Wesley Corpus

10. To sum up the evidence: If outward baptism be gene rally, in an ordinary way, necessary to salvation, and infants may be saved as well as adults, nor ought we to neglect any means of saving them; if our Lord commands such to come, to be brought unto him, and declares, “Of such is the king dom of heaven;” if infants are capable of making a covenant, or having a covenant made for them by others, being included in Abraham’s covenant, (which was a covenant of faith, an evangelical covenant) and never excluded by Christ; if they have a right to be members of the Church, and were accord ingly members of the Jewish; if, suppose our Lord had designed to exclude them from baptism, he must have expressly forbidden his Apostles to baptize them, (which none dares to affirm he did,) since otherwise they would do it of course, according to the universal practice of their nation; if it is highly probable they did so, even from the letter of Scripture, because they frequently baptized whole households, and it would be strange if there were no children among them; if the whole Church of Christ, for seventeen hundred years together, baptized infants, and were never opposed till the last century but one, by some not very holy men in Germany; lastly, if there are such inestimable benefits conferred in baptism, the washing away the guilt of original sin, the engrafting us into Christ, by making us members of his Church, and thereby giving us a right to all the blessings of the gospel; it follows, that infants may, yea, ought to be baptized, and that none ought to hinder them. I am, in the Last place, to answer those objections which are commonly brought against infant baptism:-- 1. The chief of these is: “Our Lord said to his Apostles, “Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. (Matt. xxviii. 19.) Here Christ himself put teaching before baptizing. There fore, infants, being incapable of being taught, are incapable of being baptized.” I answer, (1.) The order of words in Scripture is no certain rule for the order of things. We read in St. Mark i.