John Calvin on Baptism
Infants included, as a covenant sign
Hence it is incontrovertible, that baptism has been substituted for circumcision, and performs the same office.
THE POSITION
Infants are baptised because the Abrahamic covenant still stands and baptism has taken circumcision's place: the promise, the thing figured and the foundation are the same in both, so 'everything applicable to circumcision applies also to baptism, excepting always the difference in the visible ceremony' (Institutes IV.xvi.4). The rite is a seal on a promise already made, not the moment a child becomes God's: children of believers 'are received into the Church by a formal sign, because, in virtue of the promise, they previously belonged to the body of Christ' (IV.xv.22). He is correspondingly unbothered by mode, calling immersion or sprinkling a matter of climate (IV.xv.19), and refuses to consign the unbaptised to death (IV.xvi.26).
10 This is My covenant with you and your descendants after you, which you are to keep: Every male among you must be circumcised.
7 OTHERS HOLD THIS
ABOUT THIS FIGURE
Reformer of Geneva and the most systematic of the first-generation Reformers. This entry rests on the 1559 Institutes of the Christian Religion in Henry Beveridge's translation, checked section by section, with Calvin's own commentaries on 1 John, John, the Harmony of the Evangelists, the Psalms and the Harmony of the Law used where the Institutes are thin.
Cite this page
"John Calvin on Baptism", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/calvin/baptism (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/calvin/baptism).