“Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth. So also are all other elect persons who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word” (X.3).
The men of Westminster contradict Christ by saying that those who have never heard of Christ since they have never been called by the outward ministry of the Word, nevertheless are regenerated and saved by Christ. Christ says that eternal life is to know Him (John 17:3). The WCF says that there are some who have eternal life who do not know Him.
Romans 1:16 says that the gospel is the power of God to salvation to everyone believing. The wicked WCF vitiates the gospel by making exceptions to the Romans 1:16 rule. They demonstrate their presumptuousness by assuming that infants do not have the necessary faculties to believe the gospel.
May Luke 1:39-44 serve as a bucket of ice water to awaken them out of their drunken stupor:
“And Mary arose in those days, and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Juda; And entered into the house of Zacharias, and saluted Elisabeth. And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost: And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy” (Luke 1:39-44).
Question: Why did the infant John the Baptist leap for joy while in Elizabeth’s womb? Is this babe in Elizabeth’s womb leaping in exultation because he is ignorant of who Christ is? Or, is this babe leaping in exultation for an altogether more virtuous reason?
In Luke 1:15 we read that John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb. The WCF has to assume without warrant that despite Elizabeth walking in all the commandments of the Lord (Luke 1:6)–one of which is to teach diligently thy children (Deuteronomy 6:7)–she was somehow infected with the same extra-biblical notion as the WCF and assume that the babe to whom she read passages of Scripture about the coming Messiah, was unable to understand the words being read to him. The truth that the infant John the Baptist had the Word of God read to him while still in his mother’s womb is deduced by good and necessary consequence (cf. I.6):
He was filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb (Luke 1:15). Knowledge of and faith in Jesus Christ is the immediate and inevitable fruit of being filled with the Holy Spirit (John 15:26; Galatians 3:14; 1 John 5:20). Faith comes by hearing, and hearing comes by the Word of God (Romans 10:17).
Perhaps the men of Westminster were influenced by a kind of “17th century version of ‘Behaviorism'” or the pseudo-scientists of that day because their a priori reasoning had them convinced with extra and anti-Biblical arguments that infants are incapable of believing the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Agrammatos 