The successive alterations in this statement, no doubt, mark in a general way the growing Protestant sentiment in the Church of England, although it is noteworthy that the omission of the most obnoxious words, “and else not,” in which the condemnation of unbaptized infants, dying in infancy, is made express, first occurs in the reactionary “King’s Book,” while the effect of the transposition of the rubric from the Confirmation Service to that for Baptism, which took place so late as 1661, was distinctly reactionary. Its primary effect, standing in the Confirmation Service, was to declare that confirmation is not necessary to salvation; and any implication which may be thought to reside in the words of the necessity of baptism to salvation was entirely incidental. While, standing at the end of the Baptismal Service, its primary effect seems to be to declare the certain efficacy of baptism when administered to infants, and the implication of the loss of the unbaptized infants dying in infancy is certainly more natural, even if not necessary. The explanation of this reactionary alteration is to be found, of course, in the general spirit which governed the revision of 1661, which not only was hostile to the more Protestant party in the Church, but was determined upon all possible insult and degradation to it.⁸

The more Protestant party had, of course, never been satisfied with this rubric; and it had, of late, necessarily received its share of criticism. The committee of divines appointed by the House of Lords in 1641 had proposed the omission from it of the words, “and be undoubtedly saved.’”⁹ The Presbyterian divines at the Savoy Conference had commented on it: “Although we charitably suppose the meaning of these words was only to exclude the necessity of any other sacraments to baptized infants; yet these words are dangerous as to the misleading of the vulgar, and therefore we desire they may be expunged.’”¹⁰ The answer of the bishops was not conciliatory: “It is evident that the meaning of these words is, that children baptized, and dying before they commit actual sin, are undoubtedly saved, though they be not confirmed: wherein we see not what danger there can be of misleading the vulgar by teaching them truth. But there may be danger in this desire of having these words expunged, as if they were false; for St. Austin says he is an infidel that denies them to be true. Ep. 23. ad Bonifac.”’¹¹ This defence of the rubric obviously is ad rem only in the form and place which it had in the Confirmation Service. When, as was immediately done, it was removed from its place in the Confirmation Service and, curtailed of all reference to confirmation, inserted into the Baptismal Order in the sharply assertive form: “It is certain by God’s Word, that Children which are baptized, dying before they commit actual sin, are undoubtedly saved,” it must be accounted one of the alterations designed to exclude a Protestant interpretation of the Book of Common Prayer; and as, in the intention of the authors of the change at all events, no longer open to the interpretation that it does not imply the necessity of baptism for salvation but only asserts that confirmation is not necessary to salvation. It was obviously intended by those who gave it its present form and place to assert baptismal regeneration, and to leave whatever implications the doctrine of baptismal regeneration may include as the natural teaching of the rubric.

Nor can it be denied that, as assertorial of baptismal regeneration, the rubric finds a very natural place in the Book of Common Prayer. It was inevitable that in the beginning of the Reformation movement remainders of the unreformed doctrine of baptismal regeneration should intrench themselves in the liturgical offices of the Church. As a matter of fact, the assumption of this doctrine underlay a good deal of the language relative to baptism in the first Prayer Book (1549).¹² This may be true even of the words of the opening address, which recite the fact of original sin and declare that “no man born in sin can enter into the kingdom of God (except he be regenerate and born anew of water and the Holy Ghost).” It is more clearly true of the language of the opening prayer, where the figure of baptism found in the flood and the passage through the Red Sea is developed rather on the negative than on the positive side; and God is besought, therefore, to look mercifully upon these children, “that by this wholesome laver of regeneration, whatsoever sin is in them may be washed clean away; that they, being delivered from His wrath, may be received into the ark of Christ’s church, and so be saved from perishing.” Similarly, after “the white vesture” had been given to the child “for a token of the innocence which by God’s grace, in this holy sacrament of baptism, is given unto it,” the priest was to bless the child in the name of the God “who hath regenerate it by water and the Holy Ghost, and hath given unto it remission of all its sins.” When a child privately baptized was brought to the church for the priest to examine whether it had been lawfully baptized, if it were so decided, the minister was to certify the parents of their well-doing in having the child baptized, because it “is now, by the laver of regeneration in baptism, made the child of God, and heir of everlasting life.” The same implication naturally underlay also the whole form for the sanctification of the font, which appears only in this earliest of Anglican Prayer Books. In it God is said to have “ordained the element of water for the regeneration of His faithful people,” and is asked to sanctify “this fountain of baptism … that by the power of His word all those that should be baptized therein might be spiritually regenerated and made the children of everlasting adoption.” In the Catechism included in the Confirmation Service, the child is instructed to say that it was in its baptism that it “was made a member of Christ, the child of God, and the inheritor of the kingdom of heaven;” while in the Invocation in the Confirmation Service itself God is addressed as He “who has vouchsafed to regenerate these His servants of water and the Holy Ghost, and also has given unto them forgiveness of all their sins.”

