Scotus Academicus, Tomus quintus: De Creaturarum Corporalium et de Homine

THIRD QUESTION. IN WHAT MANNER, AND INTO WHOM, ORIGINAL SIN IS TRANSMITTED.

TRULY a difficult question, and one which drove St. Augustine into such straits that he scarcely had anything to answer, as he indicates in many places, but most of all in Epist. 29. to Jerome, where he explains the supreme difficulty in the Question to be unraveled at present by this witty apologue: When, he says, someone had fallen into a well, where there was only water enough that it would rather catch him so that he did not linger than suffocate him, so that he could not speak, another approached and said: How did you fall here? but he said: I beg you, consider how you may free me from here, and do not ask how I fell here. So, since it is certain from the Catholic faith that the soul of the infant is freed by the grace of Christ from original sin as from a well, it ought to suffice us that we know the mode by which it is saved, even if we should never perfectly know how it came into that evil. Whence in book 6. of the Contra Iulianum, *chapter 8, when he had proposed two modes by which original sin seemed to be transmitted, he said: either in the flesh alone, or in the soul; or in both, namely both flesh and soul; or the whole man: or one is corrupted in the other as in a subject: wherein the hidden justice of the divine Law is contained: he adds: But which of these things is so, I more willingly learn than say, that I may dare to teach what I do not know. It would therefore seem better to lament that supreme loss of innocence through original sin than to take anything from its transmission and propagation. Nevertheless, since it is not fitting to be silent in so fruitful and so necessary a subject of discourse, therefore

NOTANDUM 1. From the Seraphic Doctor in 2. dist. 33. art. 1. q. 1., the sins of parents can be transmitted to their children in a threefold manner, namely either by punishment, or by imitation, or by transfusion. By punishment indeed, when the offspring is punished for the sins of the parents; by imitation, when the offspring imitates the sins of the parents; by transfusion, as one infection is caused by another infection through propagation. Now therefore the transfusion of sin by punishment can be understood in two ways, according to the twofold punishment, eternal and temporal. As to the eternal, the sin of other parents is by no means transmitted, but only original sin; as to the temporal indeed, all the sins of other parents can be transmitted. Indeed Anselm, De conceptu Virginali, says that little ones are damned not only for the guilt of Adam, but for their own sin and guilt, although they do not have it by acting, but by contracting it. By imitation indeed the sins of the nearest parents are transferred to the children, when the children imitate the vices of the parents; not that the guilt of the parent's fault passes into posterity, but the punishment, when the child imitates the fault of the parents. By transfusion, finally, only original sin is transmitted to posterity: and the reason is assigned by St. Bonaventure, because there are two things in sin, namely the privation of what is due, and the undue conversion: and according to these two there are posited in the sinner deformity and stain. For the stain is posited from the conversion, but the deformity from the privation of what is due, the obligation remaining to punishment.

NOTANDUM 2. From our Lyranus upon Chapter 5. of the Epistle to the Romans: that just as in the state of innocence a twofold aspect would have to be considered in the seed of Adam, one natural and as it were proper, according to which it would be an instrument of the race in order to communicate nature in itself; the other as it were supernatural, or superadded by God, according to which it would stand as an instrument of God in order to propagate with nature original justice; so after sin, in the same seed of Adam and of posterity descending from him, a twofold aspect, or one thing, is found: one natural, according to which it has the instrument of the generation and propagation of nature; for this aspect, or perfection, just like the other natural things, was not lost through sin: the other accidental and extrinsic, by reason of which it is the instrument of Adam sinning, for communicating the defect of original justice: the first belongs to it by reason of its natural and positive perfection; the second indeed it has from the privation of the aforesaid vigor, caused by the sin of the first Parent. For we see this rule preserved in causalities, that whatever is found in the effect of perfection is attributed to the perfection of the cause: but whatever of defect and imperfection is reduced to its defect; just as whatever there is of utility, actuality, and motion in limping is attributed to the soul and its motive power; but whatever of obliquity and defect is reduced to the lame and weak leg.

