THE Development of the Doctrine of Infant Salvation. BY BENJAMIN B. WARFIELD, D.D. I tibxaxy of 1:he . 797, INFANT SALVATION. 15 through the grace of baptism, they are born to everlasting misery and destruction, whether their parents be believers or un- believers ;" while, on the other hand, we are credibly informed * that the council was near anathematizing as a Lutheran heresy the proposition that the penalty for original sin is the fire of hell. The Council of Trent at least made renewedly de fide that infants dying unbaptized incurred damna- tion, though it left the way open for discus- sion as to the kind and amount of their pun- ishment, f The Tridentine deliverance, of course, does not exclude the baptism of blood as a substitute for baptism of water. Neither does it seem necessarily to exclude the ap- plication of a theory of baptism of intention to infants. Even after it, therefore, a two- fold development seems to have been possi- ble. The path already opened by Gerson and Biel might have been followed' out, and a baptism of intention developed for infants as well as for adults. This might even have been pushed on logically, so as to cover the case of all infants dying in infancy. On the principle argued by Richard Hooker, J for ex- * So Father Paul, Hist, of the Council of Trent, c. 2. t Perrone, Protect. Theol. in C'ompend. Redact, i., p 494 X Ecclesiastical Polity, v., ix., 6. \* 16 THE DOCTRINE OF ample, that the unavoidable failure of bap- tism in the case of Christian children can- not lose them salvation, because of the pre- sumed desire and purpose of baptism for them in their Christian parents and in the Church of God, reasoners might have pro- ceeded only a single step further and have said that the desire and purpose of Mother Church to baptize all is intention of baptism enough for all dying in helpless infancy. Thus on Eoman principles a salvation for all dying in infancy might be logically deduced, and infants, as more helpless and less guilty, be given the preference over adults. On the other hand, it might be argued that as baptism either in re or in voto must medi- ate salvation, and as infants by reason of their age are incapable of the intention, they cannot be saved unless they receive it in fact,* and thus infants be discriminated against in favor of adults. This second path is the one which has been actually followed by the theologians of the Church of Rome, with the ultimate result that not only are in- fants discriminated against in favor of adults, but the more recent theologians seem almost ready to discriminate against the in- * Thus, e.g., Dominicus de Soto expresses it {Be Natura et Gratia, ii. 10) : " It is most firmly established in the Church that no infant apart from baptism in re — since he cannot have it in voto — enters the kingdom of heaven." INFANT SALVATION. 1? fants of Christians as over against those of the heathen.* The application of the baptism of inten- tion to infants was not abandoned, however, without some protest from the more tender- hearted. Cardinal Cajetan defended in the Council of Trent itself Gerson's proposition that the desire of godly parents might be taken in lieu of the actual baptism of chil- dren dying in the womb.f Cassander (1570) encouraged parents to hope and pray for children so dying. J; Bianchi (1768) holds that such children may be saved per obla- * This grows out of the development of the doctrines of igno- rance and " invincible ignorance," the latter of which was au- thoritatively defined by Pope Pius IX. in his Encyclicaladdress- ed to the Bishops of Italy. August 10, 1863. See an interesting statement concerning it in Newman's A Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, on the Infallibility of the Pope. Thus while an abso- lute necessity for baptism in re is posited for the infants of even Christian parents, even though they die in the womb, on the other hand, as the law of baptism is in force only where it is known, and even an ignorance morally invincible (as among sectaries) is counted true ignorance, not even an intention of baptism is demanded of the heathen or of certain sectaries. Gousset, Theolog. Dogmat., 10 ed., Paris, 1866, i., 548, 549, 351, ii., 382, may be profitably consulted in this connection. Among the heathen thus the old remedies for sin are still prob- ably valid ; St. Bernard says (quoted approvingly by Gousset), "Among the Gentiles as many as are found faithful, we believe that the adults are expiated by faith and the sacrifices ; but the faith of the parents profits the children, nay, even suffices for them. ,, If the fathers are saved, why not the children ? Might not a Christian's infant dying in the womb be said to be " invincibly ignorant " ? Why need the " law of baptism " be eo inflexibly extended to it ? t In 3 Part. Thomae, Q. 68, art. 2, et 11. X De bapt. infant. 18 THE DOCTRINE OF tionem pueri quam Deo mater extrinsecus faciat.* Eusebius Amort (1758) teaches that God may be moved by prayer to grant justification to such extra-sacramentally. f Even somewhat bizarre efforts have been made to escape the sad conclusion proclaimed by the Church. Thus Klee holds that a lucid interval is accorded to infants in the article of death, so that they may conceive the wish for baptism. \ An obscure French writer supposes that they may, " shut up in their mother's womb, know God, love him, and have the baptism of desire." § A more obscure German conceives that infants re- main eternally in the same state of rational development in which they die, and hence enjoy all they are capable of ; if they die in the womb they either fall back into the original force from which they were pro- duced, or enjoy a happiness no greater than that of trees. || These protests of the heart have awakened, however, no response in the Church,^ which has preferred to hold fast * De Remedio . . . pro parentis. t Theolog. Moral., ii., xi., 3. X Dog. iii., 2, § 1. § De la Marne, Traite metaphysique des Dogmes de la Trinite, etc., Paris, 182(5. II Hermessius, Zeitschr. f. Phil. u. kath. Theol., Bonn.. 1832. «[ Compare Vasqitez, in 3 P, s. Th., disp. cli., cap. 1 ; Hru- ter, op. cit., 1878, iii., 516 sq. ; Perrone, Frcelect. Theolog. (1839), vi. 55. INFANT SALVATION". 19 to the dogma that the failure of baptism in infants, dying such, excludes ipso facto from heaven, and to seek its comfort in mitigat- ing still farther than the scholastics them- selves the nature of t\v&t poena damni which alone it allows as punishment of original sin. And if we may assume that such writers as Perrone, Hurter, Gousset, and Kendrick are typical of modern Roman theology through- out the world, certainly that theology may be said to have come, in this pathway of mitigation, as near to positing salvation for all infants dying unbaptized as the rather intractable deliverances of early popes and later councils permit to them. They all teach, of course (as the definitions of Flor- ence and Trent require of them) — in the words of Perrone* — " that children of this kind descend into hell, or incur damnation ;" but (as Hurter saysf), " although all Cath- olics agree that infants dying without bap- tism are excluded from the beatific vision and so suffer loss, are lost (pati damnum, damnari) ; they yet differ among them- selves in their determination of the nature and condition of the state into which such infants pass." As the idea of " damnation" may thus be softened to a mere failure to at- tain, so the idea of " hell " may be elevated * Campend. 1861, i., 494, No. 585. t Op. cit., No. 729. 