Him, how doth it behove me to improve myself for Him? My soul is His, my body His, my parts His, my gifts His, my graces His, and whatsoever is mine is His; for without Him I could not have been, and therefore could have had nothing. So that I have no more cause to be proud of any thing I have, or am, than a page hath to be proud of his fine clothes, which are not his, but his master's; who bestows all this finery upon him, not for his page's honour or credit, but for his own. And thus it is with the best of us in respect of God; He gives men parts, and learning, and riches, and grace, and desires and expects that we should make a due use of them but to what end? Not to gain honour and esteem to ourselves, to make us proud and haughty, but to give Him the honour due to His Name; and so employ them as instruments in promoting His glory and service. So that whensoever we do not lay out ourselves to the utmost of our power for Him, it is downright sacrilege, it is robbing God of that which is more properly His, than any man in the world can call any thing he hath his own.

Having therefore thus wholly surrendered and given up myself to God, so long as it shall please His Majesty to intrust me with myself, to lend me my being in this lower world, or to put any thing else into my hands, as time, health, strength, parts, or the like, I am resolved, by His grace, to lay out all for His glory. All the faculties of my soul, as I have given them to Him, so will I endeavour to improve them for Him; they shall still be at His most noble service; my understanding shall be His, to know Him; my will His, to choose Him; my affections His, to embrace Him; and all the members of my body shall act in subserviency to Him.

And thus having given myself to God on earth, I hope God in a short time will take me to Himself in Heaven; where as I gave myself to Him in time, He will give Himself to me unto all eternity.

ARTICLE X.

I believe that as God entered into a covenant of grace with us,

so hath He signed this covenant to us by a double seal, Baptism and the Lord's Supper.

As the covenant of works had two Sacraments, viz. the [Gen.3.22.] tree of life' and the tree of the knowledge of good and [ver. 17.] evil;' the first signifying and sealing life and happiness to the performance, the other death and misery to the breach of it: so the covenant of grace was likewise sealed with two typical Sacraments, Circumcision and the Passover;' the former was annexed at God's first making His covenant with Abraham's person, the other was added at His fulfilling the promises of it to his seed or posterity, which were therefore styled the Promised Seed.' But these being only typical of the true and spiritual Sacraments that were afterwards to take place upon the coming of the Messiah, there were then, in the 'fulness of time,' two other Sacraments substituted in their stead, viz. Baptism' and the Supper of the Lord.' And these Sacraments were both correspondent to the types by which they were represented.

too.

As to the first, viz. Circumcision,' whether I consider the time of conferring it, or the end of its institution, I find it exactly answers to the Sacrament of Baptism in both these respects. For as the children under the Law were to be circumcised in their infancy at eight days old, so are the children under the Gospel to be baptized in their infancy And as the principal thing intended in the rite of Circumcision was to initiate or admit the children of the faithful into the Jewish Church; so the chief design of Baptism now, is to admit the children of such as profess themselves Christians into the Church of Christ. And for this reason, I believe, that as under the Old Testament children had the grant of covenant-privileges and Churchmembership as really as their parents had, so this grant was not repealed, as is intimated, but further confirmed in Acts 2. 39.

14.2-21.

the New Testament; in that the Apostle calls the children 1 Cor. 7. 14. of believing parents "holy," which cannot be understood of a real and inherent, but only of a relative and covenanted holiness, by virtue of which, being born of believing parents, themselves are accounted in the number of believers, and are therefore called "holy children" under the Gospel, in Deut. 7. 6; the same sense that the people of Israel were called " a holy people" under the Law, as being all within the covenant of grace, which, through the faith of their parents, is thus sealed to them in their Baptism. Not that I think it necessary that all parents should be endued with what we call a saving faith, to entitle their children to these privileges, (for then none but the children of such who have the Spirit of Christ truly implanted in them would be qualified to partake of the covenant); but even such who, by an outward historical faith, have taken the Name of Christ upon them, are, by that means in covenant with God, and so accounted holy in respect of their profession, whatever they may be in point of practice. And if they are themselves holy, it follows on course that their children must be so too, they being esteemed as parts of their parents till made distinct members in the body of Christ; or, at least, till they come to the use of their reason and the improvement of their natural abilities.

