It is probable that Zwingli stood alone among the Reformers in his extension of salvation to all infants dying in infancy. That all children of believers, dying in infancy, are included in the covenant of God and enter at once into glory was the characteristic feature of the Reformed doctrine; the boldness of which and the relief which it brought to the oppressed heart are alike scarcely estimable by us after centuries of emancipation from the dreadful burden of what had up to the rise of the Reformed theology been for ages the undoubting belief of the Church—viz., that all unbaptized infants are excluded from bliss. With this great advance the minds and hearts of most men were satisfied, and, happy in teaching from positive Scriptures the certain salvation of all the children of Christian parents departing from their arms to the arms of Jesus, they were content to leave the children of unbelievers, dying such, to the just but hidden judgment of God. It has been thought by many, indeed, that both John Calvin and Zwingli’s successor in the leadership of the Church at Zurich, Henry Bullinger, shared to the full extent the hope of Zwingli, and were ready, with him, to extend their assurance of infant salvation to all who die in infancy of whatever parentage. It is true that it is not easy to adduce from the writings of these great teachers passages which clearly affirm the opposite; what have been brought forward as such are usually rather assertions of the presence and desert of “original sin” in infants than declarations of the punishment which they actually undergo. But, on the other hand, there is a more entire lack of positive evidence for the affirmation; and there are not altogether wanting passages from either writer which appear, in their natural sense, to imply belief that some infants dying such pass into doom. It would seem difficult to read, for example, Calvin’s rejoinders to Pighius, Servetus and Castellio without becoming convinced that he did not think of all infants, dying such, as escaping the just recompense of their sinfulness. Even such a comment as that which he makes on Rom. v. 7 seems, indeed, to carry this implication on its face: “Hence, in order to partake of the miserable inheritance of sin, it is enough for thee to be a man, for it dwells in flesh and blood; but in order to enjoy the righteousness of Christ, it is necessary for thee to be a believer, for a participation of Him is obtained by faith alone. He is communicated to infants in a peculiar manner; for they have in the covenant the right of adoption, by which they pass over into participation of Christ. It is of the children of the pious that I am speaking, to whom the promise of grace is directed. For the rest are by no means released from the common lot.”⁸ Similarly Bullinger’s language, as he argues for the inclusion of believers’ infants within the covenant and their consequent right to baptism, now and again appears inconsistent with the supposition that he supposed all infants dying such to be alike included in the election of God. Thus a fundamental distinction between the children of the faithful and those of unbelievers, not only in privileges but also in ultimate destiny, seems to color the whole language of a passage like the following: “Wherefore, I, trusting to God’s mercy and his truth and undoubted promise, believe that infants, departing out of this world by a too timely death, before they can be baptized, are saved by the mere mercy of God in the power of his truth and promise through Christ, who saith in the Gospel, ‘Suffer little ones to come unto me; for of such is the kingdom of God:’ Again, ‘It is not the will of my Father which is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.’ For verily God who cannot lie hath said, ‘I am thy God, and the God of thy seed after thee.’ Whereupon St. Paul also affirmeth that they are born holy which are begotten of holy parents; not that of flesh and blood any holy thing is born, for ‘that which is born of flesh is flesh:’ but because that holiness and separation from the common seed of men is of promise, and by right of the covenant. For we are all by natural birth born the sons of wrath, death, and damnation: but Paul attributeth a special privilege to the children of the faithful, wherewith by the grace of God they which by nature are unclean are purified. So the same apostle, in another place, doth gather holy branches of a holy root; and again elsewhere saith: ‘If by the sin of one many be dead, much more the grace of God and the gift of grace which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.’”⁹ As over against the natural implications of such passages there is nothing positive to set, and it is certainly within the mark to say that as yet no decisive evidence has been adduced to show that either Calvin¹⁰ or Bullinger¹¹ agreed with Zwingli in cherishing the hope that all infants dying in infancy are saved; the probability is distinctly to the contrary.

The constitutive principles of Zwingli’s teaching, however, are not only the common conviction of all the Reformed, but are even the essential postulates of the whole Reformed system. That the salvation of men depends ultimately upon nothing except the free election of God must be the hinge of all Reformed thinking in the sphere of soteriology; and differences relative to the salvation of infants can arise within the limits of Reformed thought only on the two points of what the signs of election and reprobation are, and how surely these signs may be identified in men. On these points the Reformed were early divided into five distinguishable classes.

