Bertha and Her Baptism
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Nehemiah Adams >> Bertha and Her Baptism
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Again: "When the children arrive at an age in which they are capable of
acting for themselves in matters of religion, and making a profession of
their adherence to the Christian faith, and practice, and coming to the
Lord's Supper, if they neglect and refuse to do this, and act contrary
to the commands of Christ in any other respect, all proper means are to
be used, and methods taken, to bring them to repentance, and to do their
duty as Christians, and, if they cannot be reclaimed, but continue
impenitent and unreformed, they are to be rejected and cast out of the
church, as other adult members are who persist in disobedience to
Christ."[8]
[Footnote 8: Hopkins's Works (1852), vol. ii., pp. 158, 176.]
"Such words, from such a source," said Mr. C., "are entitled to great
consideration."
"But," said Mr. S., "here is a passage from his own theological
instructor, President Edwards:
"It is asked,' he says, 'why these children, that were born in the
covenant, are not cast out when, in adult age, they make no profession.'
He replies, 'They are not cast out, because it is a matter held in
suspense whether they do cordially consent to the covenant or not; or
whether their making no profession does not arise from some other cause;
and none are to be excommunicated without some positive evidence against
them.'"
"My dear sir," said Mr. A., "Mr. Edwards is there speaking of those who
merely refuse to own the covenant, without being guilty of scandalous
sin."
_Mr. S._ It is evident, nevertheless, that Hopkins goes further than he,
and requires that those who, at years of full responsibility, refuse to
own the covenant, shall be cut off. Modern writers on this subject,
while insisting on the church-membership of children, draw back from
this position, and are more in harmony with what, it seems to me, may be
said to be the general sense of the churches on this subject. I feel
glad, when reading such passages as those from Hopkins, that we have
liberty of opinion, and are not compelled to swear by the words of any
master. I bow to such a divine as Dr. Hopkins, but he fails to satisfy
me that he is right in these views of church-discipline for children.
Mr. R., who was the oldest man of the company, now returned to the
discussion, and said: "It is clear that one cannot be dispossessed of
that which he never possessed, except as in the case of a minor, who may
have his claim to a future possession wrested from him. Of what is a
child of the covenant, allowing him to be, while a child, a member of
the church,--of what is he in possession? Not of full communion, not of
access to the Lord's table, not of the right to a voice in the call and
settlement of a pastor, nor in any other church act. From what, then, is
he turned out by being cut off? He has never arrived at anything from
which he can be separated, except the covenant of God with him through
his parents, and its attendant privileges of watch and care. If, then,
we excommunicate an unconverted child, we can only declare the covenant
of God with him, henceforth, to be null and void,--an assumption from
which, probably, Christian parents and ministers would shrink. The same
long-suffering God, who bears and forbears with ourselves, we shall be
disposed to feel, is the God of this recreant child, and no good man
would dare to pronounce the child to be separated from the mercies of
'the God of patience and hope.' One who, being in a church, breaks a
covenant to which he assented, may be a just subject for discipline,
even to excommunication; but, all the promises of God to the child being
wholly free, conditioned, at first, upon his parents' relation to God,
all the disability which the child seems capable of receiving, is, that
the promises made to him he must fail, by his own fault, to receive.
Who will declare even his prospect of their fulfilment to be terminated
at any given time? Much more, who will undertake to divest him of things
which he never had? The church-membership, from which you profess to
expel him, does not yet exist in his case; he has not reached it. All
the church-membership of which, if any, he has been possessed, is, his
hopeful relation to God and his people through a parent. To
excommunicate a child from this would be a strange procedure."
_Mr. A._ That is the strongest thing which I have heard on that side. I
must confess (said he, rising and leaning against one of the maples)
that I am a little staggered.
But Mr. B. came to reinforce his faltering brother.
"Here," said he, "is the Cambridge Platform. You will all be willing to
hear from that source."
"Let us hear," said two or three voices.