And, therefore, though the seal be changed, yet the covenant-privileges, wherewith the parties stipulating unto God were before invested, are no whit altered or diminished; believers' children being as really confederates with their parents in the covenant of grace now, as they were before, under the Jewish administration of it. And this seems to be altogether necessary, for otherwise infants should be invested with privileges under the type, and be deprived of or excluded from them under the more perfect accomplishment of the same covenant in the thing typified; and so the dispensations of God's grace would be more straight and narrow since, than they were before the coming of our Saviour; which I look upon to be no less than blasphemy

to assert.

And, upon this ground, I believe it is as really the duty of Christians to baptize their children now as ever it was

the duty of the Israelites to circumcise theirs; and therefore St. Peter's question, "Can any man forbid water, that these Acts 10. 47. should not be baptized, who have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?" may very properly be applied to this case. Can any one forbid water, that children should not be baptized, who are in covenant with the Most High God as well as we? For what is it, I pray, that the right to Baptism doth depend upon? Surely, not upon performing the conditions of the covenant, for then none should be baptized but such as are true believers in themselves, and known to be so by us, and, by consequence, none at all; it being only God's prerogative to search their hearts, and to know the truth of that grace which Himself hath been pleased to bestow upon them. But children's right to Baptism is grounded upon the outward profession of their believing parents; so that as a king may be crowned in his cradle, not because he is able to wield the sceptre, or manage the affairs of his kingdom, but because he is heir to his father; so here children are not therefore baptized because they are able to perform the conditions of the covenant which is sealed to them, but because they are children to believing parents. And this seems to be yet further evident from the very nature of seals, which are not administered or annexed to any covenant because the conditions are already performed, but rather that they may be performed; and so children are not baptized because they are already true Christians, but that they may be so hereafter.

As for a command for Infant Baptism, I believe that the same Law that enjoined Circumcision to the Jewish enjoins Baptism likewise to Christian children, there being the same reason for both. The reason why the Jewish children were to be circumcised was because they were Jewish children, born of such as professed the true worship of God, and were in covenant with Him; and there is the same reason why Christian children are to be baptized, even because they are Christian children, born of such as profess the true worship of the same God, and are confederates in the same covenant with the Jews themselves. And as there is the same reason, so likewise the same end for both, viz. that the children might be actually admitted into the same

33.

covenant with their parents, and have it visibly confirmed to them by this initiating seal put upon them: so that Circumcision and Baptism are not two distinct seals, but the same seal diversely applied; the one being but as a type of the other, and so to give place to it whensoever by the institution of Christ, it should be brought into the Church of God. And therefore the command for initiating children into the Church by Baptism remains still in force, though Circumcision, which was the type and shadow of it, be done away. And for this reason, I believe that was there never a command in the New Testament for Infant Baptism, yet, seeing there is one for Circumcision in the Old, and for Baptism, as coming into the place of it, in the New, I should look upon Baptism as necessarily to be applied to infants now, as Circumcision was then.

But why should it be supposed that there is no command in the New Testament for Infant Baptism? There are several texts that seem to imply its being practised in the first preaching of the Gospel, as particularly in the case of Acts 16. 15, Lydia and the keeper of the prison, who had their whole families baptized; and we nowhere find that children were excepted. On the contrary, St. Peter, exhorting the converted Jews to be baptized, makes use of this argument to ch. 2. 38,39. bring them to it, " For the promise," says he," is unto you and to your children," which may as reasonably be understood of their infants as of their adult posterity. But besides, it was the express command of Christ to His DisciMatt.28.19. ples, that they should "go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." The meaning of which words I take to be this, 'Go ye and preach the Gospel amongst all nations, and endeavour thereby to bring them over to the embracing of it; that, leaving all Jewish ceremonies and heathenish idolatries, they may profess my Name, and become my Disciples, receive the truth and follow me; which, if they do, I charge you to "baptize them in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost:" for the word manreboare doth not signify to teach,' but to make disciples,' denoting the same here John 4. 1. that anràs i doth upon the like occasion.

And this is the sense that all the ancient translations