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

it has in it, unconsciously to its author, we trust and believe--as it has in it a
tinge of Pelagianism--so it trembles, logically, upon the very border of that
figment to which the Pelagianism of the Church of Rome, combined with
her strong sacramentalism, leads her--the doctrine of a limbus infantum.
She was too sacramental to admit that the original sin of a child could be
removed without Baptism; too Pelagian to concede that original sin must,
in its own nature, apart from God's grace, bring death eternal. Her
sacramentalism, therefore, kept the unbaptized child out of heaven; her
Pelagianism kept it out of hell, and the conjunction of the two generated a
tertium quid--the fancy of a "limbus infantum," or place which, without
being hell, was yet one of exclusion from heaven, a mild perdition,
whereby infants not wholly saved were, nevertheless, not totally lost. And
the shadow of this very tendency shows itself in the words we have quoted
from the Platform.
Connecting the three propositions now, with what has preceded
them, we reach, then, furthermore,
4. That God grants forgiveness of the sins of the baptized infant,
forgives its natural depravity, exempts it, of course, from the penal
consequences thereof, and thus, if it is not saved from a liability to eternal
death, it is, "at least," saved from exclusion from heaven. If the Platform
means that the sin of an infant, unforgiven, would bring eternal death to it,
then it goes as far as the extremest views of the nature of original sin can
go, and vindicates the very strongest expressions of the Confession on this
point; and if it means that original sin would exclude it from heaven
without consigning it to despair, it has virtually the doctrine of the limbus
infantum.
5. And finally, Baptism in infants is the pledge of all this--they have
the pledge--and, of consequence, unbaptized infants have not. In other
words, there is an assurance that every baptized child has this great thing,
“forgiveness of sins."
It is not surprising that, after all this, the Platform closes its discussion
on this point with these words (p. 31): "It is proper to remark that the
greater part of the passages in the former Symbols, relating to this subject,
are, and doubtless