Mr. B. read as follows:
"The like trial (examination) is to be required from such members of the
church as were born in the same, or received their membership, and were
baptized in their infancy or minority, by virtue of the covenant of
their parents, when, being grown up unto years of discretion, they shall
desire to be made partakers of the Lord's Supper; unto which, because
holy things must not be given to the unworthy, therefore it is requisite
that these, as well as others, should come to their trial and
examination, and manifest their faith and repentance by an open
profession thereof before they are received to the Lord's Supper, and
otherwise not to be admitted thereunto. Yet those church-members that
were so born, or received in their childhood, before they are capable of
being made partakers of full communion, have many privileges which
others, not church-members, have not; they are in covenant with God,
have the seal thereof upon them, namely, baptism; and so, if not
regenerated, yet are in a more hopeful way of attaining regenerating
grace, and all the spiritual blessings both of the covenant and seal;
they are also under church-watch, and consequently subject to the
reprehensions, admonitions, and censures thereof, for their healing and
amendment, as need shall require."[9]
[Footnote 9: Cambridge Platform, chap. iii. 7.]
_Mr. R._ Now, please, Br. B., what does all that prove?
_Mr. B._ Why, it proves that, in the judgment of the Cambridge Platform,
the children of church-members are members of the churches.
_Mr. R._ It shows that the Cambridge Platform calls them members; but it
gives us no proof that they are properly called members. A great deal in
that extract, I undertake to say, will command the cordial assent of all
who practise infant baptism, if we except the use of the term members.
It shows that, as to coming into the company of true believers, and
being one of them, the only way is through repentance and faith,--a way
common to the unbaptized. The only advantage, but one which is
exceedingly great and precious on the part of the believer's children,
being, that they "have many privileges," and "are in a more hopeful way
of attaining regenerating grace." But the term membership does not
express their relation to the church before they are converted.
_Mr. B._ (After a pause.) I do not know but you are right.
Mr. C., the remaining advocate of the sermon, said, "Let me refresh
your memories with the famous case quoted in Morton's New England
Memorial. He says:
"'The two ministers there (Salem, 1629), being seriously studious of
reformation, they considered the state of their children, together with
their parents, concerning which letters did pass between Mr. Higginson
(of Salem) and Mr. Brewster, the reverend elder of the church of
Plymouth; and they did agree in their judgments, namely, concerning the
church-membership of the children with their parents, and that baptism
was a seal of their membership; only, when they were adult, they being
not scandalous, they were to be examined by the church officers, and
upon their approbation of their fitness, and upon the children's public
and personally owning of the covenant, they were to be received unto the
Lord's Supper. Accordingly, Mr. Higginson's eldest son, being about
fifteen years of age, was owned to have been received a member together
with his parents, and being privately examined by the pastor, Mr.
Skelton (the other minister of Salem), about his knowledge in the
principles of religion, he did present him before the church when the
Lord's Supper was to be administered, and, the child then publicly and
personally owning the covenant of the God of his father, he was admitted
unto the Lord's Supper, it being there professedly owned, according to 1
Cor. 7:14, that the children of the church are holy unto the Lord, as
well as their parents.'"
Mr. R. stood up, and, with an animated look and manner, but with a very
pleasant voice, said:
"What, now, my good brother, did these good ministers do, with this
youth, more or less than we all do for the children of our pastoral
charge?
"Of what practical use was his so-called infant 'church-membership,' in
addition to his being, as we all hold, a child of the covenant?"
They made no reply for a little while, till at last Mr. A. said:
"Well, Br. R., what names would you substitute for _members_ and
_membership_?"
_Mr. R._ "THE CHILDREN OF THE CHURCH;" for you have it in the last
sentence of the extract which you read from Morton;--the true, the most
appropriate, and, in every respect, the best name for those who are so
ambiguously called _members_.
_Mr. B._ There is great beauty and sweetness in that name, I
confess,--"the children of the church," "the church's children."
_Mr. R._ A father never, except for concealment, says, "a member of my
family," when "a child" is meant. The term _members_, besides being
equivocal, and requiring explanation, is not so good as "children of the
church," an expression which includes and covers all that any would
claim for "infant church-members."
