An exposition of the Thirty-nine articles, historical and doctrinal. By Edward Harold Browne ...

446 OF OBTAINING ETERNAL SALVATION [ART. XVIII.
whose sympathies were strong with the ancient philosophers, speaks
of the Law as given to the Jews, and philosophy to the Greeks,
before the coming of Christ. He considers philosophy as having
borrowed much from Revelation, and thinks it was capable by
God's appointment of justifying those who had no opportunity of
knowing better.'
This charitable hope concerning the salvability of the heathen,
though naturally less entertained by divines who, like Augustine,
were engaged in opposing Pelagianism, is not confined to the earliest fathers. St. Chrysostom, in commenting on St. Paul's argument in the second chapter of Romans, verse 29, evidently implies,
that the religious and virtuous Gentile might have been saved,
whilst the ungodly Jew would be condemned.2 On the contrary,
St. Augustine, with reference to the same passage, understood by
the Gentile which does by nature the things of the Law, not the
uninstructed heathen, but the Gentile Christian, who does by grace
the things of the Law.3
We have seen that Gregory Nazianzen and the pseudo-Athanasius
believed in an intermediate state between Heaven and hell for
heathens. and infants unbaptized. In this they are followed by
Pope Innocent III., and some of the schoolmen: and, no doubt,
out of this arose the relief in a limbus for those children who die
before baptism and before the commission of actual sin.
To proceed to the period of the Reformation: the Council of
Trent anathematizes all who deny that baptism is necessary to salvation; 4 which however is not the same thing as deciding on the
state of the unbaptized.
Among the foreign reformers, Zuinglius believed that all infants
and heathens might partake of God's mercies in Christ.5 Luther
denies in plain terms remission of sins to any without the Church.6
But the Lutheran Confessions do not appear to say much on this
head. Calvin, though appearing to think baptism the only means
whereby elect infants could be regenerate and so saved, if they
died,? yet argues forcibly against such as consign all unbaptized infants to damnation.8 Still he says of the visible Church, that we
1'Hv?iV oiv irpb 7irS Tro Kvpiov TrapovU- 3 De Spiritu et Litera, ~ 43, Tom. x. p.
ag ES dcatlootvvv "E2tyatv aivayraia tLoaoo- 108. Comp. Contra Julianunm, Lib. iv. 23,
aia. - Strom. I. p. 331. OtXoaoofia dk 24, 25, Tom. x. p. 597.'E2salv7tk, ocov wrponcaOuipelt cai rpoei&et ruv 4 Sess. vii. Can. v. De Baptismo.
ivXV eFlf rrapa(5doyv 7riarOEg. - Strom. VII. 5 See on this subject under Art. xvII.
p. 839. Eir6-Cro ocv'lovdaiozl iEv v6oyog, 6 Calechismus Mlajor. Op. Tom. v. p.'E2?7/tL &d 6tfoaooia!uppt r g wrapovaaic, 629.
EVre iev (k t r2atgf i? caIqo2XuIC eif irEpto0iat- institut. IV. xvi. 17.
ov dcatoaoiivyg ta6v. - Strom. VI. p. 823. 8 Ibid. Iv. xvi. 26.
2 Chrysost. ionm. vI. in Epist. ad Rom.