That is to say, in both cases, it is a church-member's privilege.
Without detailing the conversation at this point, let me say, I take it for granted that Abraham, as my great spiritual ancestor, my representative before God, my commissioner to receive for me and transmit my privileges and blessings, continues in that relation unless expressly set aside.

Christ did not set him aside.

How wonderfully he is brought forward under the new dispensation, when it is said to us, "And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." But, pray, why should Abraham be intruded in connection with Christ, if he with his covenant is like a lapsed legacy, or a superseded act of Congress?
Why comes he here, in connection with the Saviour, and tells me that if I am Christ's, then am I his, Abraham's, seed?
Hear this: "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ." Wonderful elevation of Abraham and his blessing, as the great type of all that Christ was to procure for us! If Abraham and his covenant ceased with the Jewish people, how does the blessing of Abraham fully come upon us, the Gentiles?
But give me his covenant for my children; then I see that Christ is executor of the testament made with Abraham for his children; and I am one of the heirs; as indeed I am, even if I have no children, but if I have, all of Abraham's privileges and his covenanting God are mine and theirs.
So that, I said to my friends, I go to the Bible not to say, "Must I baptize my children ?" but, "Am I forbidden to baptize them ?" All my predecessors in the church of God, before Christ, had the privilege of bringing their children into the bonds of the covenant with themselves.

If they felt as we do about it (and strict usage, and the rich experience which they had had of its benefits, must have made it inestimably precious to them), it is incredible that a sudden and total discontinuance of it, at the beginning of Christianity, should not have occasioned great clamor.

The formalists, at least, would have remonstrated at the seeming violation, by this new order of things, of natural affection.