So as to the reality of the internal covenant interest and benefits, justification and adoption, it is ours by virtue of this universal conditional covenant, when we perform the condition. But as to our title in foro ecclesiæ, and the due solemnization and investiture, it is made ours when God's minister applieth it to us in baptism by his commission; as the rebel that was fundamentally pardoned by the act of oblivion, must yet have his personal pardon delivered him by the lord chancellor under the great seal. In this sense ministers are the instruments of God, not only in declaring us to be pardoned, but in delivering to us the pardon of our sins, and solemnly investing us therein: as an attorney delivereth possession to one that before had his fundamental title. Thus God entereth into covenant with man.
VI. The qualifications of absolute necessity to the validity of our covenant with God in foro interiori, are these: 1. That we understand what we do as to all the essentials of the covenant; for ignorantis non est consensus. 2. That it be our own act, performed by our natural or legal selves, that is, some one that hath power so far to dispose of us (as parents have of their children). 3. That it be deliberate, sober, and rational, done by one that is compos mentis, in his wits, and not in drunkenness, madness, or incogitancy.38 4. That it be seriously done with a real intention of doing the thing, and not histrionically, ludicrously, or in jest. 5. That it be done entirely as to all essential parts; for if we leave out any essential part of the covenant, it is no sufficient consent (as to consent that Christ shall be our Justifier, but not the Holy Ghost our Sanctifier). 6. That it be a present consent to be presently in covenant with God: for to consent that you will be his servants to-morrow or hereafter, but not yet, is but to purpose to be in covenant with him hereafter, and is no present covenanting with him. 7. Lastly, it must be a resolved and absolute consent, without any open or secret exceptions or reserves.
VII. The fruits of the covenant which God reapeth, (though he need nothing,) is the pleasing of his good and gracious will, in the exercise of his love and mercy, and the praise and glory of his grace, in his people's love and happiness for ever. The fruits or benefits which accrue to man are unspeakable, and would require a volume competently to open them: especially that God is our God, and Christ our Saviour, Head, Intercessor, and Teacher, and the Holy Ghost is our Sanctifier; and that God will regard us as his own, and will protect us, preserve us, and provide for us, and will govern us, and be our God and joy for ever; that he will pardon us, justify, and adopt us, and glorify us with his Son in heaven.
Direct. II. When you thus understand well the nature of the covenant, labour to understand the special reasons of it. The reasons of the matter of the covenant you may see in the fruits and benefits now mentioned. But I now speak of the reason of it as a covenant in genere, and such a covenant in specie.
1. In general, God will have man to receive life or death as an accepter and keeper, or a refuser or breaker, of his covenant, because he will do it not only as a Benefactor, or absolute Lord, but also as a Governor, and will make his covenant to be also his law, and his promise and benefits to promote obedience; and because he will deal with man as with a free agent, and not as with a brute that hath no choosing and refusing power, conducted by reason: man's life and death shall be in his own hands, and still depend upon his own will; though God will secure his own dominion, interest, and ends, and put nothing out of his own power by putting it into man's; nor have ever the less his own will, by leaving man to his own will. God will at last, as a righteous Judge, determine all the world to their final joy or punishment, according to their own choice while they were in the flesh, and according to what they have done in the body, whether it be good or evil, Matt. xxv. Therefore he will deal with us on covenant terms.
2. And he hath chosen to rule and judge men according to a covenant of grace, by a Redeemer, and not according to a rigorous law of works, that his goodness and mercy may be the fullier manifested to the sons of men; and that it may be easier for men to love him, when they have so wonderful demonstrations of his love; and so that their service here, and their work and happiness hereafter, may consist of love, to the glory of his goodness, and the pleasure of his love for ever.