20 THE DOCTRINE OF to that of a natural paradise. Hurter him- self is inclined to a somewhat severer doc- trine ; but Perrone (supported by such great lights as Balmes, Berlage, Oswald, Lessius, and followed not afar off by Gousset and Kendrick) reverts to the Pelagianizing view of Oatharinus and Molina and Sfondrati— which Petau called a "fabrication" cham- pioned indeed by Oatharinus but originated " by Pelagius the heretic/' and which Bel- larmine contended was contra fidem—and teaches that unbaptized infants enter into a state deprived of all supernatural benefits, indeed, but endowed with all the happiness of which pure nature is capable. Their state is described as having the nature of penalty and of damnation when conceived of relatively to the supernatural happiness from which they are excluded by original sin ; but when conceived of in itself and ab- solutely, it is a state of pure nature, and ac- cordingly the words of Thomas Aquinas are applied to it : " They are joined to God by participation in natural goods, and so also can rejoice in natural knowledge and love." * Thus, after so many ages, the Pelagian con- ception of the middle state for infants has obtained its revenge on the condemnation of the Church. No doubt it is not admit- * Cmnpend, 1861, i., 494, cf. ii., 252. INFANT SALVATION. 21 ted that this is a return to Pelagianism ; Perrone, for example, argues that Pelagius held the doctrine of a natural beatitude for infants as one unrelated to sin, while " Catholic theologians hold it with the death of sin ; so that the exclusion from the beatific vision has the nature of penalty and of dam- nation proceeding from sin." * Is there more than a verbal difference here ? At all events, whatever difference exists is a dif- ference not in the doctrine of the state of unbaptized infants after death, but in the doctrine of the fall. In deference to the language of fathers and councils and popes, this natural paradise is formally assigned to that portion of the other world designated " hell," but in its own nature it is precisely the Pelagian doctrine of the state of unbap- tized infants after death. By what expedi- ent such teaching is to be reconciled with the other doctrines of the Church of Rome, or with its former teaching on this same subject, or with its boast of semper eadem, is more interesting to its advocates within that communion than to us.f Our interest as historians of opinion is exhausted in simply noting the fact that the Pelagianiz- * Compend, 1861, i., 494, No. 590. t See some of the difficulties very mildly stated in Hurter, loc. cit. 22 THE DOCTRINE OF ing process, begun in the Middle Ages by assigning to infants guilty only of original sin liability to poena damni alone, culminates in our day in their assignment by the most representative theologians of modern Rome to a natural paradise. 4. It is, no doubt, as a protest against the harshness of the Romanist syllogism, " No man can attain salvation who is not a mem- ber of Christ ; but no one becomes a mem- ber of Christ except by baptism, received either in re or in voto,"* that this Pelagian- izing drift is to be regarded. Its fault is that it impinges by way of mitigation and modification on the major premise, which, however, is the fundamental proposition of Christianity. Its roots are planted, in the last analysis, in a conception of men, not as fallen creatures, children of wrath, and de- serving of a doom which can only be escaped by becoming members of Christ, but as creatures of God with claims on him for natural happiness, but, of course, with no claims on him for such additional supernat- ural benefits as he may yet lovingly confer on his creatures in Christ. On the other hand, that great religious movement which we call the Reformation, the constitutive * The words are Aquinas's (p. 3. q. 68, art. 1) ; see them quoted and applied by Pkrrone, Compend., ii., 253. INFANT SALVATION. 23 principle of which was its revised doctrine of the Church, ranged itself properly against the fallacious minor premise, and easily broke its bonds with the sword of the word. Men are not constituted members of Christ through the Church, but members of the Church through Christ ; they are not made the members of Christ by baptism which the Church gives, but by faith, the gift of God ; and baptism is the Church's recognition of this inner fact. The full benefit of this better apprehension of the nature of that Church of God membership in which is the condition of salvation, was not reaped, however, by all Protestants in equal measure. It was the strength of the Lutheran movement that it worked out its positions not theoretically or all at once, but step by step, as it was forced on by the logic of events and experience. But it was an in- cidental evil that, being compelled to ex- press its faith early, its first confession was framed before the full development of Prot- estant thought, and subsequently contracted the faith of Lutheranism into too narrow channels. The Augsburg Confession con- tains the true doctrine of the Church as the congregatio sanctorum ; but it committed Lutheranism to the doctrine that baptism is necessary to salvation (Art. IX.) in such a 24 THE DOCTRINE OF sense that children are not saved without baptism (Art. IX.),* inasmuch as the con- demnation and eternal death brought by original sin upon all are not removed except from those who are born again by baptism and the Holy Ghost (Art. II.) — i.e., to the doctrine that the necessity of baptism is the necessity of means. In the direction of mollifying interpretation of this deliverance, the theologians urge : 1. That the necessity affirmed is not absolute but ordinary, and binds man and not God. 2. That as the as- sertion is directed against the Anabaptists, it is not the privation, but the contempt of baptism that is affirmed to be damning. 3. That the necessity of baptism is not intended to be equalized with that of the Holy Ghost. 4. That the affirmation is not that for orig- inal sin alone any one is actually damned, but only that all are therefor damnable. There is force in these considerations. But they do not avail wholly to relieve the Augsburg Confession of limiting salvation to those who enjoy the means of grace, and as concerns infants, to those who receive the sacrament of baptism. It is not to be held, of course, that it asserts such an absolute necessity of baptism for infants dying such, as admits no exceptions. * " Or outside the Church of Christ," as is added in ed. 1540. INFANT SALVATION. 25 From Luther and Melanchthon down, Lu- theran theologians have always taught what Hunnins expressed in the Saxon Visitation Articles : " Unless a person be born again" of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. Cases of necessity are not intended, however, bij this.''' Luther- an theology, in other words, takes its stand positively on the ground of baptism of in- tention as applied to infants, as over against its denial by the Church of Rome. " Lu- ther," says Dorner,* " holds fast, in general, to the necessity of baptism in order to salva- tion, but in reference to the children of Christians who have died unbaptized, he says : ' The Holy and Merciful God will think kindly of them. What he will do with them he has revealed to no one, that baptism may not be despised, but has re- served to his own mercy ; God does wrong to no man.' " \ From the fact that Jewish children dying before circumcision were not lost, Luther argues that neither are Chris- tian children dying before baptism ;J and he comforts Christian mothers of still-born babes by declaring that they should under- stand that such infants are saved. 8 So * Hi.