The revising hand was, to be sure, as busy with this as with other portions of the Prayer Book. In particular, the opening prayer was already in the second Prayer Book (1552) brought into substantially the form which it still preserves: and this involved not only the omission of the words, “and so saved from perishing’”—“expressions,” as even Laurence is forced to admit, “too unequivocal to be misconceived,” in their exclusion of all unbaptized infants from salvation¹³—but also a recasting of the whole tone of the prayer. But the revision was never complete enough to exscind the underlying doctrine of baptismal regeneration; and, in the shifting opinion of the Church of England, after a while a reaction set in in its favor, which not only resisted all attempts to eliminate it,¹⁴ but added new expressions of it.¹⁵ So it came about that when the Presbyterians at the Savoy Conference represented it as a hardship that ministers should “be forced to pronounce all baptized infants to be regenerate by the Holy Ghost, whether they be the children of Christians or not,” and protested that they could not “in faith say,” as required to say in the Thanksgiving, “that every child that is baptized is ‘regenerated by God’s Holy Spirit,’”¹⁶ the bishops’ reply simply asserts in terms the obnoxious doctrine: “Seeing that God’s sacraments have their effects, where the receiver doth not ‘ponere obicem,’ put any bar against them (which children cannot do); we may say in faith of every child that is baptized, that it is regenerated by God’s Holy Spirit.’”¹⁷ There seems to be little room for doubting, therefore, that these expressions were retained by the revisers of 1661 not as “ambiguous and indefinite,” but as distinct enunciations, and just because they were judged to be distinct enunciations, of the doctrine of baptismal regeneration. We must adjudge Laurence right, therefore, in finding this doctrine plainly taught in the Book of Common Prayer as now in use; nor can we see how his summing up of the case can be set aside. “In the prayer after Baptism,” he says, “every child is expressly declared to be regenerated: ‘We yield thee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it hath pleased thee to regenerate this infant with thy Holy Spirit, to receive him for thine own child by adoption, and to incorporate him into thy holy Church.’ And in the Office of private Baptism it is unreservedly stated, that he ‘is now by the laver of regeneration in Baptism received into the number of the children of God, and heirs of everlasting life.’ That all baptized children are not nominally, but really, the elect of God, our Church Catechism likewise distinctly asserts. ‘Q. Who gave you that name? A. My Godfathers and Godmothers in my Baptism, wherein I was made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.’ … Nor is the position, that an actual regeneration always takes place confined to our Baptismal service, but also subsequently recognized in the Order of Confirmation, the first prayer of which thus commences: ‘Almighty and everlasting God, who hast vouchsafed to regenerate these thy servants by water, and the Holy Ghost,’” etc. “Surely,” he adds, with some justice, “it requires something more than a common share of ingenuity to pervert language like this from its plain grammatical sense, into one directly repugnant.’”¹⁸

On the basis of this doctrine of baptismal regeneration, thus clearly implied in her forms of worship and firmly retained in their latest revision, the Church of England is justified in asserting with the emphasis with which the rubric at the close of the Baptismal Service asserts it, that “it is certain” “that Children which are baptized, dying before they commit actual sin, are undoubtedly saved.” Whether, however, this assertion carries with it, as Laurence contends, no implication of the loss of those who die unbaptized, is more questionable.¹⁹ The mere change of language from the earlier form of “children being baptized” into the more distinguishing seventeenth-century form of “children which are baptized,” bears a contrary suggestion. And the arguments which Laurence adduces from the known opinions of Cranmer and his coadjutors, and from the elimination from the earlier forms, under their hand, of phrases which assert the necessity of baptism to salvation, are vitiated by the fatal flaw that he neglects to distinguish times and seasons.²⁰ That the leaders of the Reformation in England advanced rapidly from a semi-Romish, through a Lutheran, to a Reformed stage of opinion, and that their handiwork in the public formularies of the Church bears traces of this growth, is true enough. But it does not follow that every product of their labors must, therefore, have left their hands in a form which represents their highest attainments in doctrinal thought; or that every one has reached us in the precise form which they gave it. That much that was inconsistent with the better thought of the Protestant world was eliminated from the first Prayer Book of 1549 in its passage through the Book of 1552 to the Elizabethan Book of 1559 is thankfully to be recognized. But it must needs be recognized also that much was left in it which was scarcely consistent with the higher point of view which had been only gradually attained by the Reformers themselves; and that in the reactionary revision of the seventeenth century this unreformed element was even increased.²¹

