SERMON LI. 115 also a resolved obedience to the authority and commands of the Father, a professed belief of the gospel as taught usby the Son, with a dependence on the grace and salvation of Christ as car- ried on by all his offices of Prophet, Priest, and King, together with a compliance with all the outward discoveries, and all in= ward influences of the Holy Spirit : This is the duty, and these are the engagements. of every professor of christianity. As cir- cumcision was the modeof entrance intothe Jewish church, and becoming a professed disciple of Moses, and hereby an obligation arose to perform and practise the whole Jewish law ; Gal. v. 3. so by baptism we lay ourselves under a holy obligation to prac- tise the whole religionof Christ, ànd to wait for all its promised blessings. We hope for the love and grace of the Father, the salvation of Jesus Christ his Son, and the sanctifying and com- forting influences of the Holy Ghost; and we are hereby de- voted to the service and honour of the blessedTrinity, God the Father, the Son, and the Spirit ; whose adorable unity in respect ofthe godhead, and whose three distinctions in respect of their personal characters havebeen set before.you at large in a former sermon on this same text. Having said thus much in describing the ceremony itself, and what isthe spiritual meaningof it, we come now in the second place to enquire, Who are the subjects of this ordinanceof baptism, orto whom it is to be administered ? To this I answer, The first, the most proper, or at least the most evident subjects of it are persons who confess their sins, and profess to repent of them, and who accept of this grace and sal- vation offered in the gospel : Those who have been taught the chief doctrines and duties ofthe gospel of Christ, and professto believe and receive them and to comply with them : Those who take upon them the religion of Christ become his disciples and give up their names to .him. Here is no difference whether Greek or Jew, whether male or female, as there was in the Jewish ceremony of circumcision which belonged properly to the Jewish nation, and admitted none but males : But all pro- fessors of the gospel must receive this ceremony, and be bap- tized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and this is the most common account the New Testament gives us cf 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 bap- tize the infant children of professed christians; and though there it .2
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