-/, of Protestant Theology (E.T.), i., 171. t Opp., xxii., 872 (Dorner's quotation). X Com. in Gen., c. 17. § Christliche Bedenken, 26 THE DOCTRINE OF Bugenhagen, under Luther's direction, teaches that Christians' children intended for baptism are not left to the hidden judgment of God if they fail of baptism, but have the promise of being received by Christ into his kingdom. * It is not necessary to quote later authors on a point on which all are unani- mous ; let it suffice to add only the clear statement of the developed Lutheranism of John Gerhard (1610-22) : f " We walk in the middle way, teaching that baptism is, indeed, the ordinary sacrament of initiation and means of regeneration necessary to all, even to the children of believers, for regen- eration and salvation ; but vet that in the event of privation or impossibility the chil- dren of Christians are saved by an ex- traordinary and peculiar divine dispensation. For the necessity of baptism is not absolute, but ordinary ; we on our part are obliged to the necessity of baptism, but there must be no denial of the extraordinary action of God in infants offered to Christ by pious parents and the Church in prayers, and dying be- fore the opportunity of baptism can be given them, since God does not so bind his grace and saving efficacy to baptism as that, in * See for several such quotations brought together, Lau- rence, Bampton Lectures, 1804, ed. 1820, p. 272. Also Ger- hard as in next note. t Ed. Cotta, vol. ix., p. 284. INFANT SALVATIOX. 27 the event of privation, he may not both wish and be able to act extraordinarily. We dis- tinguish, then, between necessity on God's part and on our part ; between the case of privation and the ordinary way ; and also between infants born in the Church and out of the Church. Concerning infants born out of the Church, we say with the apostle (1 Cor. v. 12, 13), ' For what have I to do with judging them that are without ? Do not you judge them that are within ? For them that are without God judgeth.' Wherefore, since there is no promise con- cerning them, we commit them to God's judgment ; and yet we hold to no place in- termediate between heaven and hell, con- cerning which there is utter silence in Scrip- ture. But concerning infants born in the Church we have better hope. Pious parents properly bring their children as soon as pos- sible to baptism as the ordinary means of re- generation, and offer them in baptism to Christ ; and those who are negligent in this, so as through lack of care or wicked con- tempt for the sacrament to deprive their children of baptism, shall hereafter render a very heavy account to God, since they have ' despised the counsel of God ' (Luke vii. 30). Yet neither can nor ought we rashly to condemn those infants which die in their 28 THE DOCTRINE OE mothers' wombs or by some sudden accident before they receive baptism, but may rather hold that the prayers of pious par- ents, or, if the parents are negligent of this, the prayers of the Church, poured out for these infants, are clemently heard and they are received by God into grace and life." From this passage, too, we may learn the historical attitude of Lutheranism toward the entirely different question of the fate of infants dying outside the pale of the Church and the reach of its ordinances, a multitude so vast that it is wholly unreason- able to suppose them simply (like Christians' children deprived of baptism) exceptions to the rule laid down in the Augsburg Confes- sion. It is perfectly clear that the Lu- theran Confessions extend no hope for them. It is doubtful whether it can even be said that they leave room for hope for them. Melanchthon in the Apology is no doubt arguing against the Anabaptists, and intends to prove only that children should be bap- tized ; but his words in explanation of Art. IX. deserve consideration in this connec- tion also — where he argues that " the prom- ise of salvation" " does not pertain to those who are without the Church of Christ, where there is neither the Word nor the Sacra- ments, because the kingdom of Christ exists INFANT SALVATION. 29 only with the Word and the Sacraments." Luther's personal opinion as to the fate of heathen children dying in infancy is in doubt ; now he expresses the hope that the good and gracious God may have something good in view for them ;* and again, though leaving it to the future to decide, he only expects something milder for them than for the adults outside the Church ;f and Bugenhagen, under his eye, contrasts the children of Turks and Jews with those of Christians, as not sharers in salvation be- cause not in Christ. J From the very first the opinion of the theologians was divided on the subject. (1) Some held that all in- fants except those baptized in fact or inten- tion are lost, and ascribed to them, of course —for this was the Protestant view of the desert of original sin — both privative and positive punishment. This party included such theologians as Quistorpius, Calovius, Fechtei, Zeibichius, Buddeus. (2) Others judged that we may cherish the best of hope for their salvation. Here belong Dann- hauer, Hulsemann, Scherzer, J. A. Osian- der, Wagner, Musaeus, Cotta, and Spener. But the great body of Lutherans, including such names as Gerhard, Calixtus, Meisner, * Cf. Dorner, Hist. Prof. Theol., i., 171. t Cf. Laurence, Hampton Lectures, p. 272. X Ibid. 30 THE DOCTRINE OF Baldwin, Bechmann, Hoffmann, Hunnius, held that nothing is clearly revealed as to the fate of such infants, and thev must be left to the judgment of God. (3) Some of these, like Ilunnius, were inclined to believe that they will be saved. (4) Others, with more (like Hoffmann) or less (like Gerhard) clearness, were rather inclined to believe they will be lost ; but all alike held that the means for a certain decision are not in our hands.* Thus Hunnius says :f " That the infants of Gentiles, outside the Church, are saved, Ave cannot pronounce as certain, since there exists nothing definite in the Scrip- tures concerning the matter ; so neither do I dare simply to assert that these children are indiscriminately damned. . . . Let us commit them, therefore, to the judgment of God." And Hoffmann says :J; " On the question, whether the infants of the heathen nations are lost, most of our theologians pre- fer to suspend their judgment. To affirm as a certain thing that they are. lost could not be done without rashness." This cautious agnostic attitude has the best right to be called the historical Lu- theran attitude. It is even the highest posi- * This classification is taken from Cotta (Gerhard's Loci, ix., 282). t Qitcest. in cap. vii. Gen. $ See Kbatjth, Conservative Reformation, p. 433. IN FA XT SALVATION. 31 tion thoroughly consistent with the genius of the Lutheran system and the stress which it lays on the means of grace. The drift in more modern times has, however, been de- cidedly in the direction of affirming the sal- vation of all that die in infancy, on grounds identical with those pleaded by this party from the beginning — the infinite mercy of God, the universality of the atonement, the inability of infants to resist grace, their guiltlessness of despising the ordinance, and the like.* Even so, however, careful mod- ern Lutherans moderate their assertions. They may affirm that "it is not the doc- trine of our Confession that any human creature has ever been or ever will be lost purely for original sin ;" f but they speak of the matter as a " dark" or a " difficult ques- tion/' \ and suspend the salvation of such infants on an ''extraordinary" and "un- covenanted " exercise of God's mercy. § We cannot rise to a conviction or a " faith" in the matter, but may attain to a ' well- grounded hope/' based on our apprehension of God's all-embracing mercy. || In short, the Lutheran doctrine seems to lay no firm * Compare the statements in Cotta and Kraxtth, locc. citt. t Krauth, I.e., p. 4^9. % lb., pp. 561-63. § lb., pp. 430, 437. II Krauth, Infant Salvation in the Calvinistic\System, p. 22. '12 THE DOCTRINE OF foundation for a conviction of the salvation of all infants dying in infancy ; at the best it is held to leave open an uncontradicted hope. We are afraid we must say more ; it seems to contradict this hope. For should this hope prove true, it would no longer be true that " baptism is necessary to salva- tion/' even ordinarily ; the exception would be the rule. Nor would the fundamental conception of the Lutheran theory of salva- tion — that grace is' in the means of grace — be longer tenable. The logic of the Lu- theran system leaves little room for the salva- tion of all infants dying in infancy, and if their salvation should prove to be a fact, the integrity of the system is endangered. 