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

unbaptized infants are lost. Gerhard (IX. 287) replied: "1. The warning of
Christ bears not upon the privation of the Sacrament, but the contempt of
it. 2. He describes the ordinary rule, from which cases of necessity are
excepted. We are bound to the use of the means, but God may show His
grace in extraordinary ways."
4. Are unbaptized infants saved?
How touchingly and consolingly LUTHER wrote upon this topic, is
known to all admirers of his writings. Bugenhagen, in the admirable
Treatise already referred to, which is incorporated in Luther's Works, and
was issued with a Preface by him, shows at large that neither to infants nor
adults is the necessity of Baptism absolute. "Rather should we believe that
the prayers of pious parents, or of the Church, are graciously heard, and
that these children are received by God into His favor and eternal life."
On the whole dark question of the relation of the heathen world to
salvation, the early writers of our Church generally observe a wise caution.
Yet even in the school of the most rigid orthodoxy we find the breathings
of tender hope. "It is false," says Mentzer, 351 "that original sin in infants
out of the Church is an adequate cause of reprobation; for men are never
said in Scripture to be reprobated on that account solely. But as faith alone
justifies and saves, so also, as Luther says, unbelief alone condemns."
AEgidius Hunnius, whom Gerhard pronounced the most admirable
of the theologians of his period, and of whom another great writer affirms,
that by universal consent he holds the third place of merit after Luther,
says: 352 "I would not dare to affirm that the little children of heathen,
without distinction, are lost, for God desireth not the death of any--Christ
died for them also," etc.
Our Church, then, does not teach that Baptism "is necessarily and
unavoidably attended by spiritual regeneration,” but holds that a man may
be baptized, and remain then and forever in the gall of bitterness, and in the
bonds of iniquity,
351 Oper. I. 959, quoted in Gerhard; Cotta.
352 In Quaest. in Cap. VII. Gen., quoted in Gerhard IX. 284.