1. There were a few, from the very beginning, who held with Zwingli that death in infancy is one of the signs of election, and hence that all who die in infancy are the children of God and enter at once into glory. After Zwingli it is probable that Bishop Hooper was the first to embrace this view.¹² It is presented in a characteristically restrained and winning way by Francis Junius in his work on Nature and Grace, which was published in 1592. “Some one will say, perhaps,” he says, “‘But infants surely who are called from this life before they commit actual sin are not to be assigned to destruction nor held by us to be lost on account of that natural vitiosity which they have contracted as an inheritance from their parents?’ I respond that there is a double question raised here under the appearance of one: one is, What end do they deserve according to God’s justice by their vitiosity? the other is, What end will they actually have? The first we answer, briefly, thus: they cannot but deserve for their vitiosity, according to God’s justice, separation from God—that is, destruction and eternal death… . Let us look, then, at the second question. None of us is so wild, or has ever been known to be so wild, as to condemn infants simpliciter. Let those who teach otherwise look to it by what right they do it, and relying on what authority. For, although they are in themselves and in our common nature condemnable, it does not follow that we ought to pass the sentence of condemnation upon them. What then? Will they be saved? We hold that all those will be saved who belong to the covenant and who belong to the election. But those infants belong to the covenant who spring from covenanted parents, whether immediately—i.e., from covenanted father and mother, or either; or mediately—i.e., from covenanted ancestors, even though the continuity has been broken, as God says He ‘will show mercy unto thousands of generations ‘(Ex. xx.). And this is the way in which Paul speaks of the Jews as being included in his time (Rom. xi.); nor do we doubt that by the same force of the covenant God sanctifies by the covenant as His own some from the number of unbelievers—for the sake of the covenant, we mean, that their ancestors received. Some also, however, belong to the election, for God has not cut off from Himself the right and authority to communicate more widely the grace of His own election to those of whom it cannot be said that either their parents or ancestors belonged to the covenant; for just as of old He called into the covenant afresh, according to His election, those who were not in the covenant, in order that they might be in it, so also in every age the same benefit may be conferred by His most free action. And why may not this happen to infants as well as to others, since of them may be justly said what the author of the Book of Wisdom wrote of Enoch, that ‘he was taken away lest evil should change his mind or guile ensnare his soul’? All infants, therefore, are in themselves condemnable by the justice of God; and if God have condemned any (a matter to be left to Him) they are justly condemned; but we nevertheless affirm that those who are of the covenant and those who are of the election are saved—whomsoever He has ordained to eternal life; and out of charity we presume that those whom He calls to Himself as infants and snatches seasonably out of this miserable vale of sins are rather saved according to His election and fatherly providence than expelled from the kingdom of heaven. We rest utterly in His counsel.”¹³ More lately this genial judgment has become the ruling view, especially among English-speaking Calvinists, and we may select Augustus M. Toplady¹⁴ and Robert S. Candlish as its types. The latter, for example, writes:¹⁵ “‘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 that little 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 Reformed theologians taught that the only sure sign of election is faith with its fruits, and, therefore, that we can have no real ground of conviction concerning the fate of any infant. As, however, God certainly has His elect among infants too, each man can cherish the hope that his own children are of the elect. This sadly agnostic position, which was afterward condemned by the whole body of the Reformed assembled in the Synod of Dort, is at least approached by Peter Martyr, who writes: “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 predestination; but I only assert that those are truly saved to whom the divine election extends, 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 promises that are uncommon; and although they may not be general, quoad omnes, yet when I see nothing to the contrary it is right to hope well concerning the salvation of such infants.”¹⁶ Even after the declaration of the Synod of Dort there remained some to whom it did not seem possible to speak with the Synod’s confidence of the salvation of all the children of believers dying in infancy. Thus, Thomas Gataker writes to Richard Baxter on November 1st, 1653,¹⁷ that he dares not “herein speak so peremptorilie as the Synod of Dort doth;” “nor,” he adds, “do Zanchie, Ursine, or divers other of our Divines, of whom see Malderi Antisynodica,¹⁸ pp. 63, 64. Tho I confess that some of them in their Discourses and Disputes overthrow sometime with one hand, what they seem to build up with the other.” That the infants of believing parents are included in the covenant he did not doubt; but he conceived of this covenant as rather conditional than absolute, and therefore felt it to be “more than can certainlie be avowed or from Scr. can be averred,” “that the Child is therein considered as a member of the Parents, and is by its parents’ faith discharged of the guilt of its sin, and put in an actual state of Salvation.” “Concerning the state of infants, even of true believers,” therefore, he thinks that the Scripture is “verie sparing; and in averring ought therein peremptorilie we have great cause therefore to be verie warie.” Something of the same hesitancy characterizes also Baxter’s own statements on the subject. In his Plain Scripture Proof of Infant Church-Membership and Baptism, the third edition of which was issued shortly before the date of the letter to which Gataker’s was a reply, he speaks in a very similar manner. “We have,” he says, “a stronger probability than he [Tombes] mentioneth of the salvation of all the Infants of the Faithfull so dying, and a certainty of the salvation of some… . If any will go farther and say that God’s assuring mercy to them, and calling them blessed, and covenanting to be their God, with the rest of the Arguments, will prove more than a probability, even a full certainty of the salvation of all Believers’ Infants so dying; though I dare not say so my selfe, yet I profess to think this opinion far better grounded than Mr. T[ombs]’s, that would shut them all out of the Church.”¹⁹ Twenty years later he returns to the question, and treats it at great length. He thinks that “there can no promise or proof be produced that all unbaptized Infants are saved, either from the pœna damni or sensus, or both;” but, on the other hand, he can now “say, as the Synod of Dort, Art. I., that Believing Parents have no cause to doubt of the salvation of their children that dye in infancy, before they commit actual sin; that is, not to trouble themselves with fears about it:” and he thinks “it very probable that this ascertaining promise belongeth not only to the natural seed of believers, but to all whom they have the true power and right to dedicate in covenant to God.” Still, however, he “dares not say” that he is “undoubtedly certain of it;” he is giving opinions, not convictions.²⁰ A hint of the same unwillingness to make the affirmation of the salvation of the children of believers absolute is found even in the statement of the Compendium of John Marck. “Nor is it to be doubted,” he says, “that to those reprobated, there are likewise most justly to be referred as well the Gentiles who are strangers to the proclamation of the Gospel as the infants of unbelievers, while we have good hope for those of believers because of God’s promise (Gen. xvii. 7, etc.), although they are in themselves not less damnable, and possibly some of them are even to be damned (cæteroquin in se non minus damnabilibus, et forte quibusdam etiam damnandis). For although concerning individual persons of Gentiles and of infants born of unbelievers we neither can nor wish to determine anything particularly, because of God’s freedom and the frequently hidden paths of the Spirit, yet all these are by nature children of wrath, impure, alien, and remote from God, without hope, left to themselves (cf. Eph. ii. 3; 1 Cor. vii. 14; Eph. ii. 12, 17; Acts xiv. 16, etc.); God has revealed nothing concerning a salvation decreed or to be wrought for them; and they are destitute of the ordinary means of grace.”²¹