Whatever may be thought, however, of the implications of the doctrine taught in the Prayer Book, this much is at least certain—that the formularies of the Church of England hold out absolutely no hope for the salvation of infants who die unbaptized. They assert with great strength of language the certainty of the salvation of all baptized children dying in infancy. As to those who die unbaptized, they at the least preserve a profound silence. “This assertion,” says Mr. Francis Procter, the learned historian of the Book of Common Prayer, “carefully avoids all mention of children unbaptized… . Our Reformers are intending to speak only of that which is revealed—the covenanted mercy of Almighty God.’”²² Whence we may learn that, in the judgment of Mr. Procter at least, the Prayer Book knows of no covenanted mercy of God for children dying before baptism, and can find nothing in God’s revealed word which will justify an assured hope for them. In the same spirit is conceived the comment in Mr. Blunt’s Annotated Book of Common Prayer, which runs as follows: “Neither in this Rubric, nor in any other formulary of the Church of England, is any decision given as to the state of infants dying without Baptism. Bishop Bethell says [Regeneration in Baptism, p. xiv.] that the common opinion of the ancient Christians was, that they are not saved: and as our Lord has given us such plain words in John iii. 5, this seems a reasonable opinion. But this opinion does not involve any cruel idea of pain or suffering for little ones so deprived of the Sacrament of new birth by no fault of their own. It rather supposes them to be as if they had never been, when they might, through the care and love of their parents, have been reckoned among the number of those ‘in whom is no guile,’ and ‘who follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth.’ ”²³ This position has indeed the best right to be called the historical understanding of the Church of England as to the teaching of her Prayer Book, as we may be advised by the statement of it by the great historian of infant baptism, William Wall, writing indeed two hundred years ago, but putting into his carefully chosen and sober language just what, as we have seen, the best accredited expounders of the Prayer Book in our own day repeat. “The Church of England,” says Wall,²⁴ “have declared their sense of its [i.e baptism’s] necessity by reciting the saying of our Saviour, John iii. 5, both in the Office of Baptism of Infants and also in that for those of riper years… . Concerning 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 though the most noted men in the said Church from time to time since the Reformation of it to this time have expressed their hopes that God will accept the purpose of 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.”

The Church of England holds thus the unenviable place among Protestant churches of alone of them having no word of cheer to say as to the destiny of the children of Christian parents who depart from this world without baptism. There is no covenant with reference to them; it may be that they may be saved—but if so, she is sure she cannot tell how; or if they be not saved, it may be that they shall be “as if they had never been:” there is no word of God with reference to them. Surely this is all cold comfort enough. And if this is all that can be said of the children of the faithful, lacking baptism, where will those of the infidel appear?

The hope which the formularies of the Church of England can find no basis for in the Word of God, and which those whose views of Divine truth are moulded by these formularies must deny or at least withhold, has nevertheless, as Wall tells us, been “from time to time since the Reformation” freely expressed by individual teachers in that Church, and that especially, as he adds, by “the most noted men” in it. Those to whose labors and sufferings the Church of England owed her very existence were in no respect behind their successors in this. We have seen that the Reformation of the Ecclesiastical Laws, drawn up by a commission with Cranmer at its head, affirmed, of the opinion that no infant dying without baptism could be saved—which Cranmer and his coadjutors had themselves incorporated into the earliest formularies—that it was a “scrupulous superstition” and far different from the opinion of the Church of England.²⁵ Obviously “in the meantime,” as Dr. Schaff suggests, Cranmer “had changed his opinion.’”²⁶ What was the current conviction on this subject among the leading reformers we may learn, as well as from another, from one of Cranmer’s chaplains, Thomas Becon, who chances to have written repeatedly and at length upon it.