5. A similar difficulty is experienced by all types of Protestant thought in which the older idea of the Church, as primarily an external body, has been incompletely re- formed. This may be illustrated, for ex- ample, from the history of thought in the Church of England. The Thirty-nine Ar- ticles, in their final form, are thoroughly Protestant and Reformed. And many of the greatest English theologians, even among those not most closely affiliated with Geneva, from the very earliest days of the Reforma- tion, have repudiated the " cruel judgment" of the Church of Rome as to the fate of in- INFANT SALVATION. 33 fants dying unbaptized. But this repudia- tion was neither immediate, nor has it ever been universal. The second of the Ten Articles of Henry VIII. (1536) not only de- clares that the promise of grace and eternal life is adjoined to baptism, but adds that in- fants ' ' by the sacrament of baptism do also obtain remission of their sins, the grace and favor of God, and be made thereby the very sons and children of God ; insomuch as in- fants and children dying in their infancy shall undoubtedly be saved thereby, and else not. ' ' The first liturgy embodied the same implication. The growing Protestant senti- ment soon revised it out of these standards.* But there have never lacked those in the Church of England who still taught the necessity of baptism to salvation. If it can boast of a John Hooper, who speaks of " the ungodly opinion that attributeth the salva- tion of men unto the receiving of an ex- ternal sacrament/' "as though the Holy Spirit could not be carried by faith into the penitent and sorrowful conscience ex- cept it rid always in a chariot and external sacrament," and who (probably first after Zwingli) taught that all infants dying in in- fancv, whether children of Christians or in- * For an outline of the history see Schaff, Creeds of Chris- tendom, i., 642 ; cf. Laurence, op. cit., p. 176 sq. 34 THE DOCTRINE OF fidels, are saved ;* it also has counted among its teachers many who held with Matthew Scrivener that Christ's " death and passion are not communicated unto any but by out- ward signs and sacraments/' so that " either all children must be damned, being unbap- tized, or they must have baptism." f The general position of the Church up to his day is thus conceived by Wall ij " The Church of England have declared their sense of its [i.e., baptism's] necessity by reciting the say- ing of our Saviour, John iii. 5, both in the Office of Baptism of Infants and also in that for those of riper years. . . . Concern- ing the everlasting state of an infant that by misfortune dies unbaptized, the Church of England has determined nothing (it were fit that all churches would leave such things to God) save that they forbid the ordinary Office for Burial to be used for such an one ; for that were to determine the point and acknowledge him for a Christian brother. And tho' the most noted men in the said Church from time to time since the Eefor- mation of it to this time have expressed their hopes that God will accept the purpose of * An Answer to My Lord of Winchester's Book, etc., 1547, in Parker Society's Early Writings of Bishop Hooper, pp. 129, 131. t Course of Divinity, London, 1674, p. 196. % Hist, of Infant Baptism, ed. 2, 1707, p. 377. INFANT SALVATION. 35 the parent for the deed ; yet they have done it modestly and much as Wycliffe did, rather not determining the negative than absolutely determining the positive, that such a child shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.' y I f this is all that can be said of the children of the faithful, lacking baptism, where will those of the infidel appear ? Many other opinions — more Protestant or more Pelagian — have, of course, found a home for them- selves in the bosom of this most inclusive cummunion, but they are no more charac- teristic of its teaching than that of Wall. It is only needful to remember that there are still many among the clergy of the Church of England who, retaining the old, unre- formed view of the Church, still believe " that the relationship of sonship to God is imparted through baptism and is not im- parted without it ;" * though, of course, many others, and we hope still a large ma- jority, would repudiate this position as in- credible. 6. It was among the Reformed alone that the newly recovered scriptural apprehension of the Church to which the promises were given, as essentially not an externally or- ganized body but the people of God, mem- bership in which is mediated not by the ex- * Oxford Tracts, vol. ii., No. 66. 36 THE DOCTRINE OF ternal act of baptism but by the internal regeneration of the Holy Spirit, bore its full fruit in rectifying the doctrine of the appli- cation of redemption. This great truth was taught alike by both branches of Prot- estantism, but it was limited in its appli- cation in the one line of teaching by a very high doctrine of the means of grace, while in the other it became itself constitutive of the doctrine of the means of grace. Not a few Reformed theologians, even outside the Church of England, no doubt also held a high doctrine of the means ; of whom Peter Jurieu may be taken as a type.* But this was not characteristic of the Reformed churches, the distinguishing doctrine of which rather by suspending salvation on membership in the invisible instead of in the visible Church, transformed baptism from a necessity into a duty, and left men dependent for salvation on nothing but the infinite love and free grace of God. In this view the absolutely free and loving election of God alone is determinative of the saved ; so that how many and who they are is known absolutely to God alone, and to us only so far forth as it may be inferred from the marks and signs of election revealed to us in the * See his views quoted and discussed by Witsius, Be Effi- cace et TMlitale Bapt. in Miscel. Sacra (1636), ii., 513, INFANT SALVATION. 37 Word. Faith and its fruits are the chief signs in the case of adults, and he that be- lieves may know that he is of the elect. In the case of infants dying in infancy, birth within the bounds of the covenant is a sure sigu, since the promise is " unto us and our children." But present unbelief is not a sure sign of reprobation in the case of adults, for who knows but that unbelief may yet give place to faith ? Nor in the case of infants, dying such, is birth outside the cov- enant a trustworthy sign of reprobation, for the election of God is free. Accordingly there are many— adults and infants — of whose salvation we may be sure, but of rep- robation we cannot be sure ; such a judg- ment is necessarily unsafe even as to adults apparently living in sin, while as to infants who " die and give no sign/' it is presump- tuous and rash in the extreme. The above is practically an outline of the teaching of Zwingli. He himself worked it out in its logical completeness, and taught : 1. That all believers are elect and hence are saved, though we cannot know infallibly who are true believers except in our own case. 2. All children of believers dying in infancy are elect and hence are saved, for this rests on God's immutable promise. 3. It is probable, from the superabundance >-- 38 THE DOCTRINE OF of the gift of grace over the offence, that all infants dying such are elect and saved ; so that death in infancy is a sign of elec- tion ; and although this must be left with God, it is certainly rash and even impious to affirm their damnation. 4. All who are saved, whether adult or infant, are saved only by the free grace of God's election and through the redemption of Christ.