404 CHRISTIAN BAPTISM. [SERM. VII. longed properly to the Jewish nation, and admitted none but males : But all professors of the gospel must receive this ceremony, and be baptised in the name of the Fa= ther, Son and Holy Ghost ; and this is the most common account the New Testament gives us of this matter, that when persons professed their faith in Christ, they were baptized. Texts of this kind need not be cited they are so numerous. But in the christian church from its early ages, and we think from the apostles' time, it bath been the custom also to baptize the infant children of professed christians; and though there be im such express and plain commands or examples of it written in scripture as We might have expected, yet there are several inferences to be drawn from what is written, which afford a just and reasonable encouragement to this practice, and guard it from the censure of superstition and will worship. This has been a long and troublesome dispute indeed among the churches since the reformation : I shall not pretend to debate it here, but only rehearse a few hints of argument, which are commonly used to vindicate the practice of baptizing children, viz. 1. That ever since God called the familyof Abraham, and settled his visible church in it, he has never suffered it to fail. It was an " everlasting covenant that he made with Abraham, to be his God, and the God of his seed;" Gen. xvii. 7, 8. " that he might be the Father both of Jews and gentiles," who were brought into the church, as in Rom. iv. 11, 16. 2. The Jewish and the christian church are but one and the same visible church in a continued succes- sion, though under different administrations and ordin- ances. The same spiritual promises and blessings which belonged to the church under the Old Testament, belong also to it under the New ; Acts ii. 39. 2 Cor. i. 20. Abraham is represented as the root or stock ofthe visible church : Rom. xi. 16, 17, &c. The Jewish church are the natural branches of it, the gentiles are ingrafted into the same stock, verses 17, 24. and partake of the bles- sings of it. 3. The children of the Jews were visible members of the Jewish church under the covenant of Abraham, and as such they were recognised, acknowledged and receiv- ed into it bycircumcision, as the door of entrance : Now
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