those, that are born within the pale are called ' children of the covenant,' Acts iii. 25. Those that are born without the pale of grace, are counted unclean ; but others, holy, dedicated to God : 1 Cor. vii. 14, ' Else were your children unclean, but now are they holy;' so that there is a dift'erence between infant and infant. The children of unbelieving parents are plainly asserted by the apostle to be unclean ; we cannot have such comfortable hopes of them, and cannot say they are saved ; therefore we must leave them to God's judgment. The question at present is of the children of the cove- nant, and those that are born within the pale of grace. And therefore — ■
84 SERMONS UPON HEBREWS XI. [SeR. XXV.
2. Of those cliildren dying in infancy, I assert, that they have faith, not actual faith, but the seed of faith, by virtue of God's election and his grace issuing out to them through Christ in the covenant, which I shall confirni by showing — (1.) That it may be so ; (2.) That it must be so ; (B.) That it is even so ; (4.) How it is so, or what kind of faith they have : which things being cleared, the way to application will be easy.
[1.] That it may be so, because the only prejudice against this opinion seemeth to arise from the impossibility of the thing ; and the Socinians that bring down all things to the line and rule of corrupt reason, count the faith of infants a thing so impossible, that they say it is a greater dotage than the dream of a man in a fever ; therefore my first work is to j)rove that they are capable of faith. Certainly, totally incapable they are not, like stocks and stones, and things without life; and yet out of these God can raise up children to Abraham. Nor altogether as incapable as the younglings of beasts, because the per- fection of their life is only sense and natural instinct, whereas children liave reason. Now reason is in a nearer propinquity to grace than sense, therefore utterly incapable they are not, as stones, or as brute creatures are.