Quest. XXXVII. Are believers' children certainly in covenant before their baptism, and thereby in a state of salvation? or not till they are baptized?
Answ. Distinguish between, 1. Heart-covenanting and mouth covenanting. 2. Between being in covenant before God, and visibly before the church.
1. No person is to be baptized at age, whose inward heart consent before professed, giveth him not right to baptism. Therefore all the adult must be in covenant, that is, consent on their part to the covenant, before they are baptized.
2. Therefore it is so with the seed of the faithful, who must consent by their parents, before they have right; otherwise all should have right, and their baptism be essentially another baptism, as sealing some other covenant, or none.
3. If there be no promise made to the seed of the faithful more than to others, they have no right more than others to baptism or salvation. But if there be a promise made to them as the seed of believers, then are they as such within that promise, that is, performers of its conditions by their parents, and have right to the benefit.
4. If the heart consent or faith of the adult, do put themselves into a state of salvation, before their baptism, then it doth so by their children; but, &c. —
5. But this right to salvation in parents and children upon heart consent before baptism, is only before God. For the church taketh no cognizance of secret heart transactions; but a man then only consenteth in the judgment of the church, when he openly professeth it, and desireth to signify it by being baptized.
6. And even before God, there is a necessitas præcepti obliging us to open baptism after heart consent; and he that heartily consenteth, cannot refuse God’s way of uttering it, unless either through ignorance he know it not to be his duty, (for himself and his child,) or through want of ability or opportunity cannot have it. So that while a man is unbaptized, somewhat is wanting to the completeness of his right to the benefits of the covenant, viz. A reception of investiture and possession in God’s appointed way; though it be not such a want, as shall frustrate the salvation of those that did truly consent in heart.
7. I take it therefore for certain, that the children of true believers consent to the covenant by their parents, and are as certainly saved if they die before baptism, as after; though those that despise baptism, when they know it to be a duty, cannot be thought indeed to believe or consent for their children or themselves.