and ot other believers says, "We are the circumcision, which worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh." (Phil. iii. 3.) Such being the spir- itual import of circumcision, its reference to the national covenant was a very subordinate matter. Its main design was to signify and seal the promise of deliverance from sin through the redemp- tion to be effected by the promised seed of Abraham.
Children, therefore, were included in the covenant of grace as revealed under the old dispensation, and consequently were mem- bers of the Church as it was then constituted. In the sight of God parents and children are one. The former are the author- ized representatives of the latter ; they act for them ; they con- tract obligations in their name. In all cases, therefore, where parents enter into covenant with God, they bring their children with them. The covenant made with Adam included all his posterity ; the promise made to Abraham was to him and to his seed after him ; and when the Mosaic covenant was solemnly in- augurated, it was said, " Ye stand this day all of you before the Loed your God ; your captains of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, with all the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives, and thy stranger that is in thy camp, from the hewer of thy wood unto the drawer of thy water : that thou shouldst enter into covenant with the Lobd thy God, and into his oath, which the Lord thy God maketh with thee this day." (Deut. xxix. 10-12.) It is vain to say that children cannot make contracts or take an oath. Their parents can act for them ; and not only bring them under obligation, but secure for them the benefits of the covenants into which they thus vicariously enter. If a man joined the commonwealth of Israel he secured for his children the benefits of the theocracy, unless they willingly renounced them. And so when a believer adopts the covenant of grace, he brings his children within that covenant, in the sense that God promises to give them, in his own good time, all the benefits of redemption, provided they do not willingly renounce their baptis- mal engagements.
This is really the turning point in the controversy concerning infant church-membership. If the Church is one under both dis- pensations; if infants were members of the Church under the theocracy, then they are members of the Church now, unless the contrary can be proved. The next proposition, therefore, on this subject, to be established is, the
556 PART III. Ch. XX. — THE MEANS OF GRACE.
Seventh Proposition, that there is nothing in the New Testament which justifies the Exclusion of the Children of Believers from Membership in the Church.
The " onus probandi " rests on those who take the negative on this subject. If children are to be deprived of a birthright which they have enjoyed ever since there was a Church on earth, there must be some positive command for their exclusion, or some clearly revealed change in the conditions of membership, which renders such exclusion necessary. It need hardly be said that Christ did not give any command no longer to consider the children of believers as members of the Church, neither has there been any change in the conditions of church-membership which necessarily works their exclusion. Those conditions are now what they were from the beginning. It was inevitable, there- fore, when Christ commanded his Apostles to disciple all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, that they should act on the principle to which they had always been accustomed. When under the Old Testa- ment, a parent joined the congregation of the Lord, he brought his minor children with him. When, therefore, the Apostles baptized a head of a family, it was a matter of course, that they should baptize his infant children. We accordingly find several cases of such household baptism recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. In Acts xvi. 15, it is said Lydia " was baptized, and her household," and of the jailer at Philippi (ver. 33), that " he and all his " were baptized ; and in 1 Corinthians i. 16, Paul says that he baptized the household of Stephanas. The Apostles, therefore, acted on the principle which had always been acted on under the old economy. It is to be remembered that the history of the Apostolic period is very brief, and also that Christ sent the Apostles, not to baptize, but to preach the Gospel, and, therefore, it is not surprising that so few instances of household baptism are recorded in the New Testament. The same remark applies sub- stantially to the age immediately succeeding that of the Apostles. The Church increased with great rapidity, but its accessions were from without ; adult converts from among the Jews and Gentiles, who in becoming Christians, brought, as a matter of course, their children with them into the fold of Christ. Little, therefore, during this period is heard of the baptism of infants. As soon, however, as children born within the Church constituted the chief source of supply, then we hear more of baptisms for the