To the great body of Calvinists, however, both of these views seemed insufficiently in accord with “what is written.” The one appeared to err by going beyond, and the other by falling short of, the warrant of Scripture. All their thought on this subject took its start from the cardinal scriptural fact of the covenant, and they were jealous of everything which seemed to dull the sharpness of the distinction between the covenanted children of believers and the uncovenanted children of unbelievers. Triglandius speaks not for himself alone but for practically the whole body of the Reformed when, in answer to the suggestion of Episcopius that “‘it makes no difference whether the infants are children of believers or unbelievers, since the same innocence is found in all infants as such,’ he replies: “But to us the two do not stand on the same footing; since the one are included in the covenant of God and the others are strangers to that covenant (Gen. xvii. 7; Eph. ii. 11, 12). For this reason children of unbelieving Gentiles are said to be impure, but those of believers holy (1 Cor. vii. 14); wherefore also Peter says, when exhorting the Jews to repentance and faith (Acts ii. 39), ‘To you is the promise (i.e., of remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost), and to your children, and to all who are afar off whom our Lord God shall call.’”²² And John Gerhard might have quoted many more names than those of Calvin, Beza, Sadeel, Ursinus, Gentilis, and Musculus, as affirming that “the infants of believers, all alike, whether baptized or unbaptized, are rightly holy from their mothers’ womb by the inheritance of the promise, and enjoy eternal salvation in the covenant and company of God.”²³ With this central point of agreement, the great body of Calvinists differed among themselves only in their belief concerning the destiny of infants dying outside the covenant, and on this point parted into three varieties of opinion.

3. Many held that faith and the promise are sure signs of election, and accordingly that all believers and their children are certainly saved; but that the lack of faith and the promise is an equally sure sign of reprobation, so that all the children of unbelievers dying such are equally certainly 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 covenant 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 infancy, are saved, and that it would be a great blessing to them if they should be smothered 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 (reatus) 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 transgression, and distinguishes and separates (1 Cor. vii. 14) the children of the covenanted as holy from the impure children of unbelievers.”²⁴ Somewhat similarly Stapfer, after affirming the salvation of the infants of believers, dying such, continues: “As to the children of unbelievers, we believe, indeed, that they will be separated from communion with God; and hence, because as children of wrath and cursing they are excluded from the beatific communion with God, they will be damned”—though he eases the apparent harshness of his language by recalling the fact of various degrees of punishment in hell.²⁵ On an earlier page²⁶ we have quoted a passage from Usher’s Body of Divinity to the same effect. That work was a compilation, and we find the same words in an earlier Catechism published by Samuel Crooke,²⁷ which may stand as an example from English ground of this very widespread opinion.

4. More held that faith and the promise are certain signs of 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. Accordingly 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 as much as this is intended to be asserted by Thomas Goodwin when to the question, “Doth God inflict eternal death merely for the corruption of nature upon any infants?” he answers: “My brethren, it must be said, Yes: we are children of wrath by nature; and unless there come in election amongst them, for it is election saveth and is the root of salvation, it must needs be so… . But you will say, Do these perish? or Doth God let those perish? Doth His wrath seize upon them? Not only what the text [Eph. ii. 3] saith, but that in Rom. v. is clear for it… . It is true election knows its own amongst infants, but it must be free grace, it must be by grace that ye are saved, for clearly by nature ye are all children of wrath. Therefore the Lord, as He will have instances of all sorts that are in heaven, so He will have some that are in hell for their sin brought into the world.”²⁸ But probably no higher expression 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 believers. He is a God of them and of their seed, extending his mercy to a thousand generations of them that fear him.²⁹ (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.”³⁰

