15. But when and in what sort and degree Christ giveth the actual operations of the Spirit to all covenanted infants, it is wonderfully hard for us to know. But this much seemeth clear, 1. That Christ may when he please work on the soul of an infant to change its disposition, before it come to the use of reason. 2. That Christ and his Spirit as in covenant with infants, are ready to give all necessary assistance to infants for their inherent sanctification, in the use of those means, and on those further conditions, on which we must wait for it and expect it.[285] For the Holy Ghost is not so engaged to us in our covenant or baptism, as to be obliged presently to give us all the grace that we want; but only to give it us on certain further conditions, and in the use of certain means. But because this leads me up to another question, I will suspend the rest of the answer to this till that be handled. Only I must answer this objection. _Object._ It is contrary to the holy nature of God, complacentially to love an unsanctified infant, that is yet in his original corruption unchanged, and he justifieth none relatively from the guilt of sin, whom he doth not at once inherently sanctify. _Answ._ 1. God's complacential love respecteth every one as he is; for it is goodness only that he so loveth. Therefore he so loveth not those that either actually or habitually love not him, under any false supposition that they do love him when they do not. His love therefore to the adult and infants differeth as the objects differ. But there is this lovely in such infants; 1. That they are the children of believing, sanctified parents; 2. That they are by his covenant relatively united to Christ, and so are lovely as his members; 3. That they are pardoned all their original sin; 4. That they are set in the way to actual love and holiness; being thus dedicated to God. 2. All imperfect saints are sinners; and all sinners are as such abhorred of God, whose pure eyes cannot behold iniquity. As then it will stand with his purity to accept and love the adult upon their first believing, before their further sanctification, and notwithstanding the remnant of their sins, so may it do also to accept their infants through Christ upon their dedication. 3. As the actual sin imputed to infants was Adam's, and their parents' only by act, and not their own, it is no wonder if upon their parents' faith and repentance, Christ wash and justify them from that guilt which arose only from another's act.