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CHURCH OF GOD.

No. V.

Infant members.

In our preceding numbers, we have given a general view of the Church of God, as one great visible society which he has taken into peculiar relations to himself. We traced its origin, as an organized whole, up to the Abrahamic covenant, of which we explained the nature, and proved the perpetuity. We also investigated the uses of its initiating rite, viz. circumcision; which, we assigned reasons to show, has been exchanged, under the evangelical dispensation, for the ordinance of baptism and we touched, in general terms, upon the conclusion which our premises justify, respecting the ecclesiastical condition and privileges of infants born of believing parents. Having avowed our pursuasion, that they are, in virtue of their birth, members of the church of God, and entitled, during their infancy, to baptism in his name, we shall, in this number, state our con

clusion more fully, and shall strengthen it with some auxiliary considerations.

The reader, on looking back to No. III. of this series, will find the following paragraph.

"If, as has been already demonstrated, the covenant with Abraham and his seed was a covenant with the visible church-if this covenant has never been abrogated-if its relations and privileges, with an exception in favour of adults who desired to come in on the profession of their faith, were to be propagated in the line of natural generation, THEN, it follows, that the infant seed of persons who are under this covenant, are themselves parties to it; are themselves members of the church; and whatever privileges that infant seed had at any given period in the history of the church, it must retain so long as the covenant is in force. But the covenant is in force at this moment; therefore, at this moment, the covenant privileges of the infant seed are in force. Visible membership is one of those privileges; therefore the infant seed of church members are also members of the church."

This, then, is the ground on which we take our stand in pleading the cause of the children whom God has given us. We account them members of his church, not because tradition has called them so; not because the practice of the church has treated them as such; but because he consti

tuted them such by his own commandment and covenant which he has never revoked until this day.

To insist, therefore, that we shall produce, from the New Testament, a precept directly instituting the church membership of infants, is to make a demand with which we are under no obligation to comply. Such a precept was not necessary. The relation we are inquiring into had been instituted long before; it had subsisted without one moment's interruption for more than nineteen centuries. During this great lapse of ages it had enlisted on its side, in addition to its divine original, the most irrefragable prejudices of antiquity, the most confirmed national habit, and the fastidious jealousy of prerogative. In this state of its prevalence was the evangelical dispensation announced. If the same relation of infants to the church was to continue under the New Testament form, nothing is more easy than to assign the reason why it was not instituted anew. The principle was undisputed; it was acted upon as a principle which the change of dispensation did not touch; and consequently, a new institution was superfluous. The silence of the New Testament on this head, is altogether in favour of those who maintain that the union of parents with the church of God, includes their children also. But on the supposition that this principle was to

operate no longer; that the common interest of children with their parents in God's covenant was to cease; the silence of the New Testament is one of the most inexplicable things which ever tortured the ingenuity of man. If there is any point of external privilege which ought to have been settled with the most definite precision, one would imagine that this is the point. But we are taught to believe, that a constitution which is engrafted upon a principle that penetrates the essence of human society; which coincides with the genius of every other divine constitution respecting man; which is incorporated with his animal, his intellectual, and his moral character; which is interwoven with every ligament and fibre of his heart, shall be torn away; and yet the statute book of the kingdom in which this severity originates, shall contain no warrant for executing it, nor a syllable to soothe the anguish which it has inflicted! Is it thus that God deals with his people? Does this look like his wonted condescension to their infirmities? Does it bear the character of that loving kindness and tender mercy which belong to him who knows their frame, and remembers that they are dust ?"

When the economy of Moses was to be superseded by that of Jesus Christ, he prepared the way in the most gradual and gentle manner; he showed them from their own scriptures, that he had done

only what he had intended and predicted from the beginning; he set before their eyes a comparative view of the two dispensations, to satisfy them that they had lost nothing, but had gained much by the exchange. When they were "dull of hearing," he bore with their slowness; when they were extremely unwilling to part with Moses, he stooped to their infirmities; and persevered in his lenity, till the destruction of their city, their sacrifices, their temple, their nation, left their further demur ring without the shadow of an excuse. But when he touched them in the point of most exquisite sensibility—when he passed a sword through their souls by cutting off their children, unable to dis tinguish between good and evil, from all the interest which they once had in his church, the heavy mandate is preceded by no warning, is accompanied with no comfort; is followed by nothing to replace the privation; is not even supported by a single reason! The thing is done in the most summary manner, and the order is not so much as entered into the rule of faith! The believing mother hears that the "son of her womb" is shut out from the covenant of her God, but hears not why! Is this the ordinance of him who, "as a father pitieth his children, so pities them that fear him?" It cannot be !

Conceding, then, to the opposers of our children's claim as members of the Christian church, Vol. IV.

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