In distinguishing between the essence and the form (substance/administration), Ames confines the newness of the new covenant to its external form, its substance being new in nothing. Consequently, for Ames and his paedobaptist contemporaries, there is identity of substance between the old and new covenants.88 On the basis of this continuity, the paedobaptists established their principle of posterity by which the natural descendants of believers are integrated into the covenant of grace.
