labors of his ministers, the infants should be brought to the grace of baptism. As in the natural order, so also in the supernatural order of sanctification and eternal salvation, God wills to provide for infants through other human beings, and in accordance with the demands of the general laws of divine providence.
“In this way the divine will of salvation acts on the wills of men to procure the salvation of at least many infants who, nevertheless, by fault of men are not saved. With regard to these infants, the ante- cedent will of God is an active will, that they should be saved; although it is not absolute, but under con- dition, that men on their part should second the divine will, as they can and ought to do, and al- though, consequently on contrary action on the part of men, God permits death in original sin, and, on prevision of this, does not will, with a consequent will, the salvation of those infants.
* Besides the wills of the human beings, which are in the moral order, and are free; there are also second causes of the physical order, and these are not free. These causes contribute, in accordance with the common and ordinary laws of providence, to render bestowal of baptism either possible or impossible. The course of these causes, and the universal laws by which they are governed, God, consequently to original sin, wills to remain such as they now are. God has not restored the preternatural state of im- mortality, even after the redemption of the human race by Christ had been decreed and effected. Hence,
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in accordance with the ordinary course of these laws, there follows the death of many infants before use of reason; and this sometimes independently of all exercise of will, and free action, of human beings.
“With this natural course of events, there is thoroughly consistent an antecedent conditional will in God of the salvation of all these infants. The con- dition under which he wills the application to them of baptism is—so far as the general order, which has been justly and wisely instituted, permits.
“Tf God had willed this order of physical causes of itself to the end that infants should die in original sin, he certainly could not be said to will the salvation of these infants. God has not, however, instituted that order to this end, nor does he so direct it by his will. He wills it for other ends, and those most wise ends.
“Hence, God does not directly intend the con- sequent death of infants in sin. He only permits it, in as much as he does not will to hinder, for all infants, the natural demands of physical laws, by a change of the general order, or through continual miracles.
* Such a permission proves only, that there is not in God an absolute will of the salvation of these in- fants. It in no way proves that there is not in God a conditional will of the salvation of all of them.
“Tn short, God wills the salvation of all infants who die in original sin by an antecedent will, in accordance with his common providence. In his common providence God predefines for everything a certain end, he conceives and prepares sufficient means in
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order to the obtaining of that end, he leaves every- thing to use those means, in accordance with the demand of its nature. That is to say, he leaves natural and necessary causes to act naturally and necessarily, contingent causes to act contingently, and free causes to act freely."
But enough! The whole scheme is now certainly before us; and the whole scheme (generalizing from the particular instance treated) obviously is just this: that God has made sufficient provision for the salva- tion of all men, placed this provision in the world under the government of the ordinary course of nature, and left the actual salvation of men to work itself out in accordance with this ordinary course of nature. It is a kind of Deistic conception of the plan of salvation: God introduces into the concourse of causes by which the world is governed a new set of causes, working confluently in with them, making for salvation, and then leaves to the interworking of these two sets of causes the grinding out of the actual results. He will not “change the general order"; and he will not inwork in the general order by “continuous miracles." Не just commits salvation to the general order as actually established. This obviously is at best to attribute the salvation of the individual to God, only in the sense in which you attribute to God every other event which befalls him; it takes place under the operation of generallaws. There is no special supernaturalism in his salvation, though he be saved by the operation of specially supernatural instrumentalities inserted
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into the order of the world. God retires behind his works, and man, if he be saved at all, is saved by law.