NOTANDUM 3. That the opinions of the Ancients concerning the resolution of the present Question are various. For first the Master of the Sentences in 2. dist. 31., and with him Gregory of Rimini and Gabriel in the same place, teach that original sin is transmitted through a morbid quality inherent in the human seed, or a real infection superadded to it; just as in the seed of a leper there is a certain corruption, which is the principle of leprosy. For the flesh, they say, was corrupted in Adam on account of sin, so that whereas before sin man and woman could come together without the incentive of lust and the fervor of concupiscence, and the bed was immaculate; now indeed after sin carnal copulation cannot take place without lustful concupiscence, which is always a vice and even a fault, unless it be excused by the goods of marriage; in concupiscence therefore and lust the flesh to be formed into the body of the offspring is conceived. Whence the flesh itself which is conceived in vicious concupiscence is polluted and corrupted, from whose contact the soul when it is infused draws a stain, by which it is polluted, and becomes guilty, that is, it receives the vice of concupiscence, and accordingly that sin is said to remain in the flesh. — But this opinion is proscribed: First, because the flesh cannot be infected by any quality which is a sin; since it is not of itself capable of sin, and consequently although it might infect the soul, it cannot nevertheless infect it with an infection which is a sin: therefore from the infection of the flesh there is not had a sufficient principle whence the sin of the soul might arise. Second, nothing material can produce something in a spiritual thing as total cause: therefore although the flesh were infected, it could not infect the soul. Third, it is false that the flesh itself is infected by any quality, or in any way, except insofar as it would be said to be infected, because it does not have those perfections which it would have in the state of innocence, which would be an infection rather negative than positive. Fourth, if the flesh were positively infected, especially since the flesh of the generator would be so infected; but this is false; because otherwise the flesh of Adam would have been infected on account of his own sin: but this is absurd; both because his sin did not have the power of producing in the body an infecting quality, just as neither do our sins have it, which could be of the same species or even graver; and because there is no sign of positive infection in our flesh, which would arise from any quality. Fifth, because it is false that the flesh is therefore born, from the fact that it is generated with concupiscence; because even if some were already generated by some without concupiscence, they would still be born with original sin. Moreover it would follow that the greater the concupiscence with which someone was generated, the more gravely he would be infected with original sin, and thus one would have graver original sin than another, than which nothing is more absurd. — Some think, with Alexander of Hales, 2. p. q. 105. memb. 1., that the soul is vitiated in the flesh, not that sin properly so called inheres in the flesh, or that the flesh can properly draw the spirit into what is forbidden; but that the flesh, stripped of original justice, concupiscences against the spirit and inclines the soul downward, and thereby makes it distorted and crooked. But this opinion likewise cannot stand. For if anyone were created from nothing with that imperfection, so that he would be subject to the motions of concupiscence by which we are now tossed, he would certainly have flesh rebelling against the spirit, and yet would not be stained with original sin, since he would not be propagated from Adam.

Wherefore from the premises, as well as from other opinions of various Ancients omitted, what is to be determined will be opened up by the

First Conclusion. — Original sin is transmitted for no other reason than because man is generated from Adam by seminal propagation through the common way; so that the soul, at that very instant of conception in which it is infused into the organized body and constitutes the natural son of Adam, is also to be reckoned as having violated the precept of God in the first Parent himself, as head of the whole human race. This is the genuine opinion of the Subtle Doctor in 2. dist. 32. qu. unica n. 12., where he says: The soul contracts original sin through the mediation of the flesh, not in such a way that the flesh causes this original sin in it as if through a certain quality caused in it: but from this, that the flesh is sown concupiscibly, and from it the organic body is formed: into which the soul is infused, constituting a person, which is a son of Adam, who is a debtor of the original justice given by God to Adam himself for all his sons, and lacks it: therefore he has original sin. Therefore that sin is contracted in the flesh, inasmuch as it is the natural reason; and from this it ought to have the justice, which through the sin of Adam it lacks. — The Angelic Doctor accords with him in 3. p. quaest. 27. a. 2. ad 1.: Original sin, he says, is drawn from origin inasmuch as through it human nature is communicated, since it properly regards original sin, which indeed takes place when the conceived offspring is animated.

