4. Such sober antipædobaptists will consent, to profess openly, that they do devote their children to God according to all the power or duty which they can find communicated or laid upon them in the word of God; and that if they believed that God would accept them into his covenant upon their dedication, they would willingly do it. And that actually they do offer them to God according to their power, and promise to bring them up in his way. And who can force men's wills to choose aright for themselves or others?
Quest. XLIX. _May one offer his child to be baptized, with the sign of the cross, or the use of chrism, the white garment, milk and honey, or exorcism, as among the Lutherans, who taketh these to be unlawful things?_
_Answ._ I am not now to meddle with the question, whether they be lawful? but to this question I answer,
1. He that judgeth them unlawful, must first do his best to be certain whether they be so or not.
2. If so, he must never approve of them, or consent to them.
3. He must not offer his child to be so baptized, when, _cætesris paribus_, he may have it done in a better manner on lawful terms.
4. But when he cannot lawfully have better, he may and must offer his child to them that will so baptize him, rather than to worse, or none at all: because baptism is God's ordinance and his privilege, and the sin is the minister's, and not his. Another man's sinful mode will not justify the neglect of our duty; else we might not join in any prayer or sacrament in which the minister modally sinneth; that is, with none.
5. The milk and honey, white garment and chrism, are so ancient (called by Epiphanius and others the traditions and customs of the universal church) that the original of them is not known. And he that then would not be so baptized, must not have been baptized at all.
6. But in this case he that bringeth his child to baptism, should make known, that it is baptism only that he desireth; and that he disowneth and disalloweth the manner which he accounteth sinful: and then he is no consenter to it.
7. But where law, scandal, or great inconveniences forbid him, he is not to make this profession openly in the congregation, but in that prudent manner which beseemeth a sober, peaceable person; whether to the minister in private, or to his neighbours in converse; it being easy among neighbours to make known a man's dissent, without a disorderly troubling of the church, or violating the laws of obedience, civility, and peace.
8. But he must not, 1. Either offer his child to baptism, where the ordinance is essentially corrupted, or worse than none. 2. Or where he cannot be admitted without an actual sin of his own; as by false professions, subscriptions, &c. For we must not do evil for good ends.
Quest. L. _Whence came the ancient universal custom of anointing at baptism, and putting on a white garment, and tasting milk and honey? And whether they are lawful to us?_
_Answ._ 1. We must remember that the signification of these was not by a new institution of theirs, but by former custom of the countries where they lived.[297] As, (1.) Anointing in Judea was like bathing at Rome: it was taken in those scorching countries for a wholesome, and easing, and comforting thing; and therefore used to refresh the weary limbs of travellers, and to comfort the sick.
(2.) And it was the long accustomed ceremony also used on officers accounted sacred, kings and priests, who were anointed at their entrance and investiture.
(3.) White clothing and purple were then and there taken for the noblest attire;[298] not appropriated to sacred things and persons; but as scarlet lately in England, the garb only of great men. On which account, not as a sacred vestment, but as an honourable clothing, when the bishops began to be advanced, they were allowed to wear white clothing, not only when they officiated, but at other times.
(4.) The milk and honey were there highly esteemed for food, and accounted the character of the land of promise.[299]
2. Hereupon by application the churches used these signs in the sacred ordinance of baptism: not by new institution of the signification, I say, but by application of the old well-known signification.
3. As natural signs are commonly allowed to be applied to holy things, so signs whose signification is of old and commonly stated and well known by agreement or custom, do seem in this not to be different from natural signs. Such are all words, as signs of our minds; no word signifying any thing naturally, but by agreement or custom only. And such is kneeling in prayer, and being uncovered, and many the like: about some of which Paul appealeth to the custom of the churches of God.[300]