§ 113. PREDESTINATION. 565
cant phrase : " Man falls, God's providence so ordaining it ; yet he falls by his own guilt." ^ Here we have supralapsarian logic combined with ethical logic. He adds, however, that we do not know the reason why Providence so ordained it, and that it is better for us to contemplate the guilt of man than to search after the hidden predestination of God. " There is," he says, " a learned ignorance of things which it is neither permitted nor lawful to know, and avidity of knowledge is a species of madness."
Here is, notwithstanding this wholesome caution, the crucial point where the rigorous logic of Calvin and Augustin breaks down, or where the moral logic triumphs over intellectual logic. To admit that God is the author of sin would destroy his holiness, and overthrow the foundation of morality and religion. This would not be Calvinism, but fatalism and pantheism. The most rigorous predestinarian is driven to the alternative of choosing between logic and morality. Augustin and Calvin could not hesitate for a moment. Again and again, Calvin calls it blasphemy to make God the author of sin, and he abhorred sin as much as any man ever did. It is an established fact that the severest Calvinists have always been the strictest moralists.'-^
was not endued with constancy to persevere, therefore he so easily fell. Yet his choice of good and evil was free ; and not only so, but his mind and will were possessed of consummate rectitude, and all his organic parts were rightly disposed to obedience, till destroying himself he corrupted all his excellencies."
^ "Lapsus est eniin primus homo, quia Dominus ita expedire censtierat ; cur censuerit, nos latet. Certum tamen est non aliter censuisse, nisi quia videbat, nominis sui gloriam inde merito illustrari. Unde mentionem glori(v Dei audis,illic justitiam cogita. Justum enim esse oportet quod laudem meretur. Cadit igitur homo, Dei providentia sic ordinantb, sed suo vitio cadit. . . . Propria ergo malitia, quam acceperat a Domino puram naturam corrtipit ; sua ruina totam posteritatem in exitium secum attraxit." List. III. eh. XXIII. § 8 (vol. II. p. 705). In his reply to Castellio (Opera, IX. 294) he says: " Prcenidit Deus lapsum Adce: penes ipsum facultas erat prohibendi : noluit. Cur noluerit, a/in non potest afferri ratio nisi quia alio lendebat ejus voluntas."
- Comp. here the powerful sections against the abuse of the doctrine of election, in III. ch. XXIII. 12 sqq.
556 THE KEFOKMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
Infant Salvation and Damnation.
. Are infants dying in infancy included in the decree of reprobation ? This is another crucial point in the Augustinian system, and the rock on which it splits.
St. Augustin expressly assigns all unbaptized children dying in infancy to eternal damnation, because of original sin inherited from Adam's transgression. It is true, he mitigates their punishment and reduces it to a negative state of privation of bliss, as distinct from positive suffering.^ This does credit to his heart, but does not relieve the matter; for '-'• damnatio^''' though ^'' levissima'' and '•'• mitissima,^^ is still damnatio.
The scholastic divines made a distinction between 'poena damni., which involves no active suffering, and poena sensus, and assigned to infants dying unbaptized the former but not the latter. They invented the fiction of a special department for infants in the future world, namely, the Limhus Infantum, on the border region of hell at some distance from fire and brimstone. Dante describes their condition as one of "sorrow without torment." ^ Roman divines usually describe their condition as a deprivation of the vision of God. The Roman Church maintains the necessity of baptism for salvation, but admits the baptism of blood (martyrdom) and the baptism of intention, as equivalent to actual baptism. These excej)tions, however, are not applicable to infants, unless the vicarious desire of Christian parents be accepted as sufficient.
Calvin offers an escape from the horrible dogma of infant damnation by denying the necessity of water baptism for salvation, and by making salvation dependent on sovereign
1 See the passages in vol. III. 835 sq. Augustin was called durus infantum pater. But his view was only the logical inference from the doctrine of the necessity of baptism for salvation, which was taught long before him on the ground of John 3 : 8 and Mark 16 : 16. Even Pelagius excluded unbaptized infants from the kingdom of heaven, though not from eternal life. He assigned them to a middle state of half-blessedness.
- Inferno, IV. 28, duol senza mnrtiri, i.e. mental, not physical pain.