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Chapter Abstract: This chapter explores the question whether baptism for Calvin functions as a means of knowledge, assurance, and grace not just for adult converts but also for infants, especially since infants are presumably too young to believe. In its examination of the efficacy of infant baptism, the chapter surveys once again the whole of Calvin’s literary corpus, moving through the same stages of his writing career that were laid out in the foregoing chapters. The primary conclusion is that Calvin’s view of infant baptism as an instrument of both knowledge and grace is not as incompatible with his general doctrine of baptismal efficacy as some in the past have suggested. For Calvin, adult convert baptism and pedobaptism are not efficacious in exactly the same way, but the similarities between them are such that the latter can really be viewed as an age-adjusted version of the former.

From the rites of Christian initiation (baptism, confirmation, and the Eucharist), this chapter passes to the sacraments of the sick (penance and the anointing of the sick), and to the sacraments in the service of communion (holy orders and matrimony). The chapter ends by offering a descriptive definition of all seven sacraments.

Chapter 5 continues to investigate the Montagu affair by surveying adjacent doctrines related to the perseverance debate. For instance, Dort’s more narrow definition of perseverance caused difficulties for those holding a more traditionalist view of baptism and regeneration. After looking at Montagu’s baptismal argument against perseverance of the saints, the chapter evaluates published responses to Montagu’s advocacy of baptismal regeneration as well as more private debates where John Davenant and Samuel Ward tried to reconcile a form of baptismal regeneration with Dort’s determination on perseverance. This survey shows division on the efficacy of baptism even within the pro-Dortian party, with readings and receptions of Augustine factoring in. It also reveals further evidence of how a broad-church approach to being Reformed set the Church of England at odds with the international trends of the Reformed churches.

The seventh chapter documents how and why Augustine of Hippo came to reject all the forms of posthumous salvation outlined in the earlier chapters of this study. His influence over theology in the west on this issue cannot be understated. First, some of the antecedents to Augustine's thought are examined, including Cyprian and Ambrose. Next, the chapter traces the gradual development of Augustine's thought up to the year 419. In that year Augustine encountered an opponent named Vincentius Victor, who argued that unbaptized infants could be saved and prayers for the non‐Christian dead could be efficacious. Victor's interpretation of Perpetua's prayer for Dinocrates was crucial to his argument. Augustine insisted on the absolute necessity of infant baptism (as he had earlier in the Pelagianism debate), and he began to outline a notion of what would become purgatory by stating that prayers are only effective for baptized Christians who died with light sins. Central to Augustine's reasoning was a defense of the power and authority of the church on earth as the sole vehicle for salvation.

This chapter explains that silver was used at the altar because of its divine connotations, and its use in the sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion further instructed people that silver was the right material to use in rituals. If Anglican infant baptism thus served the emotional needs of parents of ill or dead children, Anglican baptism was, in other ways, in tension with the prerogatives of the gentry family. Silver's signification of divinity was in no way in tension with its signification of worldly status and hierarchy. When Baptists, Quakers, and Anglicans criticized one another's baptismal practices, the disagreement was about more than a single ceremony. It was a disagreement about the relationship of the Christian to the world, and about the shape of Christian life. For elite Anglicans reading the Virginia Gazette article, clothing also created community, expressed religious sensibility, and featured in significant Christian rituals.

Chapter 3 explains and analyzes why the first Baptists rejected infant or paedobaptism, rooting the rejection of paedobaptism in the prior embrace of a congregational ecclesiology, thus serving to both explain the emergence of baptistic congregationalists while also reinforcing the historical connection drawn in chapter 2 between “Baptists” and more mainstream congregationalists. Drawing on close readings of theological treatises published during the 1640s, chapter 3 demonstrates that baptistic congregationalists understood their embrace of believer’s baptism to be the logical outworking of their congregational principles. The chapter also demonstrates that episcopalian and presbyterian critics of both “Baptists” and congregationalists understood the two groups to be closely allied to one another, an insight that further buttresses the chapter’s overarching contention that it was congregational ecclesiology which made the rejection of paedobaptism a viable, mainstream, intellectual possibility for the first time in England’s history.

The Zwickau prophets initiated a debate about infant baptism in Wittenberg that was the starting point for Andreas Karlstadt’s rejection of Luther’s sacramental theology. Karlstadt adopted an Augustinian and Erasmian dualism that separated internal/spiritual from external/material things and so reduced the spiritual value of external acts. Karlstadt was an independent thinker, but his exegesis of scripture more often followed Erasmus than Luther. He also advocated postponing baptism until children could understand their faith, and he rejected Christ’s bodily presence in the bread and wine. Publication of his Eucharistic pamphlets in the fall of 1524 provoked a strong response from Luther and his supporters that reinforced Luther’s understanding of the sacraments and discredited Karlstadt.

Edwards's conception of the sacraments illustrates Calvin's famous doctrine of accommodation—that God accommodates himself to our lowly human capacities by communicating spiritual realities in material signs. But while his doctrine of baptism shows familiar Reformed themes, his theology of the Supper carved out new ground by highlighting divine presence. Rather than focusing primarily on the ratification of the covenantal offer, as was the Puritan tendency, or even fellowship with Christ, as Calvin emphasized, Edwards stressed dramatic presence and union with Christ. For Edwards, Christ acts and speaks in the Supper in ways that make him more present to believers than in any other ecclesial moment on earth.

The division of the Zurich reformation over the issue of infant baptism posed the problem of authority within the sacramentarian camp. Balthasar Hubmaier rejected Zwingli’s exegesis of scripture and accused him of inconsistency; Zwingli responded by asserting his position as called pastor and attacking the character of his Anabaptist opponents. Hubmaier’s pamphlets highlighted the links between baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and excommunication in creating and maintaining a separate, purified church. Spiritualists such as Ludwig Hätzer and Hans Denck, who downplayed the importance of external ceremonies, fit more easily with other sacramentarians. Kaspar Schwenckfeld and Martin Cellarius would contribute to Wolfgang Capito’s attraction to spiritualism.

In the spring and summer of 1525, Ulrich Zwingli published three works that rejected Christ’s corporeal presence, although Zwingli distanced himself from Karlstadt. Even more important was Johannes Oecolampadius’s treatise arguing that the church fathers had not taught Christ’s bodily presence. These Latin pamphlets generated a lively underground debate in letters and private conversations among reformers throughout southern Germany and Switzerland, and Erasmus did his best to distance himself from the position of his former associates. Zwingli’s pamphlets were translated into German and so contributed further to the vernacular discussion initiated by Karlstadt. Zwingli developed his understanding of the sacraments in attacks on Anabaptists who shared his understanding of the Lord’s Supper but rejected infant baptism. At the end of 1525, there was no clear distinction between the positions of Karlstadt and Zwingli, and the Wittenbergers considered Oecolampadius to be their most dangerous opponent

This chapter focuses on religious and girls' education, both charged issues in eighteenth-century Virginia. Religious education was a topic of some concern because explicit in infant baptism was the promise that the child would be taught about the faith into which they had been inaugurated. Mastery of this doctrine was linked to reception of communion. In interpreting Anglican girls' religious embroidery, the literary scholars Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass's reading of Renaissance needlework is helpful. The production of religious needlework in eighteenth-century Virginia was synthetically social and religious: in embroidery, ordinary household work, femininity, and Christian practice were literally intertwined. Sewing decorative needlework was one way girls learned how to be Christians; in particular, how to be Christian women in a hierarchical slave society, a society in which white girls' virtue stood for all social order, and in which elite girls both owed and were owed obedience.