In the second part of his treatise on The Demands of Holy Scripture, the preface to which is dated on the first of September, 1563, Becon raises the question, “What if the infants die before they receive the sacrament of baptism?” and answers it succinctly as follows: “God’s promise of salvation unto them is not for default of the sacrament minished, or made vain and of no effect. For the Spirit is not so bound to the water that it cannot work his office when the water wanteth, or that it of necessity must always be there where the water is sprinkled. Simon Magus had the sacramental water, but he had not the Holy Ghost, being indeed an hypocrite and filthy dissembler. In the chronicle of the apostles’ Acts we read that, while Peter preached, the Holy Ghost came upon them that heard him, yea, and that before they were baptized; by the reason whereof Peter brast out into these words, and said: ‘Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?’ True Christians, whether they be old or young, are not saved because outwardly they be washed with the sacramental water, but because they be God’s children by election through Christ, yea, and that before the foundations of the world were laid, and are sealed up by the Spirit of God unto everlasting life.”²⁷

In the voluminous Catechism, which he wrote somewhat earlier (1560) for the instruction of his children and presents to them in a touching and beautiful preface, he develops his views on this matter at great length. “The infants of the heathen and unbelieving,” “forasmuch as they belong not unto the household of faith, neither are contained in this covenant, ‘I will be thy God, and the God of thy seed;’ again, ‘I will pour out my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thy buds,’ ”he leaves “to the judgment of God, to whom they either stand or fall.” But “with the children of the faithful God hath made a sure and an everlasting covenant, that he will be their God and Saviour, yea, their most loving Father, and take them for his sons and heirs, as St. Peter saith, ‘The promise was made to you and to your children.’ ”He knows well “how hard and rigorous divers fathers of Christ’s church are to such infants as die without baptism,” but he judges this opinion of theirs to be injurious to the grace of God and dissenting from the verity of God’s Word. Injurious to the grace of God, because “the Holy scripture in every place attributeth our salvation to the free grace of God, and not either to our own works, or to any outward sign or sacrament.” “Hath God so bound himself and made himself thrall to a sacrament, that without it his power of saving is lame, and of no force to defend from damnation?” Baptism is to Christians what circumcision was to the Jews, not a thing that makes righteous, but “‘a seal of righteousness,’ and a sign of God’s favor toward us,” and so “the outward baptism, which is done by water, neither giveth the Holy Ghost, nor the grace of God, but only is a sign and token thereof,” and therefore, “if any of the Christian infants, prevented by death, depart without baptism (necessity so compelling), they are not damned, but be saved by the free grace of God; forasmuch, as we tofore heard, they be contained in the covenant of grace, they be members of God’s church, God promiseth to be their God, they have faith, and be endued with the Spirit of God, and so finally ‘sons and heirs of God, and heirs annexed with Christ Jesu.’” His firm conviction from Scripture is “that the grace and Spirit of God cometh where and when it pleaseth God, yea, and that they be not bound to any external ceremony, as to be present and to be given when the sacraments are ministered, and otherwise not, so that the Spirit and grace of God must wait and attend upon these outward signs, as servants do attend and wait upon their lords and masters”—“which is nothing else,” he declares, “than to bring God into bondage to his creatures, and to make him not master of his own.” “They, therefore,” he concludes, “that teach and hold this doctrine are not only enemies to the salvation of the infants, but they also utterly obscure, yea, and quench the grace and election of God and the secret operation of the Holy Ghost in the tender breasts of the most tender infants, and attribute to an external sign more than right is.”²⁸ In a word, Thomas Becon plants himself squarely on that “covenanted mercy of Almighty God,” which Mr. Procter tells us the framers of the Prayer Book failed to discover for those who die unbaptized; and finds no difficulty in showing from Scripture that it underlies baptism which is its seal, and does not rather wait on baptism as its cause.

Such an instance as that of John Hooper is, of course, even more striking. He had come under distinctly Zwinglian influences, and, like Zwingli and possibly first after Zwingli, taught the salvation not only of the infants of Christians dying unbaptized, but also of all infants dying such, whether the children of Christians or of infidels. As to baptismal regeneration, he speaks of “the ungodly opinion, that attributeth the salvation of man unto the receiving of an external sacrament,” “as though God’s holy Spirit could not be carried by faith into the penitent and sorrowful conscience except it rid always in a chariot and external sacrament.” With reference to the salvation of unbaptized infants, therefore, he says: “It is ill done to condemn the infants of the Christians that die without baptism, of whose salvation by the Scripture we be assured: Ero Deus tuus, et seminis tuis post te. I would likewise judge well,” he adds, “of the infants of the infidels who hath none other sin in them but original, the sin of Adam’s transgression. And as by Adam sin and death entered into the world, so by Christ justice and life. Ut quemadmodum regnaverat peccatum in morte, sic et gratia regnaret per justiciam ad vitam aeternam per Jesum Christum. Rom. v. Whereas the infants doth not follow the iniquity of the father, but only culpable for the transgression of Adam, it shall not be against the faith of a Christian man to say, that Christ’s death and passion extendeth as far for the salvation of innocents, as Adam’s fall made all his posterity culpable of damnation. Quia quemadmodum per inobedientiam unius hominis peccatores constituti fecimus multi, ita per obedientiam unius justi constituentur multi. The Scripture also preferreth the grace of God’s promise to be more abundant than sin. Ubi exuberavit peccatum, ubi magis exuberavit gratia. Rom. v. It is not the part of a Christian to say, this man is damned, or this is saved, except he see the cause of damnation manifest. As touching the promises of God’s election, sunt sine poenitentia dona et vocatio Dei.’”²⁹

