Quest. XLIII. Is the right of the baptized (infants or adult) to the sanctifying operations of the Holy Ghost, now absolute, or suspended on further conditions? And are the parents' further duties for their children such conditions of their children's reception of the actual assistances of the Spirit? Or are children's own actions such conditions? And may apostate parents forfeit the covenant benefits to their baptized infants or not?
Answ. The question is great and difficult, and few dare meddle with it. And almost all infant cases are to us obscure.
I. 1. It is certain that it is the parents' great duty to bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
2. It is certain that God hath appointed this to be the means of their actual knowledge, faith, and holiness.[287]
3. And God doth not appoint such means unnecessarily or in vain: nor may we ordinarily expect his grace but in the use of the means of grace, which he hath appointed us to use.
4. It is certain that God's receiving the children of the faithful, is an act of God's love to the parents as well as the children, and promised as a part of his blessing on themselves.
5. It is certain that these parents hold their own mercies upon the condition of their own continued fidelity: and (let their apostasy be on other reasons never so impossible, or not future, yet) the promise of continuance and consummation of the personal felicity of the greatest saint on earth, is still conditional, upon the condition of his persevering fidelity.
6. Even before children are capable of instruction, there are certain duties imposed by God on the parents for their sanctification; viz. 1. That the parents pray earnestly and believingly for them. 2. That they themselves so live towards God as may invite him still to bless their children for their sakes, as he did Abraham's, and usually did to the faithful's seed.[288]
7. It is certain that the church ever required parents, not only to enter their children into the covenant, and so to leave them, but to do their after duty for their good, and to pray for them, and educate them according to their covenant.
8. It is plain that if there were none to promise so to educate them, the church would not baptize them. And God himself, who allowed the Israelites, and still alloweth us to bring our children into his covenant, doth it on this supposition, that we promise also to go on to do our duty for them, and that we actually do it.