Now, that baptism is essential to church-communion, I prove from 1
Cor. xii., where we shall find the apostle labouring to prevent an
evil use that might be made of spiritual gifts, as thereby to be
puffed up, and to think that such as wanted them were not of the
body, or to be esteemed members: he thereupon resolves, that
whoever did confess Christ, and own him for his head, did it by the
Spirit, ver. 3, though they might not have such a visible
manifestation of it as others had, and therefore they ought to be
owned as members, as appears, ver. 23. And not only because they
have called him Lord by the Spirit, but because they have, by the
guidance and direction of the same Spirit, been baptized, ver. 13,
"For by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body," &c. I need
not go about to confute that notion that some of late have had of
this text., viz., that the baptism here spoken of is the baptism of
the Spirit, because you have not owned and declared that notion as
your judgment, but on the contrary, all of you that I have ever
conversed with, have declared it to be understood of baptism with
water, by the direction of the Spirit: If so, then it follows, that
men and women are declared members of Christ's body by baptism, and
cannot be by scripture reputed and esteemed so without it; which
farther appears from Rom. vi. 5, where men by baptism are said to be
"planted" into the likeness of his death and Col. ii. 12, we are
said to be "buried with him" by baptism. All which, together with
the consent of all Christians (some few in these later times
excepted), do prove that baptism is necessary to the initiating
persons into the Church of Christ.

(3.) Holiness of life is essential to church-communion, because it
seems to be the reason why Christ founded a church in the world,