5. Most Calvinists of the past, however, have held that faith and the promise are marks by which we may know assuredly that all those who believe and their children, dying such, are elect and saved; while the absence of sure marks of either election or reprobation in infants, dying such outside the covenant, leaves us without ground for inference concerning them, and they must therefore be left to the judgment of God, which, however hidden from us, is assuredly just and holy and good. This agnostic view of the fate of uncovenanted 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. Petrus de Witte may stand as one example of it. He says: “We must adore God’s judgments and not curiously inquire into them. Of the children of believers it is not to be doubted but that they shall be saved, inasmuch as they belong unto the covenant. But because we have no promise for the children of unbelievers we leave them to the judgment of God.”³¹ Our own Jonathan Dickinson³² may stand as another. “It may be further urged against this proposition,” he says, “That it drives multitudes of poor infants to Hell who never committed any actual Sin; and is therefore a Doctrine so cruel and unmerciful as to be unworthy of God. To this I answer that greatest Modesty becomes us in drawing any Conclusions on this Subject. We have indeed the highest Encouragement to dedicate our children to Christ, since he has told us, Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven; and the strongest Reason to Hope as to the Happiness of those deceased Infants, who have been thus dedicated to him. But God has not been pleased to reveal to us how far he will extend His uncovenanted Mercy to others that die in Infancy.—As, on the one Hand, I don’t know that the Scripture anywhere assures us that they shall all be saved: So, on the other Hand, we have not (that I know of) any Evidence, from Scripture or the Nature of Things, that any of them will eternally perish.—All those that die in Infancy may (for aught we know) belong to the Election of Grace; and be predestinated to the Adoption of Children. They may, in Methods to us unknown, have the benefits of Christ’s Redemption applied to them; and thereby be made Heirs of Eternal Glory. They are (it is true) naturally under the Guilt and Pollution of Original Sin; but they may, notwithstanding this, for any thing that appears to the contrary, be renewed by the gracious Influences of the Spirit of God, and thereby be made mete for Eternal Life. It therefore concerns us, without any bold and presumptuous conclusions, to leave them in the Hands of that God whose tender Mercies are over all His Works.” It is this cautious, agnostic view which has the best historical right to be called the general Calvinistic one, and it has persisted as such until the present day in all but English-speaking lands. One of the ablest living Calvinistic thinkers, for example, Dr. A. Kuyper, of Amsterdam, writes as follows: “Constantly and unwaveringly the Reformed Confession stations itself on the standpoint of the covenant and withholds baptism from all who stand outside the covenant, because it belongs to those within the covenant. To be sure, the Reformed Confession does not pass judgment on the children of heathen who die before coming to years of discretion. They depend on God’s mercy, widened as broadly as possible. But where the Scriptures are silent, the Confession, too, preserves silence. Men know nothing here and can say nothing. Mere conjecture and imagination have no right to enter so serious a matter. The lot of these numerous children belongs to the hidden things that are for the Lord God, and is not included among the things which He has revealed to the children of men. Revealed, however, is the matter of the covenant, and this covenant makes known to us the remarkable rule that God has been pleased to set His holy election in connection with the bond of generation.”³³ Van Mastricht correctly says that while the Reformed hold that infants are liable to reprobation, yet “concerning believers’ infants … they judge better things. But unbelievers’ infants, because the Scriptures determine nothing clearly on the subject, they judge should be left to the Divine discretion.”³⁴

The Reformed Confessions with characteristic caution refrain from all definition upon the negative side of this great question. 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 its polemical appendix of 1580, in its protest against the errors of “antichrist,” specifically mentions “his cruell judgement againis infants departing without 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 member 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 fathers of Dort, with truly Reformed loyalty to the positive declarations of Scripture, confined themselves to a clear testimony to the positive doctrine of infant salvation and a repudiation of the calumnies of the Remonstrants, without a word of negative inference. “Since we are to judge of the will of God from His Word,” they say, “which testifies that the children of believers are holy, not by nature, but in virtue of the covenant of grace, in which they together 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” (cap. i., art. xvii.). Accordingly they repel in the Conclusion the calumny that the Reformed teach “that many children of the faithful are torn guiltless from their mothers’ breasts and tyrannically plunged into hell.”³⁵ It is easy to say that nothing is here said of the children of any but the “godly” and of the “faithful.” This is true. And therefore it is not implied (as is 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 here that all the children of believers, dying such, are saved; and that this assertion is an inestimable advance on that of the Council of Trent and that of the Augsburg Confession that baptism is necessary to salvation, as well as upon the ominous silence of the Anglican Prayer Book as to all who die unbaptized. It is, in a word, the confessional doctrine of the Reformed churches and of the Reformed churches alone, that all believers’ children, dying in infancy, are saved.

What has been said of the Synod of Dort may be repeated of the Westminster Assembly. The Westminster divines were generally at one in the matter of infant salvation with the doctors of Dort, but, like them, they refrained from any deliverance 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 application of Christ’s redemption to His people: “All those whom God hath predestined 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.”³⁶ With this declaration of their faith that such of God’s elect as die in infancy are saved by His own mysterious working in their hearts, although incapable of the response of faith, they were content. 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 suggest. No Reformed 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 confessions; of what has been disputed among them the confessions are silent. And silence is as favorable to one type of belief as to another.

