Quest. XLIII. Is the right of the baptized (infants or adult) to the sanctifying operations of the Holy Ghost, now absolute, or suspended on further conditions? And are the parents' further duties for their children such conditions of their children's reception of the actual assistances of the Spirit? Or are children's own actions such conditions? And may apostate parents forfeit the covenant benefits to their baptized infants or not?
Answ. The question is great and difficult, and few dare meddle with it. And almost all infant cases are to us obscure.
I. 1. It is certain that it is the parents’ great duty to bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
2. It is certain that God hath appointed this to be the means of their actual knowledge, faith, and holiness.
3. And God doth not appoint such means unnecessarily or in vain: nor may we ordinarily expect his grace but in the use of the means of grace, which he hath appointed us to use.
4. It is certain that God’s receiving the children of the faithful, is an act of God’s love to the parents as well as the children, and promised as a part of his blessing on themselves.
5. It is certain that these parents hold their own mercies upon the condition of their own continued fidelity: and (let their apostasy be on other reasons never so impossible, or not future, yet) the promise of continuance and consummation of the personal felicity of the greatest saint on earth, is still conditional, upon the condition of his persevering fidelity.
6. Even before children are capable of instruction, there are certain duties imposed by God on the parents for their sanctification; viz. 1. That the parents pray earnestly and believingly for them. 2. That they themselves so live towards God as may invite him still to bless their children for their sakes, as he did Abraham’s, and usually did to the faithful’s seed.
7. It is certain that the church ever required parents, not only to enter their children into the covenant, and so to leave them, but to do their after duty for their good, and to pray for them, and educate them according to their covenant.
8. It is plain that if there were none to promise so to educate them, the church would not baptize them. And God himself, who allowed the Israelites, and still alloweth us to bring our children into his covenant, doth it on this supposition, that we promise also to go on to do our duty for them, and that we actually do it.
9. All this set together maketh it plain, 1. That God never promiseth the adult in baptism, though true believers, that he will work in them all graces further by his sanctifying Spirit, let them never so much neglect or resist him; or that he will absolutely see that they never shall resist him: nor that the Spirit shall still help them, though they neglect all his means; or that he will keep them from neglecting the means (election may secure this to the elect as such; but the baptismal covenant as such, secureth it not to the baptized, nor to believers as such). 2. And consequently that infants are in covenant with the Holy Ghost still conditionally as their parents are; and that the meaning of it is that the Holy Ghost as your Sanctifier will afford you all necessary help, in the use of those means which he hath appointed you to receive his help in.
Object. Infants have no means to use.
Answ. While infants stand on their parents’ account, or wills, the parents have means to use for the continuance of their grace, as well as for the beginning of it.
10. Therefore I cannot see but that if a believer should apostatize, (whether any do so is not the question) and his infant not to be made another’s child, he forfeiteth the benefits of the covenant to his infant. But if the propriety in the infant be transferred to another, it may alter the case.
11. And how dangerously parents may make partial forfeitures of the Spirit’s assistance to their children, and operations on them, by their own sinful lives, and neglect of prayer, and of prudent and holy education, even in particular acts, I fear many believing parents never well considered.
12. Yet is not this forfeiture such as obligeth God to deny his Spirit; for he may do with his own, as a free benefactor, as he list; and may have mercy freely, beyond his promise, (though not against his word,) on whom he will have mercy. But I say that he that considereth the woeful unfaithfulness and neglect of most parents, even the religious, in the great work of holy educating their children, may take the blame of their ungodliness on themselves, and not lay it on Christ or the Spirit who was in covenant with them as their Sanctifier, seeing he promised but conditionally to give them the sanctifying heavenly influences of his life, light, and love, in their just use of his appointed means, according to their abilities.
13. Also as soon as children come to a little use of reason, they stand conjunctly on their parents’ wills and on their own. As their parents are bound to teach and rule them, so they are bound to learn of them and be ruled by them for their good. And though every sin of a parent or a child be not a total forfeiture of grace, yet both their notable actual sins may justly be punished, with a denial of some further help of the Spirit which they grieve and quench.
II. And now I may seasonably answer the former question, whether infants’ baptismal saving grace may be lost, of which I must for the most that is to be said refer the reader to Davenant (in Mr. Bedford’s book) on this subject, and to Dr. Samuel Ward joined with it, (though Mr. Gataker’s answers are very learned and considerable,) and to my small book called “My Judgment of Perseverance.”
Augustine, who first rose up for the doctrine of perseverance, against its adversaries, carried it no higher than to all the elect as such, and not at all to all the sanctified; but oft affirmeth that some that were justified, sanctified, and love God, and are in a state of salvation, are not elect, and fall away; but since the reformation, great reasons have been brought to carry it further to all the truly sanctified; of which cause Zanchius was one of the first learned and zealous patrons, that with great diligence in long disputations maintained it. All that I have now to say is, that I had rather with Davenant believe that the fore-described infant state of salvation, which came by the parents, may be lost by the parents and the children, (though such a sanctified, renewed nature in holy habits of love as the adult have be never lost,) than believe that no infants are in the covenant of grace and to be baptized.
Object. But the child once in possession shall not be punished for the parents’ sin.
Answ. 1. This point is not commonly well understood. I have by me a large disputation proving from the current of Scripture, a secondary original sin, besides that from Adam, and a secondary punishment ordinarily inflicted on children for their parents’ sins, besides the common punishment of the world for the first sin. 2. But the thing in question is but a loss of that benefit which they received and hold only by another. It is not so properly called a punishment for another’s sin, as a non-deliverance, or a non-continuance of their deliverance, which they were to receive on the condition of another’s duty.
Object. But the church retaineth them as her members, and so their right is not lost by the fault or apostasy of the parents.
Answ. 1. Lost it is one way or other, with multitudes of true christians’ children, who never show any signs of grace, and prove sometimes the worst of men. And God breaketh not his covenant.
2. How doth the church keep the Greeks’ children that are made janizaries?
3. No man stayeth in the church without title. If the church or any christians take them as their own, that is another matter. I will not now stay to discuss the question, whether apostates’ baptized infants be still church members? But what I have said of their right before God, seemeth plain.
4. And mark, that on whomsoever you build an infant’s right, you may as well say, that he may suffer for other men’s default; for if you build it on the magistrate, the minister, the church, the godfathers, any of them may fail; they may deny him baptism itself; they may fail in his education; shall he suffer then for want of baptism or good education when it is their faults? Whoever a child or a man is to receive a benefit by, the failing of that person may deprive him of that benefit. More objections I must pretermit, to avoid prolixity.
Eph. vi. 4, 5; Col. iii. 21; Gen. xviii. 19; Deut. vi.
6-8; xi. 18-20.
Second commandment. Prov. xx. 7.
The Holy Ghost is promised in baptism to give the child grace in his parents’ and his own faithful use of the appointed means.
Mr. Whiston, p. 53. As Abraham as a single person in the covenant was to accept of and perform the conditions of the covenant — so as a parent he had something of duty incumbent on him with reference to his (immediate) seed; and as his faithful performance of that duty incumbent on him in his single capacity, so his performing that duty incumbent on him as a parent in reference to his seed, was absolutely necessary in order to his enjoying the good promised, with reference to himself and his seed: proved Gen. xvii. 1; xviii. 19. He proveth that the promise is conditional, and that as to the continuance of the covenant state the conditions are, 1. The parent’s upright life. 2. His duty to his children well done. 3. The children’s own duty as they are capable.