§ 113. PREDESTINATION. 559
And in this connection he adds the significant words : " It is an awful (horrible) decree^ I confess, but no one can deny that God foreknew the future, final fate of man before he created him, and that he did foreknow it, because it was appointed by his own decree." ^
Our best feelings, which God himself has planted in our hearts, instinctively revolt against the thought that a God of infinite love and justice should create millions of immortal beings in his own image — probably more than half of the human race — in order to hurry them from the womb to the tomb, and from the tomb to everlasting doom ! And this not for any actual sin of their own, but simply for the transgression of iVdam of which they never heard, and which God himself not only pei'mitted, but somehow foreordained. This, if true, would indeed be a " decretum horrlbile."
Calvin, by using this expression, virtually condemned his own doctrine. The expression so often repeated against him, does great credit to his head and heart, and this has not been sufficiently appreciated in the estimate of his character. He ventured thus to utter his humane sentiments far more strongly than St. Augustin dared to do. If he, nevertheless, accepted this horrible decree, he sacrificed his reason and heart to the rigid laws of logic and to the letter of the Scripture as he understood it. We must honor him for his obedience, but as he claimed no infallibility, as an interpreter, we must be allowed to challenge his interpretation.
Zwingli, as already remarked, was the first and the only
Princeton to prove that Calvin believed in the salvation of all infants, is an entire failure ("The Presbyt. and Ref. Review" for October, 1890).
1 "Decretum quideni horribile fateor." This famous expression is often ignorantly applied to the whole doctrine of predestination, while Calvin only uses it of the decree of reprobation. The decree of election is glorious and most comforting. There is no need, therefore, of moderating the term horribile, which means horrible, terrible, dreadful. In French he calls it " ce decret qui nous doit espouvanter," a decree which should terrify us. Hase (Kirchengeschichte, III. I. 196) says : " Calvin ist ein dofftnatischer Dante : dieselbe grauenvolle Lust, die Majestdt Gottes aitch in der Hdlle anzuerkennen und zu preisen, diese grauenvolle Macht, welche fiihlende Wesen yeschaffen hat zu ewiger Qual."
560 THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
Reformer who entertained and dared to express the charitable hope and belief in universal infant salvation by the atonement of Christ, who died for all. The Anabaptists held the same view, but they were persecuted as heretics by Protestants and Catholics alike, and were condemned in the ninth article of the Augsburg Confession.i The Second Scotch Confession of 1590 was the first and the only Protestant Confession of the Reformation period which uttered a testimony of abhorrence and detestation of the cruel popish doctrine of infant damnation.^
But gradually the doctrine of universal infant salvation o-ained ground among Arminians, Quakers, Baptists, Wesleyans, Presbyterians, and is now adopted by almost all Protestant divines, especially by Calvinists, who are not hampered by the theory of baptismal regeneration.^
Zwingli, as we have previously shown, was equally in advance of his age in regard to the salvation of pious heathens, who die in a state of readiness for the reception of the gospel; and this view has likewise penetrated the modern Protestant consciousness.'*
1 " They condemn the Anabaptists, who disapprove the baptism of children, and afBrm tliat children are saved icithout buplism." The edition of 1540 adds after " baptism " "et extra ecclesiam Christi," wliich must refer to heathen infants. The German text omits the clause and condemns the Anabaptists simplj' for rejecting infant baptism. This shows that Melanchthon was in doubt on tiie subject of infant damnation.
2 " Abhorremus et detestainur . . . crudele judicium contra in/antes sine baptismo morientes."
•5 Among English Calvinists, who teach universal infant salvation, are Doddridge, Thomas Scott, John Newton, Toplady, Robert S. Candlish ; among American Calvinists, Drs. Charles Hodge, A. A. Hodge, and B. B. Warfield, of Princeton, and Drs. H. B. Smith, G. L. Prentiss, and Shedd, of Union Seminary, New York. Comp. on this subject Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, I. 378, 381, 794, 898 ; Dr. Prentiss, who brings out the theological bearings, in the " Presbyterian Review " for 1883 ; Benjamin B. Warfield, The Development of the Doctrine of Infant Salvation, New York (Christ. Lit. Co.), 1891, pp. 61; also Chas. P. Krauth (Lutheran), Infant Baptism and Infant Salvation, Pliiladelphia (Lutheran Book Store), 1874, pp. 83.
* See above, pp. 95 sqq.