Although, thus, the cautious agnostic position as to the fate of uncovenanted infants dying in infancy may fairly claim to be historically the Calvinistic view, it is perfectly obvious that it is not per se more Calvinistic than the others. The adherents of all the types enumerated above are clearly within the limits of the Reformed system, and hold with the same firmness to the fundamental Reformed position that salvation is absolutely suspended on no earthly condition, but ultimately rests on God’s electing grace alone, while our knowledge of who are saved depends on our view of what are the signs of election and of the clearness with which they may be interpreted. As these several types differ only in the replies they offer to the subordinate question, 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 the latter half of the eighteenth century the agnostic view of the fate of uncovenanted infants, dying such, gradually gave place, among English-speaking Calvinists at least, to an ever-growing universality of conviction that these infants too are included in the election of grace; so that in the first half of the nineteenth century it was almost forgotten among American theologians that anything else had ever been believed among them. Men like Henry Kollock and James P. Wilson, of course, retained consciousness of the past and spoke with caution. “It is in perfect consistence,” says the one, “with both these doctrines [of original sin and the necessity of atonement], that we maintain that God has ordained to confer eternal life on all whom He has ordained to remove from this world before they arrive at the years of discretion.”³⁷ And the other, having spoken of the desert of original sin, adds similarly: “Nevertheless it does not follow that any dying in infancy are lost, since their salvation by Christ is more than possible.”’³⁸ But Dr. Lyman Beecher, in a sermon which this declaration made famous, was almost ready to assert that there never had been a Calvinist who believed that any of those dying in infancy were lost. “I am aware,” he said in his inimitable way, “that Calvinists are represented as believing and teaching the monstrous doctrine that infants are damned, and that hell is doubtless paved with their bones. But having passed the age of fifty, and been conversant for thirty years with the most approved Calvinistic writers, and personally acquainted with many of the most distinguished Calvinistic divines in New England, and in the Middle and Southern and Western States, I must say that I have never seen nor heard of any book which contained such a sentiment, nor a man, minister or layman, who believed or taught it. And I feel authorized to say that Calvinists as a body are as far from teaching the doctrine of infant damnation as any of those who falsely accuse them. And I would earnestly and affectionately recommend to all persons who have been accustomed to propagate this slander that they commit to memory without delay the ninth commandment, which is, ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.’”³⁹ A challenge delivered in such a tone as this could not fail of a reply,⁴⁰ and Dr. Beecher’s history was soon set right; but his testimony to the state of opinion in his own day on the subject is, of course, unaffected by his historical error. The same state of affairs is witnessed also by Dr. Charles Hodge, who, as the end of his long life of service as a teacher of theology was drawing to a close, could remark of the opinion, “that only a certain part, or some of those who die in infancy, are saved:” “We can only say that we never saw a Calvinistic theologian who held that doctrine.”⁴¹ Dr. Hodge’s predecessor as teacher of theology at Princeton spoke of the salvation of all infants dying such in something of the tone prevalent early in the century: “As infants, according to the creed of all Reformed churches, are infected with original sin, they cannot without regeneration be qualified for the happiness of heaven. Children dying in infancy must, therefore, be regenerated without the instrumentality of the Word; and as the Holy Scriptures have not informed us that any of the human family departing in infancy will be lost, we are permitted to hope that all such will be saved.”⁴² Dr. Hodge himself speaks with more decision;⁴³ and to-day few English-speaking Calvinists can be found who do not hold with Toplady, and Thomas Scott, and John Newton, and J. H. A. Bomberger,⁴⁴ and Nathan L. Rice, and Robert J. Breckinridge, and Robert S. Candlish, and Thomas Hamilton,⁴⁵ and Charles Hodge, and William G. T. Shedd,⁴⁶ 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 those that die in infancy are less guilty than others (for relative innocence would merit only relatively light punishment, not freedom from all punishment), 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 foundation of the world, by a loving foreordination of them unto adoption as sons in Jesus Christ. Thus, as they hold, the Reformed theology has followed the light of the Word until its brightness has illuminated all its corners, and the darkness has fled away.

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Footnotes

1. See his views quoted and discussed by Witsius, De Efficace et Utilitate Bapt. in Miscel. Sacra (1736), ii., 513. ↩

2. Zwingli’s teaching may be conveniently worked out by the aid of August Baur’s valuable Zwingli’s Theologie, especially vol. ii. (Halle, 1889). Zwingli’s peculiar doctrine of original sin had practically very little influence on his resolution of the question of the sal- vation of infants, which rather turned on his doctrine of the extent of the atonement. ↩

3. Works, i., 423 (1523). ↩

4. The word “church,” says Zwingli, “is used variously in the Scriptures. First of all, it is used for those elect who are destinated by the will of God to eternal life… . This is known to God alone, for He, according to the word of Solomon, alone knows the hearts of the sons of men. But none the less, those who are members of this church know that they themselves, since they have faith, are elect and are members of this first church; but they are ignorant of other members than themselves… . Those then who believe are ordained to eternal life. But who truly believe no one knows except the believer himself… . From these, therefore, it follows that that first church is known to God alone, and only those who have certain and unshaken faith know that they are members of this church.” (Works, iv., p. 8.) “It follows, therefore, that those who believe know they are elect; for those who believe are elect. Election is, therefore, the antecedent of faith… . It is proper to pronounce concerning those only who persist in disbelief until death. However much any give open signs, whether by cruelty or lust, that they are repudiated by God, nevertheless we ought not before the end or ‘departure’ (as the poet says) to condemn any one.” (Works, iv., 723 sq., 1530.) ↩

5. “We are more certain of the election of none than of infants who are taken away in youth, while as yet they are without law; for human life is sometimes not truly, but only apparently innocent, while there cannot be any stain (labes) in infants who spring from believers. For original sin is expiated by Christ; for as in Adam all died, so in Christ we are all restored to life—we, that is, who either believe or are of the church by promise. But no stain of misdeeds (labes facinorum) can contaminate them, for they are not yet under law. But since no cause disjoins them from God except sin, and they are alien from all sin, it follows that none can so irrefragably be known to be among the elect as those infants who are taken away by fate in youth; for in their case to die is the sign of election, just as faith is in adults. And those who are reprobated or repudiated by God do not die in this state of innocence, but are preserved by Divine providence, that their repudiation may be manifested by a wicked life.” (Works, iv., 127, 1530.) “Therefore the infants of Christians, since they are not less than adults of the visible Church of Christ, are not less to be (so it follows) in the number of those whom we judge to be elect than their parents. Hence it happens that those judges act impiously and presumptuously who devote the infants of Christians to dreadful things, since so many clear testimonies of Scripture contradict this …” (Works, iv., 8.) ↩

