The development of the doctrine of infant salvation

THE

Development of the Doctrine
of Infant Salvation.

BY

BENJAMIN B. WARFIELD, D.D.

I

tibxaxy of 1:he <fcheoic0ical gminaxy

PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY

From the library of
Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield,D,D

BT 758 .W37 1891 copy 1
War fie Id, Benjamin

Breckinridge, 1851-1921.
The development of the

rJnrfrinp nf infant

THE

DEVELOPMENT OF THE DOCTRINE

OF INFANT SALVATION.

BY

/

BENJAMIN B. WARFIELD,

Professor in Princeton Seminary.

NEW YORK :
THE CHRISTIAN LITERATURE CO.

1891.

Copyright, 1891, by

THE CHRISTIAN LITERATURE CO.,

New York.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Page.

I. The Patristic Doctrine, ... 5

Infants need salvation, p. 6 ; Bap-
tism necessary to salvation, p. 6 ;
Augustine, p. 7.

II. The Medieval Mitigation, . 9

The inherited doctrine, p. 9 ;
Scholastic doctrine of poena
clamni, p. 10 ; Attempt to apply
baptism of intention, p. 11 ; Wy-
cliffe, p. 13.

III. The Teaching of the Church

of Home, 13

Four opinions, p. 13 ; Tridentme
doctrine, p. 14 ; Attempt to ap-
ply intention rejected, p. IT ;
Modern Pelagianizing views, p.
19.

IV. The Lutheran Doctrine, . . 22

Protestant doctrine of the
Church, p. 23 ; Doctrine of Augs-
burg Confession, p. 24 ; Bap-
tism of intention recognized, p.
24 ; Gerhard's teaching, p. 2ti ;
Heathen infants, p. 28 ; Four
opinions, p. 29 ; Modern Lu-
theran ism, p. 31.

IV TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Page.

V. Anglican Views, 32

Early form of the Articles, p.
32 ; Hooper, p. 33 ; Scrivener,
p. 34 ; Wall, p. 34 ; Present
state of opinion, p. 35.

VI. The Reformed Doctrine, . . 35

Roots of the doctrine, p. 36 ;
Zwingli's teaching, p. 37 ; Five
opinions, p. 38 : 1. All dying in-
fants saved, p. 38 ; 2. Uncertain-
ty as to all, p. 39 ; 3. All cove-
nanted infants saved, p. 40 ; 4.
All covenanted and some others
saved, p. 41 ; 5. Agnostic as to
uncovenanted, p. 42 ; The Re-
formed Confessions, p. 44 ; Syn-
od of Dort, p. 44 ; Westminster
Assembly, p. 46 ; Modern Cal-
vinism, p. 48.

VII. "Ethical" Tendencies, . . 50

Early Pelagianizing, p. 51 ; Re-
monstrantism, p. 51 ; Wesleyan
Arminianism, p. 53 ; The logical
outcome, p. 54 ; Post-mortem
probation, p. 55 ; Dr. Kedney,
p. 56.

VIII. The Doctrinal Development, 57

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DOCTRINE
OF INFANT SALVATION.

The task which we set before us in this
brief paper is not to unravel the history of
opinion as to the salvation of infants dying
in infancy, but the much more circumscribed
one of tracing the development of doctrine
on this subject. We hope to show that
there has been a doctrine as to the salvation
of infants common to all ages of the Church ;
but that there has also been in this, as in
other doctrines, a progressive correction of
crudities in its conception, by which the
true meaning and relations of the common
teaching have been freed from deforming
accretions and its permanent core brought
to purer expression.