Naturally many other opinions have found expression in the bosom of this most inclusive communion. In the vexed time of the seventeenth century, for example, men like William Perkins³⁰ and James Usher³¹ approached the question from the side of the Reformed theology; others, like Jeremy Taylor,’³² from a fundamentally Pelagianizing standpoint; others, like Matthew Scrivener,³³ from a “churchly” one. From a somewhat earlier period, the argument of Richard Hooker may be taken as fairly representing the more considerate churchmanship of the time. Holding to the necessity of baptism, not indeed as “a cause of grace,” but as “an instrument or means whereby we receive grace,” ordained as such by Christ, he argues that “if Christ himself which giveth salvation do require Baptism; it is not for us that look for salvation to sound and examine him, whether unbaptized men may be saved; but seriously to do that which is required, and religiously to fear the danger that may grow by the want thereof.” Nevertheless he remarks that the “Law of Christ, which in these considerations maketh Baptism necessary, must be construed and understood according to rules of natural equity;” “and (because equity so teacheth) it is on our part gladly confessed, that there may be in divers cases life by virtue of inward Baptism, even when outward is not found.” Whether this principle may be extended to infants dying unbaptized, he makes the subject of special consideration. Inasmuch as “grace is not absolutely tied unto Sacraments;” and God accepts the will for the deed in cases where the deed is impossible; and there is a presumed desire and even purpose in Christian parents and the Church to give these children baptism; and their birth of Christian parents marks them, according to Scripture, as holy, and gives them “a present interest and right to those means wherewith the ordinance of Christ is that his Church shall be sanctified:” “it is not to be thought that he which, as it were, from Heaven, hath nominated and designed them unto holiness by special privilege of their very birth, will himself deprive them of regeneration and inward grace, only because necessity depriveth them of outward sacraments.’³⁴

It would seem that on grounds such as these, even the highest churchmanship might find it possible to assert the certain salvation of all the children of Christians, at least, which die unbaptized; and, as has been pointed out on an earlier page,³⁵ the considerations thus so judiciously set forth would even appear to open a way for the development, on churchly grounds, of a baptism of intention as applied to infants, which could be extended, without danger to any important interest, to embrace all infants that die in infancy. Nevertheless it has not been on the part of high-churchmen that, in the Church of England, the salvation of infants dying such has been affirmed. This has rather been the part of low-churchmen, like John Newton³⁶ and Thomas Scott³⁷ and Augustus Toplady,³⁸ while high-churchmen have ever shown a tendency to doubt or deny the salvation of those who die without having been “admitted into covenant with God” by baptism. This is the language of Tract No. 35³⁹ (written by A. C. Percival) of the Oxford Tracts for the Times, within which were included also Dr. Pusey’s voluminous treatises on baptismal regeneration. These treatises have not failed of their effect, and possibly at no time before the present in the whole history of the Church of England since the first years of its reformation, has there ever been a more widespread tendency to stand simply upon the wording of the rubric at the end of the Baptismal Service, as if it included all ascertainable truth, and to affirm only the certainty of the salvation of those infants dying in infancy which have been baptized. All others, though they be the children of God’s recognized children, are, sometimes with a certainly not very easily understood complacency, at the best committed to the “uncovenanted mercies of God,”⁴⁰ at the worst consigned to a place among those who know not God and obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus.