To this doctrine St. Augustine above all subscribes, who constantly in his labors against the Pelagians asserts that Adam's posterity truly and properly contract original guilt through transmitted generation, and, as the Apostle says, are by nature children of wrath. Which doctrine of Augustine, although it occurs so frequently in his works that it is obvious to anyone unrolling them, nevertheless, that we may in part lighten the reader's study and effort, I bring forth some of his texts conducive to the matter itself. First indeed from book 2. of the De gratia Christi or on Baptism against Celestius, c. 31., he poses the question: What then does it mean, he says, so great a damnation for no fault of one's own will admitted? And having rejected the opinion of the Platonists he answers: Is this man otherwise than because he pertains to the mass of perdition, and is justly understood as born of Adam damned by the obligation of the ancient debt? And c. 32.: The propagation of a damned origin damns us: and a little after: At once both nature and the vice of nature are propagated. And seeking the origin and way of the propagated vice, exactly distinguishing the honorableness of marriage from the shamefulness of lust, he affirms this to be the origin and way of the transmission of sin, c. 34. and 37., where thus: Lust is in that, which the Apostle calls, disobedience repugnant to the law of the mind, by the law of the members. But here thus: Hence it is that even infants who cannot sin are nevertheless not born without the contagion of sin, not from that which is lawful, but from that which is shameful, for from that which is lawful nature is born; from that which is shameful, vice. — He declares the matter still more openly in book 1. of the De Nuptiis et Concupiscentia, where treating of the most chaste marriage between the Virgin Mother of God and St. Joseph her spouse, when he had said at the end of c. 11.: Every good of marriage was fulfilled in those parents of Christ, offspring, faith, sacrament. Offspring we recognize as the Lord Jesus himself: faith, because no adultery; sacrament, because no divorce. He immediately adds at the beginning of c. 13.: Alone there was there no nuptial intercourse, because in the flesh of sin it could not be done without that concupiscence, which accrues from sin, without which he who was to be without sin could be conceived, not in the flesh of sin, but in the likeness of the flesh of sin, that hence also he might teach that every flesh which is born of intercourse is flesh of sin, since the flesh which alone was born from it was not flesh of sin. And book 2. c. 1., answering Julian, who had published a book against him, and had thus inscribed it: against those who condemn marriages and assign their fruit to the devil, he writes: Not therefore against us who neither condemn marriages, which we even praise in due order of preaching: nor do we assign their fruit to the devil: for the fruit of marriages are men who are orderly generated from them, not the sins with which they are born. Nor are men therefore under the devil because they are men, where are the fruits of marriages, but because they are sinners, where is what is proper to vices; for the devil is the author of fault, not of nature. And c. 5., answering the objection of Julian saying: by what therefore are those under the devil whom God made? And adding the answer of Augustine: by sin, he says, not by nature. Then, to him subjoining: but as the fetus cannot be without the sexes, so neither can the fault be without the will. This instance Augustine thus meets: So indeed it is, for thus through one man sin entered into the world, etc. Then, Julian insisting: you say therefore that they are under the devil because they are born of the commixture of both sexes? Augustine replies: I say plainly that on account of the fault they are under the devil: therefore indeed they are not without fault because they are born of that commixture, which cannot without shameful lust work even that which is honorable. Which he confirms there by the authority of St. Ambrose on Isaiah, where he said that the carnal nativity of Christ was therefore without fault, because his conception is without the commixture of both: but that no man is without fault who is conceived of that commixture: Therefore, he says, also as a man he was tempted in all things, and in the likeness of men sustained all things, but as born of the spirit, he abstained from sin, for every man is a liar, and no one without sin, except one God. It is separated therefore, that from man and woman, that is, through that commixture of bodies, no one should seem to be without fault: but he who is without fault is also without this kind of conception. — Thence St. Augustine thus presses the Pelagians: Will you dare to say that even this man, O Pelagians and Celestians, was a Manichean, whom Jovinian the heretic called such, against whose impiety this holy man defended even the virginity of St. Mary remaining after childbirth? If therefore you dare not call that man a Manichean; why do you call us Manicheans, when we defend the Catholic faith in the same cause with the same opinion? — More distinctly indeed Augustine explains the matter in the same place, c. 8.: Nor would I have said this, he says, as if any Creator of human seed, or of man himself, should be thought to exist beyond the supreme and true God, but that he would have gone forth from the womb with a tranquil will, if sin had not preceded; nor is it now said of the nature of man, but of the vice. For the former has God as author; from the latter however original sin is drawn. For if the seed itself has no vice, what is that which is written in the book of Wisdom: God, not ignorant that their nation is wicked, and their natural malice, and that their thought could not be changed forever, their seed was cursed from the beginning. How therefore the natural malice of any man, and seed cursed from the beginning? unless that be regarded which through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so death passed through into all men, in whom all sinned? — The Venerable Bede subscribes to Augustine, tom. 8. quaest. 14., where he says: That man therefore contracts original sin, because he is generated with the ardor of lust; and he adds: The soul from its union with flesh is stained with sin. He then adds: Therefore through one man sin entered into the world, because it entered through the seed of generation, in what manner the woman conceives, beginning from the man. In which manner he was unwilling to be born who alone was born without sin of a woman.