1. It is fundamental to the very concep-
tion of Christianity that it is a remedial
scheme. Christ Jesus came to save sinners.
The first Christians had no difficulty in
understanding and confessing that Christ
had come into a world lost in sin to estab-
lish a kingdom of righteousness, citizenship
in which is the condition of salvation. That

6 THE DOCTRINE OF

infants were admitted into this citizenship
they did not question ; Irenaeus, for exam-
ple, finds it appropriate that Christ was
born an infant and grew by natural stages
into manhood, since " he came to save all
by himself — all, I say, who by him are born
again unto God, infants and children, and
boys and young men, and old men/' and
accordingly passed through every age that
he might sanctify all. Nor did they ques-
tion that not the natural birth of the flesh,
but the new birth of the Spirit was the sole
gateway for infants too, into the kingdom ;
communion with God was lost for all alike,
and to infants too it was restored only in
Christ.* Less pure elements, however, en-
tered almost inevitably into their thought.
The ingrained externalism of both Jewish
and heathen modes of conception, when
brought into the Church wrought naturally
toward the identification of the kingdom of
Christ with the external Church, and of re-
generation with baptism. Already in Jus-
tin and Irenaeus, the word " regeneration"
means " baptism ;" the Fathers uniformly
understand John iii. 5 of baptism. The
maxim of the Patristic age thus became
extra ecclesiam nulla salus ; baptism was
held to be necessary to salvation with the

* IrenjEUS, Haer., ii., 22, 4, and iii., 18, 7.

INFANT SALVATION.

necessity of means ; and as a corollary, no
unbaptized infant could be saved. How
early this doctrine of the necessity of bap-
tism became settled in the Church is diffi-
cult to trace in the paucity of very early
witnesses. Tertullian already defends it
from objection.* The reply of Cyprian and
his fellow-bishops to Fidus on the duty of
early baptism, presupposes it.f After that,
it was plainly the Church-doctrine ; and
although it was mitigated in the case of
adults by the admission not only of the bap-
tism of blood, but also that of intention,^
the latter mitigation was not allowed in the
case of infants. The whole Patristic
Church agreed that, martyrs excepted, no
infant dying unbaptized could enter the
kingdom of heaven.

The fairest exponent of the thought of
the age on this subject is Augustine, who
was called upon to defend it against the
Pelagian error that infants dying unbaptized,
while failing of entrance into the kingdom,
yet obtain eternal life. His constancy in
this controversy has won for him the un-
enviable title of clurus infantum pater — a
designation doubly unjust, in that not only

* De Bapt.. c. 12. t Epistle lviii. (lxiv.)

% With what limitations may he conveniently read in Wall,
Hist, of Infant Baptism, ed. 2, 1707, pp. 359 sq.

8 THE DOCTRINE 0#

did he neither originate the obnoxious dog-
ma nor teach it in its harshest form, but he
was even preparing its destruction by the
doctrines of grace, of which he was more
truly the father.* Augustine expressed the
Church-doctrine moderately, teaching, of
course, that infants dying unbaptized would
be found on Christ's left hand and be con-
demned to eternal punishment, but also not
forgetting to add that their punishment
would be the mildest of all, and indeed that
they were to be beaten with so few stripes
that he could not say it would have been
better for them not to be born. \ No doubt,
others of the Fathers softened the doctrine
even below this ; some of the Greeks, for
instance, like Gregory Nazianzen, thought
that unbaptized infants ' i are neither glori-
fied nor punished" — i.e., of course, go into a
middle state similar to that taught by
Pelagius.J; But it is not to Augustine, but
to Fulgentius (f 533), § or to Alcimus Avitus
(f 525), || or to Gregory the Great (f 604) f

* Compare The Post-Mcene Fathers, edited by Dr. Schaff,
vol. v. (Augustin's Anti-Pelagian Treatises), p. lxx.

t Augustine's doctrine is most strongly expressed in Sermo
xiv. In De Peccat. Merit., c. 21 (xvi.), and Contra Julian., v.,
11, he speaks of the comparative mildness of the punishment.

X Cf. Wall, op. cit., p. 365,

§ De Fide ad Petr., c. 27.

\ Ad Fascinam Swwem.

