NECESSITY OF BAPTISM.

NECESSITY OF BAPTISM.

As to the necessity of baptism for salvation, the Anglican Church at first followed, but afterwards softened the rigor of the Augustinian and Roman Catholic doctrine, which excludes even unbaptized infants dying in infancy from heaven, and assigns them to the limbus infantum, on the borders of hell. In the second of the Ten Articles of Henry VIII. (1536), it is asserted that 'infants and children dying in infancy shall undoubtedly be saved thereby [by baptism], and else not.' In the first revision of the Liturgy, the introductory prayer that the child may be received by baptism into the ark of Christ's Church contains the exclusive clause 'and so saved from perishing.' [1225] But in the revision of 1552 this clause was omitted; for Cranmer, who framed the Liturgy, had in the mean time changed his opinion, as we may infer from the treatise upon the 'Reformation of Ecclesiastical Laws,' composed under his superintendency, where the 'scrupulous superstition' of the necessity of infant baptism for infant salvation is rejected. [1226] This change must be traced to the influence of Zwingli and Bullinger, who first boldly asserted that all infants dying before committing actual sin, whether baptized or not, whether of Christian or heathen parents, are saved in consequence of the universal merit of Christ ('propter remedium per Christum exhibitum'), which holds good until rejected by unbelief. [1227] Calvin likewise taught the possibility of salvation without baptism, but confined it to the elect. Thomas Becon (chaplain to Cranmer, and one of the six preachers of Canterbury Cathedral, died 1567) is very explicit on this subject. As many Jewish children, he says, were saved without circumcision, so many Christian children, and even Turks and heathens, may be spiritually baptized and saved without water baptism. 'Besides all these things, what shall we say of God's election? Can the lack of outward baptism destroy and make of none effect the election of God; so that when God hath chosen to everlasting salvation, the want of an external sign shall cast down into everlasting damnation? . . . As many people are saved which never received the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, so likewise are many saved though they were never outwardly baptized with water; forasmuch as the regeneration of the Christian consisteth rather in the spirit than in the flesh. This text, therefore, of Christ, "Except a man be born of water," etc., is to be understood of such as may conveniently be baptized, and yet, notwithstanding, contemptuously refuse baptism, and despise the ordinance of Christ.' [1228] Bishop Jewel says: 'The grace of God is not tied to any sacraments. He is able to work salvation both with them and without them.' [1229] Hooker is much more cautious and churchly. 'Predestination,' he says, 'bringeth not to life, without the grace of external vocation, wherein our baptism is implied, . . . which both declareth and maketh us Christians. In which respect we justly hold it to be the door of our actual entrance into God's house; the first apparent beginning of life; a seal, perhaps, to the grace of election, before received (Calvin, Instit. iv. 15, 22), but to our sanctification here a step that hath not any before it. . . . If Christ himself which giveth salvation do require baptism (Mark xvi. 16), it is not for us that look for salvation to sound and examine him, whether unbaptized men may be saved, but seriously to do that which is required, and religiously to fear the danger which may grow by want thereof.' Yet, touching infants who die unbaptized, he inclines, at least in regard to the offspring of Christian parents, to a charitable presumption of 'the great likelihood of their salvation,' for the reasons that 'grace is not absolutely tied unto sacraments;' that 'God bindeth no man unto things altogether impossible;' that 'there is in their Christian parents, and in the Church of God, a presumed desire that the sacrament of baptism might be given them;' and that 'the seed of faithful parentage is holy from the very birth (1 Cor. vii. 14).' [1230]

The Anglican Church, then, as far as we may infer from her authoritative declarations, makes certain the salvation of all baptized infants dying in infancy, and leaves the possibility of salvation without baptism an open question, with a strong leaning towards the liberal view. The Roman Church makes infant salvation without baptism impossible; the Lutheran Church makes it at least improbable; the Calvinistic Churches make it certain in the case of all the elect, without regard to age, and decidedly incline to the charitable belief that all children dying in infancy belong to the number of the elect.

The doctrine of the absolute necessity of baptism for salvation has always been based upon two declarations of our Lord, Mark xvi. 16, and John iii. 5 (on the assumption that 'water' refers to baptism). But in the first passage our Lord, after declaring that faith followed by baptism saves, states the negative without adding, and is not baptized; intimating by this omission, that only the want of faith or the refusal of the gospel, not the want of baptism, condemns. In the discourse with Nicodemus he does not say that water baptism is regeneration, nor that every one that is born of water is also born of the Spirit (which was certainly not the case with Simon Magus, who, notwithstanding his baptism, remained 'in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity'); he simply lays down two conditions for entering into the kingdom of God, and puts the emphasis on being born of the Spirit. This is evident from the fact that in that discourse 'water' is mentioned but once, but the Spirit four times. The most that can be inferred from the two passages is the ordinary necessity of baptism where it can be had--that is, within the limits of the Christian Church. We are bound to God's ordinances, but God's Spirit is free and 'bloweth where it listeth.' We should never forget that the same Lord was the special friend of children, and declared them to belong to the kingdom of heaven, without any reference to baptism or circumcision, adding these significant words, 'It is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish' (Matt. xviii. 14).