Direct. III. Next understand rightly the nature, use, and end of baptism. Baptism is to the mutual covenant between God and man, what the solemnization of marriage is to them that do before consent; or what the listing a soldier by giving him colours, and writing his name, is to one that consented before to be a soldier.39 In my "Universal Concord," p. 29, 30, I have thus described it: |External baptism, what.|Baptism is a holy sacrament instituted by Christ, in which a person professing the christian faith (or the infant of such) is baptized in water into the name of the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost, in signification and solemnization of the holy covenant, in which as a penitent believer (or the seed of such) he giveth up himself (or is by the parent given up) to God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, forsaking the devil, the world, and the flesh, and is solemnly entered a visible member of Christ and his church, a pardoned, regenerate child of God, and an heir of heaven.
As the word baptism is taken for the mere administration or external ordinance, so the internal covenanting or faith and repentance of the (adult) person to be baptized, is no essential part of it, nor requisite to the being of it; but only the profession of such a faith and repentance, and the external entering of the covenant; but as baptism is taken for the ordinance as performed in all its essential parts, according to the true intent of Christ in his institution (that is, in the first and proper meaning of the word); so the internal covenanting of a penitent, sincere believer, is necessary to the being of it. And indeed the word baptism is taken but equivocally or analogically at most, when it is taken for the mere external administration and action: for God doth not institute worship ordinances for bodily motion only; when he speaketh to man, and requireth worship of man, he speaketh to him as to a man, and requireth human actions from him, even the work of the soul, and not the words of a parrot, or the motion of a puppet. Therefore the word baptism in the first and proper signification, doth take in the inward actions of the heart, as well as the outward professions and actions. |Complete baptism, what it is.|And in this proper sense baptism is the mutual covenant between God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and a penitent believing sinner, solemnized by the washing of water, in which as a sacrament of his own appointment God doth engage himself to be the God and reconciled Father, the Saviour and the Sanctifier, of the believer, and taketh him for his reconciled child in Christ, and delivereth to him, by solemn investiture, the pardon of all his sins, and title to the mercies of this life and of that which is to come. What I say in this description of a penitent believer, is also to be understood of the children of such that are dedicated by them in baptism to God, who thereupon have their portion in the same covenant of grace.
The word baptism is taken in the first sense when Simon Magus is said to be baptized, Acts xxviii. And when we speak of it only in the ecclesiastic sense, as it is true baptism in foro ecclesiæ; but it is taken in the latter sense when it is spoken of as the complete ordinance of God, in the sense of the institution, and as respecting the proper ends of baptism, as pardon of sin and life eternal; and in foro cœli.
In this full and proper sense it is taken by Christ when he saith, Mark xvi. 16, "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved;" that is, he that believeth, and is by baptism entered into the covenant of God; and in this sense the ancients took it, when they affirmed that all that were baptized were regenerated, pardoned, and made the children of God. And in this sense it is most true, that he that is baptized (that is, is a sincere covenanter) shall be saved if he die in that condition that he is then in.40 All that the minister warrantably baptizeth, are sacramentally regenerate, and are in foro ecclesiæ members of Christ, and children of God, and heirs of heaven: but it is only those that are sincerely delivered up in covenant to God in Christ, that are spiritually and really regenerate, and are such as shall be owned for members of Christ and children of God in foro cœli. Therefore it is not unfit that the minister call the baptized, regenerate and pardoned members of Christ, and children of God, and heirs of heaven, supposing that in foro ecclesiæ they were the due subjects
Quis vero non doleat baptismo plerosque adultos initio passim et nostro tempore non raro ante perfundi quam christianam catechesin vel mediocriter teneant, neque an flagitiosæ et superstitiosæ vitæ pœnitentia tangantur, neque vero id ipsum quod accipiunt, an velint accipere, satis constet. Acosta, l. vi. c. 2. p. 520. Nisi petant et instent, christianæ vitæ professione donandi non sunt. Idem. p. 521. And again, While ignorant or wicked men do hasten any how, by right or wrong, by guile or force, to make the barbarous people christians, they do nothing else but make the gospel a scorn, and certainly destroy the deserters of a rashly undertaken faith. Id. ibid. p. 522.
See the "Reformed Liturgy," p. 68.
Read the Propositions of the Synod in New England, and the Defence of them against Mr. Davenport, about the subject of Baptism.
