THE CONFESSION DOES NOT CONDEMN INFANTS.
4. This narrowing tendency of most of the presently proposed revisions of the Confession is especially evident in the objections brought against the Section (X., iii.) on "elect infants." This section was added to the Confession during the course of the debate on an order from the Assembly to its Committee "that something be expressed in fit place concerning infants' regeneration in their infancy." The purpose of its addition, 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. The phrase, as originally reported, reads in the Minutes, "Elect of infants," and the "of" may have been subsequently dropped, Dr. Briggs thinks as a mere matter of style—possibly, however, as a means of making the statement somewhat more inclusive; while it is the most probable of all suggestions that the presence of the of in the Minutes is due only to the carelessness of the scribe.[1] However this may be, the form in which the section was adopted is capable of such interpretation as to make it inclusive of several views. Those who believe that some of those who die in infancy are God's elect and are saved by His grace, while others are left in their original sin to perish, can accept this statement; but they have no exclusive right to it, as has been so constantly asserted of late. The statement does not im-
- ↑ Certainly the scribe is very careless of exact phraseology elsewhere in his jotting down the subjects of debate. For example, if I have counted correctly, the third chapter is mentioned more or less formally by name ten times in the Minutes. In five the plural is used (pp. 114, 126, 127, 322, 323); in five the singular (pp. 126, 129, 130, 245, 246). The Minutes, as we have them, are somewhat loosely-kept notes, and it will not do to hang a theory on the exact phraseology they use in a case like the present.
