It's really great to be back with you, and that's not something just that I say, it's the truth. Sharon and I would really be glad to be back and be able to sleep on our own beds for a few days in a row, that was nice, but also to see all of you most of all. Now, I don't know exactly what William said last week, but apparently he left the subject of the proper subjects of baptism for somebody else. Turns out I'm the somebody else. And you may wonder where we're going with the first part of this lesson, but what I'm doing is, well, there's this new word that's been coined. It's social media lingo, frenemies. The discussion on the subject of baptism that I'm going to engage in this morning has to do with frenemies. That is to say, we're going to get to the point and we're going to discuss the discussion between Reformed Baptist and Reformed Pedo-Baptist or Infant Baptist, and I want to explain that discussion to you. So let's get right into it, let's pray, and then we'll take up the whole subject of the proper subjects of baptism. And let's go to prayer. Father, we thank you that whenever we stand to proclaim and teach your word, the promise of our Lord Jesus Christ that he would be with us in this great task to the end of the age stands and we take our refuge in it this morning and pray for the help of your own Holy Spirit as we endeavor to open up this important subject and especially a subject that is formative for the local church. We ask these things in Jesus' name and for His sake. Amen. So, as I said, the proper subjects of baptism is what we're going to talk about. And by way of introduction, let me just say a couple of things. I want to talk about the context of the doctrine and only very briefly because James covered it last week, but you remember the three points in the chapter of the Confession dealing with this deal with the spiritual significance of baptism. And then paragraph two is what we're taking up this morning, the proper subjects of baptism. And then paragraphs three and four take up the outward elements. of baptism and some of the issues there with regard to water and the immersion of the person being baptized. But 29.2 makes this statement, and it's brief, but it's really consequential and packed with meaning historically. Those who do actually profess repentance towards God, faith in and obedience to our Lord Jesus Christ are the only proper subjects of this ordinance. And to me, two words stand out there, actually and only. And these two words, the essence and the distinctiveness of the Baptist view of baptism are signified, all right? Now, as I said, I want to talk about how this is a discussion with frenemies. And to do that, I've got to talk about the historical situation of the church so that you understand why we are where we are historically. And first of all, under that historical situation, I want to talk about the fundamental distinction in the church historically. And this fundamental distinction in the church historically is between those who affirm baptismal regeneration, which I will in this context call sacramentalist, and those who deny baptismal regeneration or anti-sacramentalist. Baptismal regeneration or sacramentalism is of course the teaching that there is in and of itself a saving efficacy to the application of water for religious purposes in the Christian religion. So, Sacramentals, who are they? Well, Roman Catholics and some Lutherans, I might say most Lutherans, but I think there are some exceptions, and Anglicans, and here I might say at least some Anglicans. There are differences of opinion, I think, between the low and high church Anglicans and in the Episcopal churches. But then there are anti-sacramentalists. Who are they? Well, these are they in the Reformed tradition. includes most Baptists and the Anabaptist tradition, which of course would include folks like the Mennonites and Amish in our day and age. Baptismal regeneration, if you believe that baptism saves the baby and is necessary to the salvation of the baby, then baptismal regeneration logically and ethically requires infant baptism. If you believe that baptism saves, then you ought to apply it to anybody you can get your hands on, and this would include infants, of course. And if you believe that, you're rather ethically required to baptize infants, because this is the way of their salvation. And it's usually defended, baptismal regeneration, is usually defended by those in the traditions I mentioned by church tradition. I noticed a couple years ago that even Martin Luther defends infant baptism mainly on the basis of church tradition and not on the basis of scripture. But then there's a fundamental cleavage. We're now narrowing our focus from a larger circle to a narrower circle. There's a fundamental cleavage or distinction among anti-sacramentalists like ourselves. After the Reformation especially, two groups of anti-sacramentalists emerged. We can call them the Baptist and the pedo or infant Baptist. infant Baptists rejected both baptismal regeneration and the authority of tradition, and you might have expected them to