The book of Job seems to have been written partly to refute this sort of Calvinism. The friends of Job were Calvinists in this sense. The sum of their argument was that, since God was all-powerful, therefore whatever he did must be right; and, since he punished Job, Job must be a sinner, and ought to confess his sin whether he saw it or not. This has been, in all ages, the substance of Calvinism—Jewish Calvinism, Mohammedan Calvinism, Christian Calvinism. It declares that we are bound to submit to God, not because he is good, but because he is powerful. But the answer of Job to his friends is a rebuke to the same spirit wherever shown. He asks them “if they will speak with unfairness for God,” and “speak deceitfully for him,” and “accept his person.” He declares that if he could find God he would go before his throne and defend his own cause. “Would he contend with me with his mighty power? No! he would have regard unto me.”
This is the sin of Calvinism, that it “accepts the person of the Almighty,” assuming that he has a right to do as he pleases with his creatures, and that they have no rights which he is bound to respect, except that of being punished. Thus it destroys the moral character of the Almighty.
Fourth. Professor Lawrence says, “It is the general belief of the Old School that those who die in infancy before actual transgression, are renewed and saved by the blood of Christ.”
The power of infancy is wonderful. It can even break down the logic of Calvinism. Wordsworth was right in calling the infant—
“Mighty prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest
Which we are toiling all our lives to find.”
Every kind of theology, however savage and bitter it may be against adult sinners, sending them into an eternal hell without the least hesitation or remorse, hesitates and stammers when it comes to speak of little children. Even the idolatrous Jews, sacrificing their children to Moloch in the valley of Hinnom, beat drums to drown their cries, which they could not bear to hear. Both schools of theology, Old and New, hasten to say that infants are not to be damned. But why not, if they are born with a depraved nature, and die without being converted? Both the great schools of Presbyterian theology hold to the doctrine of the Assembly's Catechism, which declares (chap. 6, § 6), that “every sin, both original and actual, being a transgression of the righteous law of God, and contrary thereunto, doth, in its own nature, bring guilt upon the sinner, whereby he is bound over to the wrath of God.” Therefore the infant who dies before he has exercised repentance and faith in Christ, is under the wrath of God. Orthodoxy does not allow of repentance in the other life: how, then, can infants be saved according to Orthodoxy? Professor Lawrence can only reply, that it is a general belief that they will be saved. The Catechism declares, less decidedly, that “elect infants” will be saved. Dr. Whedon (Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1862), on behalf of the Methodists, says, “That the dying infant is saved, and saved by the atonement, all agree.” But how he is saved, or what reason they have to think him saved, except their wish to believe it, no one can tell. Death, in fact, becomes to the infant a saving sacrament. As long as he lives he is believed unregenerate and unconverted. As soon as he dies he is considered ready for heaven. But he cannot be ready for heaven until he is regenerate; and after death there is no such thing as obtaining a new heart, and no [pg 172] opportunity for repentance. Logically, therefore, the infant is converted by the mere act of dying. We presume that no Orthodox theologians would assert this; and yet we really do not see how they can avoid the conclusion.
But why is it any worse for children to be damned in consequence of Adam's sin than for adults to be damned? Orthodoxy assures us that in consequence of Adam's sin we are born depraved. Dr. Duffield, stating and defending the doctrines of the New School Presbyterian Church (Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1863), says that Adam subjected his posterity to such a loss that they are born without any righteousness, are exposed to the consequences of his transgression, and all become sinners as soon as they are capable of it. He quotes with approbation from a protest of the New School minority, in the General Assembly of 1837 (which he calls a document of great historic value), an assertion that “by reason of the sin of Adam, the race are treated as if they had sinned;” and from another document of the same school which says, that “we are all born with a tendency to sin, which makes it morally certain that we shall do so.” Now, we do not see why it is any worse to send infants to hell because of this depraved nature, than to send grown persons there who have sinned in consequence of possessing such a depraved nature. If it be said that adults have had an opportunity to repent, and have not accepted it, we reply, that to the mass of mankind no such opportunity is offered; that, where it is offered, no one has the power to accept it, except he be one of the elect; and that at all events, since infants are sure to be saved, and a very large proportion of adults are very likely to be lost, death in infancy is the most desirable thing possible. According to this doctrine, child-murder becomes almost a virtue.
The radical difficulty in all these theories consists in refusing to apply to God the same rules of justice which we apply to man. To do so implies no irreverence, but the highest [pg 173] reverence. There is nothing more honorable to the Almighty than to believe him to be actuated by the same great principles of right which he has written in our conscience and heart. Those laws of eternal justice, so deeply engraven on the fleshly tables of the heart, are a revelation of the character of God himself. If we think to honor him by rejecting these intuitions of the reason, and by substituting for this divine idea of a God of justice that of a being of arbitrary will, who is under no obligations to his creatures, we deeply dishonor the Almighty and fatally injure our own character. From this perverted view of God comes a cynical view of man. When we make will supreme in God, we legitimate all tyranny and contempt from man to man. Then comes the state of things described by Shakespeare:—