Quest. LXX. Is there any such thing in the church, as a rank or classis, or species of church members at age, who are not to be admitted to the Lord's table, but only to hearing the word and prayer, between infant members, and adult confirmed ones?
Answ. Some have excogitated such a classis, or species, or order, for convenience, as a prudent, necessary thing; because to admit all to the Lord's table they think dangerous on one side; and to cast all that are unfit for it out of the church, they think dangerous on the other side, and that which the people would not bear. Therefore to preserve the reverence of the sacrament, and to preserve their own and the church's peace, they have contrived this middle way or rank. And indeed the controversy seemeth to be more about the title (whether it may be called a middle order of mere learners and worshippers) than about the matter. I have occasionally written more of it than I can here stay to recite; and the accurate handling of it requireth more words than I will here use. This breviate therefore shall be all.
1. It is certain that such catechumens as are in mere preparation to faith, repentance, and baptism, are no church members or christians at all; and so in none of these ranks.
2. Baptism is the only ordinary regular door of entrance into the visible church; and no man (unless in extraordinary cases) is to be taken for a church member or visible christian till baptized.
Two objections are brought against this. 1. The infants of christians are church members as such, before baptism, and so are believers. They are baptized because members, and not members by baptism.
What makes a visible member?
Answ. This case hath no difficulty. 1. A believer as such, is a member of Christ and the church invisible, but not of the visible church, till he be an orderly professor of that belief. And this profession is not left to every man's will how it shall be made, but Christ hath prescribed and instituted a certain way and manner of profession, which shall be the only ordinary symbol or badge, by which the church shall know visible members; and that is baptism. Indeed when baptism cannot be had, an open profession without it may serve; for sacraments are made for man, and not man for sacraments. But when it may be had, it is Christ's appointed symbol, tessera, and church door. And till a person be baptized, he is but irregularly and initially a professor; as an embryo in the womb is a man; or as a covenant before the writing, sealing, and delivering is initially a covenant; or as persons privately contracted without solemn matrimony are married; or as a man is a minister upon election and trial before ordination: he hath only, in all these cases, the beginning of a title, which is not complete; nor at all sufficient in foro ecclesiæ, to make a man visibly and legally a married man, a minister, and so here a christian. For Christ hath chosen his own visible badge, by which his church members must be known.
2. And the same is to be said of the infant title of the children of believers; they have but an initial right before baptism, and not the badge of visible christians. For there are three distinct gradations to make up their visible Christianity. 1. Because they are their own, (and as it were parts of themselves,) therefore believers have power and obligation to dedicate their children in covenant with God. 2. Because every believer is himself dedicated to God, with all that is his own, (according to his capacity,) therefore a believer's child is supposed to be virtually (not actually) dedicated to God in his own dedication or covenant, as soon as his child hath a being. 3. Being thus virtually and implicitly first dedicated, he is after actually and regularly dedicated in baptism, and sacramentally receiveth the badge of the church; and this maketh him a visible member or christian, to which the two first were but introductory, as conception is to human nativity.
Object. But the seed of believers as such are in the covenant; and therefore church members.
Answ. The word covenant here is ambiguous; either it signifieth God's law of grace, or prescribed terms for salvation, with his immediate offer of the benefits to accepters, called the single covenant of God; or it signifieth this with man's consent, called the mutual covenant, where both parties covenant. In the former sense, the covenant only offereth church membership, but maketh no man a church member, till consent. It is but God's conditional promise, "If thou believe thou shalt be saved," &c. If thou give up thyself and children to me, I will be your God, and you shall be my people. But it is only the mutual covenant that maketh a christian or church member.