The disputation turns again to the Baptist complaint against infant baptism. Cufin is reported to say, “I pray you M. Doctor come to the point: how prove you the Baptism of children to be lawful by the Word of God?”¹ To this Featley replied, “It seems you willingly fall upon no other point but this of Anabaptism; which heresy was condemned near fifteen hundred years ago.”² To the last, the anonymous “Scotchman” objected, “Not sixteen hundred years ago.” The Scotsman has a point. Taken literally, that would place the heretical group in the AD 40s, which seems unlikely. To this Featley conceded, “If it were but a thousand, it is long enough, being condemned by the whole Christian Church Greek and Latin.”³ This clarification suggests that perhaps he had in mind the Donatists, who held a highly realized eschatology and convictions about the church (e.g., of a pure, gathered congregation) similar to that of the Anabaptists and Baptists. The point of contact here might be Augustine’s Concerning Baptism: Against The Donatists (c. AD 400).⁴ Augustine wrote,

And this is the firm tradition of the universal Church, in respect of the baptism of infants, who certainly are as yet unable “with the heart to believe unto righteousness, and with the mouth to make confession unto salvation,” as the thief could do; nay, who even, by crying and moaning when the mystery is performed upon them, raise their voices in opposition to the mysterious words, and yet no Christian will say that they are baptized to no purpose.

And if any one seek for divine authority in this matter, though what is held by the whole Church, and that not as instituted by Councils, but as a matter of invariable custom, is rightly held to have been handed down by apostolical authority, still we can form a true conjecture of the value of the sacrament of baptism in the case of infants, from the parallel of circumcision, which was received by God’s earlier people, and before receiving which Abraham was justified, as Cornelius also was enriched with the gift of the Holy Spirit before he was baptized.⁵

Augustine’s argument was effectively anti-Anabaptist (and anti-Baptist) and congenial to Featley’s purpose since Augustine’s biblical defense of infant baptism had been that of the Reformed since Zwingli’s 1525 defense of infant baptism and his 1527 Refutation of the Tricks of the Catabaptists.⁶ Augustine appealed to the parallel between infant circumcision and infant baptism. All the objections that one can make against infant baptism may also be made against infant circumcision, and yet the Lord plainly instituted infant circumcision: “He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised” (Gen 17:12). Augustine noted that Abraham was circumcised as a believer, but that infants are circumcised even before they are able to believe with the heart (qui nondum poterat corde credere).⁷ Abraham circumcised Isaac first, applying the “seal of this righteousness of faith” and

afterwards, as he imitated the faith of his father, the righteousness itself followed as he grew up, of which the seal had been given before when he was an infant. So in infants, who are baptized, the sacrament of regeneration is given first, and if they maintain a Christian piety, conversion also in the heart will follow, of which the mysterious sign had gone before in the outward body.⁸

Featley’s other interlocutor, Cufin, objected that the history of the church was “neither here nor there” on the ground that, in the new covenant, whether we worship in Samaria or Jerusalem is immaterial (John 4) and that thus, the Samaritans, for insisting on their location, were in error for “above 2000 years.”⁹ His point was to subvert Featley’s appeal to antiquity. To this Featley replied that Cufin was “mistaken” in his chronology and more importantly, that the Samaritans were “in error a long time but this [infant baptism] is no error, but a doctrine of truth, that children ought to be baptized.”¹⁰ He defended infant baptism on three grounds:

1. Scripture.
2. From consent of the universal church.
3. From evident reason.¹¹

There are two sorts of biblical proofs, Featley argued: “some probable, some necessary.” Probable refers to arguments from inference. Necessary refers to plain statements in Scripture. He draws his first argument from inference from Acts 16:33, “That the ‘Apostle baptized the jailer with all that belonged to him’ and ‘Lydia and her household,’ Acts 16.15 and 1 Cor 1.16 that he ‘baptized the household of Stephanas;’ and in a whole household in all probability there were some children.”¹²

Predictably, the Baptist “Scotch-man” was having nothing to do with inferences and demanded “necessary proofs out of God’s Word.” Featley turned immediately to the analogy between baptism and circumcision. This analogy he regarded as “good ground, reason, or warrant for the baptizing of children now, as there was of old for circumcising them.”¹³ For Featley, every command to circumcise an infant is tantamount to a command to baptize infants.

