Imatges de pàgina
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dying before they commit actual sin, are undoubtedly saved."

What enemies soever that assertion may have now, it had none in those times of which I am writing. The maintainers of Predestination in those days spoke thus of the case of an infant dying before actual sin :-That if he was baptized before he died, it was thence manifest that he had been elected; if not, it appeared that he was not elected. Or thus: "That those infants which were predestinated to salvation, came by God's providence to obtain baptism; but the others missed of it."

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This is plain in the discourses of St. Austin, Prosper, Fulgentius, &c. "There are (says St. Austin)* two infants born. If you ask what merit they have, they both are of the lump of perdition. But how comes it that the mother of the one brings him to the grace? (viz. of baptism) the mother of the other, in her sleep overlies it? You will ask me,-What merit had one, that he should be brought to the grace? What merit had the other, that was overlaid by his sleeping mother? Neither of them deserved any good.". But the potter has power over his clay; of the same lump to make one vessel to honour, another to dishonour.

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And he puts a harder case yet: The Pelagians, who held that the grace of God is given according to mens' merits, were urged by St. Austin to tell what foregoing merit one infant that was baptized and then died, could have above another that died without the grace of baptism. "If you should say (says he) † that he merited this by the piety of his parents, you will be answered, Why then do the children of godly parents sometimes miss of this benefit, and the children of wicked parents obtain it? Sometimes a child, born of religious parents, is taken away as soon as it is born, before it be washed with the laver of regeneration; and

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* Serm. de verbi Apost. 11.

+ Lib. 2, contra dua. Epistolas Pelagianorum, c. 6.

an infant born of the enemies of Christ is, by the compassion of some Christian, baptized in Christ. A baptized and chaste mother bewails her own son dying unbaptized; and yet finding another child left in the street by some strumpet, takes it up and procures it to be baptized. Here for certain the merits of the parents can have no place," &c. He goes on to show, by several other reasons or instances, that it was impossible to assign any other ground of difference, except the free purpose of God, "why some infants, being baptized, should obtain; and others dying unbaptized, should miss of so excellent a benefit, of being made the sons of God, without any merit of their parents, or of their own."

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So Prosper (or be it Hilarius, [340] or Pope Leo that was the author of the book) de Vocatione Gentium, lib. 1. c. 7, challenges those who attributed the difference that God makes in calling one nation, or one person, to the means of salvation, and not another, to the different use that they had made of free-will, to give any tolerable account of the case of infants: "Why some, being regenerated, are saved: others, not being regenerated, do perish; for I suppose (says he) that these patrons of free-will will not be so shameless as either to say that this difference happens by chance; or to deny that those that are not regenerated do perish."

And those who were at that time [323] (from the year 420 to 500) [400] the opposite party in the church, to those that held this absolute election and reprobation, and were called by the others Semi-Pelagians, as in reference to the adult, they maintained that God had elected those who he foresaw would be faithful; so for infants that die in infancy, they said that those of them which God foresaw would have been godly, if they had lived, those he in his providence took care should be baptized: and those that would have been wicked if they had lived, he by some providence causes to miss of baptism; so that both these

contrary parties agreed in this:-That of infants so dying, all the baptized ones were saved; and (as the opinion then was) all the unbaptized missed of it.

Of the modern Predestinarians or Calvinists, if some have been so rigid as to think that some baptized in-fants dying in infancy do perish, yet they are not-all; of that opinion. Vossius allows it to be an infallible. rule which is expressed in the Rubric aforesaid. It

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is (says he) *not the judgment of charity only, but of charity that cannot be mistaken, that we account baptized infants go to Heaven, as many of them as die before the use of reason, and before they have defiled themselves with actual sins."

