CHAPTER VI.

OF THE INFLUENCE OF THE COVENANT RELA

TION OF THE PARENT UPON THE RIGHTS

OF THE CHILD UNDER THE NEW DISPEN

SATION.

By going to the Abrahamic covenant for our doctrine of infant church-membership, we bind ourselves by the principles and rules of that covenant. The Baptists reject the covenant altogether, and although they are believed most capitally to err in this, yet it is due to them to say, that there is far less inconsistency in their plan, than there is in that of those, who receive it in some respects, and reject it in others. This is certainly done by those who refuse to apply its principles to the extent of the terms, in which they are expressed, and after the pattern furnished by the history of the initiatory ordinance in the word of God.

If the covenant be still in force, it certainly cannot be competent for us to weave into the doctrine of baptism, or into the warrant for its

application, any confessions or personal qualifications, which are unknown to that original charter of the church. Our privileges, and the privileges of our children, are as great as those of the ancient Jews. And unless the New Testament Church be that bundle of sticks, which Dr. Gill makes it, unsupported by stock or root, and wholly incapable of producing a single bud, even "though the scent of water," we shall undoubtedly partake of "the root and fatness of the good olive tree." Even those children of the church, whose parents are no better than the untoward Jews were, are as much of the seed ecclesiastically as theirs were; they will be as certainly owned of God as his children; and should as unhesitatingly be owned of the church as hers.

These remaks are entitled to full influence, unless it can be shown that there is something to forbid it, either in the nature of the case, or in some express New Testament provision.

As for the children themselves, to whom privileges are to be sealed, without at all adding to those already enjoyed by the parents, who conceives of a difference between them,

either from nature or from grace? It might be well, if an inquiry were instituted into the precise nature of the reason, why spiritual qualities in the parent who is in actual covenant, should be insisted on in order to give his child a right to the initiatory ordinance. Whatever right a child has, is derived to it, through its natural relation to its parent. Through this relation alone it is transmitted, and no right is conveyed, but such as is conveyable through this channel. We can conceive of a right to an external ordinance, or a right to external privileges, being thus conveyed; because they result from relations, but of the conveyance of spiritual things, or grace in such a way, we can form no conception. If then the children of the two classes in the covenant of the church, the children of the pious, and the children of those who are not pious, are all alike, confessedly in a state of nature—if the privileges proposed to be sealed to them, are conveyable by natural relations—and if these privileges are to be sealed to the children themselves, without adding to those already enjoyed by the parents, from what can the

influence proceed which demands a distinction, unless it be from some vague, confused, indefinable conception of spiritual qualities, transmissible, and transmitted from the pious parent to his offspring? As far as the exclusive doctrine deserves favour from a mere feeling of fitness and congruity in the plan, which excludes from the church the children of all who are not supposed to possess piety, just so far is this mystic fancy allowed to interfere with the constitution of the church of God. It would perhaps be deemed unkind even to suggest a suspicion, that in any case the idea is intended to be entertained, that gracious qualities are conveyed by natural generation; but besides that there may be many things floating in the imagination, and producing effects without our consciousness, it may be said that of so wonderful an ante-type, the necessity of personal piety to give validity to a right conveyed by natural generation, is a most suitable and worthy type.

The grand peculiarity of the covenant, is the conveyance of the right to the seal, by natural relation from the parent to the child. The

principle involved in this peculiarity, which excludes, as has been seen, the idea of the transmission of grace, together with the child's own acknowledged destitution of grace in itself, confirms to the church under the New Dispensation, all the essential attributes, which distinguished her under the Old. While she acts upon the principle of receiving the great body of her members at an age, when the dream of their being in a gracious state, whatever may be the piety of their parents, would be the wildest of all dreams, there may be benevolence in the desire, that she should be holier than she is, but the wisdom is more than questionable that attempts to make her so, by casting out of her pale vast multitudes, as good as those she receives, and whose right of admission by the strictest construction of the charter, are as unquestionable as theirs. By an universal law, as large rights can be conveyed by natural relations under the New Economy, as under the Old. And by an equally extensive law, which like the other, is simply the nature of the case, grace is as untransmissible now as it was then. As a con