reject infant baptism, because that's the way it had been historically and traditionally practiced in the church. But instead of doing that, men like John Calvin and others, like Zwingli and their successors in the Reformed tradition attempted to justify infant baptism biblically. And so rejecting the authority of church tradition as they did because they believed in sola scriptura and applied that even to the church, they tried to find in scripture a justification for infant baptism that was biblical. And it is the viability, the feasibility, if I can put it that way, of this rationale for infant baptism that is really the issue in the discussion we're gonna take up today. We're not gonna worry about those who believe in baptismal regeneration. We're not gonna worry about those who believe that you can justify anything you do in the church on the basis of the church's tradition. We're gonna talk about those who believe with us in Sola Scriptura, and we're gonna ask if their attempt to justify infant baptism on the basis of the Bible in some way is viable or feasible, right? So the present debate is between two groups of professedly evangelical, or anti-sacramentalists, Christians. Now, I say this, I guess, because of my own background. I grew up thinking, I'm not sure if I was taught this, but it certainly was what I thought, that there were us Baptists who were right and were the true Christians, and then there were Catholics who baptized infants. And that was it, basically. That was the distinction. And as I grew in my understanding of the Christian religion and Christian history, I realized that that was incredibly simplistic way of looking at it. But I don't want you to be looking at it that way either, because it is incredibly simplistic. But this brings me to the third point under the historical situation. the fundamental argument of anti-sacramentalist pedobaptists. Well, how do they argue for infant baptism from the Bible? Well, their argument goes something like this, and this is a very sketchy and a summary of it, but we'll get into it more a little bit later. But first, the covenant of grace, they say, belongs not to believers only, but also to their children. Then they say the covenant sign, the sign of the covenant of grace in the Old Testament was circumcision, which was of course applied to infants. And they conclude on the basis of this syllogism-like reasoning, the covenant sign in the New Testament is baptism. which has replaced circumcision and should be applied to both believers and their children. It's always been this way, God's covenant's always been this way, and therefore we ought to be baptizing our children because they circumcised infants in the Old Testament. Now, a lot of alarm bells may be going off in your mind and we'll come to look at them in a few minutes, but that's the basic argument. But fourth, I want to mention that I think there's a fundamental difference among Baptists and their responses to this argument. There's a fundamental difference in the way Baptists have responded to this argument, depending on whether they were Reformed Baptists or not. The non-Reformed Baptist response, that of Anabaptists and Mennonites and Dispensationalists that believe in a very great a distinction between the Old Testament Israel and the New Testament church and so forth. These deny the unity of God's covenant dealings. They don't believe in the unity of God's covenant dealings throughout the history of the world. They believe the Old Testament was something very, very different than the New Testament, and so they deny the unity of God's covenant dealings. And because they don't see this at all in scripture, the whole argument for infant baptism from the Old Testament doesn't make any sense to them. Of course it doesn't. Because they don't think that Israel and the church are the same people of God at all, all right? And so they don't appreciate at all, they don't acknowledge any validity in at all the pedobaptist argument from the covenant or the covenants. But on the other hand, Reformed Baptists, that is to say Baptists who were in the Reformed tradition beginning in the 16th and 17th century, they do embrace the fundamental Reformed commitment to the unity of God's covenant dealings with his people. Because they embrace the unity of God's covenant dealings with his people and the idea that God has only one people and not two different peoples of God, like the dispensationalists say today, since we embrace that, We are more inclined to see at least some rationality in the argument from the covenants that Peto Baptist bring forward, but we say as Reformed Baptists that an accurate understanding of God's covenant dealings actually requires believer's baptism, and though there's a unity in God's covenant dealings with his people, there are also distinctions in progress, and this is where the problem lies with the argument for infant baptism put forward by others in the Reformed tradition, okay? So Reformed Baptists admit the unity of the covenants and a parallel between circumcision and baptism. And so when in