But, to insist still more stoutly upon this point, they add that baptism is a sacrament of repentance and of faith. Accordingly, since neither of these can come about in tender infancy, we must guard against admitting infants into the fellowship of baptism, lest its meaning be made empty and fleeting. But these darts are aimed more at God than at us. For it is very clear from many testimonies of Scripture that circumcision was also a sign of repentance [Jer. 4:4; 9:25; cf. Deut. 10:16; 30:6]. Then Paul calls it the seal of the righteousness of faith [Rom. 4:11]. Therefore, let a reason be required of God himself why he commanded it to be impressed on the bodies of infants. For since baptism and circumcision are in the same case, our opponents cannot give anything to one without conceding it to the other. If they have recourse to their usual way out, that the age of infancy then symbolized spiritual infants, their path is already blocked. We therefore say that, since God communicated circumcision to infants as a sacrament of repentance and of faith, it does not seem absurd if they are now made participants in baptism—unless men choose to rage openly at God’s institution. But as in all God’s acts, so in this very act also there shines enough wisdom and righteousness to repel the detractions of the impious. For although infants, at the very moment they were circumcised, did not comprehend with their understanding what that sign meant, they were truly circumcised to the mortification of their corrupt and defiled nature, a mortification that they would afterward practice in mature years. To sum up, this objection can be solved without difficulty: infants are baptized into future repentance and faith, and even though these have not yet been formed in them, the seed of both lies hidden within them by the secret working of the Spirit.
With this answer everything gleaned from the meaning of baptism that they twist against us is once for all overthrown. Such is the label with which Paul marks it when he calls it the washing of regeneration and of renewal [Titus 3:5]. From this they reason that it is to be conferred only on persons capable of experiencing these things. But we are free to counter this by saying: neither was circumcision, which designated regeneration, to be conferred upon any but the regenerate. And thus a thing instituted by God will be condemned by us. Accordingly (as we have already suggested at various times), all the arguments that tend to shake circumcision are without force in assailing baptism.
And they do not escape by saying that what rests upon God’s sure authority is established and fixed, even though there is no reason for it, but that such reverence is not due either infant baptism or other like things that are not commended to us by God’s express word; when once they are caught and held in this dilemma, they are held forever. God’s command concerning circumcision of infants was either lawful and not to be trifled with, or it was deserving of censure. If there was in it nothing incongruous or absurd, neither can anything absurd be found in the observance of infant baptism.
John Calvin | Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 4.16.20 (HT: Mason Craig).
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I don’t know that the idea of circumcision being a “sign of repentance” is demonstrative here. The texts above speak of people being circumcised in their hearts, but that is a metaphor for their repentance. If I tell people to “cast themselves on God’s mercy” as a metaphor for faith, that doesn’t mean that God says that everyone who physically throws himself on something is signifying his future faith. There are more direct texts referring to baptism as “a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins,” but literal circumcision is not described as circumcision for the remission of sins.
Do you mean demonstrated
No, sorry, I meant “demonstrative,” meaning that it does not demonstrate the point Calvin seeks to make. For even if circumcision is in some sense a sign of repentance, and baptism also is, that does not mean that what was appropriate for the former also fits with the latter in all respects. I could see a Baptist appealing to the fact that, for example, women had no sign of the covenant on their own persons in the OT, but we do not transfer that to the NT and preclude women from baptism. I believe demonstrative is appropriate here but I could be wrong 😅