_Mr. C._ I confess, I like Br. R.'s views and proposition. If, by
calling the offspring of believers, "the children of the church," we, by
implication, abridged any of their privileges, or if, by calling them
church-members, we believed that they acquired rights and privileges not
otherwise appertaining to them, we ought to prefer the words member and
membership; but it is not so. No one of the writers cited,--and the
proofs we all know could be extended by quoting from other
authors,--claims the right of a child to full communion, except upon
evidence, in his "trial and examination," that he is regenerate. Indeed,
the only use to which the terms member and membership seem to be
applied, is, in furnishing some ground for urging the discipline and
excommunication of the child. This, though urged by some, is urged in
vain.
_Mr. R._ Other terms, in connection with members and membership, have
been proposed, such as members in minority, members in suspension,
future members; but all in vain. The children of believers are certainly
the children of the church, and such I devoutly hope and pray they may
come to be called.
_Mr. A._ Seeing that the use of the term _member_ keeps before our minds
a theoretical, hard necessity, from which every one shrinks, I think I
will alter my sermon so far as to dismiss the term, and, with it, all
sense of inconsistency in neglected obligations as to disciplining these
young "members."
"Well, Br. A.," said Mr. B., "I will join you in submission."
"So will I," said Mr. C. "How good it is to be convinced, and to give up
one's own will; is it not?"
"It ought to be," said Mr. A., "to those whose great business it is to
preach submission. But I think we did not differ at first, except as to
the use of terms."
_Mr. T._ I wish to make a confession. Though I have always been of Br.
R.'s opinion, I have felt it to be invidious, and, for several reasons,
disagreeable, to call a meeting of "the children of the church,"--making
a distinction between them and the other children of my pastoral charge.
Am I correct in such views and feelings?
"Come, Mr. Chairman," said Mr. A., "we have not paid you sufficient
deference, I fear; for we have hardly kept order, in addressing one
another, and not through you. Now, please to speak for us, and tell us
what you think of Br. T.'s difficulty."
_Mr. C._ I have sinned with you, as to keeping order, if there has been
any transgression; but I have been so much interested and instructed,
that I forgot my preeminence over you. But to Br. T., I would say, There
is a church; and it means something, and something of infinite
importance. All our labors have this for their end, to make men
qualified for worthy church-membership, on earth, and in heaven,--the
conditions of admission here and there, as we hold, being essentially
the same. This church, which we thus build up, has children, call them
what we may, the objects of God's peculiar love. On that topic I need
not dwell. We ought to pay some marks of special regard to these
children, for God has done so. As to its being invidious, it is not more
invidious than to address our congregations as partly Christians, and
partly unconverted; or to invite the unconverted to meetings especially
designed for them. Meetings of the children of my church, called by me,
and addressed by me, never fail to make very deep impressions upon the
young, upon their parents, upon other children, and upon the parents of
those children. Another form of effecting the same desirable ends, is,
to call meetings of parents in the church, and their children, and to
address the parents and the children in sight and hearing of each other.
In doing so, if there are any parents in the church who are withholding
their children from baptism, we have the best of opportunities to
conciliate their feelings to the ordinance of baptism. We all know how
little is effected in our minds by abstract reasoning upon any subject,
where the feelings are deeply concerned; close argument, invincible
logic, absolute demonstrations, and all measures seemingly intended to
coerce the will, excite resistance, and confirm us in our prejudices.
But open to a parent, who has doubts on the subject, its inestimable
benefits to all concerned, and he will be more disposed to see the
grounds for it, and the abundant proofs of its divine authority, which
the atmosphere of pure reason had not sufficient power of refraction to
make him apprehend.
_Mr. S._ I thank the chairman heartily for those remarks. May I add a
leaf from my observation? I have noticed that in such meetings of
parents, in the church, and their children, good influences sometimes
reach those who are pursuing the mistaken course of withholding their
children from baptism, under the plea that they can consecrate their
children to God as well without baptism, as with it. They need to learn
the spiritual power which God has vested in the sacraments of his own
appointment, and to be disabused of the notion that the baptism of a
child is, from beginning to end, merely a human act, of which God is
only a spectator;--they need to feel that baptism is something conferred
upon a child by God; and not merely a sign, but a seal.
