Yet we have already seen that serious injustice is done to God’s covenant if we do not assent to it, as if it were weak of itself, since its effect depends neither upon baptism nor upon any additions. Afterward, a sort of seal is added to the sacrament, not to confer efficacy upon God’s promise as if it were invalid of itself, but only to confirm it to us. From this it follows that the children of believers are baptized not in order that they who were previously strangers to the church may then for the first time become children of God, but rather that, because by the blessing of the promise they already belonged to the body of Christ, they are received into the church with this solemn sign.
John Calvin | Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 4.15.22.
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Mike Brown
Mike Brown is pastor of Chiesa Riformata Filadelfia, Milan, Italy. Prior to serving in Italy he was pastor of Christ Reformed Church, Santee, CA. He is a graduate of Westminster Seminary California, a veteran of the United States Army, and author of Christ and the Condition: The Covenant Theology of Samuel Petto (1624–1711) (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Reformation Heritage Books, 2012) and co-author (with Zach Keele) of Sacred Bond : Covenant Theology Explored (Grandville, MI: Reformation Fellowship, 2017).
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