And, I think, we do not assert this without some warrant from scripture; for when God told Abraham, in the promise but now mentioned, that he would be _a God unto him, and to his seed_, which is the foundation of their federal holiness; this is assigned as a reason why they should be devoted to God in circumcision, Gen. xvii. 10. for we cannot but conclude circumcision, as we do baptism, to have been an ordinance of dedication or separation to God: And, in Acts ii. 39. when the apostle had been pressing those Jews, amongst the mixed multitude, to whom he had preached, to _repent and be baptized_; and encouraged them to hope for the _gift of the Holy Ghost_; he assigns this as a reason, namely, that _the promise was to them and to their children_, which refers to the promise of the covenant made with Abraham, and his seed; and it immediately follows, _and to them that are afar off_, that is, the Gentiles, who might claim this promise, when they believed, whom the apostle calls elsewhere, _children of the promise, as Isaac was_, Gal. iv. 28. These who are styled, before conversion, a people _afar off_, were after it reckoned the spiritual seed of Abraham, and so had a right to the blessings of the covenant, that God would be a God to them; and, by a parity of reason, in the same sense in which the seed of Abraham were children of the promise, the seed of all other believers are to be reckoned so, till by their own act and deed, they renounce this external covenant relation: Now, from hence it may be inferred, that if they stand in this relation, to God, this is publicly to be owned; and accordingly they are to be given up to him in baptism, as there is therein a professed declaration thereof.