The Council of Trent confirms these things, Sess. 5. can. 4., where concerning little ones it decrees: Therefore they are truly baptized unto the remission of sins, that what they have contracted by generation may be cleansed in them by regeneration. And session 6. c. 3., treating of justification which is made through the grace of Christ, says: Just as truly men, unless they were born propagated from the seed of Adam, would not be born unjust; since by that propagation, through him, while they are conceived they contract their own injustice: so unless they were reborn in Christ, they would never be justified; since by that rebirth the grace whereby they are made just is bestowed upon them through the merit of his passion. From all these it is established that all the posterity of Adam contract original sin for this reason, because all sinned in him as in the head of the whole of humanity, namely by reason of the covenant entered into by God with him, by which, if he had preserved the original justice, which he had received as much for himself as for his posterity, he would have transfused it by the way of natural generation to posterity; otherwise, if by his rebellion he should lose it: but all men are not reckoned to have sinned in Adam for any other reason than because they are his natural sons, and propagated from him by the natural way of common generation: therefore original sin is not transfused otherwise than through that natural generation.

Second Conclusion. — Although concupiscence is not formally sin, it is nevertheless the vehicle and mode by which original sin is transfused from parents into children. This opinion seems to be common not only to St. Augustine, but to very many other Fathers who either preceded or followed him, as appears from those whom St. Augustine himself praises and relates, book 1. contra Iulianum, c. 3. and 5. First indeed Origen on chapter 8. of the Epistle to the Romans, when explaining why Christ had come in the likeness of the flesh of sin, not in the flesh of sin, said: He who came to an immaculate body from no contagion of man, but by the Holy Spirit alone coming upon the Virgin, and the power of the Most High overshadowing, indeed had the nature of our body, but had not at all the pollution of sin, which is transmitted to those conceived by the motion of concupiscence. The same Olympius

