[+Donny]

Here is a quote from Daddy, Why Was I Excommunicated? by Peter Leithart. Though the book is about Paedocommunion, I am quoting him in regards to sacramentology in general. Any comments on the quote?

The fact of the matter is that, according to the Reformed Confessions, children are made members of the Church by baptism (Westminster Confession of Faith 28.1). If they are not baptized, they are not members of the Church. The Bible teaches and the Reformers taught that baptism is not a 'bare sign,' but an instrumental signs [sic] that, by God's ordination, actually brings something into effect.
In order to understand what baptism actually brings into effect, our thinking must be continually guided, as Van Til insisted, by the Creator-creature distinction. Translated into sacramental theology, the Creator-creature distinction means that we must distinguish between membership in the covenant and eternal election to salvation. Election is the Creator's business; the covenant is the creature's business. God orders all things after the counsel of His own unconditioned will; we are to order our lives and the Church in conformity with the demands, signs, and sanctions of the covenant. The Creator saves sinners; the covenant signs and seals that the Church administers are means of blessing. The Creator's plans and works canno t be resisted; the Church's administration of the covenant can be resisted. One canno t be eternally elect and fall from grace, but one can enter into the covenant and apostatize.
The distinction between covenant and election is basic to the Reformed theology of baptism and the Supper. Baptism is a covenant administration. It is not a guarantee of eternal salcation; instead, it is a sign of the covenant. What baptism actually brings into effect is entrance into the covenant and the covenant community of the Church. Because the baptized person becomes a member of Christ's body, he is identified with Christ. The baptized person is, covenantally speaking, a Christian. Ture, the baptized person may not persevere in faith. He may taste of the heavenly gift and fall away (Heb. 6:4-6). The backslidden Christian had real life, a real participation in Christ and the powers of the age to come. Yet his was not an eternal participation in Christ. Ultimately (in terms of election), he goes on from Christ because he is not really of Christ (1 Jn. 2:19).
Though election and covenant must be distinguished, however, they ought not to be separated. By persevering in faithfulness to the covenant (which is possible only in the power of the Spirit), one works out his election with fear and trembling. By the power of the Spirit, the covenant signs and seals and the Word lead men and women into saving fellowship with God. Engrafted into Christ and His Church by baptism, a child may grow quickly only to wither and die. Or, the elect child may grow to produce thiry-, sixty-, or a hundred-fold (Mat. 13). In the meantime, even a reprobate receives non-salvific blessing from baptism and membership in the Church. Thus, the Reformed view is not that children are members of the Church before baptism, but that they become members of the Church through baptism.