(2.) A man may be baptized by a general unfixed minister, who is not the pastor of any particular church:[273] and he may be baptized in solitude, where there is no particular church. The eunuch, Acts viii. was not baptized into any particular church.
(3.) Baptism doth but make us christians, but a man may be a christian who is no member of any particular church.
(4.) Otherwise baptism should oblige us necessarily to a man, and be a covenant between the baptized and the pastor and church into which he is baptized: but it is only our covenant with Christ.
(5.) We may frequently change our particular church relation, without being baptized again. But we never change our relation to the church which we are baptized into, unless by apostasy.
2. Yet the same person at the same time that he is baptized may be entered into the universal church, and into a particular; and ordinarily it ought to be so where it can be had.
3. And the covenant which we make in baptism with Christ, doth oblige us to obey him, and consequently to use his instituted means, and so to hear his ministers, and hold due communion with his churches.
4. But this doth no more enter us into a particular church, than into a particular family. For we as well oblige ourselves to obey him in family relations as in church relations.
5. When the baptized therefore is at once entered into the universal and particular church, it is done by a double consent to the double relation. By baptism he professeth his consent to be a member of Christ and his universal church; and additionally he consenteth to be guided by that particular pastor in that particular church; which is another covenant or consent.
[273] Matt. xxviii. 19, 20.