must be justified by faith, because Abraham was thus justified. Christians, therefore, are said to be the sons or heirs of Abraham, because faith in the promise of redemption secures their redemp- tion just as faith in the same promise secured his. And he tells the Galatians, " If ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." (Gal. iii. 29.) This doc- trine, that the Church now rests on the Abrahamic covenant, in other words, that the plan of salvation revealed in the Gospel was revealed to Abraham and to the other Old Testament saints, and that they were saved just as men since the advent of Christ are saved, by faith in the promised seed, is not a matter incident- ally revealed. It is wrought into the very substance of the Gos- pel. It is involved in all the teachings of our Lord, who said that He came not to destroy, but to fulfil ; and who commanded in quirers to search the Old Testament Scriptures if they would learn what He taught. The Apostles did the same thing. The Bereans were commended, because they searched the Scriptures daily to see whether the doctrines taught by the Apostles ac- corded with that infallible standard. (Acts xvii. 11.) The mes- sengers of Christ constantly quoted the Old Testament in support of their teachings. Paul says that the Gospel which he preached had been taught already in the law and the prophets. (Rom. iii. 21.) He tells the Gentiles that they were grafted in the old olive-tree and made partakers of its root and fatness.
The conclusion is that God has ever had but one Church in the world. The Jehovah of the Old Testament is our Lord ; the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is our covenant God and Father; our Saviour was the Saviour of the saints who lived before his advent in the flesh. The divine person who delivered the Israelites out of Egypt ; who led them through the wilder- ness ; who appeared in his glory to Isaiah in the temple ; towards whose coming the eyes of the people of God were turned in faith and hope from the beginning, is He whom we recognize as God manifest in the flesh, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He, therefore, who was the head of the theocracy is the head of the Church. The blood which He shed for us, was shed from the foundation of the world, as much "for the redemption of the transgressions which were under the first testament " (Heb. ix. 15), as for us and for our salvation. The promise unto which the twelve tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hoped to come (Acts xxvi. 7), is the promise on which we rely. The faith which saved Abraham was, both as to its nature and
552 PART m. Ch. XX. — the means of grace.
as to its object, that which is the condition of salvation under the Gospel. " The city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God" (Heb. xi. 10), is "Jerusalem the golden," the heaven to which we aspire.
Fifth Proposition. The terms of admission into the Church before the Advent were the same that are required for admis- sion into the Christian Church.
Those terms were a credible profession of faith in the true religion, a promise of obedience, and submission to the appointed rite of initiation. Every sincere Israelite really received Jehovah as his God, relied upon all his promises, and especially upon the promise of redemption through the seed of Abraham. He not only bound himself to obey the law of God as then revealed, but sincerely endeavoured to keep all his commandments. Those who were Israelites only in name or form, or, as the Apostle ex- presses it, were " Jews outwardly," made the same professions • and engagements, but did so only with the lips and not with the heart. If any from among the heathen assayed to enter the con- gregation of the Lord, they were received upon the terms above specified, and to a place equal to, and in some cases better than, that of sons and of daughters. If any Israelite renounced the religion of his fathers, he was cut off from among the people. All this is true in reference to the Church that now is. The Christian Church requires of those whom it receives to member- ship in visible communion, nothing more than a credible profes- sion of faith, the promise of obedience to Christ, and submission to baptism as the rite of initiation. There has, therefore, been no change of the terms of admission to the Church, effected by the introduction of the Gospel.
Sixth Proposition. Infants were Members of the Church under the Old Testament Economy.
This is conclusively proved by the fact that infants, by the command of God, were circumcised on the eighth day after their birth. It is indeed said that circumcision was the sign of the national covenant between God and the Hebrews ; and, there- fore, that its administration to children was only a recognition of their citizenship in the commonwealth of Israel.
To this it may be answered, first, that under the old economy, the Church and State were identical. No man could be a mem- ber of the one without being a member of the other. Exclusion
§ io.] BAPTISM OF INFANTS. 553
from the one was exclusion from the other. In the pure the- ocracy the high priest was the head of the State as well as the head of the Church. The priests and Levites were civil as well as religious officers. The sacrifices, and the festivals, even the Pass- over, ever regarded as a sacrament, were national as well as relig- ious services. If, therefore, circumcision was a sign and seal of membership in the Hebrew nation, it was a sign and seal of mem- bership in the Hebrew Church. All this arose from the nature of God's covenant with Abraham. In that covenant, as we have seen, were included both national and religious promises. God selected the descendants of that patriarch through Isaac to be a people peculiar to himself, He constituted them a nation to be secluded and hedged around from other nations, He gave them the land of Canaan for a habitation, and He enacted for them a code of laws, embracing their civil, national, social, personal, and religious duties. All these enactments were mingled to- gether. The people were not regarded as bearing distinct relations to the magistrate and to God. All their obligations were to Him. They were a holy people ; a Church in the form of a na- tion. The great promise, as we have seen, was the promise of the redemption of the world by the Messiah. To this every- thing else was subordinate. The main design of the constitution of the Hebrews as a distinct nation, and of their separation from all other people, was to keep alive the knowledge of that promise. Almost the whole significancy and value of the priesthood, sacri- fices, and temple service, were to prefigure the person, offices, and work of the Messiah. To the Hebrews as a people were com- mitted the " oracles of God ; " this was their grand distinction. Those oracles had reference to the great work of redemption. To suppose a man to be a Jew, and not at least a professed be- liever in those promises and predictions, is a contradiction. A man, therefore, was a member of the Jewish commonwealth, only in virtue of his being a member of the Jewish Church ; at least, he could not be the former without being the latter. Conse- quently, every child who was circumcised in evidence that he was one of the chosen people, was thereby sealed as a member of the Church of God as it then existed.
Secondly, that circumcision was not the sign exclusively of the national covenant with the Hebrews, is plain because it was en- joined upon Abraham and continued in practice hundreds of years before the giving of the law on Mount Sinai, when the people were inaugurated as a nation. It was instituted as the sign of
554 PART in. Ch. XX. — the means of grace.