That Featley regarded this as a “necessary” argument (as distinct from a probable argument) reveals the different frameworks within which the Baptists and Featley (and the Westminster Divines who commissioned him to write this response) read the history of redemption. For Featley, and the Divines, who confessed, “There are not therefore two covenants of grace, differing in substance, but one and the same, under various dispensations,”¹⁴ covenant of grace was not absent from the types and shadows, nor was it merely foreshadowed. Rather, for Featley and the Divines, the substance of the covenant of grace was already present in, with, and under the types and shadows. Only a few years after this debate, the Divines would confess that the covenant of grace was,

administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews, all foresignifying Christ to come; which were, for that time, sufficient and efficacious, through the operation of the Spirit, to instruct and build up the elect in faith in the promised Messiah, by whom they had full remission of sins, and eternal salvation.¹⁵

In other words, for Featley, as for the rest of the Reformed, infant circumcision had been instituted in the church. Infants had been visibly included in the church for two thousand years before the inauguration of the new covenant. Our brothers and sisters who lived under the types and shadows had “full remission of sins and eternal salvation” before the inauguration of the new covenant. They were already recipients of the “efficacious” work of the Spirit.

Of course, the “Scotch-man” rejected Featley’s argument on the grounds that there is no express command to baptize infants as there had been to circumcise them.¹⁶ Thus, he revealed the radical departure of the Baptists, including the Particular Baptists, from the Augustinian, Reformation, and Reformed understanding of the continuity of the covenant of grace—that is, from their covenant theology.

Featley’s reply was the standard reply that the Reformed had been making to the Anabaptists for more than a century: circumcision, “in the old law” (the patristic expression for the Old Testament) was to the Jews what baptism is to Christians—namely, “the Sacrament of entrance into the church; for so Saint Augustine and all the sound Divines hold, that our sacrament of baptism answers [corresponds to] theirs of Circumcision, as the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper does their Paschal Lamb.”¹⁷

Circumcision, he argued, is substantially the same as baptism because it too was instituted as a “seal of the righteousness of faith” (Rom 4:11). Baptism is also a seal of the righteousness of faith and of “the covenant of grace and the free remission [forgiveness] of sins by faith.”¹⁸ Children, before they were eight days old, under the Old Testament, did not have “actual faith” and could not make profession of faith; nevertheless, “they received the Sacrament thereof.”¹⁹

Therefore by the same reason children under the Gospel [new covenant], though they have not actual faith, nor can make profession thereof, yet may and ought to receive the Sacrament of Baptism, which is a seal of the Covenant of grace, and righteousness by faith.²⁰

The “Scotch-man” again demands proof “by Scripture that” infants “ought to be baptized.” Featley replied by turning to John 3:5, “Truly, truly I say to you, except a man be born of water, and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.”²¹ From this text he inferred that to be born of water is to be baptized and to born of the Spirit is to be regenerated,²² Therefore there is a “necessity of baptizing Children or else they cannot enter into the Kingdom of God, (that is ordinarily) fore we must not tie God to outward means. But the former is true. Ergo the latter.”²³

The Baptist Scotch-man retorted that this means that all the baptized are regenerated and only the baptized. What then, he demanded, becomes of the unbaptized? Featley argued that the state of unbaptized children is the same as

those among the Jews who died before they were circumcised; we leave them to the mercy of God, conceiving charitably of their salvation, because the children are comprised in the Covenant, Gen. 17.7 and Acts 2.39 and the Apostle says, ‘They are holy,’ 1 Cor. 7.14. All that I will conclude from this place is, that no children enter into the Kingdom of Heaven by the ordinary way chalked out by Christ but those who are baptized; or, which comes all to one, that the Sacrament of Baptism ought to be administered to Children as the ordinary means of their salvation.²⁴

Throughout this dialogue we see not only the dueling proof texts, but also, and more fundamentally, the competing ways that the Baptists and the Reformed read Scripture and the continuity of the covenant of grace.