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Footnotes

1. Reform. Legum; de Baptismo: “Illorum etiam videri debet scrupulosa superstitio, qui Dei gratiam et Spiritum Sanctum tanto- pere cum sacramentorum elementis colligant, ut plane affirment, nullum Christianorum infantem salutem esse consecuturum, qui prius morte fuerit occupatus, quam ad Baptismum adduci potuerit: quod longe secus habere judicamus.” This code of laws seems to have been drawn up by a commission with Cranmer at the head of it. It was published by Parker in 1571. ↩

2. “As seen by us, from the position we now occupy,” says Hardwick (A History of the Articles of Religion, etc. Third ed. revised by the Rev. Francis Procter, M.A., etc. London: Bell, 1876, p. 42), “these articles belong to a transition-period. They embody the ideas of men who were emerging gradually into a different sphere of thought, who could not for the present contemplate the truth they were recovering, either in its harmonies or contrasts, and who conse- quently did not shrink from acquiescing in accommodations and concessions, which to riper understandings might have seemed like the betrayal of a sacred trust.” Dr. Schaff repels Dixon’s description (History of the Reformation, i., p. 415) of these articles as bearing “the character of a compromise between the old and the new learning.” “They are essentially Romish,” he says (Creeds of Christendom, i., 611), “with the Pope left out in the cold;” and he endorses Foxe’s characterization of them (which Hardwick deprecates) as intended for “weakelings, which were newly weyned from their mother’s milke of Rome.” ↩

3. The full text may be conveniently read in Hardwick, as above, p. 242 sq. ↩

4. The text may be seen in Bishop Lloyd’s Formularies of Faith in the Reign of Henry VIII., p. 1. ↩

5. Ibid. Cf. Francis Procter, A History of the Book of Common Prayer, etc. 15th ed. London and New York: Macmillan & Co., 1881, pp. 384, 385, note 1. ↩

6. The Two Liturgies, A.D. 1549 and A.D. 1552, etc., edited for the Parker Society, by the Rev. Joseph Ketley, M.A., etc. (Cambridge, 1844, p. 121). ↩

7. Ibid., p. 295. The two may be found together in The Two Books of Common Prayer set forth … in the Reign of King Edward the Sixth, by Edward Cardwell, D.D., etc. (Oxford, 1852, p. 544). ↩

8. Observe how even Cardwell speaks of the general spirit of this revision (A History of Conferences and other Proceedings connected with the Revision of the Book of Common Prayer, etc. Third ed. Oxford, 1849, pp. 387 sq.) and the warning he draws from it (pp. 463 sq.): “Let it be remembered, also, on the part of nonconformists, that whenever objection is made against any expressions as ambiguous or indefinite, other parties, of different and even opposite opinions, will be as ready as they themselves are, to offer amendments. In such a case, the result will probably be that phrases, which had previously afforded a common shelter to both, will be made precise and contracted in accordance with the wishes of the more rigid interpreters. Let it be remembered that if one party complain of a strict adherence to forms and a tendency toward superstition, another party, more compact, more learned, and more resolute, may call for the restoration of prayers and usages which once found a place in the liturgy, and were removed by the fathers of the reformation as too nearly allied to Romanism.”’ ↩

9. Cardwell, as cited, p. 276. ↩

10. Ibid., p. 327. ↩

11. Cardwell, as cited, p. 358. The reference to Augustine is to Ep. 98 in the Benedictine enumeration (§ 10). Augustine is discussing the propriety and effect of baptism prior to the exercise of active faith on the part of the recipient, and says: “During the time in which he is by reason of youth unable to do this, the sacrament will avail for his protection against adverse powers, and will avail so much on his behalf, that if before he arrives at the use of reason he depart from this life, he is delivered by Christian help, namely, by the love of the Church, commending him through the sacrament unto God, from that condemnation which by one man entered into the world. He who does not believe this, and thinks that it is impossible, is assuredly an unbeliever, although he may have received the sacrament of faith; and far before him in merit is the infant which, though not yet possessing a faith helped by the understanding, is not obstructing faith by any antagonism of the understanding, and therefore receives with profit the sacrament of faith” (translation of the Rev. J. G. Cunningham, M.A., in The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, vol. i., p. 410). ↩

12. The quotations that follow are taken from the text as given by Cardwell, The Two Books of Common Prayer … in the Reign of King Edward the Sixth, etc., 3d ed. Oxford, 1852, pp. 320 sq. ↩

13. Laurence, Bampton Lectures for 1804, rev. ed., Oxford, 1820, p. 71. Compare Procter, A History of the Book of Common Prayer, 15th ed, 1881, p. 374, note 1; Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, i., 642. ↩

14. It was naturally against this doctrine that the “Puritan party” directed their most persistent objection. See the form of their objections in the documents printed by Cardwell, A History of Confer- ences, etc., 3d ed., Oxford, 1849, pp. 266, 276, 325, 326; and the answers of the bishops, pp. 357 and 358. ↩

15. For example, the thanksgiving address and prayer after baptism inserted in the Prayer Book of 1552, which declare the baptized child to be regenerate, and the questions, at the end of the Catechism, on the sacraments, added apparently in 1604, which declare that “we are made the children of grace” by baptism. ↩

