Salvation of infants

[1] In his Letter to Jerome, he wrote,[2] Likewise, whosoever says that those children who depart out of this life without partaking of that sacrament shall be made alive in Christ, certainly contradicts the apostolic declaration, and condemns the universal Church, in which it is the practice to lose no time and run in haste to administer baptism to infant children, because it is believed, as an indubitable truth, that otherwise they cannot be made alive in Christ.

Roman Catholic tradition teaches that unbaptized infants, not being freed from original sin, go to Limbo (Latin: limbus infantium), which is an afterlife condition distinct from Hell.

According to Herman Bavinck,[9][10] The Reformed refused to establish the measure of grace needed for a human being still to be united with God, though subject to many errors and sins, or to determine the extent of the knowledge indispensably necessary to salvation.

[13] The Declaratory Statement of the Presbyterian Church of Australia (1901) says "in accepting the subordinate standard it is not required to be held that any who die in infancy are lost".

[14] The Presbyterian Church in the United States of America's Declaratory Statement of 1903 went further, and said,[15] Second, with reference to Chapter X, Section 3, of the Confession of Faith, that it is not to be regarded as teaching that any who die in infancy are lost.

before they are capable to chuse either Good or Evil, whether born of Believing Parents, or Unbelieving Parents, shall be saved by the Grace of God, and Merit of Christ their Redeemer, and Work of the Holy Ghost, and so being made Members of the Invisible Church, shall injoy Life everlasting; for our Lord Jesus saith, of such belongs the Kingdom of Heaven.

John MacArthur argues for the salvation of those who die before the age of accountability on the basis of 2 Samuel 12:23, where David says of his infant son, "I shall go to him, but he will not return to me".

[26] Those who reject universal infant salvation, however, point out that this and other Scriptural passages support only the view that the children of believers will be in heaven.