* The central principle of Zwiugli's teaching is not only the common possession of all Cal- vinists, but the essential postulate of their system. They can differ among themselves only in their determination of what the signs of election and reprobation are, and in their interpretation of these signs. On these grounds Calvinists early divided into five classes : 1. From the beginning a few held with Zwingli that death in infancy is a sign of election, and hence that all who die in infancy are the children of God and enter at once into glory. After Zwingli, Bishop Hooper was probably the firstf to embrace * Zwingli's teaching may be conveniently worked out by the aid of August Baur's valuable Zwinglis Theologie, especially vol. ii. (Halle, 1889). Zwingli's doctrine of original sin had practically no influence on this question. t The adverb is used advisedly. Calvin is often held to have believed that all infants dying such are saved. For a careful statement of this opinion see especially the full and learned paper of Dr. Chakles W. Shields, in The Presbyte- rian and Reformed Review for October, 1890 (vol i., pp. 634- 651). To us, however, Calvin seems, while speaking with ad- INFANT SALVATION. 39 this view.* It has more lately become the ruling view, and we may select Augustus Topladyf and Robert S. Candlish as its types. The latter, for example, writes :{ "In many ways I apprehend it may be inferred from Scripture that all dying in infancy are elect, and are, therefore, saved. . . . The whole analogy of the plan of saving mercy seems to favor the same view, and now it may be seen, if I am not greatly mistaken, to be put beyond question by the bare fact thatlittle children die. . . . The death of little children must be held to be one of the fruits of redemption. . . ." 2. At the opposite extreme a very few held that the only sure sign of election is faith with its fruits, and, therefore, we can have no real ground of knowledge concerning the fate of any infant ; as, however, God cer- tainly has his elect among them too, each man can cherish the hope that his children mirable caution, to imply that he believed some infants dying such to be lost. See, e.g., his comment on Rom. v. 17, and his treatises against Pighius, Servetus, and Castellio. Dr. Schaff repeatedly speaks of Bullinger as agreeing in this point with Zwingli — on what grounds we know not unless the note in Creeds of Christendom, i., 642, note 3, is intended to direct us to the passages quoted by Laurence as such. But these passages do not seem to support that opinion ; and in a diligent search in Bullinger's works we find nothing to favor it and much to nega- tive it. * See reference ante, p. 129. t The Works of, etc., new ed., 1837, p. 645. % The Atonement, etc., 1861, pp. 183, 184. 40 THE DOCTRINE OF are of the elect. Peter Martyr approaches this sadly agnostic position (which was after- ward condemned by the Synod of Dort), writing : " Neither am I to be thought to promise salvation to all the children of the faithful which depart without the sacrament, for if I should do so I might be counted rash ; I leave them to be judged by the mercy of God, seeing I have no certainty concerning the secret election and predes- tination ; but I only assert that those are truly saved to whom the divine election ex- tends, although baptism does not intervene. Just so, I hope well concerning infants of this kind, because I see them born from faithful parents ; and this thing has prom- ises that are uncommon ; and although they may not be general, quoad ovmes, yet when I see nothing to the contrary it is right to hope well concerning the salvation of such infants."* The great body of Calvinists, however, previous to the present century, took their position between these extremes. 3. Many held that faith and the promise are sure signs of election, and accordingly all believers and their children are certainly saved ; but that the luck of faith and the promise is an equally sure sign of reproba- tion, so that all the children of unbelievers, * Loci Communes, i., class 4, cap 5, § 1G (compare i\\, 100). INFANT SALVATION. 41 dying such, are equally certaiuly lost. The younger Spanheim, for example, writes : " Confessedly, therefore, original sin is a most just cause of positive reprobation. Hence no one fails to see what we should think concerning the children of pagans dying in their childhood ; for unless we acknowledge salvation outside of God's cov- enant and Church (like the Pelagians of old, and with them Tertullian, Epiphanius, Clement of Alexandria, of the ancients, and of the moderns, Andradius, Ludovicus Vives, Erasmus, and not a few others, against the whole Bible), and suppose that all the children of the heathen, dying in in- fancy, are saved, and that it would be a great blessing to them if they should be smoth- ered by the midwives or strangled in the cradle, we should humbly believe that they are justly reprobated by God on account of the corruption (labes) and guilt (renins) derived to them by natural propagation. Hence, too, Paul testifies (Rom. v. 14) that death has passed upon them which have not sinned after the similitude of Adam's trans- gression, and distinguishes and separates (1 Cor. vii. 14) the children of the cove- nanted as holy from the impure children of unbelievers." * 4. More held that faith and * Opera, iii., cols. 1173-74, § 22. 42 THE DOCTRINE OF the promise are certain signs 01 election, so that the salvation of believers' children is certain, while the lack of the promise only leaves us in ignorance of God's purpose ; nevertheless that there is good ground for asserting that both election and reprobation have place in this unknown sphere. Ac- cordingly they held that all the infants of believers, dying such, are saved, but that some of the infants of unbelievers, dying such, are lost. Probably no higher expres- sion of this general view can be found than John Owen's. He argues that there are two ways in which God saves infants : " (1) by interesting them in the covenant, if their immediate or remote parents have been be- lievers. He is a God of them and of their seed, extending his mercy to a thousand generations of them that fear him ;* (2) by his grace of election which is most free and not tied to any conditions, by which I make no doubt but God taketh many unto him in Christ whose parents never knew or had been despisers of the Gospel." \ 5. Most Calvinists of the past, however, have simply held that faith and the promise are marks by which we may know assuredly that all * It is, perhaps, worth noting that this is the general Calvin- istic view of what "children of believers 1 ' means. Compare Calvin, Tracts, vol. Hi., p. 351. t Works, x., 81 ; compare v., 137. INFANT SALVATION. 43 those who believe and their children, dying such, are elect and saved, while the absence of sure marks of either election or reproba- tion in infants, dying such outside the cov- enant, leaves us without ground for inference concerning them, and they must be left to the judgment of God, which, however hid- den from us, is assuredly just and holy and good. This agnostic view of the fate of un- covenanted infants has been held, of course, in conjunction with every degree of hope or the lack of hope concerning them, and thus in the hands of the several theologians it approaches each of the other views, except, of course, the second, which separates itself from the general Calvinistic attitude by allowing a place for reprobation even among believers' infants, dying such. Petrus de Witte may stand for one example. He says : "We must adore God's judgments and not curiously inquire into them. Of the children of believers it is not to be doubt- ed but that they shall be saved, inasmuch as they belong unto the covenant. But be- cause we have no promise of the children of unbelievers we leave them to the judgment of God." * Matthew Henry f and our own Jonathan Dickinson J may also stand as types. It is this cautious, agnostic view * Catechism, q. 37. t Works, ii., 940. % Sermons, 205. 