16. Cardwell, as cited, pp. 276, 325; cf. 326. ↩

17. Ibid., p. 356. ↩

18. Op. cit, pp. 440, 441. ↩

19. Op. cit., pp. 70 and 176. Laurence contends that “the Reformers” intended by the language of the Prayer Book in no way “to establish any opinion inconsistent with the salvation of infants unbaptized:” “the very reverse of this is the fact,” he thinks. And thus it has become customary to speak. So, e.g., Procter, Op. cit., p. 384, note 1: and even Blunt, The Annotated Book of Common Prayer (London, 1866), ii., 230, although himself inclining to believe the loss of all infants dying unbaptized. These opinions would seem, however, to be too little determined by historical considerations. See further below. ↩

20. In some cases also his knowledge of historic facts was defective. ↩

21. It must be thankfully recognized also that a more complete reformation of doctrinal statement was accomplished in the doctrinal formularies of the Church of England than in her devotional forms. This is probably due to the singular discontinuity in the growth of the doctrinal formularies, by which the later Articles were saved from corruption through inheritance from the earlier and more tentative attempts to state the reformed faith. The first Prayer Book (1549) stands at the basis of and contributes its substance to the whole series of Prayer Books. But the first doctrinal formularies, the “Ten Articles” and the “Bishop’s” and “King’s Books,” though they contributed to the Prayer Book the very rubric in which the assertion of baptismal regeneration reaches its climax, had little effect on the development of the “Articles of Religion.” For them, an entirely new beginning was made in the “Thirteen Articles” of 1538, which were formed under Lutheran influence and rather on the basis of Lutheran than earlier Anglican formularies. In these Articles the Lutheran doctrine of the sacraments, of course, finds expression, and is sometimes even strengthened. In Article 2, for example, it is asserted that original sin condemns and brings eternal death “to those who are not born again by baptism and the Holy Spirit.” In Article 4 it is declared that “by the word and sacraments, as by in- struments, the Holy Spirit is given, who effects faith when and where it seems good to God, in those who hear the Gospel.” These statements came from the Augsburg Confession. Article 6, “on Baptism,” teaches, in the words of the Augsburg Confession, that “baptism is necessary to salvation, and by baptism remission of sins and the grace of Christ are offered to infants and adults.” Then it is added that “by baptism infants receive remission of sins and grace and are the children of God,” and “that the Holy Spirit is efficacious even in infants and cleanses them”—a statement which is repeated in Article 9. These Articles were never published, and have influenced the development of the Articles of the Church of England only through their use by the framers of the Forty-two Articles of 1553. The first draught of these was from the hand of Cranmer himself, and reflects his more advanced Reformed opinions, deriving practically nothing from former Articles except where the “Thirteen Articles” have been drawn upon. In the portions at least which have been retained in the Thirty-nine Articles the influence of even the “Thirteen Articles” has affected rather language than doctrine, in which latter particular the new Articles follow Reformed rather than Lutheran modes of statement. If the language of the “Thirteen Articles,” by which the sacraments are said, “as by instruments,” to convey the Holy Spirit who effects faith, seems to be repeated here in the Article on Baptism (Art. 28 of 1553, 27 of 1563-71), it is along with an important caveat by which the effect is confined “to those that receive baptism rightly.” By this the stress is thrown rather on the subjective attitude of the recipient than on the mere reception of the rite. ↩

22. A History of the Book of Common Prayer, etc., 15th ed. (London and New York, 1881), p. 384, note 1. ↩

23. The Annotated Book of Common Prayer, etc., edited by the Rev. John Henry Blunt, M.A., F.S.A., etc. (London, 1866), ii., 230. ↩

24. Hist. of Infant Baptism, ed. 2, 1707, p. 377. ↩

25. See above, foot-note on p. 174. ↩

26. Creeds of Christendom, i., p. 642. ↩

27. Prayers and Other Pieces by Thomas Becon, S.T.P., edited for the Parker Society by the Rev. John Ayre, M.A. (Cambridge, 1844), p. 617. ↩

28. The Catechism of Thomas Becon, S T.P., etc., edited for the Parker Society by the Rev. John Ayre, M.A. (Cambridge, 1844), pp. 214-225. ↩

29. An Answer unto My Lord of Winchester’s Booke, etc., 1547, in the Parker Society’s Early Writings of Bishop Hooper, pp. 129, 131. ↩

