I think that Rev. Winzer's comments about the views of the ECFs on baptism, in pointing out that they adopted the sacramental language of the NT, is an accurate description of them. It is certainly true that they did, as the Reformed after them, hold to the sacramental union of the sign and the reality. I'm not convinced from my reading of many of their works, not only from the Eerdmans set, the FC set, and the ACW set, but from many of their exegetical commentaries, that it could be successfully argued that they did not believe in baptismal regeneration, though I appreciate the expressed sentiment by Rev. Winzer otherwise. I think their language often goes beyond that of the sacramental language of the NT. Far too often they linked baptism with justification itself, something never affirmed in the NT. Their instances of affirming this latter sentiment (justification by baptism) are simply myriad in number. And the general consent was that it was absolutely necessary for salvation.

I have found the treatment of E. Brooks Holifield's The Covenant Sealed: The Development of Sacramental Theology in Old and New England, 1570-1720 helpful to the subject of the preceding discussions, so I thought that I would post some of his comments in his attempt to understand Calvin, the Puritans, and Burges and Ward in context. Though both Samuel Ward and Cornelius Burges held to forms of baptismal regeneration, their views differed from one another. Burges, as it has already been noted, believed that the efficacy of baptism applied only to elect infants and that its effects was lasting, while Ward believed that baptism conveyed to infants a grace that was "provisional and only of temporary effect." Another difference was that Samuel Ward believed baptism to be the means for the ablution of original guilt (read original sin) in infants.

E. Brooks Holifield: Nevertheless, Calvin had difficulty integrating baptism into his theology. He did not join Luther in seeking the Word “in” the water and instructed his readers to look beyond “the visible element.” He repeatedly cautioned that baptism was of benefit only to the elect; he repudiated emergency baptism; and he denied that the sacrament was necessary for salvation. In fact, Calvin emphasized so strongly the freedom of God in election that secondary means of salvation were superfluous. The ground of election was hidden in the Divine Will: we must “always at last return to the sole decision of God’s will, the cause of which is hidden in Him.” Calvin frequently wrote as though that detracted in no way from the sacrament, but elsewhere he acknowledged that he was not prepared to “bind the grace of God, or the power of the Spirit, to external symbols.” Many received the sign, but the Spirit was bestowed on none but the elect. Since the sacrament had no efficacy without the Spirit, the reality of baptism, Calvin acknowledged, would be “found only in a few.” E. Brooks Holifield, The Covenant Sealed: The Development of Sacramental Theology in Old and New England, 1570-1720 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), p. 16.

E. Brooks Holifield: The tension emerged clearly in Calvin’s doctrine of infant baptism. Since faith was necessary for the perfection of baptism, and since infants could not demonstrate faith—only the elect among them would ever persevere in it—why baptize infants at all? In the 1536 edition of the Institutes Calvin joined Luther in attributing some kind of faith to infants, but he dropped that idea after 1539. He supported infant baptism by various appeals to Scripture, noting the apostolic practice of baptizing families and Jesus’ command that infants be brought to him. But Calvin’s main argument for infant baptism was based on the covenant motif, which first became prominent in his sacramental theology in the 1538 edition of the Geneva Catechism....But though baptism “engrafted” children into the visible church, it did not actually place them within the covenant. It simply testified that they had been “born directly into the inheritance of the covenant.” Since the inheritance was ultimately destined only for the elect, how could one say the testimony was reliable? Calvin confessed that many children of faithful Christians would “thrust themselves out of the holy progeny through their unbelief.” So even if infants were, as Calvin often argued, baptized for future repentance and faith, the sacrament itself offered no assurance that a child would in fact believe. E. Brooks Holifield, The Covenant Sealed: The Development of Sacramental Theology in Old and New England, 1570-1720 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), pp. 16-17.

E. Brooks Holifield: In adopting Calvin’s baptismal doctrine, however, the Puritans also inherited the characteristic Reformed ambivalence about external sacraments. Salvation, after all, rested ultimately on the unconditioned election of a Deity who was “Father and the God of all the elect, and only the elect.” The ministers criticized any suggestion that the sacrament conferred saving grace, or removed the stain of original sin, or justified the baptized infant, just as they denied that baptism was necessary for salvation. E. Brooks Holifield, The Covenant Sealed: The Development of Sacramental Theology in Old and New England, 1570-1720 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), p. 46.

E. Brooks Holifield: The vocabulary of the sacramentalists revealed their intention: to elevate baptism by combining two theological traditions, Reformed orthodoxy and medieval scholasticism. To speak of the Christian life in terms of potency, or form, and actualization, or matter, was to appropriate scholastic imagery. “Initial grace” was a Reformed adaptation of the medieval gratia prima, also given to children in baptism. Baxter recognized later the similarity between “seminal grace” and the scholastic notion of infused habits. Burges and Ward carefully inserted the older language into their orthodox Calvinism, but they could not entirely eliminate the incommensurabilities. The medieval language depicted the Christian pilgrimage as a gradual development, approximate to salvation in ascending stages and levels of growth, nourished by sacramental grace from beginning to end. Earlier Reformed theologians spoke of progressive sanctification after the effectual call, and they argued about preparatory development in adults prior to the experience of saving grace, but the sacramentalist language seemed to depict the whole of a man’s spiritual life, from infancy to glorification, as an unbroken continuum beginning with baptism. The problem was to combine that vocabulary with a traditional Puritan notion of genuine conversion as a specifiable experience, restricted to the elect, moving them into a new sphere of life, discontinuous with their past. Puritan theology often consisted of the artful manipulation of images, and Burges and Ward accordingly proposed a sacramental theology based on medieval images of salvation as a new creation.
Few of their Puritan contemporaries shared their vision, however, and the initial response was therefore hostile. When Ward first published his ideas around 1627, a close friend, John Davenant, advised that he not “sett that controversy on foot,” and when Burges published his treatise he complained that he received for his effort nothing but “clamors, slanders, and revilings without end or measure.” E. Brooks Holifield, The Covenant Sealed: The Development of Sacramental Theology in Old and New England, 1570-1720 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), pp. 85-86.

E. Brooks Holifield: Most Puritan theologians believed that baptism did not seal an absolute covenant of grace, since that would entail either the regeneration of all who were baptized or the restriction of baptism to the elect. They distinguished a conditional and an absolute covenant, and administered a baptism that was efficacious only on the condition of future faith. E. Brooks Holifield, The Covenant Sealed: The Development of Sacramental Theology in Old and New England, 1570-1720 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), p. 92.

DTK

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Sola Scriptura est norma normans non normata
David T. King, pastor
Christ Presbyterian Church (OPC)
Elkton, Maryland
Augustine (354-430): Therefore what He [i.e., Christ] has deigned to speak to us, we ought to believe that He meant us to understand. But if we do not understand He, being asked, gives understanding, who gave His Word unasked. NPNF1: Vol. VII, Tractates on John, Tractate XXII, §1.