Paedobaptism examined - v. 2 Author:Abraham Booth Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: taught a widow came fresh to remembrance. That ancient Briton, as you perhaps may recollect, advised his female disciple thus to address the Omniscient: 'Thou kn... more »owest, O Lord, how holy, and pure, and clean, from all wickedness, and iniquity, and rapine, these hands are, which I now lift up to thee; like as the lips with which I offer supplications to thee to have mercy upon me, are pure, and clean, and free from all falsehood.' Forgive my suspicions, dear Sir, if I cannot but apprehend, that there is too great a likeness between the grounds of your parental prayers, and those of this widow, as taught by Pelagius. The reasons of expecting an answer in both cases are, not sovereign mercy and atoning blood; these lie open to a publican, when praying for himself or his offspring—these lie open to the vilest wretch upon earth, if he possess a disposition to pray;—but a supposed and an immense difference between the state and character of certain infants in one case, of a widow in the other, compared with those of children and of adults in common."—The following extract from Dr. Willet shall conclude this branch of the subject: " Infants neither have faith in themselves, nor yet are profited or furthered to their salvation by the faith of others.... Infants are not justified, nor relieved or helped forward towards their salvation, by the faith of their parents or godfathers, when they are baptized; for the scripture saith, 'The just shall live by faith;' that i?, by his own faith, not the faith of another." f Sect. 3.—Jewish Circumcision. Dr. Willet.—" Arguments drawn from types and figures conclude not, unless they be types ordained of God to such use; neither are the sacraments of the gospel to be squared out according to the pattern of theceremonies of the law. We also deny, th...« less