A similar difficulty has been experienced by all types of Protestant thought in which the Roman idea of the Church, as primarily an external body, has been incompletely reformed. This may be illustrated, for example, from the history of opinion in the Church of England. The Thirty-nine Articles in their final form are thoroughly Protestant and Reformed. And many of the greatest English theologians, from the very earliest days of the Reformation, even among those not most closely affiliated with Geneva, have repudiated the “scrupulous superstition”1 of the Church of Rome as to the fate of infants dying unbaptized. But such repudiation neither was immediate, nor has it ever been universal. And it must needs be confessed that this “scrupulous superstition” was so deeply imbedded in the forms of the Book of Common Prayer, that it has survived all the changes which successive revisions have brought to its language, and remains to-day the natural implication of its Baptismal Offices.
The history of the formularies of the Church of England begins with the publication in 1536 of the somewhat more than semi-Romish Articles devised by the Kinges Highnes Majestie, to stablyshe Christen quietnes and unitie amonge us, and to avoyde contentious opinions, which articles be also approved by the consent and determination of the hole clergie of this realme,2 commonly known as the “Ten Articles.” These Articles explicitly teach the twin doctrines of baptismal regeneration and the necessity of baptism for salvation. Among the things which “ought and must of necessity” be believed regarding baptism, they tell us, is “that it is offered unto all men, as well infants as such as have the use of reason, that by baptism they shall have remission of sins, and the grace and favour of God;” that it is “by virtue of that holy sacrament” that men obtain “the grace and remission of all their sins;” and that it is “in and by this said sacrament” which they shall receive,” that “God the Father giveth unto them, for His son Jesus Christ’s sake, remission of all their sins, and the grace of the Holy Ghost, whereby they be newly regenerated and made the very children of God.” Accordingly they “ought and must of necessity” also believe that “the sacrament of baptism was instituted and ordained in the New Testament by our Saviour Jesu Christ, as a thing necessary for the attaining of everlasting life;” that original sin cannot be remitted “but by the sacrament of baptism;” and that, therefore, since “the promise of grace and everlasting life (which promise is adjoined unto this sacrament of baptism) pertaineth not only unto such as have the use of reason, but also to infants, innocents, and children,” they “ought therefore and must needs be baptized,” and “by the sacrament of baptism, they do also obtain remission of their sins, the grace and favour of God, and be made thereby the very sons and children of God;” “insomuch as infants and children dying in their infancy shall undoubtedly be saved thereby, and else not.’”3 The express assertion of the loss of all unbaptized infants included in these last words was taken over from the “Ten Articles” into The Institution of the Christian Man, commonly called “The Bishop’s Book,” which was published in 1537;4 and thence, though with the omission of the final words in which the statement reaches its climax, into The Necessary Doctrine and Erudition of Any Christian Man, commonly called “The King’s Book,” which was published in 1543.5 Here its career in the doctrinal formularies ceased.
But it still had a part to play in the liturgical forms of the Church of England. The first Book of Common Prayer was published in 1549, and in it, among the rubrics which precede the Order of Confirmation, is found this pararagraph: “And that no man shall think that any detriment shall come to children by deferring of their confirmation: he shall know for truth, that it is certain by God’s word, that children being baptized (if they depart out of this life in their infancy) are undoubtedly saved.’”6 In the Prayer Book for 1552 this was so far altered that its latter portion reads, “That children being baptized have all things necessary for their salvation, and be undoubtedly saved;’”7 and so it stands in the Elizabethan Prayer Book of 1559, and substantially in later issues, until in the Prayer Book of 1661 it was transferred to the end of the order for the Public Baptism of Infants in the form: “It is certain by God’s Word, that Children which are baptized, dying before they commit actual sin, are undoubtedly saved.” Thus it still remains in the Book of Common Prayer according to the use of the Church of England, although it has dropped out of the Prayer Book according to the use of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.