Page:On the Revision of the Confession of Faith.djvu/63

Rh that I can prove it from Scripture. But I think it far better to leave the Confession, asserting, as it does assert, that God saves all the elect, whether reaching adult age or dying in infancy, rather than to force into it a dogmatic definition of a doctrine which many among us still believe rests on a pious hope rather than on clear Scripture. To do this, as Dr. De Witt has unanswerably shown, is to move in the direction of narrowing our confessional basis, without necessity and without gain. The Confession already provides firm ground for all who believe that all those that die in infancy are elect, and it does this without dogmatism and without sacrificing its moderation and calm guardedness of statement. Why sacrifice this? No one can doubt that what the Confession asserts is exactly true: that "elect infants dying in infancy are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when and where and how He pleaseth." Who denies that? And why should it be altered to a more doubtful form to save men from the possibility of misinterpreting it inconsistently with both the context and its own grammatical form?

In the preceding paper (pp. 25 sq. above) I have already said a few words regarding the general subject which lies at the base of the third test case which Dr. Van Dyke adduces to prove a necessity for revising the Confession—the Confession's treatment of the love of God to man. Here the following few remarks, additional to what I have there said, may suffice. Dr. Van Dyke complains that "there is not, in all our Confession, one declaration which clearly comprehends or alludes to the teaching of the Scripture" on the sufficient provision and free proclamation of