the Spanish Bishop, cited by Augustine book 1. contra Iulian. c. 3., where he says: by the deadly transgression of the first-formed man the vice was spread into the germ, and sin would be born with man. By which he indicates that the germ, or seed, whence man is born, is so vitiated that he is not born without sin. Similarly St. Ambrose in the same St. Aug., in the same place c. 4.: It is separated therefore, he says, that from man and woman, that is, through that commixture of bodies, anyone should seem to be without fault; but he who is without fault is also without this kind of conception. — That all who were followers and disciples of St. Augustine seem to feel the same, who teach that therefore the Lord Christ was unwilling to be born by the natural way of generation, lest being begotten through concupiscence he should be subject to original sin. Thus St. Leo, ser. 5. De Nativitate Domini.: Alone, he says, among the sons of men the Lord Jesus was born innocent, because alone conceived without the pollution of carnal concupiscence. Thus St. Fulgentius, book De Libero arbitrio et gratia, c. 13., explaining the cause of the immaculate nativity of Christ, says: Indeed the womb of his mother was opened not by the concupiscence of the husband coming together, but by the omnipotence of the Son being born. He alone is that one in whom the prince of this world coming finds nothing. St. Bernard in the Velitationibus, c. 3., says: Because of the flesh man was made like unto charity: because from it he drew the vice of concupiscence, by which, captive to its pull, and bent, he loves carnality and works iniquity. Therefore from these and other similar opinions of the holy Fathers it is established that no other cause of the transfusion of original sin is to be assigned than concupiscence itself, by which in the act of generation there is fervor, and it is transmitted to the offspring. — The same opinion St. Augustine most constantly hands down and defends in very many places, but especially Epist. 105.: Just as error, he says, so in Baptism the infirmity of the concupiscence of the flesh is immediately healed, as its guilt is immediately abolished: but by the grace of being reborn, not by the condition of being born. Thence whoever is born through this concupiscence even of one reborn, without doubt will harm the one born, unless he himself likewise be reborn. And book 5. contr. Iulian. c. 18.: The affectional quality, he says, does not pass by migrating from substance to substance, but by a certain running contagion, that is, by the affect of concupiscence, just as from diseased parents diseased offspring is procreated. — This same he explains book 2. of the oper. imperf. contr. Iulian., by the example of gout, which children in turn draw from parents by hereditary right. If anyone should make gout for himself by intemperance, and transmit it to his sons, which often happens, is it not rightly said that that vice passed from the parent into them: that they also did this in the parent? Because when he did it, they were in him: therefore they did it not by the action of men, but by the reason of the already existing seeds. What therefore is found several times in the diseases of the body, let it be known was done in that ancient and great sin of the first begetter, by which the whole of human nature was vitiated. Thence book 1. De Nuptiis et Concupiscentia, he declares what he undertakes to treat in this work in these words: The intention of this book is this, that as much as the Lord deigns to help us, we may discern the evil of carnal concupiscence, on account of which man, who is born through it, draws original sin, from the goodness of marriage. And c. 12. of the same book, bringing forward the cause why Christ was unwilling to be generated by the natural way, he says it is, lest being begotten through concupiscence, he should draw the vice of concupiscence, or original sin, from Adam. Alone there was there no nuptial intercourse, he says, namely in the blessed Virgin, because in the flesh of sin it could not be done, without the shameful concupiscence of the flesh, which accrues from sin, without which he willed to be conceived, who was to be without sin: not in the flesh of sin, but in the likeness of the flesh of sin; that hence also he might teach that every flesh which is born of intercourse is flesh of sin. And c. 23.: This concupiscence, which is expiated by the sacrament of regeneration alone, truly passes by generation as a bond of sin into posterity. And c. 21: From this concupiscence of the flesh as daughter of sin, whatever offspring is born, is bound by original sin, unless it be reborn in him whom the Virgin conceived without this concupiscence: therefore when he deigned to be born in the flesh, he alone was born without sins.

Next the Pelagians themselves never doubted that Augustine was of the opinion that concupiscence itself propagated original sin. Thence arose that most bitter conflict between him and Julian; namely whether that concupiscence had arisen through the sin of Adam; for Julian most pertinaciously attributed it to God's creation, that by this device he might erase the transmission of original sin: Augustine on the contrary contended with all the sinews of his genius that this concupiscence had arisen from the sin of Adam, and had been transmitted into his posterity, together with sin, as is seen book 2. contra Iulianum, c. 10., and book 2. of the imperfect work, and elsewhere often. And that this is true anyone will easily understand who knows who St. Augustine was and his conflict against the Pelagians: for in all the books published against them he takes up this one thing above all to be proven, namely that concupiscence is not from God, but from the sin of Adam, and through the same original sin is transfused from Adam to posterity. Also the victory of the Church over the Pelagians would be vain, unless that opinion of Augustine were true; for all the arguments of Julian, the Architect of the Pelagian Heresy, by which he asserted the transit of original sin to be impossible, tended to this, that he might assert concupiscence not to be transmissive of sin, not to arise from sin; but that it had been originally implanted in nature by God: otherwise spouses by that natural commixture of the sexes would be the cause of sin, and thus marriages, or wedlocks, would have to be condemned; God likewise, the author of marriage, would have to be condemned, or certainly the devil himself would have to be called the author of marriage and of the commixture, from which sins would be born: which Pelagian device indeed, in order that St. Augustine might overthrow it, he taught that in the commixture of spouses two things are to be considered; namely the commixture itself, and its honor; marriage, by which spouses are legitimately joined, and the concupiscence of the flesh, by which, stimulating, they are joined: and he says the former is good, the latter evil; of the former God, of the latter the devil is author; by the former nature, by the latter sin is propagated, he holds: therefore St. Augustine holds that original sin is transfused from parents to children through concupiscence itself, as through a vehicle.