30. “Reprobates are either infants or men of riper age. In reprobate infants the execution of God’s decree is this: As soon as they are born, for the guilt of original and natural sin, being left in God’s secret judgment unto themselves, they dying are rejected of God forever” (The Golden Chain, ch. 53, in Works, ed. 1608, i., p. 107). “We are to judge that Infants of believing parents in their infancy dying, are justified” (How to Live Well, i., 486). ↩

31. “Some Reprobates dying Infants … Being once conceived they are in a state of Death (Rom. 5. 14), by reason of the sin of Adam imputed, and of original corruption cleaving to their Nature, wherein also, dying they perish: As (for instance) the Children of Heathen Parents. For touching the Children of Christians, we are taught and account them holy. 1 Cor. 7. 14” (Body of Divinity, 4to ed., 1702, p. 165). ↩

32. The Whole Works of, etc. (London, 1828), vol. ii., p. 258 sq., 289 sq.; vol. viii., 150 sq.; vol. ix., p. 12 sq., 90 sq., 369 sq. ↩

33. “Either all children must be damned, dying unbaptized, or they must have baptism… . The principle in Christian religion is, That children come into the world infected with original sin; and therefore, if there be no remedy against that, provided by God, all children of Christian parents, which St. Paul says are holy, are liable to eternal death without remedy. Now, there is no remedy but Christ; and his death and passion are not communicated to any but by outward signs and sacraments. And no other do we read of but that of water in baptism” (Course of Divinity, London, 1674, p. 196). ↩

34. Ecclesiastical Polity, Book V., § 60. (Dobson’s ed, i., 600-607; Keble’s ed. ii., 341-347.) ↩

35. See above, p. 156. ↩

36. Works, IV., 182: “I cannot be sorry for the death of infants. How many storms do they escape! Nor can I doubt, in my private judgment, that they are included in the election of grace. Perhaps those who die in infancy are the exceeding great multitude of all people, nations, and languages mentioned (Rev. 7:9) in distinction from the visible body of professing believers, who were marked on their foreheads and openly known to. be the Lord’s.” ↩

37. The Articles of the Synod of Dort, etc. (Philadelphia, 1818, p. 189): “The salvation of the offspring of believers dying in infancy is here scripturally stated, and not limited to such as are baptized. Nothing is said of the children of unbelievers dying in infancy, and the Scripture says nothing. But why might not these Calvinists have as favorable a hope of all infants dying before actual sin as anti-Calvinists can have?” ↩

38. The Works of, etc. (new ed., London, 1837, pp. 645, 646): “But you observe … that ‘With regard to infants, the rubrick declares it is certain by God’s word that children which are baptized, dying before they commit actual sin, are undoubtedly saved.’ I firmly believe the same; nay, I believe more. I am convinced that the souls of all departed infants whatever, whether baptized or unbaptized, are with God in glory… . I believe that in the decree of predestination to life, God hath included all whom he hath decreed to take away in infancy; and that the decree of reprobation has nothing to do with them.” So, again, p. 142, note m: “No objection can hence arise against the salvation of such as die in infancy (all of whom are undoubtedly saved); nor yet against the salvation of God’s elect among the Heathens, Mohametans, and others. The Holy Spirit is able to inspire the grace of actual faith into those hearts (especially at the moment of dissolution) which are incapable of exerting the explicit act of faith.” ↩

39. “The Sacrament of Baptism, by which souls are admitted into covenant with God, and without which none can enter into the kingdom of heaven (John 3:5)” (Tract No. 35, p. 1). Cf. the words of Tract No. 67 which affirms that the relationship of sonship to God is imparted through baptism, and is not imparted without it. ↩

40. Efforts to assign salvation to them on the “uncovenanted mercies of God,” proceed ordinarily either upon a Romish conception of “ignorance,” or upon the conjecture of a proclamation of the Gospel to them in the intermediate state. Thus a recent writer declares that “those souls who have, until this season, been ignorant of their God, or seen Him, at the best,but dimly, through their heathen faiths, and yet, despite of this, have followed and obeyed, as best they could, His guidings and ‘enlightenings ‘of their minds—those souls, I say, will doubtless, in that ‘Vision ‘at last receive the Full Light, hear His Gospel, and know Him as their Lord.” Then he adds in a note: “In this category, also, evidently belong unbaptized infants” (Alan S. Hawkesworth, De Incarnatione Verbi Dei, p. 64). Why “unbaptized infants,” even of believers, “evidently” belong in the category of the heathen, we are not told; nor why, if they are so classed by God, they should belong in the category of those heathen who “have followed and obeyed, as best they could;” nor what reason we have to think that all of either these or those will receive the Gospel when it is offered them. ↩