e assented, may be a just subject for discipline,
even to excommunication; but, all the promises of God to the child being
wholly free, conditioned, at first, upon his parents' relation to God,
all the disability which the child seems capable of receiving, is, that
the promises made to him he must fail, by his own fault, to receive.
Who will declare even his prospect of their fulfilment to be terminated
at any given time? Much more, who will undertake to divest him of things
which he never had? The church-membership, from which you profess to
expel him, does not yet exist in his case; he has not reached it. All
the church-membership of which, if any, he has been possessed, is, his
hopeful relation to God and his people through a parent. To
excommunicate a child from this would be a strange procedure."

_Mr. A._ That is the strongest thing which I have heard on that side. I
must confess (said he, rising and leaning against one of the maples)
that I am a little staggered.

But Mr. B. came to reinforce his faltering brother.

"Here," said he, "is the Cambridge Platform. You will all be willing to
hear from that source."

"Let us hear," said two or three voices.

Mr. B. read as follows:

"The like trial (examination) is to be required from such members of the
church as were born in the same, or received their membership, and were
baptized in their infancy or minority, by virtue of the covenant of
their parents, when, being grown up unto years of discretion, they shall
desire to be made partakers of the Lord's Supper; unto which, because
holy things must not be given to the unworthy, therefore it is requisite
that these, as well as others, should come to their trial and
examination, and manifest their faith and repentance by an open
profession thereof before they are received to the Lord's Supper, and
otherwise not to be admitted thereunto. Yet those church-members that
were so born, or received in their childhood, before they are capable of
being made partakers of full communion, have many privileges which
others, not church-members, have not; they are in covenant with God,
have the seal thereof upon them, namely, baptism; and so, if not
regenerated, yet are in a more hopeful way of attaining regenerating
grace, and all the spiritual blessings both of the covenant and seal;
they are also under church-watch, and consequently subject to the
reprehensions, admonitions, and censures thereof, for their healing and
amendme