Question 74

Ought Infants also to be baptized

Yea trulie: For seeing they belong to the couenant and Church of God, as wel as those that be at years of discretion, and seeing vnto them is promised by the blood of Christ,^a forgiuenes of sins, and the^b holie Ghost the worker of faith, no lesse than to the other: they ought also by Baptisme to bee ingraffed into the Church of God, and to be^c discerned from the children of Infidels, as they were in the olde Testament by^d circumcision, in place wherof, was ordained^e Baptisme in the new Testament.^f

The vse

Ovt of this defence of baptizing of infants, ariseth a double doctrine and comfort: the one to the parentes, when they see, that the Lord wil be, not onelie their God, but the God of their seed, which is confirmed vnto them as it were, by a seale printed vnto them, according vnto that saying. Wee are all baptized in one bodie: The other to the children, that they knowe they are ingraffed into the bodie of the Church, and therefore are somewhat the better commended to the rest of the members, that is, to the faythfull: & when they are growne to yeares of discretion, may thereby, be pricked forward not a litle, to an earnest indeuour to serue God, by whome they were receiued for sonnes, by a solemne pledg of their adoption, before by their age they were able to acknowledg him for their Father.