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

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We have seen that our own Confessors did not maintain the absolute<br />

necessity of Baptism to salvation, <strong>and</strong> it may, therefore, seem surprising<br />

that they charge upon the Anabaptists as an error what they themselves<br />

appear to concede. But if we see the true force of their language, the<br />

difficulty vanishes, for<br />

1. <strong>The</strong> Anabaptists contended that Baptism was not the ordinary<br />

channel of salvation to the child. Our Confessors maintained that it is.<br />

2. <strong>The</strong> Anabaptists contended that in fact children are not saved by<br />

Baptism. Our Confessors maintained that in fact children are saved by it.<br />

3. <strong>The</strong> Anabaptists contended that no child is saved by Baptism.<br />

Our Confessors maintained that children are saved by Baptism.<br />

4. <strong>The</strong> Anabaptists contended that a baptized child who is saved, is<br />

saved without respect to its Baptism. Our Confessors maintained that it is<br />

saved of God by it as a mean.<br />

5. When our Confessors conceded that an unbaptized child might be<br />

saved, they rested its salvation on a wholly different ground from that on<br />

which the Anabaptists rested it. <strong>The</strong> Anabaptists contended, on a Pelagian<br />

basis, that the child was saved because of its innocence, <strong>and</strong> without a<br />

change of nature. Our Confessors maintained that it was saved as a sinful<br />

being for Christ's sake, <strong>and</strong> after renewal by the Holy Ghost. Our<br />

Confessors, in a word, maintained that children are ordinarily saved by<br />

Baptism; that this is God's ordinary channel of salvation to them. <strong>The</strong><br />

Anabaptists contended that children are in no case saved by Baptism; that<br />

it is not the ordinary channel of salvation; <strong>and</strong> this error of theirs is the one<br />

condemned in the Confession. <strong>The</strong> Formula of Concord 368 makes all<br />

these points very clear in its statement of the errors of the Anabaptists,<br />

which it enumerates thus: 1. "That unbaptized children are not sinners<br />

before God, but are righteous <strong>and</strong> innocent, who, without Baptism (of<br />

which, according to the opinion of the Anabaptists, they have no need,) are<br />

saved in their innocence, inasmuch as they have not yet attained to the use<br />

of their reason. In this way they reject the entire doctrine of Original<br />

368 Epitom. 558. 6, 7, 8. Solid. Declarat. 727. 11, 12, 13.

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