Re-Review.
Good Sirs, consider what a reasonlesse reply to reason this is.
For if by faith you mean only a faculty of believing, what ever in time may be told them, which is the adaequate object of faith in general, that is in all reason∣able creatures: and is de esse to them, universally, innate in them, as a part of the rationall soul, as well as the faculty of remembring what in time they may hear, and of willing, and chosing what in time may be propounded to them, and of understanding what in time may be taught them; but what is all this to your purpose, who plead faiths being in some infants onely, not in all: when as faith in that sense is as much in all infants as in some, and would (if it could at all entitle such as have it to baptism) entitle all mankind to baptism as well as some, sith all have the faculty of believing things (as beasts which are meerly sensitive have not) flowing naturally from the rationall soul in man?
But if by faith you mean restrictively, that faith in special, whose adequate object is the word of God preached, in the promise and precept of it, which one∣ly makes us subjects of salvation and baptism, dare you say that tis of equal neces∣sitie, and certainty that faith in such a sense is in infants, as the faculty of Rea∣son, and understanding is? so that by the same Reason that we deny one of these to be in them, it may be therefore denied that they have the other? and that their non knowledge of good or evill will as much prove them to be habitually no rea∣sonable creatures, as it proves them to be habitually no true believers of the Gos∣pel?
For shame Sirs blot out and abjure this absurdity, for you cannot but know that the faculty of understanding in man is Habitus a natur â innatus, a habit in∣gendred in them in very nature, yea in all mankind necessarily, & qua id ipsum: but your selves say faith, in the sense in which we speak of it, is but Habitus in∣fusus, a habit infused, and that into some only, for all say you have it not, and I say tis Habitus acquisitus, rather an acquired habit, which comes if not with∣out the gift of God to persons therein, yet also in that way of hearing the word, which on our parts is first done, in order to its being begotten in us, whereby we come to know good and evil first, i.e. to be convinced of sin and guilt in our selves, and righteousness and mercy in God, through Jesus Christ, and then to have faith in him to justification: in this therefore Reason remains unrefuted, and rather routs you, then is routed by you.