This the Angelic Doctor excellently explains, 1. 2. q. 81. a. 1., where answering the second argument proposed at the beginning of the question, he says: It must be said, that although the soul is not transmitted, because the power of the seed cannot cause a rational soul, it nevertheless moves to it dispositively. Whence through the power of the seed human nature is transmitted from parent to offspring, and together with nature the infection of nature. For from this it is that this one, who is born a partaker of the guilt of the first parent, is made, because he receives nature from him through a certain generative motion. And again ad 3.: To the third it must be said, that although guilt is not actually in the seed, it is nevertheless there virtually in human nature, which such guilt accompanies. Again ad 4.: To the part it must be said, that the seed is the principle of generation; which is the proper act of nature serving its propagation, and therefore the soul is more infected through the seed, than through the flesh already perfect, which is already determined to a person.

Therefore from the mind both of St. Augustine and of the Angelic Doctor and of other Fathers and Doctors, concupiscence is as it were the vehicle by which original sin is transmitted from parents, although these be cleansed of it, to children, through the seminal way and the propagation of nature. For the seed of both parents, diffused with the itch of lust, has annexed to it vital and animal spirits, which are transfused with it into the offspring, which presently from the heat of that concupiscence and lust grows warm and is formed; in such a way, however, that if this lust were absent from the act of generation, the offspring begotten would no less contract original sin, because that is transmitted chiefly through the propagation of human nature, derived from Adam in rebellion against God.

Things similar to these the Subtle Doctor hands down in 2. dist. 32. quaest. unica, where he teaches three things: first, that concupiscence is the material or vehicle of original sin. Second, that libidinous propagation contributes to the transfusion of that sin. Third, that that sin is contracted in the very union with the body, by which it comes about that the man conceived is a son of Adam. The first he teaches n. 1., where he writes: Concupiscence in this manner, that is, inasmuch as it is a pronity in the rational appetite to concupiscence immoderately of delectable things, is the material of original sin. The second he hands down n. 18.: Propagation, he says, in the state of innocence would have been entirely without lust, but not every common propagation is libidinous: and that therefore, because it is stained, stains the offspring. And he adds, expounding the authority (as he says, of Augustine): Lust is taken for the lack of original justice in the propagators, which is the cause of lust in the act of propagating. The third he indicates in the same place, where he says: The soul is the form of the flesh, from whose union there results a son of God. And answering the arguments proposed at the beginning of the question, he says that Adam is the cause of our guilt and of the lack of original justice. Adam, he says, corrupted himself by personal sin, and in this meritoriously his whole posterity.