"Yes," said Mr. R., "it is an ordinance of God, and the neglect of it is
not merely a failure to obtain blessings, but a disregard of a divine
ordinance; not merely the withholding a sign of allegiance, but the loss
of a seal,--the government seal, not ours, which God would affix to the
intercourse between himself and our souls. If we, pastors, feel this
deeply, and so perceive the design of God in bestowing baptism upon the
children of his people, we shall convey to the hearts and minds of
doubting Christian parents, persuasive influences, which will succeed
where arguments and appeals, based on mere proofs and obligations, have
failed."
_Mr. A._ It is gratifying, now, to think that these things, and others
like them, may be done without calling the children "members of the
church." Except discipline, it is obvious that everything in the way of
watchfulness may be done for them as children of the church, which it
would be proper, or even possible to do, if they were counted as
members.
_Mr. R._ I am aware of the analogy which many, who plead for the term
members, seek to carry out between the Old and the New Testament church,
making children members of the Christian church, because the church in
ancient days included the children. But it seems to me that there is
the same difference, now and formerly, between the relation of children
to the church, that there is between the relation of the whole religious
community, now and formerly, to the church of God. Formerly, all the
members of the religious community were, by their association under the
same belief and worship, members of the church. To make the case with us
parallel, our whole Christian community ought to be members of the
church. No examination or discrimination should be used; to belong to
the Christian community should constitute church-membership.
But this, we know, is not the case. God chooses now to make up his
visible church not as formerly, but of those who give credible evidence
of regeneration. They who worship with us, but do not profess to be
Christians, are hopeful subjects of effort and prayer, whom we expect to
receive hereafter to the visible church, on profession of their faith.
As the Christian church is constituted differently from the Jewish
church, in this respect, discrimination and separation taking place
between the members of a Christian congregation, have we not analogical
reason to infer that it may also be thus with regard to children?--who
once, indeed, were members of the church of God, but, under the
dispensation of the Spirit, they fall, with other unconverted members of
the congregation, out of membership in the church.
_Mr. C._ And yet, Br. R., the fall is not far, nor hurtful. They are
entitled to all the privileges, and they enjoy, or should enjoy, all the
care and effort, which they would have under a different name. Only they
do not come to the Lord's Supper, as a matter of course, as they did to
the Passover.
_Mr. S._ Suppose that the legislature should incorporate a fish-market,
and cede to the proprietors fifteen square miles of the sea, within
which they should have the privilege of taking fish. All the fish,
within those fifteen miles of salt water, might be said to _belong_ to
the market; yet every one of them must be taken by hook and line ere his
belonging to the market is of any practicable value. So the children of
the church may be said to belong to the church, and are to constitute
her chief resource. Rivers, and other distant or neighboring waters,
would also send fish to that market, even if they were "far off;" but it
is from the bay at her doors that the market would derive her principal
supplies. I do not see that children are members of the church, any
further than those fishes belong to that market. Go there when you will,
you see the stalls filled from those adjacent waters; supplies are
continually coming in; they are, in a sense, secured to the market by a
covenant; yet every fish is caught and handled, before he has anything
like membership in that market, as really as though he swam and were
caught in Baffin's Bay;--only he is now far more likely to be caught,
and, in a sense, he already belongs to the market by the seal of the
state.
Mr. A., the reader of the sermon, not having much ideality, but much
plain good sense, yet taking everything literally at first, and from his
own honesty supposing that all figures of speech are to be cashed, as it
were, for what they purport on their face, immediately challenged his
brother to carry out the illustration. He asked him whether the constant
passage, in and out, of fishes from and beyond the ceded fifteen miles,
allowed of any resemblance, in the migratory creatures, to the children
of the church, who are born and remain in the limits of the church, and
are designated, individually, by virtue of their parentage.
Mr. S. replied, that he did not mean to make a comparison to satisfy all
the points of the case, and he hoped that the brethren would take it
with due allowance.
