cannot exercise faith, therefore they are not members of the Church, and consequently ought not to be baptized.
In order to justify the baptism of infants, we must attain and authenticate such an idea of the Church as that it shall include the children of believing parents. The word Church is used in Scripture and in common life, in many different senses, (1.) It means the whole body of the elect, as in Ephesians v. 25, and when the Church is said to be the body, or the bride of Christ, to be filled by his Spirit, etc. (2.) It means any number of be- lievers collectively considered ; or the whole number of believers residing in any one place, or district, or throughout the world. In this sense we use the word when we pray God to bless his Church universal, or his Church in any particular place. (3.) It is used as a collective term for the body of professed believers in any one place ; as when we speak of the Church of Jerusalem, of Ephesus, or of Corinth. (4.) It is used of any number of pro- fessed believers bound together by a common standard of doctrine and discipline ; as the Church of England, the Church of Scot- land, the Lutheran Church, and the Reformed Church. And (5.) It is used for all the professors of the true religion through- out the world, considered as united in the adoption of the same general creed and in common subjection to Christ.
It is evident that no one definition of the Church can include all the senses in which the word is legitimately used ; and, there- fore, that we may affirm of the Church in one sense of the word, what must be denied of it in a different sense; and the same person may be said to be, or not to be a member of the Church according to the meaning attached to the word. In the present discussion, by the Church is meant what is called the visible Church ; that is, the whole body of those who profess the true religion, or, any number of such professors united for the pur- pose of the public worship of Christ, and for the exercise of mutual watch and care. "With regard to infant baptism the fol- lowing propositions may be maintained.
First Proposition. The Visible Church is a Divine Institution. Concerning the Church in this sense, it is clearly taught in Scripture, that it is the will of God that such a Church should exist on earth. This no Christian denies. God has imposed duties upon his people which render it necessary for them thus to associate in a visible organized body. They are to unite in his worship ; in teaching and propagating his truth ; in testifying for
548 PART III. Ch. XX. — THE MEANS OF GRACE.
God in all ages and in all parts of the world. He has prescribed the conditions of membership in this body, and taught who are to be excluded from its communion. He has appointed officers, specified their qualifications, their prerogatives, and the mode of their appointment. He has enacted laws for its government. Its rise, progress, and consummation are traced in history and proph- ecy, from the beginning to the end of the Bible. This is the kingdom of God of which our Lord discourses in so many of his parables, and which it is predicted is ultimately to include all the nations of the earth.
Second Proposition. The Visible Church does not consist exclu- sively of the Regenerate.
It is no less clearly revealed that it is not the purpose of God that the visible Church on earth should consist exclusively of true believers. This is plain, (1.) Because the attainment of such a result in any society or government administered by men is an impossibility. It would require that the officers of the Church or the Church itself should have the power to read the heart, and be infallible in judgments of character. (2.) The condi- tions which, under both dispensations, He has prescribed for ad- mission into this visible society of his professed worshippers, are such as men not truly regenerated may possess. Those qualifica- tions, as we have seen, are competent knowledge, and a credible profession of faith and obedience. (3.) Our Lord expressly for- bids the attempt being made. He compares his external king- dom, or visible Church, to a field in which tares and wheat grow together. He charged his disciples not to undertake to separate them, because they could not, in all cases, distinguish the one from the other. Both were to be allowed to grow together until the harvest. (4.) Christ, to whom all hearts are known, admit- ted Judas to the number of his most favoured disciples, and even made him an Apostle. (5.) All attempts to make a Church consisting exclusively of the regenerate, have failed. So far as known, no such Church has ever existed on the face of the earth. This of itself is proof that its existence did not enter into the purpose of God.
Third Proposition. The Commonwealth of Israel was the Church.
(1.) It is so called in Scripture. (Acts vii. 38.) (2.) The He- brews were called out from all the nations of the earth to be the peculiar people of God. They constituted his kingdom. (3.) To
§ io.l BAPTISM OF INFANTS. 549
them were committed the oracles of God. They were Israelites ; to them pertained the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service, and the promises. (Rom. ix. 4.) Nothing more can be said of the Church under the new dispensation. They were selected for a Church purpose, namely, to be witnesses for God in the world in behalf of the true religion ; to celebrate his worship ; and to observe his ordi- nances. Their religious officers, prophets, and priests, were ap- pointed by God and were his ministers. No man could become a member of the Commonwealth of Israel, who did not profess the true religion ; promise obedience to the law of God as re- vealed in his Word ; and submit to the rite of circumcision as the seal of the covenant. There is no authorized definition of the Church, which does not include the people of God under the Mosaic law.
Fourth Proposition. The Church under the New Dispensation is identical with that under the Old. It is not a new Church, but one and the same. It is the same olive-tree. (Rom. xi. 16, 17.) It is founded on the same cove- nant, the covenant made with Abraham. It has, indeed, often been said that it is to belittle the truth to put the idea of a covenant between God and man in the place of a general law or economy. It is, however, to be remembered that God is a per- son, capable of speaking with other persons, of promising and threatening. These promises are not merely announcements of the results of cosmical laws, physical or moral. That Christ should be born of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Judah, and of the house of David, is not to be attributed to the working of any general law. Nothing pertaining to his advent, his per- son, his work, or to the application of his redemption, is to be accounted for in any such way. Our Lord gives us an infinitely higher idea of God's relation to the world when He tells us that He feeds the young ravens when they cry ; and that the hairs of our heads are all numbered ; than when He is regarded as merely the author or source of the physical and moral order of the uni- verse. A covenant is a promise suspended upon a condition. It is beyond controversy that God did make such a promise to Adam, to Abraham, and to the Hebrew nation through Moses ; and these transactions are in Scripture constantly called cove- nants. It does not, therefore, seem very reverent to speak of God as belittling his truth by the form in which He presents it.
550 PART IH. Ch. XX. — the means of GRACE.