Baptism, which now saves us by
Water, that is, by the assistance of Water, and it Antitypical to the Ark of Noah,
does not signifie the laying down the Filth of the Flesh in the Water, but the
Covenant of a good Conscience towards God, while we are plung’d in the Water,
which is the true use of Water in Baptism, thereby to testify our Belief in the
Resurrection of Jesus Christ; so that there is a manifest Antithesis
between these words by Water, and by resurrection; Nor is the
Elegancy of it displeasing. As if he should say, the Ark of Noah, not
the Flood, was a Type of Baptism, and Baptism was an Antitype of the Ark, not
as Baptism is a washing away the Filth of the Flesh by Water, wherein it
answers not at all to the Ark, but as it is the Covenant of a good Conscience
towards God by the Resurrection of Christ, in the Belief of which Resurrection
of Christ, in the Belief of which Resurrection we are saved, as they were saved
by the Ark of Naah: For the Ark and Baptism were both a Type and Figure
of the Resurrection; so that the proper end of Baptism ought not to be
understood as if it were a sign of the washing away of sin, altho it be thus
oftentimes taken metonymically in the New Testament, and by the fathers, but a
particular signal of the Resurrection by Faith in the Resurrection of Christ,
of which Baptism is a lively and emphatical Figure, as also was the Ark of
which Noah returned as from the Sepulcher to a new Life, and therefore
not unaptly called by Philo, the Captain of the new creature: And the
Whales Belly out of which Jesus, after a burial of three days, was set a
liberty . . . (Benjamin Keach, Gold Refined, or, Baptism in its Primitive
Purity: Proving baptism in water an holy institution of Jesus Christ, and to
continue in the church to the end of the world [London: Nathaniel Crouch,
1689], 47)
