Faith and baptism are not equal necessities; John 3:5 is not yet the later rite of water, but Spirit-washing — and if baptism, adults only
Third: they assume that faith and baptism are equally necessary for salvation. But Christ nowhere said — it is plain — that whoever has not been baptized will be damned.
Faith can stand without baptism: the converted thief, the Ethiopian eunuch, Saul, Cornelius, all before they were baptized. Baptism can also stand without faith: Simon Magus, for example — an outward washing without the inward (1 Peter 3:21), as fleshly circumcision without circumcision of the heart (Romans 2:28–29).
Fourth precarious claim: that John 3:5 is about baptism in bodily, outward water properly so called — a rite not yet instituted then, but only later (Matthew 28).
More truly it concerns the necessity of the thing signified: washing by the Holy Spirit, of which alone Christ speaks in the words that follow — and which alone Nicodemus needed, already circumcised long before, and now to be raised into a new life.
Add this: even if the text were about baptism, Christ's words could aim only at adults who could use this instrument of regeneration and refused to.
Latin
3. Sic supponunt, parem esse necessitatem fidei & baptismi, in negotio salutis: Quum nusquam dixerit Christus, ut liquet, qui non baptizatus fuerit, damnabitur. Ac possit esse fides sine Baptismo, ut in Latrone converso, in Eunucho, Saule, Cornelio, nondum baptizatis; quemadmodum & Baptismus sine fide, ex. gr. in Simone Mago, id est ablutio externa, sine interna 1. Pet. III.21. uti Circumcisio carnis, sine illa cordis, Rom. II.28.29. 4. Sic precaria Hypothesis, locum Joh. III.5. agere de Baptismo aquae corporeo, externo, proprie dicto, nondum tunc instituto, sed demum Matth. XXVIII. Non verius agere, de necessitate rei significatae, ablutionis per Spiritum S. de quo unice Christus verbis sequentibus; quae & unice necessaria erat Nicodemo pridem circumciso, jam vero ad novam vitam excitando. Adde, si vel de Baptismo, non potuisse Verba Christi respicere nisi adultos, qui possent uti hoc Regenerationis instrumento, & nollent.