The Work of the Holy Spirit

By this confession the Reformed Church proved to be in accord with God’s Word and
not less with the actual facts. With few exceptions, persons who afterward prove to belong
to the regenerate do not begin life with riotous outbreaks of sin. It is rather the rule that
children of Christian parents manifest from early childhood a desire and taste for holy
things, warm zeal for the name of God, and inward emotions that can not be attributed to
an evil nature.
Moreover, this glorious confession gave the right direction to the education of children
in our Reformed families, largely retained to the present time. Our people did not see in
their children offshoots of the wild vine, to be grafted perhaps later on, with whom little
could be done until converted after the manner of Methodism;^10 but they lived in the quiet
expectation and holy confidence that the child to be trained was already grafted, and
therefore worthy to be nursed with tenderest care. We admit that, latterly, since the Reformed
character of our churches has been impaired by the National Church as a church for the
masses, this gold has been sadly dimmed; but its original, vital thought was beautiful and
animating. It made God’s work of regeneration precede man’s work; to Baptism it gave its
rich development; and it made the work of education, not dependent on chance, cooperate
with God.

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Hence we recognize among the rising generation in the Church four classes:

1. All elect persons regenerated before Baptism, in whom the implanted life remains
   hidden until they are converted at a later age.


2. Elect persons, not only regenerated in infancy, but in whom the implanted life was
   early manifested and ripened imperceptibly into conversion.


3. Elect persons born again, and converted in later life.


4. The non-elect, or the chaff.

Examining each of these four, with special reference to preparatory grace, we arrive at
the following conclusions:
Regarding the elect of the first class, from the very nature of the case preparatory grace
has scarcely room here, in its limited sense. In its direct form, it is unthinkable with reference
to an unborn or new-born child. In such it is only indirect—i.e.,frequently, it pleases God
to give such child parents whose persons and nature’s practise a form of sin less outspoken
in its war upon grace than other forms of sin. Not as, tho such parents had anything from
which the child could be grafted, for that which is born of the flesh is flesh; nothing clean
from the unclean; it is always the wild vine waiting for the grafting of the Lord. Nay, the
preparatory grace in this case appears from the fact that the child receives from its parents
a form of life adapted to its heavenly calling.

10 For the sense in which the author takes Methodism, see section 5 in the Preface.

XX. Its Course