"How doth God suffer them to run into condemnation?
"In a divers manner: Some Reprobates, dying Infants, other of riper Years; of which latter sort, some are not called, others called.
"How doth God deed with Reprobates dying Infants?
"Being once conceived they are in a state of Death, (Romans 5. 14,) by reason of the sin of Adam imputed, and of Original Corruption cleaving to their Nature, wherein also dying, they perish: As (for instance) the Children of Heathen Parents. For touching the Children of Christians, we are taught to account them holy, 1 Cor. 7. 14."[1]
And Stackhouse, another distinguished Church of England divine, writing nearly a century later, and contemporaneously with Swedenborg, says:
"The Calvinists carry the matter much farther [than the schoolmen], asserting that original sin (besides an exclusion from Heaven) deserves the punishment of damnation; and therefore they conclude that such infants as die unbaptized, and are not of the number of the elect, (which have always a particular exemption,) are, for the transgression of our first parents, condemned to the eternal torments of hell-fire. It must be confessed that the doctrine of the Church of England makes too near approaches to this opinion, when it tells us that 'in every person born into the world, original sin deserves God's wrath and damnation.'"[2]
Let this suffice by way of evidence going to show what was the belief of the English Church on this subject prior to the time of Swedenborg.