The “Scotch-man” objects that John 3:5 was not spoken about infants. Featley replied that neither was it spoken about females, and yet the Baptists will be hard-pressed to deny baptism to females on the ground that they are not explicitly listed.²⁵ Featley closes out this section of the treatise, which turns to ecclesiology next, with a syllogism (about which he had warned them at the outset):

1. All that enter into the Kingdom of God ought to be born of Water and the Spirit.
2. But children enter into the Kingdom of God as well as adults.
3. Therefore, children ought to be born again with water etc.

An unnamed “Anabaptist” objected: “How prove you that children enter the kingdom of God?” Featley: “All those that are holy enter the kingdom of God” and cited and quoted again 1 Cor 7:14. “Ergo, they enter the kingdom of God.”²⁶ An “Anabaptist” complains: “The Apostle means that such are not bastards.”²⁷

At which the company laughing, as a ridiculous answer, as if all that were not Bastards were holy; or that no children could be holy in the Apostle’s sense who were base [low] born.²⁸

The competing conceptions of the substantial continuity of the new covenant with the Abrahamic also, of course, impinged on the administration. The fundamental question between the Baptists and the Reformed then, as now, was whether God has changed the administration of the covenant of grace in the new covenant. The Baptist assumes that children have now been excluded from the external administration until they can demonstrate that they already have the substance of the covenant of grace (Christ and his benefits), whereas the Reformed were (and are) convinced that the ordained means by which God brings his elect to new life and true faith has never changed: inclusion of children into the visible covenant community where the means of grace are administered.

Notes

1. Daniel Featley, Dippers Dipt: Or, The Anabaptists Duck’d and Plung’d over Head and Ears, at a Disputation at Southwark (London: N. B. And Richard Royston, 1647), 8. The name of the interlocutor is given in the margin as “Cufin.” Could this be a form of Kiffin?
2. Featley, Dippers Dipt, 8.
3. Featley, 9.
4. Augustine of Hippo, On Baptism, Against The Donatists, in St. Augustin: The Writings Against The Manichaeans and Against The Donatists, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. J. R. King, vol. 4, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (Buffalo: Christian Literature Company, 1887), 407–515.
5. Augustine, On Baptism, 4.23.31–24.32, p. 461.
6. Huldrych Zwingli, An Exposition of the Faith, in Zwingli and Bullinger, ed. John Ballie and John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1953), 129–75; Huldrych Zwingli, The Latin Works of Huldreich Zwingli, ed. William John Hinke, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Heidelberg Press, 1922).
7. Augustine, On Baptism, 4.24.32; Augustine, De baptismo contra donatistas libri septem in S. Aurelii Augustini opera omnia in Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 43.
8. Augustine, On Baptism, 4.24.32, pp. 461–62; De Baptismo, 24.31: “ita in baptizatis infantibus praecedit regenerationis Sacramentum; et si christianam tenuerint pietatem, sequetur etiam in corde conversio, cuius mysterium praecessit in corpore.” Augustine’s language here would seem to complicate the claim that all the fathers taught baptismal regeneration. Here Augustine argued that regeneration follows baptism.
9. Featley, Dippers Dipt, 9.
10. Featley, 9.
11. Featley, 9.
12. Featley, 9.
13. Featley, 9.
14. Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) 7.6.
15. WCF 7.5.
16. Featley, Dippers Dipt, 9.
17. Featley, 9–10.
18. Featley, 10.
19. Featley, 10.
20. Featley, 10.
21. There is an extended marginal note here seemingly dissenting from Featley’s use of this text in this context.
22. Featley, Dippers Dipt, 11.
23. Featley, 11.
24. Featley, 11.
25. Featley, 11. The margin note includes a Latin translation of a portion of and citation of Matt 19.14.
26. These designations are given in the margins.
27. Featley, 11.
28. Featley, 12.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

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Post authored by:

• R. Scott Clark

  

  R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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