---
title: 'Samuel Davies on the Importance of Teaching Children About Baptism and the Covenant'
type: post
author: 'R. Andrew Myers'
date: 2024-05-05
url: https://confessional.org/blog/2024-samuel-davies-on-the-importance-of-teaching-children-about-baptism-and-the-covenant
---

# Samuel Davies on the Importance of Teaching Children About Baptism and the Covenant

“Here let me hint by the bye, at the duty of parents. The early dedication of your children to God, furnishes you with a very proper motive to make them sensible of their duty. And were it duly improved for this purpose, the good effects of baptism, and its subserviency to early piety, would be more frequent and visible. Take your littles creatures up in your arms, and with all the powerful oratory which the fond heart of a father, and the warm heart of a Christian, can make you master of, put them in mind of their early baptism; explain to them the nature of that ordinance; and labour to make them sensible of the obligations that lie upon them in consequence of it. Warn them of the danger of breaking covenant with God, and living a life of perjury. That good man, Mr. Philip Henry, drew up for his children, the following short form of the baptismal covenant, which excellently represents its nature and obligations.

‘I take God the Father to be my choicest good and highest end; I take God the Son to be my prince and Saviour; I take God the Holy Ghost to be my sanctifier, teacher, guide, and comforter; I take the word of God to be my rule in all my actions; and the people of God to be my people in all conditions; I do likewise devote and dedicate myself to the Lord, my whole self, all I am, and all I can do; and this I do deliberately, sincerely, freely, and forever.’

This he taught his children, and they repeated it every Sunday evening: the good old gentleman adding, ‘So say, and so do, and you are made forever.’ He laboured to bring them to understand, and consent to, this covenant. And when they grew up, he made them all write it over severally with their own hands, and very solemnly set their names to it; and he kept it by him, telling them, that it should be produced as a witness against them, in case they should afterwards depart from God.

Thus, my brethren, do you endeavour to make your children sensible of their early obligations, and bring them to consent to this covenant, and you have reason to hope, that abused and profaned ordinance will be of great service to them.” — [**Samuel Davies**](/authors/samuel-davies), *Christians Solemnly Reminded* in *Sermons on Important Subjects* (1810), pp. 333-334