Jeremy Taylor Week: Unum Necessarium (V) "from his goodness, nothing but goodness is to be expected"
It is strange to me that Men should desire to believe that their pretty Babes which are strangled at the gates of the Womb, or die before Baptism, should, for ought they know, die eternally and be damned, and that themselves should consent to it. So said Taylor in Unum Necessarium , stating a significant pastoral implication of his teaching on Original Sin. That his critics would regard as heterodox the assurance his teaching gave to the parents of infants who died before Baptism struck Taylor as perverse: If I had told them evil things of God and hard measures, and evil portions to their Children, they might have complained; but to complain because I say God is just to all, and merciful and just to Infants, to fret and be peevish because I tell them that nothing but good things are to be expected from our good God, is a thing that may well be wondered at. No less perverse was the notion that God would damn unbaptised infants for Adam's sin: To condemn Infants to hell for the faul...