Romans 4.11, Paul says that circumcision was a sign and seal of God's covenant with Abraham, we agree that that kind of language might be appropriate to apply to baptism. And in Colossians 2.11 and 12, there is at least a distant relationship, some sort of parallel instituted between baptism and circumcision. Eddie, could you look that up for me, Colossians 2, 11 and 12? Just read it nice and loud, please, so we can see what we're talking about here. Colossians 2, 11 and 12. I thought you were faster on your phone than that. In Him, you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him up from the dead. And so our Baptist friends would say, see, see, see, there's circumcision, and immediately starts talking about baptism. They're the same thing. Well, that's jumping to a lot of conclusions in a very brief period of time, but we do admit that yes, there was a sense in which circumcision and baptism are parallel. One way in which they're parallel is both circumcision and baptism are rites of induction or initiation into the covenant people of God. It was circumcision that put people visibly into the old covenant and it is baptism that puts people visibly into the new covenant. So yeah, right, there's a parallel. But parallels, especially in the Bible where you're talking about typology, types and antitypes, parallels are not equivalencies, and that's what we need to understand. Well, I'm gonna come to a scriptural demonstration, but maybe I should stop right here, and if you have questions about the history of this as I've been laying it out, if you have questions about that, please feel free to ask them. Yes, David. Both, but I didn't say that exactly. What I said is that some Anglicans believe in it. Historically, going right back to the beginning and down to the present day, there's a distinction between what's sometimes been called low-church and high-church Anglicans. Low-church Anglicans would be much more evangelical in their view of baptism, very similar to Reformed pedobaptists that we've been talking about. High Anglicans would be very Roman Catholic. In fact, sometimes they're called Angle Catholics. Okay, Blake? Well, the Anabaptist, well boy. Why don't you do that, Blake? How would you do it if you had to do it? Yeah, but one of the things that fall under it is, that Anabaptists would make, not in all the same ways, but a great big and hairy distinction between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, in a way that's similar in some respects to dispensationalism. Yeah, Pastor Ben? Yeah, and the book, Baptism in the Early Church, which we have people read and they, historical theology one course in the seminary presents that evidence and it's pretty compelling when you see it. Who's that book by? A couple of South Africans. Say it again, Brex. Yeah. So if you ever get a hold of that book, it's hard to find and you probably pay $100 on Amazon for it or something. If you want it, Jonathan. Well, that's a great question because I think it's substantially the same, although within the basic family of arguments or with the basic tradition of that argument, there are a lot of different ways in which specifically infant baptism has been justified. So while I think there's a unity in the tradition, Even in the tradition itself, the way infant baptism is justified can be quite different in different places at different times and for different Reformed pedobaptists. Some of them are going to treat infant baptism simply like a baby dedication that doesn't have anything to do with salvation, it just is a dedication. Others are going to baptize infants on the basis of what's called presumptive regeneration, And the notion is that the infants are baptized because they are, as the infants of believers, assumedly regenerate. And on you go with a number of other subtypes. All of these things, all of them though, biblically trace back to the fundamental commitment that circumcision creates a precedent for infant baptism. Yes, Ben? Well, I think so, yeah, I would say so. You know, I would say that in terms of the different specifics of the way Reformed Beto Baptists come out, some of those views are less dangerous than others. But I would not deny, say that a person believes in the presumptive regeneration of infants, And certainly not someone who, in the more Southern Presbyterian tradition, simply looks at infant baptism as a kind of infant dedication. I wouldn't say that those people are not Christians. I think that's consistent with Christianity. Not consistent with our confession of faith, but consistent with Christian profession in my view. Yes, go ahead. So do any Christians or professing professing Christians that predate the Reformation, whether it was very early or Roman Catholic who believed in baptismal regeneration, would you say we have to claim that all of those people were damned for that view? Oh, you ask such wonderful questions. I think people can be really confused in their doctrinal views since they'll have the heart of the matter in them. And I think that we'd have to qualify that a great deal. I do think that