6. “Since those alone who have heard and then either believed or remained in unbelief are subject to our judgment, it follows that we vehemently err in judging infant children, whether of Gentiles or of Christians. Of Gentiles, because no law condemns them, for they do not fall under that of ‘Who shall not believe,’ etc. Hence, since the election of God is free, it is impious to exclude from it those of whom by these signs, faith and unbelief, we are not able to determine whether they are in it or not. With reference to those of Christians, however, we are not only intruding rashly into the election of God, but we are not even believing His word by which He manifests this election to us. For since He admits us into the covenant of Abraham, this word now renders us no less certain of their election than formerly of the Hebrews. For that word, that they are within the covenant, testament, people of God, makes us certain of their election until God shall announce something else concerning any one.” (Works, iii., 427, cf. 429, 1527.) “Hence it follows that if in Christ, the second Adam, we are restored to life, just as we were handed over to death in the first Adam, we rashly condemn the children born of Christian parents; nay, even the children of Gentiles. But as to the infants of Gentiles, whatever opinion may be held, we confidently assert that on account of the virtue of the pre-eminent salvation of Christ, they go beyond the mark who adjudge them to eternal malediction, both because of the reparation spoken of and because of the free election of God, which does not follow, but is followed by, faith… . They ought not, therefore, to be rashly condemned by us who, by reason of age, have not faith; for although they do not as yet have it, the election of God is nevertheless hidden from us, with respect to which, if they are elect, we judge rashly concerning things of which we know nothing.” (Works, iv., 7.) ↩

7. “But I have spoken in this manner, That the children of Christians cannot be damned by original sin for this reason, because though sin should condemn according to the law, yet on account of the remedy exhibited in Christ it cannot condemn, especially not those included in the covenant made with Abraham; for concerning these we have other clear and solid testimonies: concerning the rest, who are born out of the church, we have nothing except the present testimony” (i.e., “As in Adam, so in Christ, but more”), “so far as I know, and similar ones in this fifth chapter of Romans, by which to prove that those who are born outside the Church are cleansed from original contamination. But if any one should say that it is more probable that the children of the Gentiles are saved by Christ than that they are damned, certainly he is less making Christ void than those who damn those born in the Church, if they die without baptism; and he will have more foundation and authority from the Scriptures than those who deny this, for he would assert nothing more than that the children of the Gentiles, too, while of tender age, are not damned on account of original vice, but this, of course, through the benefit of Christ.” (Works, 637, 1526.) ↩

8. Amsterdam ed. of Calvin’s Opera, vii., 36a: “De piorum liberis loquar, ad quos promissio gratiæ dirigitur. Nam alii à communi forte nequaquam eximuntur.” ↩

9. Decades, Parker Soc. ed., iv., 373; cf. 382, 313, 344. ↩

10. Dr. Charles W. Shields, in a very thorough and learned paper in The Presbyterian and Reformed Review for October, 1890(vol. i., pp. 634–651), has said everything possible to be said in favor of including Calvin in the class of those who teach the salvation of all infants dying such. Dr. Shields’s ingenious and powerful argument is vitiated, however, by two faults of interpretation. He does not always catch the drift of Calvin’s argument, as directed rather to showing against the Anabaptists that infants, too, as subjects of salvation, are also subjects of baptism; and he refers Calvin’s repeated assertions of the presence of personal guilt as distinguished from imputed guilt in all those who are lost, to guilt arising from actual sinning, whereas Calvin means it of guilt arising from inherent corruption or “original sin.” Calvin says that every soul that is lost deserves it not merely because it is implicated in the guilt of Adam’s first sin, but also because it is inwardly corrupt and wrath-deserving; he does not say it is not condemned unless it has committed overt acts of sinning. When these two errors of interpretation are eliminated, no passages remain which would seem to imply the salvation of all who die in infancy. ↩

11. That Bullinger agreed with Zwingli in holding that all who die in infancy are saved is repeatedly asserted by Dr. Schaff, but without the adduction of evidence, unless we are to read the note in Creeds of Christendom, i., 642, note 3, as directing us to the passages cited in Laurence’s Bampton Lectures, pp. 266, 267, as such. But these passages do not support the contention; they only prove that Bullinger taught that infants, too, are salvable (arguing for their baptism as against the Anabaptists), not that all that die in infancy are saved. In the seventh volume of his History of the Christian Church, published in 1892, Dr. Schaff somewhat qualifies the sharpness of his previous statement by adding a justifying clause. Bullinger, he here says, “agreed with Zwingli’s extension of salvation to all infants and to elect heathen; at all events, he nowhere dissents from these advanced views, and published with approbation Zwingli’s last work, where they are most strongly expressed” (p. 211). That the young Bullinger—he was then thirty-two—did put forth his beloved master’s last work, the Expositio Fidei, addressed to King Francis, with a preface of hearty appreciation and praise, is certainly true. But this can scarcely be said to commit him to every statement in the work. We know that he did not share his master’s doctrine of original sin, but labors to explain away its peculiarities and reduce it to only a verbal deviation from the common doctrine of the Reformers (Decades as above, ii., 394, 388). Why should the case be different with reference to matters lying on the periphery of the doctrinal system? Surely the argument from silence here is most precarious. Nor is it clear that he nowhere betrays dissent from these views of his master. We have adduced passages which appear to imply that he did not contemplate heathen infants dying in infancy as saved. And in a little book on the Judgment Day, published in 1572 (Von höchster Freud und gröstem Leyd des künftigen jüngsten Tags, u.s.w.), he certainly does not speak in Zwingli’s manner of the heathen. The learned Zwingli scholar, Dr. J. W. Wyss, of Zurich, suggests that Bullinger may have changed his mind in the interval between the ages of thirty-two and sixty-eight, a suggestion which seems unnecessary in the entire absence of proof that he ever had a different mind from that suggested in the Decades of 1551 as well as in his Judgment Day of 1572. ↩

