Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/366

156 of, they by any means, (by purchase or captivity, or abandoned by their Heathen parents) came into the hands of pious persons ." For, (as has often been alleged), since not only the children born of "faithful Abraham," were admitted into the covenant of circumcision, but they also who were "bought with his money," or the slave, "born in his house," so also, and much more, might all those be admitted into our enlarged covenant in , whom the Church could, with safety to herself, offer unto . It was necessary, namely, for the purity of the Church, that some guarantee should be given, that those admitted into her, the body of , should be brought up as her true children; but the Sacrament had its power not of man but of : the faith of those who brought them was available in that they undertook the condition, which (for the well-being of the Church) was necessary for their reception, and brought them to their Saviour to take them into His arms and bless them: the faith of the Church was available in that she believed the promises of , and administered the Sacrament committed to her, whereby those promises of were realized and applied to the individual. "Be it then," says Hooker, "that Baptism belongeth to none but such as either believe presently, or else, being infants, are the children of believing parents. In case the Church do bring children to the holy font, whose natural parents are either unknown or known to be such as the Church accurseth, but yet forgetteth not in that severity to take compassion upon their offspring, (for it is the Church which doth offer them to Baptism by the ministry of presenters,) were it not against both equity and duty to refuse the mother of believers herself, and not to take her in this case for a faithful parent? It is not the virtue of our fathers, nor the faith of any other, that can give us the true holiness which we have by virtue of our new-birth. Yet even through the common faith and of 's Church, (a thing which no quality of parents can prejudice) I say, through the faith of the Church of , undertaking the motherly care of our souls, so far forth we may be and are in