Wesley Corpus

This therefore is our First ground. Infants need to be washed from original sin; therefore they are proper subjects of baptism. 3. Secondly. If infants are capable of making a covenant, and were and still are under the evangelical covenant, then they have a right to baptism, which is the entering seal thereof. But infants are capable of making a covenant, and were and still are under the evangelical covenant. The custom of nations and common reason of mankind prove that infants may enter into a covenant, and may be obliged by compacts made by others in their name, and receive advantage by them. But we have stronger proof than this, even God's own word: “Ye stand this day all of you before the Lord, --your captains, with all the men of Israel; your little ones, your wives and the stranger,-that thou shouldest enter into covenant with the Lord thy God.” (Deut. xxix. 10-12.) Now, God would never have made a covenant with little ones, if they had not been capable of it. It is not said children only, but little children, the Hebrew word properly signifying infants. And these may be still, as they were of old, obliged to perform, in aftertime, what they are not capable of per forming at the time of their entering into that obligation. 4. The infants of believers, the true children of faithful Abraham, always were under the gospel covenant. They were included in it, they had a right to it and to the seal of it; as an infant heir has a right to his estate, though he cannot yet have actual possession. The covenant with Abraham was a gospel covenant; the condition the same, namely, faith, which the Apostle observes was “imputed unto him for righteousness.” The inseparable fruit of this faith was obedience; for by faith he left his country, and offered his son. The benefits were the same; for God promised, “I will be thy God, and the God of thy seed after thee:” And he can promise no more to any creature; for this includes all blessings, temporal and eternal. The Mediator is the same; for it was in his Seed, that is, in Christ, (Gen. xxii. 18; Gal. iii. 16,) that all nations were to be blessed; on which very account the Apostle says, “The gospel was preached unto Abraham.” (Gal. iii.