The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

all other elect persons, who are incapable of being outwardly called by the
ministry of the Word" (x. 3). "Faith is ordinarily wrought by the ministry
of the Word" (xiv. 1). Here the system comes again into direct selfcontradiction.
In the face of chap. iii. 6, it is taught that there is an
"effectual call," without means, without anything outward, without the
ministry of the Word, or Sacraments, utterly out of the ordinary channel.
"It might be lawful," says Peter Martyr, "to affirm that young children be
born again by the Word of God, but yet by the inward Word, that is by the
comfortable power of Christ and his Holy Spirit." 273 But if the Holy Ghost,
without any means, regenerates some of the elect, why may there not be
elect Pagans reached in the same way? and if it be said that only those
born in Christendom are elect, and, of consequence, extraordinarily called,
is not that an admission that the mere fact of birth in Christendom in some
sense influences the election? The BAPTIST system, which totally
withholds Baptism from the infant, and every system which, while it
confers the outward rite, denies that there is a grace of the Holy Spirit of
which Baptism is the ordinary channel, are alike destitute, on their theory,
of any means actually appointed of God to heal the soul of the infant.
Romish System.
The ROMISH system, too Pelagian to think that original sin could
bring the positive pains of eternal death, and too tenacious of the external
rite to concede that an infant can be saved without that rite, leaves its
theologians, outside of this general determination, in a chaos of doubt.
Some of them reach the middle theory, that the unbaptized infant is neither
in heaven nor hell, but in a dreary limbo. Others consign it to hell. The
COUNCIL OF TRENT declares: "If any one shall say that the
Sacraments of the New Law are not necessary to salvation, and that
without them, or a desire for them, men obtain...the grace of justification...;
let him be anathema." "If any one shall say that Baptism...is not necessary
unto salvation, let him be anathema." 274 The CATECHISM of the Council
of Trent (Quest. xxx): "Nothing
273 Common Place. Transl. by Anthonie Marten. 1583. Lond. Fol. iv. 136.
274 Sess. vii. Can. 4. De Baptism, Can. 5.