If indeed there had been a different religion introduced; if christians were not engrafted into the old stock; if they worshipped some other than the God of Israel; if there was another moral law, another Christ than he whose day the fathers anticipated, and another faith; this privilege of receiving infants into the church might have been interrupted; and in that case unless expressly again enjoined, it ought not to have been regarded in practice. But if the christian religion is founded upon the prophets; if the peculiarities of the Jewish worship were but shadows of gospel things; if both were directed to the same glory of God and salvation of men; if they both enjoined the same holiness and presented the same object of faith; if those who were saved under the Old Testament shall be associated with those who are saved under the New; the privileges formerly granted to children will remain the same; and it is not wonderful that the first christian should obey the dictates of parental tenderness; and that desiring the salvation of their children as well as their own, should cause their households to be baptized as well as themselves. To have affirmed in the gospel history expressly, that children were a part of the household, could have answered no purpose in the first days of christianity, but would have been thought repetitions and unmeaning until modern times. In the fifth, in the third and even so early as in the second century, the baptism of infants was the established usage of the church, and it was then thought, and not disputed, to have been the practice of the apostles themselves. Quest. CLXVI. QUEST. CLXVI. _Unto whom is baptism to be administered?_ _Answ._ Baptism is not to be administered to any that are out of the visible church, and so strangers from the covenant of promise, till they profess their faith in Christ, and obedience to him; but infants descending from parents, either both, or but one of them, professing faith in Christ, and obedience to him, are in that respect within the covenant, and to be baptised. In this answer, which principally respects the subjects of baptism, we have,