Page:Beauty for Ashes.djvu/45

"We believe, indeed, with Augustin, in his Enchiridion and elsewhere, that those who shall perish on account of original sin alone, will receive the mildest punishment."—"But it does not follow there will be any punishment of loss without the punishment of sense; for in the first place, to be for ever excluded from the assembly of the blessed and the presence of God, of itself would bring a sense of grief. Even for original sin alone, we are 'children of wrath,' Ephes. ii. 3, and therefore worthy to feel God's wrath; and of all sin the 'wages is death,' Rom. vi. 23. But of the whole nation of the Sodomites and Gomorrites, among whom there were many infants, it is said in Jude, vs. 7, that they are suffering the vengeance of eternal fire; but in what manner or degree, we leave to the judgment of God."^[1]

Heniry Alting was also a member of the Synod, a deputy from the Palatinate, and professor of divinity at Heidelberg and Groningen. And among the "calumnies" against the orthodox doctrine on the punishment of sin, he reckons the following, which we give, with his answer:

"The Calumny. That we indifferently exempt all infants, dying without baptism, from the punishment of original sin, and place them with the happy in heaven. "The Answer. No truly Orthodox theologian has said that or written it; not Zuingle, not Calvin, nor any other of the same stamp. But we distinguish between the infants of believers and unbelievers. Those indeed who are born in the covenant, if they are cut off by death so that they cannot be baptized, we number among those to be saved, and that

1. Walaeus, Op. tom. I. pp. 534, 535.