A Reply to Mr. Philip Cary's Solemn Call

The book I have undertaken to briefly comment upon bears the title of A Solemn Call; but I am not so much concerned with the solemnity, as I am with the authority of this call. Not how it is, but whose it is. If it be the call of God, it must be obeyed, though it be to part not only with the privileges, but lives of our dearest children; but then we had need be very well assured it is the call of God, else we are guilty at once of the highest folly and basest [reconstructed: Treachery] to part with so rich an inheritance, conveyed by God's covenant with Abraham, to us believing Gentiles, and our seed, at Mr. Cary's call.

You direct your solemn call to all that would be owned as Christ's faithful witnesses.

Here you are too obscure and general; do you mean all that would be owned by you, or by Christ? If you mean that we must not expect to be owned by you, until we renounce infant baptism, you tell us no news; for you have long since turned your back upon our ministry and assemblies. Yet it is strange, that we who were lately owned as Christ's faithful witnesses under our late sufferings, must now be disowned by you, when we have liberty to amplify and confirm our testimony in the peaceful improvement of our common liberty.

But if your meaning be (as I strongly suspect it is) that we must not expect to be owned by Christ, except we give up infant baptism; then I say it is the most uncharitable, as well as unwarrantable, and dangerous censure that ever dropped from the pen of a sober Christian. It is certainly your great evil to lay salvation itself on such a point as the proper subject of baptism, and to make it Articulus Stantis, vel cadentis Religionis, the very basis on which the whole Christian religion, and its professors' salvation must stand. I hope the rest of your brethren are more charitable than yourself; but however it be, I do openly profess, that I ever have, and still do own you, and many more of your persuasion, for my brethren in Christ, and am persuaded Christ will own you too, notwithstanding your many errors and mistakes about the lesser and lower matters of religion. Nor need your censure much affect us, as long as we are satisfied you have neither a faculty, nor commission thus solemnly to pronounce it upon us.

But what is the condition upon which this dreadful sentence depends? Why, it is our attendance, or non-attendance to the primitive purity of the gospel doctrine.

Sir, I hope we do attend it, and in some respects better than some greater pretenders to primitive purity; who have cast off, not only the initiating sign of God's covenant (this did not Abraham) but also that most comfortable and ancient ordinance of singing Psalms. And what other primitive ordinance of God may be cashiered next, who can tell?

We have a witness in your bosom, that the defense of Christ's pure worship and institutions has cost us something; and as for me, were I convinced by all that you have here said, or any of your friends, that in baptizing the infants of believers we did really depart from the primitive purity, I would renounce it, and turn Anabaptist the same day.

But really sir, this discourse of yours has very much convinced me of the weakness and sickliness of your cause, which is forced to seek a new foundation, and is here laid by you upon such a foundation as must inevitably ruin it, if your party, as well as yourself, have but resolution enough to venture it thereupon.

And it appears to me very probable, that they intend to fight us upon the new ground you have here chosen, and marked out for them, by the high encomiums they give your book in their epistles to it, wherein they tell us, your notions are of so rare a nature, that you are not beholden to any other for them. And it is a wonder if you should be, for I think it never entered into any sober Christian's head before you, that Abraham's covenant (Genesis 17) was the very same with Adam's covenant made in Paradise; or that Moses, Abraham, and all the elect of God in those days were absolutely under the very rigor and tyranny of the covenant of works, and at the same time under the covenant of grace, and all the blessings and privileges thereof, with many other such rare notions, of which it is a pity but you should have the sole propriety.

I am particularly concerned to detect your dangerous mistakes, both in love to your own soul, and care of my people, among whom you have dispersed them; though I foresee by M. E's epistle to your book what measure I am likely to have for my plain and faithful dealing with you. For if that gentleman, upon a mere surmise and presumption, that one or other would oppose your book, dare venture to call your unknown answerer, before ever he put pen to paper, a man-pleaser, a quarreler at reformation, and rank him with the Papists, who opposed the faithful for their non-conformity to their inventions — what must I expect from such rash censurers, for my sober, plain, and rational confutation of your errors?