From the last quoted place of St. Austin, one may observe, that the antients did not, in the baptizing of children, go by that rule which some Presbyterians would establish, viz. that none are to be baptized but the children of parents actually godly and religious; for he speaks of the case of a strumpet's child, or a child born of the enemies of Christ, viz. of Heathens found in the streets and baptized, as a common instance. And in his epistle to Auxilius, a young bishop that had rashly excommunicated a whole family for the parents crimes, he desires him to shew a reason if he can, how a son, a wife, a slave, can justly be excommunicated for the fault of the father, husband, master; and then adds, " Or any one in that family that is not yet born, but may be born during the excommunication: so that he cannot, if in danger of death, be relieved by the laver of regeneration?"

Bishop Stillingfleet has fully shown the absurdity and inconsistency of this opinion of such Presbyteri. ans; and how they can never, in many cases that may be put, come to a resolution or agreement what children may be baptized, and what not; and has cleared the grounds of baptism from such scruples. And as for the text, 1 Cor. vii. 14, on which they build those * De Baptismo Disp. 4. Th. 4. + Epist. 75. Unreasonableness of Separation, Part 3, Sect. 36.

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scruples, I have shewn that the antients do understand it in a sense much more plain and natural, and more agreeable to the scope of St. Paul's arguing there, which gives no foundation for any such scruple. And we see by the instances here brought, and many other, that they willingly baptized any infants, if the parents, or any other that were owners or possessors of such infants, shewed so much faith in Christ as to desire bap-. tism for them.

CHAPTER VII.

STATE OF INFANT BAPTISM TO THE RISE OF GERMAN ANTIPEDOBAPTISTS. OF THE WALDENSES, AND THEIR CONFESSIONS.

I Gave before a note of reference to the books of some authors that lived after the year 400, for the use of those that would trace this practice for one century farther. The general account of them is, that they speak of infant baptism as a thing uncontroverted. And so it holds for all the following times till after the year 1000. The Antipædobaptists who do put in their plea for the first 300 or 400 years, yet do (so many of them I mean as have any tolerable degree of learning and ingenuity) confess, that in all these following ages the baptizing of infants did prevail. Mr. Tombs says, "The authority of Austin was it which carried the baptism of infants in the following ages, almost without controul." And though it appear plainly by St. Austin's writings, which I have largely produced, that there was no Christian in the world, that he knew or heard of, that denied it (except those that denied all baptism) so that he need not say St. Austin's authority carried it; yet it is however a confession of the matter of fact for the after-times.

*Part 1. ch. 19, item ch. 11.
Examen, Part 1.

+ Part 1. ch. 22.

Only whereas he puts in the word almost, as if some, though few, did oppose it; there is, on the contrary, not one saying, quotation, or example that makes against it, produced or pretended, but what has been clearly shewn to be a mistake. As in the first 400 years there is none but one Tertullian, who advised it to be deferred till the age of reason; and one Nazianzen, till three years of age, in case of no danger of death, so in the following 600 there is no account or report of any one man that opposed it at all.

Some places of Authors have been cited indeed; but there wants nothing but looking into the books themselves, to see that they are nothing to the purpose. So Mr. Danvers created to Mr. Wills and Mr. Baxter a great deal of trouble, in sending them from one book" to another, to discover his mistakes, and misrepresentations of several authors within this space, but withal a great deal of discredit to himself; for there is not one of his quotations that seemed material enough to need searching, but proved to be such. Mr. Wills had at first yielded him two authors as being on his side; but Mr. Baxter coming after (and Mr. Wills himself upon a second review) rectified that erroneous concession, as was easy to do, by consulting the original authors; for it was taking the scraps and breviats of things out of the Magdeburgensian Epitomizers, which occasioned that there was any possibility of mistake.

One of the two I spoke of was Hincmarus, Bishop of Laudun, [760] whom I had occasion to mention in the last chapter on another account. He had, upon a

*quarrel, excommunicated all the clergy of his diocese, so that there was for a time none to baptize, bury, absolve, &c. Some children died by that means without baptism. Complaint was made to his metropolitan; he reproves him, shows him the pernicious consequences, hopes that the children that died, and others that died without absolution, the communion, &c. may by God's

* Hincmari Rhem. Opus. 55. capit. c. 28, &c. ad 48.

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