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THE OLD DOCTRINE
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by nature, and reprobation by God. The Catholics, in the superabundance of their compassion, had provided a limbus infantum, a place reserved especially for these little ones, in which they were to suffer something less than the full torments of hell—a notion which was ridiculed by the Protestants, who held that there are but two places for all who are to appear before the judgment seat of Christ, a heaven and a hell—the one on the right hand, the other on the left of the Judge; and that such as are not admitted to the former, must necessarily take up their abode in the latter."
And we might show from the writings of Luther, Melancthon, Zanchius, Beza, Perkins, Whitacre, Piscator, Marlorat, Martyr, Ridgley, Watts, Edwards, Bellamy, and a host of others, who have been long regarded as shining lights in the church, that they believed and taught the same doctrine on this subject as Augustine, Fulgentius, and Calvin. Thus Zanchius—than whom there is scarcely a commentator of the age of Calvin, who is quoted oftener or with more respect—writes in opposition to Pighius as follows:
"Says Pighius: 'Infants are without actual sin. Therefore, although exiles from the kingdom of heaven, they will not be damned, nor receive any punishment of sense, except those of them who, in the course of nature, sin, either in their external or internal senses [nisi etiam qui sensibus internis vel externis naturaliter peccant.]'
"I answer. They are nevertheless wicked, and being born adapted to sin, are therefore justly damned although they have not yet sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression. For as temporal death came upon them on account of original sin, so did also eternal; for God threatened
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