He says: "There is the same inward cause moving God to take in the children of believing parents into the church and covenant, now, to be of the number of his people, as there was for taking the Jews and their children.

For the only reason why the Lord took in the children of the Jews with themselves evidently was his love to the parents.

'Because he loved thy fathers, therefore he chose their seed.' So that I do from hence believe, that either God's love is, in these days of his Gospel, less unto his people and servants than in the days of the Old Testament,--or, if it be as great, that then the same love respects the seed of his people now as then it did.

And, therefore, if then because he loved them he chose their seed to be of his church, so in these days because he loveth us he chooseth our seed to be of his church also." Though the title of the treatise from which I read is called the Church-Membership of Children, to which expression I have very great objections, and feel that it has done harm, yet this good man held the doctrine of infant church-membership in a sense which is free from all reproach of making people members of the church otherwise than by regeneration.

His belief on this point comes out under the following illustration: "These children may not be the sons of God and his people really and savingly, but God will honor them outwardly with his name and privileges, just as one that adopts a youngster tells the father that if the child carry himself well toward him, when he is grown up to years he shall possess the inheritance itself; but yet in the meanwhile he shall have this favor, to be called his son, and be of the family and household, and so be reckoned among the number of his sons." One of the chief reasons which brought this excellent man to New England, was that he could not in Old England enjoy the ordinance of infant baptism in its purity.