12. See reference, ante, p. 191. ↩

13. Francis Junius, De Natura et Gratia, 1592, pp. 83, 84: the closing words are: “Ex charitate antem eos quos ad se infantes vocat, et tempestive ex hac misera valle peccatorum eripit, potius servari præsumimus, secundum electionem et providentiam ipsius paternam, quam à regno cœlorum abdicari. Omnino conquiescimus in consilio ejus.” ↩

14. See reference, ante, p. 193. ↩

15. The Atonement, etc., 1861, pp. 183, 184. ↩

16. Loci Communes, i., class. 4, cap. 5, § 16 (compare iv., 100). ↩

17. This letter is preserved in the Williams Library, London, and was printed by Dr. Briggs in The Presbyterian Review, v., 705 sq. See pp. 708 and 706. ↩

18. Dr. Briggs prints “Antisquodica,” which is a mere blunder, of course, for Gataker’s “Antisynodica.” Malderus was bishop of Antwerp and a prolific writer, author of a number of commentaries and theological and ethical treatises. The book cited by Gataker was published at Antwerp by Balthasar Moretus, in 1620, and is a volume of over 300 8vo pages. Its full title is: Antisynodica, sive Animadversiones in decreta conventus Dordraceni, quam vocant synodum nationalem, de quinque doctrinæ capitibus inter Remonstrantes et Contra-Remonstrantes controversis. ↩

19. Op. cit., ed. 3, 1653, pp. 76 and 78. ↩

20. A Christian Directory, etc., London, 1673, p. 807 sq. See p. 809. (“Christian Ecclesiastics: Ecclesiastical Cases of Conscience,” Quest. 35.) ↩

21. Joannis Marckii Compendium, etc. (1752), p. 147 (cap. vii., § xxxiii.). In defending Marck’s suggestion, De Moor quotes a similar passage from the Censura Confess. Remonstr., and another from Triglandius very much to the same effect as Gataker’s. ↩

22. Antapolog., caput. 13, p. 207a. ↩

23. Loci., ix., p. 281, edition of 1769. ↩

24. Opera, iii., cols. 1173-74, § 22. ↩

25. Institut. Theolog. Polemic., 1716, iv., 518. ↩

26. See above, p. 191. ↩

27. Guide unto True Blessedness, etc., ed. 2, 1614. ↩

28. Works, ii., 135-36. ↩

29. It is, perhaps, worth noting that this is the general Calvinistic view of what “children of believers” means. Compare Calvin, Tracts, vol. iii., p. 351; and also Junius as quoted above, p. 203. ↩

30. Works, x., 81; compare v., 137. ↩

31. Catechism, q. 37. ↩

32. The True Scripture Doctrine concerning some Important Points of Christian Faith, etc. Boston, 1741, pp. 123, 124. ↩

33. De Heraut, for September 7th, 1890. ↩

34. Theoretico-Pract. Theol. (1724), p. 308. ↩

35. The language here used has a not uninteresting history. It is Calvin’s challenge to Castellio: “Put forth now thy virulence against God, who hurls innocent babes torn from their mothers’ breasts into eternal death” (De Occulta Dei Providentia, in Opp. ed., Amst., viii., pp. 644-45). The underlying conception that God condemns infants to eternal death may, no doubt, be Calvin’s; but the mode of expression is Calvin’s reductio 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’ children. This very gross calumny the Synod repels. Its deliverance is subjected to a very sharp and not very candid criticism by Episcopius (Opera I., i., p. 176, and specially II., p. 28). ↩

