CLAUSE III. of the Declaratory Act has in view the following sections of the Confession of Faith:—“Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how He pleaseth. So also are all other elect persons, who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word. Others not elected, although they may be called by the ministry of the Word, and may have some common operations of the Spirit, yet they never truly come unto Christ, and therefore cannot be saved: much less can men not professing the Christian religion be saved in any other way whatsoever, be they ever so diligent to frame their lives according to the light of nature, and the law of that religion they do profess; and to assert and maintain that they may, is very pernicious, and to be detested (Chap. x. secs. iii. and iv.).” Over against the Confessional statement may now be set that of the Declaratory Act, which is as follows:—“That it is the duty of those who believe, and one end of their calling by God, to make known the Gospel to all men everywhere for the obedience of faith. And that while the Gospel is the ordinary means of salvation for those to whom it is made known, yet it does not follow, nor is the Confession to be held as teaching, that any who die in infancy are lost, or that God may not extend His mercy, for Christ’s sake, and by His Holy Spirit, to those who are beyond the reach of these means, as it may seem good to Him, according to the riches of His grace.” There are three points raised by the Declaratory Act in this Clause which demand our attention: (1) The duty of preaching the Gospel, (2) the salvation of infants, (3) the salvation of the heathen.
1. The duty of preaching the Gospel.
According to the Declaratory Act: “It is the duty of those who believe, and one end of their calling, to make known the Gospel to all men everywhere for the obedience of faith.” This is a carelessly-worded statement, and as it stands would countenance Plymouth Brethrenism. While it is the duty of all who believe to adorn the doctrine of God their Saviour so that they may be epistles known and read of all men, God has not commissioned all men who believe, to say nothing of all believers, to preach or make known the Gospel. While we guard against the sacerdotal view that it is only clergymen or ministers that have a right to preach, yet it is quite evident that all are not equipped or called to make known the Gospel by preaching. Further, the phrase as it stands, not only allows, but makes it the duty of women, who believe, to preach. The fruit sown in 1892 is now bearing fruit in the United Free Church, and though the motion to allow women to enter the ministry of that Church was not carried at last General Assembly, it was simply shelved for another day.
2. The salvation of infants.
According to the Declaratory Act, “while the Gospel is the ordinary means of salvation for those to whom it is made known, yet it does not follow, nor is the Confession to be held as teaching, that any who die in infancy are lost.” The Confessional statement may be again quoted for comparison: “Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit.” This is one of the most cautious statements we have in the Confession, drawn up by men who would not set down dogmatically what was not most plainly revealed. We shall see that the Confessional statement pronounces no opinion whether all or only some infants are elected, because the Scriptures have given no absolute declaration on this point. It simply says that all infants who were elected and who die in infancy are saved. It also makes it very plain that their salvation was not dependent on a supposed innocence attributed to little ones by many misguided and doting mothers and deluded sentimental religionists. If they are saved it is (1) because they are “elect,” (2) because they are “saved by Christ,” (3) and because they are “regenerated through the Spirit.” These three points are of supreme importance in assessing the value of the Confessional statement. Infants that are saved require exactly the same work to save them that saves adults, for all alike came into the world under the curse and were children of wrath. In framing the Confession the section on ‘elect infants, dying in infancy,’ was added during the course of the debate on an order from the Assembly to the Committee “that something be expressed in fit place concerning infants’ regeneration in their infancy.” “The purpose of its addition,” says Dr Warfield, “therefore, was in the interests of infant salvation—in order to show that though incapable of the outward call of the Word, they might nevertheless be saved by the inward call of the Holy Spirit (On the Revision of the Confession, p. 35).” In the original report in the Minutes of the Assembly the words are, “Elect of infants,” but the “of” was dropped and the phrase “elect infants” was adopted.* For the correct understanding of the Confessional statement it is important to bear in mind (1) that the subject dealt with in chapter x. of the Confession is the Effectual Calling of God’s elect and not their election. Sections i. and ii. state that God’s elect, and they only, are saved, being effectually called “by His Word and Spirit.” Does that mean that all infants dying in infancy who are incapable of being called by the Word cannot be saved? “No,” answer the Westminster Divines, “we believe ‘elect infants dying in infancy are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit’ ” (sec. iii.). As the Confession stands it asserts what all Calvinists must admit, that if infants are saved they must have been elected. (2) A good deal of the misunderstanding of this statement in the Confession is due to the fact of forgetting that election is not the choice of individuals from among classes, as, say, infants or adults, but from the lost