Monday, September 13, 2021

Salvation (and Reprobation) of Infants in the Reformed Tradition

  

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)