4. It is certain that infants before they are glorified, shall have all that grace that is prerequisite to their preparation and fruition.

5. No sanctified person on earth is in an immediate capacity for glory; because their sin and imperfection must be done away, which is done at the dissolution of soul and body. The very accession of the soul to God doth perfect it.

6. Infants have no actual faith, or hope, or love to God to exercise; and therefore need not the influence of the Spirit of Christ to exercise them.

7. We are all so very much in the dark, as to the clear and distinct apprehension of the true nature of original inherent pravity or sin, that we must needs be as much ignorant of the true nature of that inherent sanctity or righteousness, which is its contrary or cure. Learned Illiricus thought it was a substance, which he hath in his "Clavis" pleaded for at large. Others call it a habit, others a nature or natural inclination, and a privation of a natural inclination to God. Others call it an indisposition of the mind and will to holy truth and goodness, and an ill disposition of them to error and evil. Others call it only the inordinate lust of the sensitive faculties, with a debility of reason and will to resist it. And whilst the nature of the soul itself and its faculties, are so much unknown to itself, the nature of original pravity and righteousness must needs be very much unknown.

8. Though an infant be a distinct natural person from his parents, yet he is not actually a distinct person morally as being not a moral agent, and so not capable of moral actions good or evil. Therefore his parents' will goeth for his.

9. His first acceptance into the complacential love of God, as distinct from his love of benevolence,) is not for any inherent holiness in himself; but (1.) As the child of a believing parent who hath dedicated him to Christ; and (2.) As a member of Christ, in whom he is well pleased.

10. Therefore God can complacentially as well as benevolently love an infant in Christ, who only believeth and repenteth by the parents, and not by himself, and is not yet supposed to have the spirit of sanctification.

11. For the spirit of sanctification is not the presupposed

condition of his acceptance into covenant with God, but a gift of the covenant of God itself, following both the condition on our part, and our right to be covenanters, or to God's promise upon that condition.

66

12. So the adult themselves have the operation of the Spirit by which they believe and repent, by which they come to have their right to God's part in the covenant of baptism, (for this is antecedent to their baptism): but they have not that gift of the Spirit, which is called in Scripture the Spirit of sanctification, and of power, love, and a sound mind," and is the benefit given by the covenant of baptism, till afterward; because they must be in that covenant before it can be made good to them. And their faith or consent is their infant's right also, antecedent to the covenant gift.

13. There is therefore some notable difference between that work of the Spirit by which we first repent and believe and so have our title to the promise of the Spirit, and that gift of the Spirit which is promised to believers; which is not only the Spirit of miracles given in the first times, but some notable degree of love to our reconciled Father, suitable to the grace and gospel of redemption and reconciliation, and is called the " Spirit of Christ," and the "Spirit of adoption", which the apostles themselves seem not to have received till Christ's ascension. And this seemeth to be not only different from the gifts of the Spirit common to hypocrites and the unbelievers, but also from the special gift of the Spirit which maketh men believers. So that Mr. Tho Hooker saith more truly than once I understood, that vocation is a special grace of the Spirit, distinct from common grace on one side, and from sanctification on the other side. Whether it be the same degree of the Spirit which the faithful had before Christ's incarnation, which causeth men first to believe distinct from the higher following degree, I leave to inquiry but the most certain distinction is from the different effects.

:

14. Though an infant cannot be either disposed to a holy life, or fit for glory immediately, without an inward holiness of his own, yet by what is said it seemeth plain, that merely on the account of the condition performed by the parent,

u Rom. viii. 9. 16. 26.

and of his union relatively with Christ thereupon, and his title to God's promise on these grounds, he may be said to be in a state of salvation; that is, to have the pardon of his original sin, deliverance from hell, (in right,) adoption, and a right to the needful operations of the Holy Ghost, as given to him in Christ, who is the first receiver of the Spirit.