1" Expos, in Job., i., 16.

INFANT SALVATION.

to whom we must go for the strongest ex-
pression of the woe of imbaptized infants.
Probably only such anonymous objectors
as those whom Tertullian confutes,* or such
obscure and erratic individuals as Vincentius
Victor whom Augustine convicts, in the
whole Patristic age, doubted that the king-
dom of heaven was closed to all infants de-
parting this life without the sacrament of
baptism.

2. If the general consent of a whole age
as expressed by its chief writers, including
the leading bishops of Kome, andbyitssynod-
ical decrees, is able to determine a doctrine,
certainly the Patristic Church transmitted
to the Middle Ages as de fide that infants
dying unbaptized (with the exception only
of those who suffer martyrdom) are not only
excluded from heaven, but doomed to hell.
Accordingly the mediaeval synods so define ;
the second Council of Lyons and the Coun-
cil of Florence declare that "the souls of
those who pass away in mortal sin or in orig-
inal sin alone descend immediately to hell,
to be punished, however, with unequal pen-
alties." On the maxim that gradus non
mutant speciem we must adjudge Petavius's
argument f unanswerable, that this deliver-

* De BapL, c. 12.

+ Petavius, Dog. Theol., ed. Paris, 1865, ii., 59 sq.

10 THE DOCTRINE OF

anoe determines tiie punisnment ot un bap-
tized infants to be the same in kind (in the
same hell) with that of adults in mortal sin :
" So infants are tormented with unequal
tortures of fire, but are tormented neverthe-
less/' Nevertheless scholastic thought on
the subject was characterized by a success-
ful effort to mollify the harshness of the
Church-doctrine, under the inrpulse of the
prevalent semi-Pelagian conception of orig-
inal sin. The whole troup of schoolmen
unite in distinguishing bet ween poena damni
and poena sensus, and in assigning to infants
dying unbaptized only the former — i.e., the
loss of heaven and the beatific vision, and
not the latter — i.e., positive torment. They
differ among themselves only as to whether
this poena damni, which alone is the lot of
infants, is accompanied by a painful sense
of the loss (as Lombard held), or is so neg-
ative as to involve no pain at all, either ex-
ternal or internal (as Aquinas argued). So
complete a victory was won by this mollifi-
cation that perhaps only a single theologian
of eminence can be pointed to who ventured
still to teach the doctrine of Augustine and
Gregory — Gregory Ariminensis thence call-
ed tortor infant am; and Hurter reminds
us that even he did not dare to teach it de-
finitively, but submitted it to the judgment

INFANT SALVATTON. 11

of his readers. * Dante, whom Andrew Seth
not unjustly calls " by far the greatest dis-
ciple of Aquinas," has enshrined in his im-
mortal poem the leading conception of his
day, when he pictures the " young children
innocent, whom Death's sharp teeth have
snatched ere yet they were freed from the
sin with which our birth is blent/' as im-
prisoned within the brink of hell, " where
the first circle girds the abyss of dread," in
a place where " there is no sharp agony"
but " dark shadows only," and whence " no
other plaint rises than that of sighs which
from the sorrow without pain arise." f The
novel doctrine attained papal authority by a
decree of Innocent III. (c. 1200), who de-
termined " the penalty of original sin to be
the lack of the vision of God, but the pen-
alty of actual sin to be the torments of
eternal hell."

