Presumptive Regeneration, or, the Baptismal Regeneration of Elect Infants

by Cornelius Burges

The great Athanasius, who, in his time was the chief, and in manner, the only professed champion when the truth had left her and (as Jerome complains) the whole world seemed to be turned to the heretic Arius. Athanasius, by the sentence of all divines, was a most approved doctor, as Vigilius[107] the Martyr describes him. He, in his Book of Questions dedicated to Antiochus, Question 2, propounds this question, “Whence may a man know plainly that he hath been baptized and received the Spirit in baptism, seeing he was but an infant when he was baptized?” The answer he gives to this, “As a woman with child by the springing of the babe in her womb, knows for certain that she hath conceived fruit: so the soul of a true Christian knows, not by the reports of his parents, but by the springings of his heart, (especially upon those solemn days in which baptism, and the Lord’s Supper are administered) and by the inward joys that then he conceives, that he received the Holy Spirit when he was baptized.”[108]