It may be hard to accept, but little children, even infants, are guilty under God’s sentence of death, and dead in sin. They are wholly defiled, with a corrupted nature, conceived in sin, servants of sin, subject to death, which is the wages of sin, and to and all other miseries. Note this well: they are subject to “spiritual and eternal” miseries, according to the teaching of our esteemed Confession, which is amply supported by the Scriptures. Of course “eternal miseries” could mean nothing else than everlasting torment under God’s just wrath.
Now the Confession would be misconstrued if one thought it means that infants who die in infancy actually do perish. Rather, it is zealous to imply that they deserve to perish, and that they are liable to perish. Only the grace of God, and not their supposed innocence, would account for saved infants, so that the God of grace will have the praise for it.
The Confession explicitly affirms infant salvation in these words, “Elect Infants dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit; who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth” (1689 LBCF 10.3), but it does not make a statement about the number or identification of such “elect infants.” Even this cautious statement goes beyond the Scriptural teaching, and it probably would have been better omitted from the Confession, since it is arguably dubious. Still, it asserts only the salvation of “elect infants dying in infancy,” not all infants dying in infancy.
Spurgeon and many Christians today have exceeded both the biblical statement and the confessional statement in advocating the doctrine of universal, unconditional infant salvation.
Surely all Calvinists can affirm that if there are any “elect infants,” they shall certainly be saved, along with all God’s elect.