15. But when and in what sort and degree Christ giveth the actual operations of the Spirit to all covenanted infants, it is wonderfully hard for us to know. But this much seemeth clear, 1. That Christ may when he please work on the soul of an infant to change its disposition, before it come to the use of reason. 2. That Christ and his Spirit as in covenant with infants, are ready to give all necessary assistance to infants for their inherent sanctification, in the use of those means, and on those further conditions, on which we must wait for it and expect it. For the Holy Ghost is not so engaged to us in our covenant or baptism, as to be obliged presently to give us all the grace that we want; but only to give it us on certain further conditions, and in the use of certain means. .. But because this leads me up to another question, I will suspend the rest of the answer to this till that be handled. Only I must answer this objection.

Obj. It is contrary to the holy nature of God, complacentially to love an unsanctified infant, that is yet in his original corruption unchanged, and he justifieth none relatively from the guilt of sin, whom he doth not at once inherently sanctify.

Answ. 1. God's complacential love respecteth every one as he is; for it is goodness only that he so loveth. Therefore he so loveth not those that either actually or habitually love not him, under any false supposition that they do love him when they do not. His love therefore to the adult and infants differeth as the objects differ. But there is this lovely in such infants; 1. That they are the children of believing, sanctified parents; 2. That they are by his covenant relatively united to Christ, and are so far lovely as his

* Mr. Whiston, p. 60. sheweth, That even the promises of a new heart, &c. Ezek. xxxvi. xxxvii. &c. though they may run in the external tenor of them absolutely, yet are not absolutely absolute, but have a subordinate condition, and that is, that the parties concerned in them do faithfully use the means appointed of God in a subserviency to his working in or bestowing on them the good promised.'

members; (3.) That they are pardoned all their original sin; (4.) That they are set in the way to actual love and holiness; being thus dedicated to God.

2. All imperfect saints are sinners; and all sinners are, as such, abhorred of God, whose pure eyes cannot behold iniquity. As then it will stand with his purity to accept and love the adult upon their first believing, before their further sanctification, and notwithstanding the remnant of their sins, so may it do also to accept their infants through Christ upon their dedication.

3. As the actual sin imputed to infants was Adam's, and their parents' only by act, and not their own, it is no wonder if upon their parents' faith and repentance, Christ wash and justify them from that guilt which arose only from another's act.

4. And then the inherent pravity was the effect of that act of their ancestors, which is forgiven them. And this pravity or inherent original sin may two ways be said to be mortified radically, or virtually, or inceptively before any inherent change in them, 1. In that it is mortified in their parents from whom they derived it, who have the power of choosing for them; and 2. In that they are by covenant engrafted into Christ, and so related to the cause of their future sanctification; yea, 3. In that also they are by covenant and their parents' promise, engaged to use those means which Christ hath appointed for sanctification".

5. And it must be remembered that as this is but an inceptive, preparatory change, so the very pardon of the inherent vitiosity is not perfect, (as I have elsewhere largely proved;) however some Papists and Protestants deny it. While sin remaineth, sin and corruption is still indwelling, besides all the unremoved penalties of it, the very being of it proveth it to be so far unpardoned, in that it is not yet abolished, and the continuance of it being not its smallest punishment, as permitted, and the Spirit not given so far as to cure it. Imperfect pardon may consist with a present right, both to further sanctification by the Spirit, and so to heaven.

y God's being a God to any individual person, doth require and presuppose that they do for the present, supposing them capable, or for the future as soon as capable, take God in Christ as their God. Ibid. p. 61.

Obj. Christ's body hath no unholy members.'

Answ. 1. "Now are your children holy"." They are not wholly unholy who have all the fore-described holiness. 2. As infants in nature want memory and actual reason, and yet initially are men; so, as Christ's members, they may want actual and habitual faith and love, and yet initially be sanctified, by their union with him and his Spirit, and their parents' dedication, and be in the way for more, as they grow fit; and be Christians and saints' in fieri,' or initially only, as they are men.

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 ob

scure.

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 a.

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 apostacy be on other reasons never so impossible, or not future, yet) the promise of continuance and consum

z 1 Cor. vii. 14.

a

Eph. vi. 4, 5. Col. iii. 21. Gen. xviii. 19. Deut. vi. 6-8. xi. 18-20.