Hence shortly, I say, the Court of Rome as Popish, is the falling-sickness of the church, not the church. But the same court teaching something of Christ (baptism, good works, etc.) has something of the life and being of a church; howbeit she is not a whole church, her skin being leprous, pocky and polluted.
1. Because in a church that is no church, there cannot be a true seal of God’s covenant; but in the Court of Rome there is true baptism, for we baptize not again children once baptized there. Some of the Separation called it idol-baptism, and no baptism, which is Anabaptism. For then all converted Papists must be baptized again, no less than converted Turks or Jews. But (1.), the covenant is there, Come out of her my people; then their baptism confirms this covenant. (2.) Circumcision even in apostate Israel is true circumcision; her [children] the Lord’s [children] (Ezk. 16:21). He is Israel’s God, the holy one of Israel in the midst thereof. In Hezekiah’s reformation the people ate the Passover, and yet all had corrupted their ways, and had been a long time worshipping Idols, and they are not (2 Chron. 30) circumcised again; and yet (Ex. 12) none but the circumcised might eat the Passover.
