Questioning Augustine: Isaac Casaubon and the roots of Taylor's Unum Necessarium
That it having been been affirmed by S. Austin , that Infants dying unbaptized are damn'd, he is deservedly called duruspater Infantum, and generally forsaken by all sober men of the later ages: And it will be an intolerable thing to think the Church of England guilty of that which all her wiser sons, and all the Christian Churches generally abhor. I remember that I have heard that K. James reproving a Scottish Minister, who refus'd to give private Baptism to a dying Infant; being ask'd by the Minister, if he thought the Child should be damn'd for want of Baptism, answered, 'No, but I think you may be damn'd for refusing it': and he said well.
The same incident is referred to by Isaac Casaubon in his from the Answer to Cardinal Perron (1612), to justify the same critique of Augustine as articulated by Taylor:
Afterwards you bring a place out of S. Augustine, wherein the possibility of salvation of children not baptised is precisely denied. Here, first, his Majesty professeth that himself and the Church of England do allow the necessity of baptism, in respect of divine institution, as well as you.
The Church of England doth not bind the grace of God to the means, which is contrary even to the doctrine of the better sort of schoolmen: yet because God hath appointed this for the ordinary way to obtain remission of sins in his Church, and Christ himself denieth the entrance into the Kingdom of heaven to those which are not born again of water and the Spirit: therefore it is carefully provided here by the Ecclesiastical laws, that parents may have baptism for their children at any time, or place ...
But his excellent Majesty doth so highly esteem of this Sacrament, that when some Ministers in Scotland, pretending I know not what ordinances of new discipline, refused, upon the desire of the parents, to baptise infants ready to die, he compelled them to this duty with fear of punishment, threatening no less than death if they disobeyed.
Wherefore the words of S. Augustine, which do precisely exclude the not baptised from eternal life, if they be understood of the ordinary way thither, and the only way that Christ hath taught us, his Majesty hath nothing to object against that opinion: but if it be simply denied that almighty God can save those which die unbaptised, his Majesty, and the Church of England abhorring the cruelty of that opinion, doe affirm that S. Augustine was an unnatural and hard father unto infants.
Undoubtedly his Majesty thinketh, that both these extremes are with the like care to be eschewed: lest if we embrace this rigid sentence, we abbreviate the power of God, and offer wrong to his infinite goodness: or, whilst, as some do, we reckon baptism amongst such things, the having, or foregoing whereof is not much material, we should seeme to make light of so precious a Sacrament and holy ordinance of God. S. Augustine was a worthy man, of admirable piety, and learning, yet his private opinions his Majesty alloweth not as articles of faith, neither do you allow them.
In addition to similarly invoking King James on the matter, Casaubon uses the same term for Augustine as does Taylor: a "hard father unto infants". Note, too, the same insistence as later found in Unum Necessarium that the Church is not bound by all of Augustine's opinions. In other words, Casaubon anticipates Taylor's critique of a radical Augustinian view of Original Sin. Unum Necessarium, rather than entirely being an outlier, with Taylor as an innovator, was drawing on significant antecedents in the Jacobean Church.
Comments
Post a Comment