Improve your baptism

[MW]

Thomas Boston, Works, 2:480:

Improve your baptism agreeable to the nature of it, and the ends of its institution. It is a gross neglect, that we are not often putting the question to ourselves, Into what was I baptised? Alas! many make no more use of their baptism rightly, than if they had never been baptised. Though ye were but once baptised, ye should be improving it all your life long, and particularly when you see others baptised.

 

[PuritanCovenanter]

Reverend Winzer, I don't own Boston and would like to read a bit more about what he means by improving our baptism and what we were baptized into if he comments further on the topic. What does Boston mean by making more use of our Baptism? Puritans were great at expounding so I am sure you can help in this. How do we improve our baptism? I would appreciate some posts expositing this thought if you have the opportunity. Thank You So Much.

 

[Reformed Covenanter]

I don't own Boston and would like to read a bit more about what he means by improving our baptism and what we were baptized into if he comments further on the topic.

Randy, the work quoted is online at the following link: The Whole Works of the Late Reverend and Learned Mr. Thomas Boston, Minister ... - Thomas Boston - Google Books

And from the following link: https://archive.org/details/wholeworksoflate02bost

 

[MW]

Randy, here are the explanatory points which follow the quotation (pp. 480-481):

(1.) Improve it for raising your hearts in thankfulness to God, that ever ye were sealed with the seal of God’s covenant, and had his name called on you, while many in the world are utter strangers to the covenants of promise.

(2.) Improve it for your strengthening against temptation, considering that you are the Lord’s, not your own, and are under the most solemn and awful engagement to God, to resist the devil, the world, and the flesh; and also drawing strength from the death and resurrection of Christ, into whom they were baptised, Rom. 6:4.

(3.) Improve it for your humiliation under your sins and miscarriages, considering them as sins against the grace of baptism, and your engagements to God therein; remembering that sins after solemn engagements to the contrary, are highly offensive to God, and attended with more aggravating circumstances, than if they had never been baptised, and such solemn engagements entered into by you. The vows of God are upon you; break them not, and go not about after vows to make inquiry.

(4.) Improve your baptism to the strengthening of your faith and confidence in Jesus Christ, especially in downcastings under a sense of guilt; for it is a sign and seal of remission, adoption, etc., and so may answer the question to an exercised soul, How can I be put among the children?

(5.) Improve it to the vigorous exercise of, and growth in holiness, since thereby ye are engaged to newness of life, as ye “are raised from the dead,” Rom. 6:4. Were ye dedicated unto God, does not that say ye should be holy in heart, lip, and life? As God is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of life and conversation; remembering that without holiness no man shall see the Lord.

(6.) Lastly, Improve it to the increase of brotherly love, even love to all the saints, who are all baptised into one body, 1 Cor. 12:13. It is as unnatural for saints not to love one another, or to quarrel with one another, as it is for the members of the natural body to be at war with each other. Then love one another, as Christ hath loved you.