1. This promise hath parts essential and parts integral: we promise not both these parts alike, nor on the same terms; though both be promised. The essential parts, are our essential duties of christianity, (faith, love, repentance in the essential parts,) &c. The integrals are the integral duties of Christianity.[294]
2. He that performeth not the essential duties is an apostate, or hypocrite.
3. He that performeth not the integral duties is a sinner, not only against the law of nature, and Christ's precepts, but his own promise; (and in this sense we all confess our breach of covenant with Christ;) but he is no apostate, hypocrite, or out of covenant.
[293] John iii. 16-18, 36; i. 11-13.
[294] 2 Pet. ii. 20-23; Heb. vi. 2, 4-8; x. 26-28; 1 John i. 9, 10; James iii. 2, 3.
Quest. XLVI. _May not baptism in some cases be repeated? And when?_
_Answ._ 1. You must distinguish between baptism, taken morally, or only physically. 2. Between baptism morally, as it is a church or visible covenant, and as a heart covenant. 3. Between real baptism, and seeming baptism, which is a nullity. 4. Between certain reception of baptism, and that which is uncertain or justly doubted of. And so I answer,
1. Real and certain baptism as a visible church ordinance may not be repeated; though the heart covenant was wanting; and though it wanted not only decent modes, but integral parts.
2. But in these cases baptism may be used where it seemed to have been received before.
1. When the person made no profession of the christian faith (nor his parents for him, if an infant). 2. If that profession notoriously wanted an essential part; as if he only professed to believe in God the Father, and not in the Son, or the Holy Ghost. 3. If the minister only baptized him into the name of the Father, or Son, or left out any essential part. 4. If the person or ministry only contracted for a distant futurity, (as, I will be a christian when I am old, &c.) and not for the present; which is not to be christened, but only to promise to be christened hereafter. 5. If all application of water (or any watery element) was omitted, which is the external sign. 6. Of the baptizer's power I shall speak anon. 7. If the church or the person himself have just cause of doubting, whether he was truly baptized or not, to do it again, with hypothetical expressions, If thou art not baptized, I baptize thee; yea, or simply while that is understood, is lawful, and fit. And it is not to be twice baptized morally, but only physically, as I have fully opened in the question of re-ordination, to which I must refer the reader.
3. And I confess I make little doubt but that those in Acts xix. were re-baptized, notwithstanding the witty evasion invented by Phil. Marnixius Aldegondus, and Beza's improvement of it, and the now common reception of that interpretation.[295]
For, 1. A new and forced exposition which no reader dreameth of till it be put into his head, is usually to be suspected, lest art deceive us.
[Sidenote: Whether it were re-baptizing.]
2. The omission of the Holy Ghost is an essential defect, and maketh baptism specifically another thing; and he were now to be re-baptized who should be so baptized.
3. Whatever some say in heat against the papists, John's baptism and our christian baptism are so specifically distinct also, that he that had now but John's were to be yet baptized: the person of the Messiah himself being not determinately put into John's baptism as such. Nor can it be supposed that all the Jews that John baptized, were baptized into the profession of faith in this numerical person Jesus, but only to an unknown Saviour undetermined: however he pointed to Christ in the hearing of some of his disciples. We must not run from plain truth in peevishness or opposition to papists or any other men.
4. The fifth verse would not be true of John's baptism, as the history showeth, that "when John's hearers heard this, they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus." This is contrary to the text that recordeth it.
5. In the fourth verse, the words "that is, on Christ Jesus" are plainly Paul's expository words of John's, and not John's words. John baptized them "into the name of the Messiah that should come after him," which indeed, saith Paul, was Christ Jesus, though not then personally determined by John.