baptismal regeneration is very serious error, but I'm not willing to go where you're taking it right there, what you suggested. Yes, Nathan? not walking with the covenant family. Is there any acknowledgement? Is there any, what happened? Yeah, well, that's a good question. And I guess it would depend on whether they were baptized as infants or not. I'm assuming they were, yes. Yeah, well, even if they were baptized as infants in, say, in the Roman Catholic Church, their baptism would normally be accepted by a Reformed pedobaptist. if it was Trinitarian. But certainly if they came to faith and they were of age, they would, and we're going to get to this in a moment, they would be required to make confession of faith and only upon confession of their faith be given the Lord's table, which is a good place for me to go unless they run out of time here. Reformed pedobaptists must establish infant baptism from circumcision in the Old Testament. Here's what Louis Burckhoff, famous Reformed systematician, says. It will be observed that all these statements, he's given a number of statements about infant baptism, are based on the commandment of God to circumcise the children of the covenant, for in the last analysis, that commandment is the ground of infant baptism. So you see what he's saying, even though Presbyterians, infant Baptists, will bring up New Testament texts, they don't regard those New Testament texts as the primary ground for infant baptism. That ground is found in the command to circumcise the children of the covenant, as they say. Now, while Reformed Baptists admit a parallel between circumcision and baptism, pedobaptist equate them. And there's a difference between equation and parallel, right? And an important difference. Birkhoff actually says that baptism is substituted for circumcision. Substituted for it. That's equation, not parallel. A parallel may be seen between baptism and circumcision in certain respects, but simple substitution or replacement is unjustifiable. Why do we say that? Well, first of all, the pedobaptist argument then assumes the identity of baptism and circumcision. It assumes their equivalency. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent. That's the old television program. I've dated myself now when I said that, right? So is it proper to put an equal sign between circumcision and baptism? Well, there are certain obvious differences, aren't there, between circumcision and baptism that prevent that kind of equal sign. The external right is clearly different, right? Even if all you're doing is sprinkling water on the baby, That's a lot different than circumcising the baby, right? The subjects are different. Ah, here's an important difference. Only males were circumcised, but the New Testament is explicit that both men and women are baptized. Well, and yet we're supposed to think of them as exactly the same and equivalent? Well, at least explain to me why this is different. Acts 8-12, but when they believed Philip preaching the good news about the kingdom of God in the name of Jesus Christ, they were being baptized men and women alike. Men and women alike. That's different. The classic passage on the relation of the old covenant to the new covenant emphasizes not their identity, but their difference. I will make a new covenant. not like the covenant I made with your fathers. So the key passage in the Bible that speaks of the relation of the old and new covenants distinguishes them rather than equating them. I read Jeremiah 31 to 34. It's been the subject of a lot of exposition, and you're probably familiar with it. Much more could be said, but the emphasis of the key passages are not like. Hebrews 8 goes on to say that the Old Covenant was faulty. The New Covenant is faultless. If the New Covenant is not identical with the Old Covenant, how can it be said that baptism is identical with circumcision? And here's something else you can study on your own time, but the Old Covenant does not equal New Covenant adoption. It's very interesting. Go read Romans 8 and what it says about adoption, and then read Romans 9, 1 to 5, and see what it says about adoption. You're gonna discover something very interesting. New Covenant adoption assumes and means that someone is saved. They're led by the Spirit, they're adopted in Christ. Old Covenant adoption is consistent with Paul grieving over these people that they are going to hell. So, old covenant adoption and new covenant adoption are not the same thing at all. There's a parallel, but there's no equivalence. And this, despite the same Greek word being used in both Romans 9-4 and Romans 8-16, Clearly they're not the same adoption. Is there a type, anti-type relationship? Yes. Is there a parallel? Yes. But this is not equivalency and it's not identity. And that's what the pedobaptist argument requires. But two, the pedobaptist is not consistent in applying his logic to the Lord's table. Historically, almost unanimously until the case of some Presbyterian pedobaptists today. But historically, almost unanimously, they do not give the Lord's Supper to baptize