As to the controversy between us, you truly say in your title page, and many parts of your book, and your brethren corroborate it in their epistles, that the main arguments made use of by the Paedo-Baptists for the support of their practice are taken from the covenant of God with Abraham (Genesis 17). You call this the very hinge of the controversy; and therefore if you can but prove this to be the very same covenant of works with that made with Adam in Paradise, we shall then see what improvements you will quickly make of it.

Ay sir, you are sensible of the advantage, no less than a complete victory you shall obtain by it; and therefore being a more hardy and adventurous man than others, put desperately upon it (which never any before you dared attempt) to prove Abraham's covenant, which stands so much in the way of your cause, to be a mere covenant of works, and therefore now abolished.

My proper province is to show here, that part of the foundation (I mean Abraham's covenant) from where our divines, with great strength and evidence, deduce the right of believers' infants to baptism now. Next, to demonstrate the absurdity of your assertions and arguments you bring to destroy it. And lastly, to reflect briefly upon the answers you give in the beginning of your book, to those several texts of Scripture pleaded by the learned and judicious divines you oppose, for the justification of infant baptism.

(1.) Those that plead God's covenant with Abraham (Genesis 17) as a Scripture foundation for baptizing believers' infants under the gospel, proceed generally upon these four grounds or principles.

(1.) That God's covenant with Abraham (Genesis 17) was the same covenant for substance we Gentile believers are now under, and they substantially prove it from Luke 1:54-74, which place evidently shows the sameness of the covenant of grace they were, and we are now under. And from Matthew 21:41, 43, the same vineyard and kingdom the Jews then had is now let out to us Gentiles. And from Romans 11, that the Gentile Christians are grafted into the same olive tree from which the Jews were broken off for their unbelief. And that the blessing of Abraham comes now upon the Gentiles (Galatians 3:8, 14, 16), and in a word, that the partition wall between them and us is now pulled down, and that we, through faith, are let into the self-same covenant, and all the privileges they then enjoyed (Ephesians 2:13).

(2.) They assert and prove that in Abraham's covenant, the infant seed were taken in with their parents, and that in token thereof, they were to have the sign of the covenant applied to them (Genesis 17:9).

(3.) They affirm and prove that the promise of God to Abraham and his seed, with the privileges thereof to his children, do, for the substance of them, descend to believers now, and their seed (Acts 2:38, 39), and though the external sign, namely circumcision, be changed, yet baptism takes its place under the gospel (Colossians 2:11, 12).

(4.) They constantly affirm that none of those grants or privileges made to the infant seed of Abraham's family were ever repealed or revoked by Christ or his apostles, and therefore believers' children now are in the rightful possession of them. And therefore there needed no new command or promise: in Abraham's command we find our duty to sign our children with the sign of the covenant, and in Abraham's promise we find God's gracious grant to our children as well as his, especially since the apostle directs us, in this very respect, to the covenant of God with Abraham (Acts 2:38, 39).

These, sir, are the principles on which we lay (as you say) great stress, and which to this day you have never been able to shake down. Here therefore you attempt a new method to do it, by proving this covenant is now abolished, and this is your method in which you promise yourself great success. Three things you pretend to prove: (1.) that the Sinai covenant (Exodus 20), (2.) that Abraham's covenant (Genesis 17) are no gospel covenants, and that because (3.) the gospel covenant is absolute and unconditional.

How you come to hook in the Mosaic covenant into this controversy is not very evident, unless you think it were easy for you to prove that to be a covenant of works, and then Abraham's covenant (Genesis 17), being an Old Testament covenant, were the more easily proved to be of the same nature. I am obliged to examine your three positions above noted, and if I evidence to the world the falsity of them, the cause you manage is so far lost, and the right of believers' infants to baptism stands firm upon its old and sure foundation. I begin therefore with your

Finis.