In Mosiah 18:16, there is an explication of the transformative nature of justification upon baptism:
And after this manner he did baptize every one that went forth to the place of Mormon; and they were in number about two hundred and four souls; yea, and they were baptized in the waters of Mormon, and were filled with the grace of God.
Here, as a result of water baptism, one receives an infusion of the grace of God. Such is commensurate with the explicit witness of Latter-day Saint and New Testament theology of water baptism.
In spite of the common Protestant view that justification is merely declarative and the language of "transformation" and "infusion" belongs to the realm of sanctification, many Reformed theologians and confessions "slipped up" by utilising the language of "infusion."
For instance, John Calvin (1509-1564) in The Institutes of the Christian Religion 3.6.2 wrote the following:
. . . we ought rather first to cleave to him, in order that, pervaded with his holiness, we may follow whither he calls . . .
The term translated as "pervaded" is the Latin perfundo which means "infused." Francis Turretin (1623-1687), mirroring Calvin, used "infusion" (Latin: infundo) in his Institutes of Elenctic Theology 15.4.13.
The Canons of Dort (1618), a response to The Five Articles of the Remonstrants (1610), wrote the following in Article XI and XIV of the Third and Fourth Heads of Doctrine:
But when God accomplishes his good pleasure in the elect, or works in them true conversion, he not only causes the gospel to be externally preached to them, and powerfully illuminates their minds by his Holy Spirit, that they may rightly understand and discern the things of the Spirit of God, but by the efficacy of the same regenerating Spirit he pervades the inmost recesses of man; he opens the closed and softens the hardened heart, and circumcises that which was uncircumcised, infuses [Latin: infundo] new qualities into the will, which, though heretofore dead, he quickens; from being evil, disobedient, and refractory, he renders it good, obedient, and pliable; actuates and strengthens it, that, like a good tree, it may bring forth the fruits of good actions. . . . Faith is therefore to be considered as the gifts of God, not on account of its being offered by God to man, to be accepted or rejected at his pleasure, but because it is in reality conferred, breathed, and infused [Latin: infundo] into him . . .(Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vol. III: The Evangelical Protestant Creeds [revised by David S. Schaff; New York: Harper and Row, 1931; repr., Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 2007], 590, 591; emphasis added; comments in square bracket mine)
What is interesting is that this passage speaks that “in reality” one receives an “infusion” within the context of justification—it is not a mere forensic declaration that does not correspond to reality, per the common Reformed understanding of imputation and forensic justification.