children and infants. Now, that's good. We're glad they don't do that. It really means that there's kind of a Baptist church in every evangelical Presbyterian church. The Baptist church is the people that can take communion. All right, the communicant members. And this is a happy inconsistency, so they haven't completely corrupted the church with their infant baptism, but the fact of the matter is is that it is an inconsistency. They argue that children are in the covenant and ought to be baptized, but apparently they're not sufficiently in the covenant to receive the covenant sign of the Lord's table. What's up with that? Well, nothing consistent. They do not give the Lord's Supper to their covenant children, even though the Lord's Supper is clearly a covenant meal. This cup is the new covenant in my blood. So they argue that Baptists are wrong to make a confession of faith a condition of Baptism. Somehow we think we can read people's souls and pronounce judgment on people's true and actual condition, and all of this because we require a credible profession of faith for baptism. But the fact of the matter is, they require a personal confession of faith, a credible profession of faith, before they allow somebody to participate in the Lord's Supper. They're being completely inconsistent in doing that. So they require for the Lord's Supper exactly what Baptists require for baptism. And then thirdly, the pedobaptist argument from the Abrahamic Covenant is false. And let me give it to you again. It goes like this, major premise, the Abrahamic Covenant was made with believers and their seed. Minor premise, the Abrahamic Covenant was the covenant of grace. Conclusion, the covenant of grace is made with believers and their seed, and hence, believers and their seed should be given the covenant sign of baptism. Now, what's wrong with that? Well, that's a syllogism, right? And a fallacy in just one of the premises of a syllogism proves it to be false. But actually, there's a fallacy in both the major and minor premise of this syllogism. Let me show you what I mean. The major premise is faulty. The Abrahamic covenant was made with believers and their seed. No, it wasn't. It was made with Abraham and his seed. And that's not the same thing. And again, what's happening here is that the pedobaptist is confusing type with anti-type. No verse proves, in the Bible, proves that the Abrahamic covenant was made with believers in their seed. Galatians 3.29, if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed. But not if you belong to Abraham, then you belong to Christ. That's not the same thing. But the minor premise is also wrong. The Abrahamic covenant was the covenant of grace, really. The Abrahamic covenant was a shadowy revelation of the covenant of grace, but shadowy revelation is different from being, put the equal sign there, the covenant of grace. Again, the distinction between type and anti-type. Does the covenant of grace promise all of us the land of Canaan? your promises to new heaven and new earth, but a land of Canaan was the promise of the Abrahamic covenant, Genesis 17, 8. And two verses later, the sign of the Abrahamic covenant was literal circumcision. Is literal circumcision a sign of the covenant of grace? Well, of course not. We're going to see in a second that many passages in the New Testament tell us that circumcision was abolished. And that's the fourth argument. The pedobaptist is unable to explain the New Testament teaching. So we have granted that there's a kind of parallel or continuity between circumcision and baptism, but now, having granted that, we have to say, at the same time, that we must recognize that circumcision was abolished in Christ, and this is not something that's iffy. It's the product of one, two, three, four, five passages of Scripture, at least in the New Testament, and probably many more. circumcision was abolished. And that emphasis certainly should make us wonder at saying that it was simply equivalent to baptism. Baptism is a New Testament ordinance. And therefore, since it is a New Testament ordinance, not an Old Testament ordinance, the New Testament evidence must be normative for it. But this evidence is conclusive. The New Testament evidence is conclusive against infant baptism. What is the precept, practice, and precedent of the New Testament regarding baptism? Well, this is where we run out of time. The New Testament supports baptizing professed disciples only. Where? There. And so you go from Matthew 3, in which John the Baptist is telling the Pharisees that they're a brood of vipers, and if they want to be baptized, they need to repent, down to 1 Peter 3.21, which is Pastor Benesota showed us recently in his preaching through 1 Peter. either says that baptism is a pledge or something, however you translate the words, it's talking about a response to the gospel, and all the passages in between are the same. So yes, the New Testament teaches the baptism of professed disciples only. But, of course, though I said that this is not the main argument, of course, wherever they can find a little