44 THE DOCTRINE OF which has the best historical right to be called the general Calvinistic one. Van Maastricht correctly says that while the Re- formed hold that infants are liable to repro- bation, yet " concerning believers' infants . . . they judge better things. But unbelievers 7 infants, because the Scriptures determine nothing clearly on the subject, they judge should be left to the divine dis- cretion/' * The Reformed Confessions with character- istic caution refrain from all definition of the negative side of the salvation of infants, dying such, and thus confine themselves to emphasizing the gracious doctrine common to the whole body of Reformed thought. The fundamental Reformed doctrine of the Church is nowhere more beautifully stated than in the sixteenth article of the Old Scotch Confession, while the polemical ap- pendix of 1580, in its protest against the errors of " antichrist," specifically mentions " his era ell judgement againis infants de- parting Avithout the sacrament : his absolute necessitie of baptisme. ' ' No synod probably ever met which labored under greater temptation to declare that some infants, dying in infancy, are reprobate, than the Synod of Dort. Possibly nearly every mem- * Theoretico-Pract. Theol. (1724), p. 308. INFANT SALVATION. 45 ber of it held as his private opinion that there are such infants ; and the certainly- very shrewd but scarcely sincere methods of the Remonstrants in shifting the form in which this question came before the synod were very irritating. But the fa- thers of Dort, with truly Reformed loyal- ty to the positive declarations of Scrip- ture, confined themselves to a clear testi- mony to the positive doctrine of infant sal- vation and a repudiation of the calumnies of the Remonstrants, without a word of neg- ative inference. " Since we are to judge of the will of God from his Word/' they say, " which testifies that the children of believ- ers are holy, not by nature, but in virtue of the covenant of grace in which they to- gether with their parents are comprehended, godly parents have no reason to doubt of the election and salvation of their children whom it pleaseth God to call out of this life in their infancy" (Art. XVII. ). Accord- ingly they repel in the Conclusion the calumny that the Reformed teach ' that many children of the faithful are torn guilt- less from their mothers' breasts and tyran- nically plunged into hell." * It is easy to * The language here used has a not uninteresting history. It is Calvin's challenge to Castellio : " Put forth now thy viru- lence against God, who hurls innocent babes torn from their mothers' breasts into eternal death" (Be Occulta Bei Providen- 46 THE DOCTRINE OF say that nothing is here said of the children of any but the " godly" and of the " faith- ful ;" this is true ; and therefore it is not implied (as is so often thoughtlessly asserted) that the contrary of what is here asserted is true of the children of the ungodly ; but nothing is taught of them at all. It is more to the purpose to observe that it is asserted that the children of believers, dying such, are saved ; and that this assertion is an ines- timable advance on that of the Council of Trent and that of the Augsburg Confession that baptism is necessary to salvation. It is the confessional doctrine of the Keformed churches and of the Reformed churches alone, that all believers' infants, dying in in- fancy, are saved. What has been said of the Synod of Dort may be repeated of the Westmin- ster Assembly. The Westminster divines were generally at one iu the matter of infant salvation with the doctors of Dort, tia, in Opp. ed., Amst, viii., pp. 644-45). The underlying con- ception that God condemns infants to eternal death seems to be Calvin's ; but the mode of expression is Calvin's reducfio ad absurdum (or rather ad blasphemiam) of Castellio's opinions. Nevertheless the Remonstrants allowed themselves in their polemic zeal to apply the whole sentiment to the orthodox, and that, even in a still more sharpened form — viz., with reference to believers' 1 children. This very gross calumny the Synod repels. Its deliverance is subjected to a very sharp and not very candid criticism by Episcopius {Operal., i., p. 176, and specially II., p. 28). INFANT SALVATION. 47 but, like them, they retrained from any de- liverance as to its negative side. That death in infancy does not prejudice the salvation of God's elect they asserted in the chapter of their Confession which treats of the ap- plication of Christ's redemption to his people : " All those whom God hath pre- destined unto life, and those only, he is pleased, in his appointed and accepted time, effectually to call, by his word and Spirit, . . . so as they come most freely, being made willing by his grace. . . . Elect infants dying in infancy are regenerated and saved by Christ, through the Spirit who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth." * With this declaration of their faith that such of God's elect as die in in- fancy are saved by his own mysterious work- ing in their hearts, although incapable of the response of faith, they were content. ; h'tstminster Confessionof Faith,~K.., i. and iii. The opinion that a body of non-elect infants dying in infancy and not saved is implied in this passage, although often controversially asserted, is not only a wholly unreasonable opinion exegetically, but is ab- solutely negatived by the history of the formation of this clause in the Assembly as recorded in the Minutes, and has never found favor among the expositors of the Confession. David Dick- son's (1684) treatment of the section shows that he understands it to be directed against the Anabaptists ; and all careful stu- dents of the Confession understand it as above, including Shaw, Hodge, Macpherson and Mitchell. The same is true of all schools of adherents to the Confession. See, e.g., Lyman Beech- er (SjArit of the Pilgrims, i., pp. 49, 81) ; cf. also Philip Schapf {Creeds of Christendom, i., 795). 48 THE DOCTRINE OF Whether these elect comprehend all infants, dying such, or some only — whether there is such a class as non-elect infants, dying in infancy, their words neither say nor sug- gest. No Eeformed confession enters into this question ; no word is said by any one of them which either asserts or implies either that some infants are reprobated or that all are saved. What has been held in common by the whole body of Reformed theologians on this subject is asserted in these confes- sions ; of what has been disputed among them the confessions are silent. And silence is as favorable to one type as to an- other. Although the cautious agnostic position as to the fate of uncovenanted infants dying in infancy may fairly claim to be the his- torical Calvinistic view, it is perfectly obvi- ous that it is not per se any more Calvinistic than any of the others. The adherents of all the types enumerated above are clearly within the limits of the system, and hold with the same firmness to the fundamental position that salvation is suspended on no earthly cause, but ultimately rests on God's electing grace alone, while our knowl- edge of who are saved depends on our view of what are the signs of election and of the clearness with which they may be inter- INFANT SALVATION. 