Infant baptism, regeneration prior to salvation, and even works-based salvation were all key elements of what the Reformed movement taught. My question has always been, if the "reformers" got all that wrong, why do we hold them in such high esteem?
Speaking as a Reformed Presbyterian, we do not teach that infants are saved by baptism. You act as if we're Roman Catholics. We simply baptize our children, since we believe that they, as our children, are proper members of the church too, and are inheritors of His promise to us, though they may, in fact, never be saved at all, which can only be seen later.
We do not teach regeneration precedes salvation, since regeneration and salvation are the same thing. Well, the latter is implicit in the former. What I think you mean is, Regeneration precedes faith. But we teach that regeneration precedes faith in the same way a hammer strikes a nail. When the Holy Spirit reveals to you that Jesus is the Christ, and creates in you a new heart, you are, at that moment, naturally a believer.
We have never taught salvation by works. You will not find this in Luther, or Calvin, or Knox, or Spurgeon, or Edwards. We simply teach that works are a necessary result of true faith. If one has faith, one naturally "shews forth their faith," though they are justified by faith alone. In other words, we can tell the contents of the heart by what appears, though what appears is only a result of an invisible reality that only God can see. Works do not cause salvation. Works are the result of salvation.
From Luther:
"This is what I have often said, if faith be true, it will break forth and bear fruit. If the tree is green and good, it will not cease to blossom forth in leaves and fruit. It does this by nature. I need not first command it and say: Look here, tree, bear apples. For if the tree is there and is good, the fruit will follow unbidden. If faith is present works must follow.” [Sermons of Martin Luther 2.2:340-341]
“We must therefore most certainly maintain that where there is no faith there also can be no good works; and conversely, that there is no faith where there are no good works. Therefore faith and good works should be so closely joined together that the essence of the entire Christian life consists in both.” [Martin Luther, as cited by Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963], 246, footnote 99]
"What Augustine says is indeed true: He who has created you without yourself will not save you without yourself. Works are necessary for salvation, but they do not cause salvation; for faith alone gives life. For the sake of hypocrites it should be said that good works are necessary for salvation. Works must be done, but it does not follow from this that works save… Works save externally, that is, they testify that we are just and that in a man there is that faith which saves him internally, as Paul says: ‘With the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation’.” [What Luther Says 3: 1509]. [Ewald M. Plass, “What Luther says,” page 1509]
We think the Reformers taught that sola fide means “solitary faith” -- without any connection to “good works,” the reality being, they continued to teach the same works-based salvation of "mother church" for two hundred years after Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg Cathedral door.
I think what you are promoting is that works don't naturally proceed from a regenerated heart, in the same way a pregnant cloud must rain. The Catholics believe that works result in salvation, and that grace can be "merited" for that purpose. We do not believe that. But we do not believe, nor should anyone, whether they are Baptists or Presbyterians, that good works are not a necessary
result of salvation. If you see a person who claims to have faith, and yet lies constantly, does all manner of evil, etc., are we to presume that he is justified? God forbid, though we cannot see the heart, and so we can never truly know for sure. Sanctification, after all, is not an immediate process, but we can reasonably conclude, with the Apostle James, that they have no saving grace within them, but are simply like the devils who also believe.
They cite the Five Points and think they're done. The reality is, Calvinist/Reformed thought has become so distorted and overly simplified by today's adherents that Calvin or Luther wouldn't recognize what they would hear today.
Luther didn't teach anything that Calvin didn't in regards to soteriology. They differed in some areas. For example, Luther believed in actually eating Christ (with the mouth) in the Lord's Supper, and affirmed consubstantiation (but not transubstantiation). Zwingli, rightly or wrongly perceived, seemed to teach a purely memorialist view of the Lord's Supper. In other words, totally symbolic. This is probably the primary view held by the Baptists. Calvin taught suprasubstantiation. That is, Christ is present with us in the Lord's Supper, and eating the bread and drinking the wine is in fact, through faith, communion with Christ and with the body (other Christians). But unlike Luther, he did not believe this was done with "teeth and stomach," but through faith only, and unlike a purely memorial view, Calvin taught that Christ was "really present" with us during the supper, just not within the elements, or under them, or above them, but in faith only.
Yes, these are differences, and there are more, but on all the essentials we certainly agreed, and I doubt that anyone is going to go to hell because they baptize children, or wait to baptize them when they are of age, since we all still believe in salvation, not by works, but looking to faith only.
I couldn't begin to explain what Reformed theology actually is in the few inches of space allowed on a message board. But Spurgeon repeatedly preached on the truthful dichotomy of God's sovereignty and man's responsibility. Most who claim to be of either Calvinistic or Reformed theology today can't grasp the duality of those truths.
Spurgeon was a Calvinist. It is a myth that he was not. The simple truth is that those who say so simply do not understand what Reformed theology actually teaches in regards to man's responsibility and in reprobation, and so they confuse it and think that we are contradicting ourselves, but we do not. They simply do not understand what we are even teaching. But Spurgeon said nothing that Calvin didn't, or Augustine didn't.
"The old truth that Calvin preached, that Augustine preached, that Paul preached, is the truth that I must preach to-day, or else be false to my conscience and my God. I cannot shape the truth; I know of no such thing as paring off the rough edges of a doctrine. John Knox's gospel is my gospel. That which thundered through Scotland must thunder through England again."—C. H. Spurgeon
More:
"I suppose there are some persons whose minds naturally incline towards the doctrine of free-will. I can only say that mine inclines as naturally towards the doctrines of sovereign grace. Sometimes, when I see some of the worst characters in the street, I feel as if my heart must burst forth in tears of gratitude that God has never let me act as they have done! I have thought, if God had left me alone, and had not touched me by His grace, what a great sinner I should have been!"
You can read more here in his sermon "In defense of Calvinism":
A Defense of Calvinism