evidence, they'll try to use it. So there is the let the children come passages. These passages are found in the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Here's one of them. They're all about the same. Then some children were brought to him so that he might lay his hands on them and pray. and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, Let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to me, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. After laying his hands on them, he departed from there." Now, allow me to quote C. H. Spurgeon in his message entitled, Children Brought to Christ and Not to the Fond. In handling this text and what I believe to be its true light, Spurgeon says, I shall commence first of all by observing that, and the caps are original, not mine, that this text is not the shadow of the shade of the ghost of a connection with baptism. There is no line of connection so substantial as a spider's web between this incident and baptism, or at least my imagination is not vivid enough to conceive one. And just to comment a little on what he's saying, if the disciples of Christ believed in or practiced infant baptism, if they'd either seen it or believed in it, is it conceivable that they would have so conducted themselves as to hinder babies from being brought to Christ? I think not. There is the you and your children passage. This is, of course, Acts 2.39. Pastor Ben, would you look that up and read it for us, please? Acts 2.39. Acts 2.39. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off. everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself. Now, it's awfully hard to listen to Presbyterians talk about this passage because they want to stop reading after children. But the passage doesn't stop reading after children. It says, to your children and to all who are afar off, all who are afar off. So if we're going to baptize all the children, does that mean we're going to baptize all who are afar off too? And then, of course, the key thing is it doesn't even close there. To as many as the Lord our God shall call. Call. It's a reference to effectual calling. And the promise here is not the promise of baptism. The nature of the promise is the promise of the Holy Spirit, verse 33. And the definition of the recipients of the promise is also important. It is those who repent, verse 38, and are affectionately called, verse 39b. Well, hastening on. There are the household baptism passages, which are found in Acts 10, 16, 1 Corinthians 1. In Acts 10, and we won't read all these passages, I'll comment on them briefly. In Acts 10, Cornelius' house is mentioned as baptized. But Peter asked, can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have? Well, no Baptist would have any problem baptizing a household where everyone fears God, listens to the word, and receives the Holy Spirit. Act 16. 13 to 15, we see Lydia's house baptized, but as Paul Jewett points out, nothing in the passage implies that Lydia was a married woman with nursing children, for she traveled some 300 miles from her native city and felt the liberty as head of the house to invite men into her home. Good point. And then in Acts 16, 31 to 34, we have the Philippian jailer's house being baptized. But in that passage, his household is also said to have heard, believed, and rejoiced in the gospel. In 1 Corinthians 1.16, we're told that Stephanus' house was baptized, but according to the same letter in 16.15, his house also ministered to the saints, and this implies, of course, that they were all believers. So the issue of infant baptism cannot be resolved from such passages. These texts have to do not with infants, but with the conversion and baptism of families to whom the gospel was proclaimed. Should we quibble about infants in such texts? So what's the message of these texts? I think the message of these texts, the reason they're included is that we see the gospel is coming with such power that that whole families were being converted to Christ, and I think this is why they're brought up. Well, we come to another passage which might have been pointed out to some of you in arguments about this, and this is the holy children passage. Holy children? No, well, I better stop myself right here. No, this is not some sort of exclamation like, holy children. No, it's not that. It's the holy children passage, which is 1 Corinthians 7, 12 to 15, which reads, in part, if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever and she consents to live with him, he must not divorce her. And a woman who has an unbelieving husband and he consents to live with her, she must not send her husband away, for the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, And the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband, for otherwise your children are unclean, but now are they holy. Yet if the unbelieving one leaves, let him leave. Now, from this text, pedobaptists argue that the infants of believers possess a kind of covenant holiness which gives them a right to baptism. Oh, scary. Except for these things. First, this proves too much, since