49 preted. As these several types diif er only in the replies they offer to the subordinate ques- tion, there is no " revolution" involved in passing from one to the other ; and as in the lapse of time the balance between them swings this way or that, it can only be truly said that there is advance or retrogression, not in fundamental conception, but in the clearness with which details are read and with which the outline of the doctrine is filled up. In the course of time the agnostic view of the fate of uncovenanted infants, dying such, has given place to an ever-grow- ing universality of conviction that these in- fants too are included in the election of grace ; so that to day few Calvinists can be found who do not hold with Toplady, and Doddridge, and Thomas Scott, and John Newton, and James P. Wilson, and Nathan L. Rice, and Robert J. Breckinridge, and Robert S. Candlish, and Charles Hodge, and the whole body of those of recent years whom the Calvinistic churches delight to honor, that all who die in infancy are the children of God and enter at once into his glory — not because original sin alone is not deserving of eternal punishment (for all are born children of wrath), nor because they are less guilty than others (for relative in- nocence would merit only relatively light 50 THE DOCTRINE OF punishment, not freedom from all punish- ment), nor because they die in infancy (for that they die in infancy is not the cause but the effect of God's mercy toward them), but simply because God in his infinite love has chosen them in Christ, before the founda- tion of the world, by a loving foreordination of them unto adoption as sons in Jesus Christ. Thus, as they hold, the Eeformed theology has followed the light of the Word until its brightness has illuminated all its corners, and the darkness has fled away. 7. The most serious peril which the orderly development of the Christian doc- trine of the salvation of infants has had to encounter, as men strove, age after age, more purely and thoroughly to apprehend it, has arisen from the intrusion into Chris- tian thought of what we may, without lack of charity, call the unchristian conception of man's natural innocence. For the task which was set to Christian thinking was to obtain a clear understanding of God's re- vealed purpose of mercy to the infants of a guilty and wrath-deserving race. And the Pelagianizing conception of the innocence of human infancy, in however subtle a form presented, put the solution of the problem in jeopardy by suggesting that it needed no solution. We have seen how some Greek INFANT SALVATION. 51 Fathers cut the knot with the facile formula that infantile innocence, while not deserving of supernatural reward, was yet in no dan- ger of being adjudged to punishment. We have seen how in the more active hands of Pelagius and his companions, as part of a great unchristian scheme, it menaced Chris- tianity itself, and was repelled only by the vigor and greatness of an Augustine. We have seen how the same conception, creep- ing gradually into the Latin Church in the milder form of semi-Pelagianism, lulled her heart to sleep with suggestions of less and less ill- desert for original sin, until she neg- lected the problem of infant salvation altogether and comforted herself with a con- stantly attenuating doctrine of infant pun- ishment. If infants are so well off without Christ, there is little impulse to consider whether they may not be in Christ. The Eeformed churches could not hope to work out the problem free from menace from the perennial enemy. The crisis came in the form of the Remonstrant controversy. The anthropology of the Remonstrants was distinctly semi- Pelagian, and on that basis no solid advance was possible. Nor was the matter helped by their postulation of a uni- versal atonement which lost in intention as much as it gained in extension. Infants 52 THE DOCTRINE OF may have very little to be saved from, but their salvation from even it cannot be wrought by an atonement which only pur- chases for them the opportunity for salva- tion — an opportunity of which they cannot avail themselves, however much the natural power of free choice is uninjured by the fall, for the simple reason that they die infants ; while God cannot be held to make them, without their free choice, partakers of this atonement without an admission of that sovereign discrimination among men which it was the very object of the whole Remon- strant theory to exclude. It is not strange that the Remonstrants looked with some favor on the Romish theory of pcena damni. Though the doctrine of the salvation of all infants dying in infancy became one of their characteristic tenets, it had no logical basis in their scheme of faith, and their proclama- tion of it could have no direct eifect in working out the problem. Indirectly it had a twofold effect. On the one hand, it retarded the true course of the development of doctrine, by leading those who held fast to biblical teaching on original sin and par- ticular election, to oppose the doctrine of the salvation of all dying in infancy, as if it were necessarily inconsistent with these teach- ings. Probably Calvinists were never so INFANT SALVATION. 53 united in affirming that some infants, dying such, are reprobated, as in the height of the Remonstrant controversy. On the other hand, so far as the doctrine of the salvation of all infants, dying such, was accepted by the anti-Remonstrants, it tended to bring in with it, in more or less measure, the other tenets with which it was associated in their teaching, and thus to lead men away from the direct path along which alone the solu- tion was to be found. Wesleyan Arminian- ism brought only an amelioration, not a thoroughgoing correction of the faults of Remonstrantism. The theoretical postu- lation of original sin and natural inability, corrected by the gift to all men of a gracious ability on the basis of universal atonement in Christ, was a great advance. But it left the salvation of infants dying in infancy logically as unaccounted for as original Remonstrantism. Ex liypothesi, the universal atonement could bring to these infants only what it brought to all others, and this was something short of salvation — viz., an ability to improve the grace given alike to all. But infants, dying such, can- not improve grace ; and therefore, it would seem, cannot be saved, unless we suppose a special gift to them over and above what is given to other men — a supposition subversive 54 THE DOCTRINE OF at once of the whole Arminian contention. The assertion of the salvation of all infants dying in infancy, although a specially dear tenet of Wesleyau Arminianism, remains therefore, as with the earlier Remonstrants, unconformable to the system. The Arminian difficulty, indeed, lies one step further back ; it does not make clear how any infant dying in infancy is to be saved.* The truth seems to be that there is but one logical outlet for any system of doctrine which suspends the determination of who are to be saved upon any action of man's own will, whether in the use of gracious or natural ability (that is, of course, if it is unwilling to declare infants, dying such, incapable of salvation); and that lies in the extension of " the day of grace" for such into the other world. Otherwise, there will inevitably be brought in covertly, in the salvation of in- fants, that very sovereignty of God, " irre- * The prevailing view in the Methodist Episcopal Church is probably that infants are all born justified. The difficulties of this view are hinted by a not unfriendly hand in The Cumber- land Presbyterian Review for January, 18!)0, p. 113. The best that can be said toward placing the dying infant " in the same essential gracious position as that into which the justified and regenerate adult is brought by voluntary faith, 11 may be read from Dr. D. D. Whedon's pen in The Methodist Quarterly Review for 1883, p. 757. It is inconsequent ; and its consequences are portentous to Arminianism — or shall we say that God does not determine who are to die in in- fancy ? INFANT SALVATION. 55 sistible" grace and passive receptivity, to deny which is the whole raison d'etre of these schemes. There are indications that this is being increasingly felt among those who are most concerned ; we have noted it most re- cently among the Cumberland Presbyte- rians,* who, perhaps alone of Christian de- nominations, have embodied in their confes- sion their conviction that all infants, dying such, are saved. The theory of a probation in the other world for such as have had in this no such probation as to secure from them a decisive choice has come to us from Germany, and bears accordingly a later Lutheran coloring. Its roots are, however, planted in the earliest Lutheran thinking, f and are equally visible in the writings of the early Remonstrants ; its seeds are present, in fact, wherever man's salvation is causally suspended on any act of his own. But the outcome offered by it certainly affords no good reason for affirming that all infants, dying such, are saved. It is not uncommon, indeed, for the advocates of this theory to suppose the present life to be a more favor- able opportunity for moral renewal in Christ * Cumberland Presbyterian Review, July, 1890, p. 369 : cf. January, 1890, p. 113. t Cf . e.g., Andre -e, Actis Oolloq. Montisbelligart, p. 447, 448 ; and note Beza*s crushing reply. 