Mr. T. said that he had thought of this illustration: "All the young
male children of the Levites might be said to be members of the
priesthood. They certainly 'belonged' to the priesthood. But no one of
them could officiate till he had complied with certain conditions, nor
if he was the subject of certain disabilities. He believed that the
children of God's people have, by the grace of God, as really a
presumptive relation, by future membership, to the church of Christ, as
an infant Levite boy had to sacred offices; prayer, with the child, as
well as for it, and faithful training, with a spiritual use of God's
appointed ordinances, constitute, he was persuaded, as good reason to
hope that the child of a true believer will become a Christian, and
that, too, early in life, as that the young son of Levi would minister
in the levitical office."
"O," said Mr. B., "how many cases there are which seem to disprove
that. You will be obliged to reflect severely on some good people as
parents, if you take so strong ground."
_Mr. T._ I do not despair of a child whose parents, or parent, has
really covenanted with God for him, even though the child be long a
wanderer from the fold.
But it is the same now with Abraham's spiritual seed as it was with his
natural posterity,--neglect on the part of parents may work a forfeiture
of the covenant promises; failure in family government, above all
things, may frustrate every good influence which would otherwise have
had a powerful effect in the conversion of the child. The sons of Eli
were not well governed; Esau was evidently of an undisciplined spirit.
With regard to the children of several good men, in the Bible, it may be
inferred, that the public engagements of the fathers hindered them from
bestowing needful attention upon their sons. The only thing derogatory
to the prophet Samuel, of which we are informed, is, that his sons were
vile. With regard to certain cases of mournful wickedness, on the part
of the children of eminently good men, it will be found that some of
these men, occupying, perhaps, important stations of a public nature,
such as the Christian ministry, were so engrossed in their public duties
as not to give sufficient time and attention to their own families;
which is a great shame and folly in any father of a family. In vain do
we plead the covenant promises, if we neglect covenant duties. Grace is
not hereditary in any sense that compromises our free agency; its
subjects are born "not of blood;" there are many of the children of the
kingdom who will be cast out into outer darkness, but among them, we may
venture to say, will not be found those whose parents diligently sought
their moral and religious culture in the exercise of a strict,
judicious, affectionate, prayerful, watch and care, praying with them in
secret, which, it seems to me, is, perhaps, the most powerful of all the
means which a parent can use to influence the moral and religious
character of a child.
"Is it not a mournful inconsistency," said Mr. R., "for us to be
laboring and spending our strength and lives for the conversion and
salvation of others, and not be equally zealous for the souls of the
children whom God has given us?"
_Mr. C._ Our habits of seclusion and study may operate to make us
reserved, moody, and so repulsive, to our own children. We ought to be
interested in their every-day affairs, and watch for opportunities to
form their opinions, on moral as well as religious subjects, and be as
kind and assiduous to them, certainly, as we endeavor to be to other
children.
* * * * *
What more could these good men have said, with regard to the subject,
had they concluded to adopt the terms "member" and "membership," to
express the relation of children to the church? They were not conscious
of omitting or diminishing one privilege or blessing to which the
children of the church are entitled; everything which the most strenuous
advocates of "infant church-membership," so called, mention as accruing
to them, they claimed in their behalf. Did infant church-membership
admit to the Lord's Supper, as it did to the passover, the children
would now, with propriety, be said to be "members of the church." But,
inasmuch as, under the Christian dispensation, they cannot come to the
sacrament which distinguishes between the regenerate and the
unregenerate, without a change of heart, they, and all those who are
associated with the church in general acts of worship, and in Christian
privileges, but are not converted persons, are, alike, under the
Christian system, removed from outward membership--only, that the
children of the church have privileges and promises which go far to
increase the probability of their future church-membership, and directly
to prepare them for that sacred relation.
"THE CHILDREN OF THE CHURCH," then, is the sufficient name by which it
seems desirable that the children of believers should be designated.
And, instead of using the term "church-membership," applied to them, we
shall include everything which is properly theirs, we shall lose
nothing, we shall prevent great misunderstanding, and liability to
perversion, by substituting the "Relation of Baptized Children to the
Church," whenever we wish to express the peculiar and most precious
connection which they hold, in the arrangements of divine grace, with
the covenant people of God.
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