36. Westminster Confession of Faith, X., 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 absolutely 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 Dickson’s (1684) treatment of the section shows that he understands it to be directed against the Anabaptists; and all careful students of the Confession understand it as above, including Shaw, A. A. Hodge, Macpherson, Mitchell, and Beattie. This is true of all schools of adherents to the Confession. See, e.g., Lyman Beecher (Spirit of the Pilgrims, 1828, i., pp. 49, 81): “The phrase ‘elect infants,’ which, in his usual way, the reviewer takes for granted implies that there are infants who are not elect, implies no such thing.” “But this Confession, which represented the Calvinism of Old England and New, and which expresses also the doctrinal opinions of the Church of Scotland and of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, teaches neither directly nor by implication that infants are damned.” Compare also Philip Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, i., 380, 795. Compare also The Presbyterian Pastor’s Catechism, by the Rev. John H. Bockok, D.D. (Presbyterian Board, 1857): “Q. 13. Why do we not baptize the infant children of unbelievers? A. 1. Not because we think such children would be lost if they died in infancy. We do not think children will be saved on account of their baptism, but through the merits of Christ. Baptism does not confer salvation, but only acknowledges and recognizes it. 2. Non-elect infants are such as do not die in infancy, but grow up to be wicked and impenitent men, as Cain, Herod, Judas, Voltaire, Paine.” The impression that the phrase “elect infants dying in infancy,” implies as its contrast “non-elect infants dying in infancy,” rather than “elect infants living to grow up,” is probably due in some measure to lack of acquaintance with the literature of the subject. A glance into Cornelius Burges’s treatise entitled Baptismal Regeneration of Elect Infants, which was published in 1629, will supply a number of instances of the use of the phrase in the latter contrast. For example: “Elect infants that live to years … yet such as dye in infancy” (p. 166). Some think Calvin in his Institutes, iv., 16, 21, speaks only of the “case of elect infants dying in infancy,” “but he is not so to be taken, as if he held that only elect infants who dye in infancy doe receive the Spirit in baptism: but that all the elect, whether they live or dye, doe ordinarily partake of the Spirit in that ordinance” (p. 164). “That all elect infants doe ordinarily, in Baptism, receive the Spirit of Christ, to seaze upon them for Christ, and to be in them as the roote and first principle of regeneration and future newnesse of life… . This I speake … with reference only unto such Infants as dye not in infancy, but live to years of discretion, and then come to be effectually called, and actually converted by the ordinary means of the word applied by the same Spirit unto them, when and how he pleaseth. As for the rest of the elect who dye infants, I will not deny a further worke, sometimes in, sometimes before baptisme, to fit them for heaven” (p. 3). The relation of this sentence to the statement in the Westminster Confession is obvious. Among the testimonies which Burges cites from leading Reformed theologians in support of his contentions, we may adduce two, the language of which is closely similar to that of the Confession. One is from the Continental divine Junius (De Pædobapt. 7), and asserts that “elect infants are regenerated when they are ingrafted unto Christ (regenerantur infantes electi cum Christo inseruntur), and this is sealed to them when they are baptized” (quoted p. 26). The other is from the English divine Whitaker (De Sacram. in Genere, quæst. i., cap. 3, p. 15), and affirms that “God renews elect infants dying in infancy by the power of His Spirit (infantes electos, morientes antequam adoleverint, Deus virtute Spiritus sui renovat): but if it falls to them to live to greater age, they are the more incited to seek renewal, because they know they received its badge while infants” (quoted p. 211). ↩

37. Sermons (Savannah, Ga., 1822), iii., pp. 20 sq. (esp. p. 23); cf. iv., p. 273 sq. ↩

38. An Essay on the Probation of Fallen Man, etc., 1827, pp. 15, 16. Dr. H. M. Dexter, in The Congregationalist, December 10th, 1874, says that Dr. Wilson, editing Ridgeley’s Body of Divinity, “dissents from his author, and argues effectively and at great length in proof that all infants dying before actual transgression are ‘saved by sovereign mercy, by free favor, to the praise of the glory of God’s grace.’” The reference given is vol. i., p. 422, but it is wrong; and we have, consequently, not been able to verify the statement. ↩

39. The Government of God Desirable. A sermon delivered at Newark, N. J., October, 1808, during the session of the Synod of New York and New Jersey. By Lyman Beecher, A.M., Pastor of the Church of Christ in East Hampton, L. I. Seventh edition. Boston: T. R. Marvin, 1827, 8vo, pp. 27. P. 15, note. This footnote was added in this (seventh) edition. The sermon is also reprinted in Dr. Beecher’s Works. ↩

40. In three articles in The Christian Examiner for 1827 and 1828 (vols. iv. and v.), said to be by F. Jenks. In The Spirit of the Pilgrims, i. (1828), pp. 42 sq., 78 sq., and 149 sq. Dr. Beecher explained that in writing the note attacked his mind was more upon contemporary than past teachers. He says further: “I have only to add that I have nowhere asserted that Calvinists as a body teach that all infants are certainly saved. I am aware that many, with Dickinson and the Reformers” (doubtless a blunder, from Van Mastricht’s Reformati) “and ‘moderate Calvinists’ have hoped that they are saved, and referred the event to the unerring discretion of heaven” (p. 51). ↩

41. Systematic Theology, iii., 605, note 4, published in 1872. In the succeeding words Dr. Hodge approaches, but fortunately does not attain, the unhistorical assertion of Dr. Beecher. He adds: “We are not learned enough to venture the assertion that no Calvinist ever held it; but if all Calvinists are responsible for what every Calvinist has ever said, and all Lutherans are responsible for everything Luther or Lutherans have ever said, then Dr. Krauth as well as ourselves will have a heavy burden to carry.” Dr. Krauth, of course, found no more difficulty than the writer in The Christian Examiner had found in reply to Dr. Beecher, in bringing together, in reply to Dr. Hodge, a great list of Calvinists who had held this doctrine. The result is found in his Infant Baptism and Infant Salvation in the Calvinistic System, etc. (Phila., 1874, p. 83.) ↩

42. The Life of Archibald Alexander, D.D., etc., by James W. Alexander, D.D., p. 585. ↩

43. Systematic Theology, i., 26; iii., 605. ↩

44. Infant Salvation in its Relation to Infant Depravity, Infant Regeneration and Infant Baptism. Philadelphia, 1859, pp. 64, 109, 196. ↩

45. Beyond the Stars, ch. vii. (pp. 184, etc.). ↩

46. Dogmatic Theology, ii., 714. ↩