A more timid effort was also made in this
period to modify the inherited doctrine by
the application to it of a development of the
baptism of intention. This tendency first
appears in Hincmar of Rheims (f 882), who,
in a particularly hard case of interdict on a
whole diocese, expresses the hope that " the

* Hurter, Theolog. Doc/mat. Compend., 1878, iii., p. 516.
Tract, x., cap. iii., § 729. Wycliife must be added.

t Hell, iv., 23 sq. ; Purgatory, vii., 25 sq. ; Heaven, xxxii..
76 sq. (Plumptre's translation),

12 THE DOCTRINE OF

faith and godly desire of the parents and
godfathers" of the infants who had thns
died unbaptized, " who in sincerity desired
baptism for them but obtained it not, may
profit them by the gift of Him whose spirit
(which gives regeneration) breathes where
it pleases." It is doubtful, however,
whether he would have extended this lofty
doctrine to any less stringent case.* Cer-
tainly no similar teaching is met with in the
Church, except with reference to the pecul-
iarly hard case of still-born infants of Chris-
tian parents. The schoolmen {e.g., Alex-
ander Hales and Thomas Aquinas) admitted
a doubt whether God may not have ways
of saving such unknown to us. John Ger-
son, in a sermon before the Council of Con-
stance, presses the inference more boldly, f
God, he declared, has not so tied the mercy
of his salvation to common laws and sacra-
ments, but that without prejudice to his law
he can sanctify children not yet born, by the
baptism of his grace or the power of the
Holy Ghost. Hence, he exhorts expectant
parents to pray that if the infant is to die
before attaining baptism, the Lord may
sanctify it ; and who knows but that the
Lord may hear them ? He adds, however,

* Cf. Waix, op. cit., p. 371.

t Sermon, Be Nat. Mar. Virg., consid, 2, col. 33.

INFANT SALVATION. 13

that he only intends to suggest that all hope
is not taken away ; for there is no certainty
without a revelation. Gabriel Biel (f 1495)
followed in Gerson's footsteps,* holding it
to be accordant with God's mercy to seek
out some remedy for such infants. This
teaching remained, however, without effect
on the Church-dogma, although something
similar to it was, among men who served
God in the way then called heresy, fore-
shadowing an even better to come. John
Wycliffe (f 1384) had already with like cau-
tion expressed his unwillingness to pro-
nounce damned such infants as were in-
tended for baptism by their parents, if they
failed to receive it in fact ; though he could
not, on the other hand, assert that they were
saved, f His followers were less cautious,
whether in England or Bohemia, and in
this, too, approved themselves heralds of a
brighter day.

3. In the upheaval of the sixteenth century
the Church of Rome found her task in har-
monizing under the influence of the scholas-
tic teaching, the inheritance which the some •
what inconsistent past had bequeathed her.
Four varieties of opinion sought a place in
her teaching. At the one extreme the earlier
doctrine of Augustine and Gregory, that in-

* In iv., Sect, iv., q. 11. t Cf. Wall, as above,

14 THE DOCTRINE OF

fants dying unbaptized suffer eternally the
pains of sense, found again advocates, and
that especially among the greatest of her
scholars, such as Noris, Petau, Driedo,
Conry, Berti. At the other extreme, a
Pelagianizing doctrine that excluded unbap-
tized infants from the kingdom of heaven
and the life promised to the blessed, and yet
accorded to them eternal life and natural
happiness in a place between heaven and
hell, was advocated by such great leaders as
Ambrosius Catharinus, Albertus Pighius,
Molina, Sfondrati. The mass, however,
followed the schoolmen in the middle path
of parna damni, and, like the schoolmen,
only differed as to whether the punishment
of loss involved sorrow (as Bellarmine held)
or was purely negative.* The Council of
Trent (1545) anathematized those who affirm
that the " sacraments of the new law are
not necessary to salvation, and that without
them or an intention of them men obtain
. . . the grace of justification ;" or,
again, that " baptism is free — that is, is
not necessary to salvation. ': This is ex-
plained by the Tridentine Catechism to mean
that "unless men be regenerated to God

* For this classification see Bellarmine, Be Amiss. Gra-
tia, etc., vi., 1 ; and compare Gerhard, Loci (Cotta's ed.),
vol. ix., p. 279 ; Chamier, Panstrat. Cath. (1626), iii., 159, or
Spaniieim, Chamierus Contractus (1643), i>. 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 believers1' 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
unbelievers7 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.

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