56 THE DOCTRINE OF than the next.* Some, no doubt, think otherwise. Bat in either event what can as- sure us that all will be so reneAved ? We are ready to accept the subtle argument in Dr. Kedney's valuable work, Christian Doctrine Harmonized, \ as the best that can be said in the premises ; for although Dr. Kedney de- nies the theory of "future probation" in general, he shares the general " ethical" view on which it is founded, and projects the sal- vation of infants dying in infancy into the next world on the express ground that they are incapable of choice here. He assures us that they will surely welcome the knowl- edge of God's love in Christ there. But we miss the grounds of assurance, on the funda- mental postulates of the scheme. If the choice of these infants, while it remains free, can be made thus certain there, why not the same for all men here f And if their choice is thus made certain, is their destiny deter- mined by their choice, or by God who makes that choice certain ? Assuredly no thor- oughfare is open along this path for a con- sistent doctrine of the salvation of all those that die in infancy. But this seems the only pathway that is consistently open to those, of whatever name, who make man's * Cf. Progressive Orthodoxy, p. 76. t Vol. ii., pp. 91 sq. INFANT SALVATION. 57 own undetermined act the determining fac- tor in his salvation.* 8. The drifts of doctrine which have come before us in this rapid sketch may be reduced to three generic views. 1. There is what may be called the ecclesiastical doctrine, ac- cording to which the Church, in the sense of an outwardly organized body, is set as the sole fountain of salvation in the midst of a lost world ; the Spirit of God and eternal life are its peculiar endowments, of which none can partake save through communion with it. Accordingly to all those departing this life in infancy, baptism, the gateway to the Church, is the condition of salvation. 2. There is Avhat may be called the gracious doctrine, according to which the visible Church is not set in the world to determine by the gift of its ordinances who are to be saved, but as the harbor of refuge for the saints, to gather into its bosom those whom God himself in his infinite love has selected in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world in whom to show the wonders of his grace. Men accordingly are not saved be- * The Rev. D. Fisk Harris, himself a Congregational minister (Calvinism Contrary to God's Word and Man's Mor- al Nature, p. 107), tells us that a view not essentially differing from Dr Kedney's " seems to be the prevailing view of Congre- gationalists. 11 This he states thus : "All infants become mor- al agents after death. Exercising a holy choice, they 'are saved on the ground of the atonement and by regeneration.' " 58 THE DOCTRINE OF cause they are baptized, but they are bap- tized because they are saved, and the failure of the ordinance does not argue the failure of the grace. Accordingly to all those departing this life in infancy, inclusion in God's saving purpose alone is the condition of salvation ; we may be able to infer this purpose from manifest signs, or we may not be able to infer it, but in any case it cannot fail. 3. There is what may be called the humanitarian doc- trine, according to which the determining cause of man's salvation is his own free choice, under whatever variety of theories as to the source of his power to exercise this choice, or the manner in which it is exercis- ed. Accordingly whether one is saved or not is dependent not on baptism or on inclusion in God's hidden purpose, but on the decisive activity of the soul itself. The first of these doctrines is character- istic of the earlv, the mediaeval, and the Koman churches, not without echoes in those sections of Protestantism which love to think of themselves as " more historical" or less radically reformed than the rest. The second is the doctrine of the Reformed churches. These two are not opposed to one another in their most fundamental conception, but are related rather as an earlier misapprehen- INFANT SALVATION. 59 si on and a later correction of the same basal doctrine. The phrase extra ecclesiam nulla sal us is the common property of both ; they differ only in their understanding of the * *' ecclesia, " whether of the visible or in- visible church. The third doctrine, on the other hand, has cropped out ever and again in every age of the Church, has dom- inated whole sections of it and whole ages, but has never, in its purity, found expression in any great historic confession or exclusively characterized any age. It is, in fact, not a section of Church doctrine at all, but an in- trusion into Christian thought from with- out. In its purity it has always and in all communions been accounted heresy ; and only as it has been more or less modified and concealed among distinctively Christian ad- juncts has it ever made a position for itself in the Church. Its fundamental conception is the antipodes of that of the other doc- trines. The first step in the development of the doctrine of infant salvation was taken when the Church laid the foundation which from the beginning has stood firm, Infants too are lost members of a lost race, and only those savingly united to Christ are saved. In its definition of what infants are thus savingly united to Christ the early Church missed ( >0 THE DOCTRINE OF the path. All that are brought to him in baptism, was its answer. Long ages passed before the second step was taken in the cor- rect definition. The way was prepared in- deed by Augustine's doctrine of grace, by which salvation was made dependent on the dealings of God with the individual heart. But his eyes were h olden that he should not see it. It was reserved to Zwingli to proclaim it clearly, All the elect children of God, ivho are regenerated by the Spirit who worheth when, and where, and how he pleas- eth. The sole question that remains is, Who of those that die in infancy are the elect children of God ? Tentative answers were given. The children of God's people, said some. The children of God's people, with such others as his love has set upon to call, said others. All those that die in in- fancy said others still ; and to this reply Re- formed thinking and not Reformed thinking only, but in one way or another, logically or illogically, the thinking of the Christian world has been converging. Is it the Scrip- tural answer ? It is as legitimate and as logical an answer as any, on Reformed postu- lates. It is legitimate on no other postu- lates. If it be really conformable to the Word of God it will stand ; and the third step in the development of the doctrine of INFANT SALVATION. 61 infant salvation is already taken. .But if it stand, it can stand on no other theological basis than the Reformed. If all infants dying in infancy are saved, it is certain that they are not saved by or through the ordinances of the visible Church (for they have not received them), nor through their own improvement of a grace common to all men (for they are incapable of activity) ; it can only be through the almighty operation of the Holy Spirit who worketh when and where and how he pleaseth, through whose ineffable grace the Father gathers these lit- tle ones to the home he has prepared for them. Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 1 1012 01094 4835 KB I DATE DUE J MA**^" 91 -4^«i**^ ? '■ ' ■" ~ ■ ■ DEMCO 38-297