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be baptized?” as follows: “Yes, for since they, as well as adults, are included in the covenant
and Church of God, and since both redemption from sin and the Holy Spirit, the Author of faith,
are through the blood of Christ promised to them no less than to adults, they must also by
baptism, as a sign of the covenant, be ingrafted into the Christian Church, and distinguished
from the children of unbelievers, as was done in the old covenant or testament by circumcision,
instead of which baptism was instituted in the new covenant.”[Lord’s Day XXVII, Q. 74.] And the
Canons of Dort contain the following statement in I, Art. 17: “Since we are to judge of the will of
God from His Word, which testifies that the children of believers are holy, not by nature, but in
virtue of the covenant of grace, in which they together with their parents are comprehended,
godly parents ought not to doubt the election and salvation of their children whom it pleases
God to call out of this life in their infancy (Gen. 17:7; Acts 2:39; I Cor. 7:14).” These statements
of our confessional standards are entirely in line with the position of Calvin, that infants of
believing parents, or those who have only one believing parent, are baptized on the basis of
their covenant relationship.[Inst. IV. 16:6,15.] The same note is struck in our Form for the
Baptism of Infants: “Since, then, baptism has come in the place of circumcision, the children
should be baptized as heirs of the Kingdom of God and of His covenant.” It will be observed that
all these statements are based on the commandment of God to circumcize the children of the
covenant, for in the last analysis that commandment is the ground of infant baptism. On the
basis of our confessional standards it may be said that infants of believing parents are baptized
on the ground that they are children of the covenant, and are as such heirs of the all-
comprehensive covenant-promises of God, which include also the promise of the forgiveness of
sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit unto regeneration and sanctification. In the covenant God
makes over to them a certain grant or donation in a formal and objective way, requires of them
that they will in due time accept this by faith, and promises to make it a living reality in their
lives by the operation of the Holy Spirit. And in view of this fact the Church must regard them as
prospective heirs of salvation, must regard them as under obligation to walk in the way of the
covenant, has the right to expect that, under a faithful covenant administration, they, speaking
generally, will live in the covenant, and is in duty bound to regard them as covenant breakers, if
they do not meet its requirements. It is only in this way that it does full justice to the promises
of God, which must in all their fulness be appropriated in faith by those who come to maturity.
Thus the covenant, including the covenant promises, constitutes the objective and legal ground
for the baptism of children. Baptism is a sign and seal of all that is comprehended in the
promises.
(2) Differences of opinion among Reformed theologians.
Reformed theologians did not all
agree in the past, and are not even now all unanimous, in their representation of the ground of
infant baptism. Many theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries took the position
described in the preceding, namely, that infants of believers are baptized, because they are in