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

can seem more necessary than that the faithful be taught that this Law of
Baptism is prescribed by our Lord to all men, insomuch that they, unless
they be regenerated unto God through the grace of Baptism, are begotten
by their parents to everlasting misery and destruction, whether their
parents be believers or unbelievers." In exposition of the doctrine of Trent,
BELLARMIN says: "The Church has always believed that if infants
depart from this life without Baptism, they perish. The Catholic faith
requires us to hold that little ones dying without Baptism are condemned
to the penalty of eternal death." "Yet are they not punished with the
penalty of sense or of sensible fire." "It is probable that those little ones
suffer an internal grief (although a most mild one), forasmuch as they
understand that they are deprived of blessedness, are separated from the
society of pious brethren and parents, are thrust down into the prison of
hell, and are to spend their life in perpetual darkness.” 275 DOMINICUS A
SOTO says that "in the (Roman) Church it is a most fixed point that no
little one without Baptism can enter into the kingdom of heaven."
MALDONATUS 276 says "they are condemned, with the goats, to the left
hand; that at once upon their death they descend into hell." CANUS 277 :
"Their souls, with the bodies resumed, are thrust out into darkness."
Lutheran System.
How beautiful and self-harmonious, over against all these, is the view
of our Church. Over against the Calvinist, it knows of no non-elect infants,
but believes that our children are alike in the eyes of Infinite mercy. Over
against the Pelagians it confesses that all children are sinners by nature,
and believes that the Holy Spirit must change those natures. Over against
the Anabaptists, and the school which is at heart in sympathy with the
Anabaptist theory, though it retains infant Baptism as a form, our Church
believes that God has appointed Baptism as the ordinary channel through
which the Holy Spirit works a change in the nature of a child. In the fact
that there is an ordinary means appointed, our Church sees the guaranty
that
275 Lib. I. De Bapt. ch. iv. Lib. VI. ch. ii., iv.,. vi.
276 On Matt. xxv. 28.
277 Cited in Gerhard Confessio Catholica, 1679. Fol. 1110.