Calvin held to election
in regard to infants, and speaks thus: —
“As to infants, they
seem to perish, not by their own fault, but by the fault of another. But there
is a double solution. Though sin does not yet appear in them, yet it is latent;
for they bear corruption shut up in the soul, so that before God they are
damnable.” “That infants who are to be saved (as, certainly, out of that age
some are saved) must be previously regenerated by the Lord is clear.”—Institut.,
iv., xvi.17
We find this doctrine
of infant salvation through election expressed in the Calvinistic symbols. The
Canons of the Synod of Dort (1619) declare: —
“Since we are to
judge of the will of God from his word (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 the 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.”—First Head of
Doctrine, art. X xli.
And the Westminster
Confession: —
“The grace promised
[in baptism] is not only offered, but really exhibited and conferred, by the
Holy Ghost to such (whether of age or infants) as that grace belongeth unto,
according to the counsel of God’s own will, in his appointed time.”—xxviii.vi.
And
“Elect infants, dying
in infancy are regenerated and saved by Christ, through the Spirit, who worketh
when and where and how he pleaseth.”—X.III
But, in the Second
Scotch Confession (1580), it says, —
“We abhor and detest
the cruel judgment against infants dying without baptism.” —See SCHAFF:
Creeds, vol. iii. p. 482.
Since Calvinists
distinguish between elect and non-elect infants, it is not strange that some of
their theologians have spoken of elect and reprobate infants. Thus
Musculus says, —
“Since, therefore,
this discrimination of elect and reprobate in new-born infants is hidden from
our judgment, it is not fitting that we should inquire into it, lest by
ignorance we reject vessels of grace.”—Loci Communes, 336.
And the Swiss
theologians at the Synod of Dort said, —
“That there is an
election and reprobation of infants, no less than of adults, we cannot deny in
the face of God, who loves and hates unborn children.”—Acta Synod. Dort.
Judic., 40.
A proof of the
existence of the stern view in Calvinistic New England in the seventeenth
century is the passage in that curious poem, The Day of Doom, written by
Rev. Michael Wigglesworth, which was published in 1682, ran through many editions,
and was reprinted as a curiosity, New York, 1867. Among the classes of sinners
who make their plea for mercy are the “reprobate infants” who died in infancy,
“And never had or
good or bad
effected pers’nally;
But from the womb unto the womb
were straightway carried
(Or at the least ere they trangress’d).”
But they are answered
like the rest. However, in recognition of their innocence, they are allowed “the
easiest room in hell.” Calvinism, by its doctrine of election, rids itself of
the stigma of infant damnation; for surely it is allowable to hope, at least,
that the grace of election extends to all who die in infancy. (“Infant
Salvation,” in Philip Schaff and Samuel Macauley Jackson, eds., A Religious
Encyclopaedia: Or Dictionary of Biblical, Historical, Doctrinal, and Practical
Theology, 3 vols. [3d ed.; New York: Fung and Wagnalls Company, 1891], 2:1080)
