From the Synod of Dordt, Canon I, Article 17, Concerning the Salvation of Infants Dying in Infancy:
Since we must make judgments about God’s will from his Word, which testifies that the children of believers are holy, not by nature but by virtue of the gracious covenant in which they together with their parents are included, godly parents ought not to doubt the election and salvation of their children whom God calls out of this life in infancy.
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From John Calvin:
God is so kind and liberal to his servants, as, for their sakes, to appoint even the children who shall descend from them to be enrolled among his people…. God pronounces that he adopts our infants as his children, before they are born, when he promises that he will be a God to us, and to our seed after us. This promise includes their salvation….
The mere promise of God ought to be sufficient to assure us of the salvation of our children….The children of the faithful which are born in the Church are from their mother’s womb of the household of the kingdom of God….. The salvation of infants is included in the promise in which God declares to believers that he will be a God to them and to their seed…Their salvation, therefore, has not its commencement in baptism, but being already founded on the word, is sealed by baptism…
The children of the godly are born the children of the Church, and…they are accounted members of Christ from the womb, because God adopteth us upon this condition, that he may be also the Father of our seed.
The offspring of believers is born holy, because their children, while yet in the womb…are included in the covenant of eternal life…Nor…are they admitted into the Church by baptism on any other ground than that they belonged to the body of Christ before they were born.
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From Martin Luther’s “Comfort for Women Who Have Had a Miscarriage”:
A final word—it often happens that devout parents, particularly the wives, have sought consolation from us because they have suffered such agony and heartbreak in child-bearing when, despite their best intentions and against their will, there was a premature birth or miscarriage and their child died at birth or was born dead.
One ought not to frighten or sadden such mothers by harsh words because it was not due to their carelessness or neglect that the birth of the child went off badly. One must make a distinction between them and those females who resent being pregnant, deliberately neglect their child, or go so far as to strangle or destroy it. This is how one ought to comfort them.
First, inasmuch as one cannot and ought not know the hidden judgment of God in such a case—why, after every possible care had been taken, God did not allow the child to be born alive and be baptized—these mothers should calm themselves and have faith that God’s will is always better than ours, though it may seem otherwise to us from our human point of view. They should be confident that God is not angry with them or with others who are involved. Rather is this a test to develop patience…
Second, because the mother is a believing Christian it is to be hoped that her heartfelt cry and deep longing to bring her child to be baptized will be accepted by God as an effective prayer…
Who can doubt that those Israelite children who died before they could be circumcised on the eighth day were yet saved by the prayers of their parents in view of the promise that God willed to be their God. God (they say) has not limited his power to the sacraments, but has made a covenant with us through his word. Therefore we ought to speak differently and in a more consoling way with Christians than with pagans or wicked people (the two are the same), even in such cases where we do not know God’s hidden judgment. For he says and is not lying, “All things are possible to him who believes” [Mark 9:23]… Therefore one must leave such situations to God and take comfort in the thought that he surely has heard our unspoken yearning and done all things better than we could have asked.
In summary, see to it that above all else you are a true Christian and that you teach a heartfelt yearning and praying to God in true faith, be it in this or any other trouble. Then do not be dismayed or grieved about your child or yourself, and know that your prayer is pleasing to God and that God will do everything much better than you can comprehend or desire. “Call upon me,” he says in Psalm 50 [:15] “in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.” For this reason one ought not straightway condemn such infants for whom and concerning whom believers and Christians have devoted their longing and yearning and praying. Nor ought one to consider them the same as others for whom on faith, prayer, or yearning are expressed on the part of Christians and believers. God intends that his promise and our prayer or yearning which is grounded in that promise should not be disdained or rejected, but be highly valued and esteemed. I have said it before and preached it often enough: God accomplishes much through the faith and longing of another, even a stranger, even though there is still no personal faith. But this is given through the channel of another’s intercessions, as in the gospel Christ raised the widow’s son at Nain because of the prayers of his mother apart from the faith of the son. And he freed the little daughter of the Canaanite woman from the demon through the faith of the mother apart from the daughter’s faith. The same was true of the king’s son, John 4 [:46-53] and of the paralytic and many others of whom we need not say anything here.
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From the Westminster Directory for the Public Worship of God:
The promise is made to believers and their seed; and that the seed and posterity of the faithful, born within the church, have, by their birth, interest in the covenant, and the right to the seal of it, and the outward privileges of the church…That children, by baptism, are solemnly received into the bosom of the visible church, distinguished from the world, and them that are without, and united with believers; and that all who are baptized in the name of Christ, do renounce, and by their baptism are bound to fight against the devil, the world, and the flesh: That they are Christians and federally holy before baptism…
From the Lutheran (LCMS) book of Pastoral Care and Comfort:
In love God has blessed his people with the washing of holy baptism, through which he gives rebirth in the Holy Spirit to us and to our children. When death comes before baptism, we trust in his mercy that by his grace he has received this child to himself for the sake of the death and resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. We take comfort in the confident hope that this child will be raised to life with Christ in the resurrection on the last day.
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