mass of mankind. An elect infant is therefore not so designated because he has been chosen from among infants, but because he was chosen from among the ruined race of Adam. This point is brought out by Dr Mitchell in the following sentences:—”The statement occurs . . . in the chapter treating of effectual calling; and is meant, not to define the proportion of infants dying in infancy who shall be saved, but to assert the great truths, that by nature they are every one of them in the ‘massa perdicionis,’ that they can only be separated from it, and saved by the electing love of the Father, the atoning work of the Son, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost; and that even they, however as yet incapable of the exercise of reason and faith, may be regenerated and made meet for the inheritance of the saints in light” (Report of Proceedings of Second General Council of the Presbyterian Alliance, pp. 481-2). It is to be borne in mind that the antithesis of “elect infants dying in infancy” is not “non-elect infants dying in infancy,” but “elect infants not dying in infancy.” The Confessional statement means “such elect infants as die in infancy,” and not “such infants dying in infancy as are elect.” Dr Warfield’s words are worth quoting—”Elect infants, dying in infancy,” he says, “can mean nothing but “such elect infants as die in infancy,” and this does not imply that there are some infants dying in infancy that are not elect, but that there are some elect infants who do not die in infancy,” and he further adds—”No one can doubt that what the Confession asserts is exactly true: that ‘elect infants dying in infancy are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when and where and how He pleaseth.’ Who denies that? And why should it be altered to a more doubtful form to save men from the possibility of misinterpreting it inconsistently with both the context and its own grammatical form” (On the Revision of the Confession, pp. 37 and 55). To bring in the question of election in Chapter x., which deals with “Effectual Calling,” would be as much out of place as to bring in “Effectual Calling” in dealing with “Election” in Chapter iii., and whatever else the Westminster Divines were they certainly were not bunglers, but masters in theological reasoning, and their sound, sanctified judgment saved them from the ditches into which modern theologians are so ready to take headlong plunges. The question before them in Chapter x was not who are God’s elect and who are not, but how does God save His elect? The Confessional statement then is eminently scriptural, marked by great caution, while that of the Declaratory Act is neither the one nor the other, and any interference with it is more likely to cause confusion rather than clarifying it. As it stands, the Confessional statement is sound, cautious, and scriptural.
* “This statement [elect infants dying in infancy], it has been averred, necessarily implies that there are non-elect infants dying in infancy who are not ‘regenerated and saved.’ . . . It might have been susceptible of such an interpretation had it been allowed to stand in the form which it appears to have borne in the draft first brought in to the Assembly—’elect of infants,’ not elect infants. But the very fact that the form of expression was changed shows how anxious the Divines entrusted with the methodising of the Confession were to guard against pronouncing dogmatically on questions on which neither Scripture nor the Reformed Churches had definitely pronounced” (Mitchell’s Westminster Assembly, pp. 397, 398).
3. The salvation of the heathen.
The last section in Clause iii. of the Declaratory Act deals with the case of those who are beyond the reach of the means of the Gospel, and it asserts that God may extend His mercy, for Christ’s sake, and by His Holy Spirit to such as it may seem good to Him according to the riches of His grace. The Confessional statement in Section iii. as to “all other elect persons, who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word,” being like elect infants, “regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit,” refers to such as mental imbeciles, and has no bearing on the question of the salvation of the heathen. The Declaratory Act rashly daring, inasmuch as it goes beyond the teaching of the Scriptures, teaches that God may extend His mercy for Christ’s sake to those who are beyond the means of the Gospel. It is probably owing to this that the framers of the Declaratory Act improperly use the term “ordinary means” when speaking of the Gospel. According to their view God may extend His mercy without the means of the Gospel to those who are capable of being outwardly called. If so, why send the Gospel to the heathen? Both the Scripture and the Confession alike in its emphatic statement of the insufficiency of the light of nature to give “that knowledge of God and of His will, which is necessary unto salvation (Chap. i., sec. i.),” and in its statement in chapter x., sec. iv., already quoted, go contrary to the Declaratory Act. The whole matter has been thoroughly discussed by Dr Charles Hodge, who brings forward abundant Scripture proof for his contention, but the length of this article precludes us entering into the subject as fully as it deserves. We content ourselves with quoting Dr Hodge’s conclusion: “It is, therefore, as before stated, the common faith of the Christian world, that, so far as adults are concerned, there is no salvation without the knowledge of Christ and faith in Him. This has ever been regarded as the ground of the obligation which rests upon the Church to preach the Gospel to every creature (Systematic Theology, I., 30).” To teach otherwise as the Declaratory Act does is, therefore, in the words of the Confession, “very pernicious, and to be detested.”