the passage also says that the spouses are holy in the same way. It would also prove that unbelieving spouses have a right to baptism. So, the argument proves too much. It proves more than even the pedobaptists will want to admit. Pedobaptists reject this conclusion that unbelieving spouses should be baptized, although it's a conclusion that their argument leads to. And thus, this argument is an argument, I'm gonna throw some Latin at you here just for the fun of it. It's the argument reductio ad absurdum. This argument reduces to absurdity because it proves something we know is not true. It's reductio ad absurdum. And since it proves too much and proves something that we know isn't true, it cannot be correct. Two, this interpretation ignores the context and theme of the passage. You may have noticed that the theme of the passage is not baptism. The theme of the passage is? Huh? Divorce and remarriage, that's what it's about. And so Paul's not even talking about the baptism of infants. The true intent is to deal with mixed marriage and divorce, not the baptism of infants. And in the third place, this interpretation misses Paul's meaning. You have to understand what the situation was. Corinthian believers were arguing that their marriages were no true marriages, and therefore they could put away their unbelieving spouses because they weren't true marriages at all. And read in a certain way, we might admit that the Old Testament might seem to justify that kind of argumentation, right? But Paul has a question for them. His question is, if your marriages to these unbelievers are not valid, what does that make these kids? There's a word for that. And it's a word they wouldn't want to use about their own kids. If the marriage isn't valid, then the kids are, yes, let's lose the word, they're bastards, right? Well, when you're ready to say your kids are bastards, and at that point, and that point only, you can say that this is not a true marriage. When you're ready to say that. If you're not ready to say that, then stop it. That's what Paul is saying. If the children of a marriage are holy, that is to say legitimate, which is what Paul means by the word here and the way it was actually used historically in some cases, then the marriage must be a proper marriage. Paul is saying to the Corinthians that when you are willing to call your children illegitimate, then you may call your marriage as illegitimate, but not till then. Holiness here is used here to refer to the legitimacy of a marriage and its offspring. So, what are our conclusions about pedobaptism? First, we conclude that the Old Testament argument for infabaptism simply does not work. It requires equating the Old and New Covenant, the Abrahamic Covenant, and the Covenant of Grace in a way that is flatly contradicted by the Bible. There is no New Testament evidence for infant baptism. All the evidence runs the opposite direction, and all the passages, all the passages usually cited fall short of any proof for the baptism of infants. Okay, well, I have three or four minutes. Yes, Bryce, go ahead. So much emphasis on the equation of circumcision and baptism. Well, yeah, if you pursue the argument we talked about very briefly about the Lord's table, there's some very strange argumentation that you can read about why the infants weren't given the Passover. They're assuming that, of course. And the fact of the matter is that the participation of their children in the Passover didn't require a confession of faith. And so, but you'll read stuff like, I think I've actually read this, well, they're too young to eat solid food. Okay, what does that got to do with it, right? Yes, Tom. That's right. By the way, we've asked Tom to, since he's narrating, It's Abraham Booth. I've got their first name right. He's been narrating Abraham Booth's argument against infant baptism. He's going to give us a summary of that next week in Sunday school class. Pastor Ben, first of all. I think that's true. And like I pointed out several times, they're slipping from type to anti-type without making the proper distinctions. Alex? That's a good question. I don't know. The rationale is that the New Testament is too clear to do anything else. But the whole thing implies then some sort of really significant distinction between baptism and circumcision. Go ahead, Roberto. You're the last one. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what they try to do is prove that circumcision in the Old Testament assumed that people were circumcised in their hearts. But of course the whole Old Testament teaches that Israel was not circumcised in their heart. Even the nation with whom God made a covenant in Exodus 20 was not circumcised in heart. So the distinction that we as Baptists have to make and must make on the basis of Scripture As well, circumcision was a type of regeneration in the Old Testament. Circumcision did not assume, was not administered on the basis of an assumed regeneration in the Old Testament. It was only a type, it wasn't a symbol of a present reality. And that's the important distinction we have to make.