From these it appears that original sin is contracted by the posterity of Adam insofar as they are his sons, begotten by their parents through the seminal way and lustful concupiscence. Thence St. Augustine inveighs so greatly against concupiscence itself; especially in the books contra Iulianum, who celebrated concupiscence with praises as a good of nature implanted by God. Thence St. Augustine elegantly and subtly carps at him, book 3. c. 21.: Both of us, he says, profess continence: and if we profess anything we act, that concupiscence indeed we both bridle, against its repugnant motions we both war. But this is the difference, that I say I bridle an evil, but you yourself a good. I say that an evil repugns to me, you that a good repugns to you. I war against evil, you against good... Gloriously you profess to exercise contests through continence, against what? I ask what will you say, unless against the concupiscence of the flesh? But whether as a friend, or as an adversary? Unless as an adversary, do you answer? For the flesh concupiscences against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh: for these are opposed to one another, as the apostle is witness. Perhaps therefore when you praise it you feign: but how you faithfully do both these things at once, I do not see, that you praise it as a friend, and assault it as an enemy. We believe both these: but say what we should believe. If you fight from the heart, you do not praise from the heart: but if you act simply in the procoenium, you play in the battle... Nevertheless of these two, of which you can be thought to do one from the heart, the other feigned: I would rather you falsely praise concupiscence, than falsely assault it: for your tongue lies more tolerably than your life: your opinion more tolerably than your continence is feigned. For you feign the praise, whereby you are an adversary of my opinion, if you do not feign the chastity, whereby you are an adversary of your own concupiscence. So it will come to pass that you no longer bring forth falsely a contest against me, if faithfully you wage war against lust. From which it is evident that St. Augustine pretends nothing else than that concupiscence is the incentive of evil, against which one must fight with all one's strength.

You will say: Against this and the preceding Conclusion, and what has been asserted hitherto: Therefore concupiscence is reckoned to be propagative of original sin, and that it is transfused from nature itself through vitiated generation, especially because all men are said to contract original sin insofar as they sinned in Adam, for this reason namely, that God entered into a covenant with Adam, and placed all the wills of posterity in his will; so that as his will would have been the guardian of the will of all in transferring original justice, if he had obeyed the divine mandates; so also his transgression would be reckoned the transgression of all. But that divine covenant is entirely fictitious, and wholly unknown to St. Augustine and other holy Fathers: therefore original sin is not reckoned to be propagated for this reason. — I deny the minor; for that divine covenant was entered into with Adam very many teach from the holy Fathers, but especially St. Chrysostom on the Epistle to the Colossians, by that covenant he explains that passage of chapter 2.: Blotting out the handwriting of the decree that was against us. What, he says, does the author understand by the handwriting? That which they had said to Moses, Whatsoever God shall say we will do: or that which he had said to Adam, saying: Whatsoever day you shall eat of this tree, dying you shall die. Similarly St. Jerome, weighing those words of Osee c. 6.: They like Adam have transgressed my covenant, there have they dealt treacherously against me: he thus introduces God speaking: But they imitated Adam, that what he had done in Paradise, passing over my covenant and law, these should do on earth. And there, that is, in Paradise, all have dealt treacherously against me, in the likeness of the transgression of Adam. For it is not wonderful, if what preceded in the parent is also condemned in the children. This same St. Augustine also openly teaches. Expounding that Gen. 17.: That soul shall be blotted out from its people, because it had made void my covenant, he thus says: It can be seen, as it ought to be understood, what was said here: the male who shall not be circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin on the eighth day, that soul shall perish from its kindred, because it shall have dissipated my testament; since this is no fault of the little one, whose soul he said would perish: nor has he himself dissipated the testament of God, but the elders, who did not care to circumcise him, except that little ones also, not according to the proper condition of their own life, but according to the common origin of the human race, all dissipated in him one testament of God, in whom all sinned. For the testaments of God are commonly so called, excepting those two great ones, the old and the new, which anyone may know by reading. But the first testament, such as it was made with man, is indeed that: When you shall have eaten, you shall die. — This answer is confirmed from holy Scripture itself, which not obscurely signifies that some covenant or divine constitution intervened, that the sin of Adam should be transfused, and pertain to posterity. For this Paul indicates when he says all sinned in Adam, Rom. 5.: Through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so death passed through into all men, in whom all sinned. But therefore we all sinned in him, says St. Augustine, because we were all that one; not physically only, inasmuch as he was the progenitor of us all: for thus anyone can be reckoned the head of his own sons, and one with them; and yet for that reason sons are not said to contract the sins of parents. Therefore it was necessary that Adam should be by divine constitution the moral head of all descending from him by the natural way of generation, to this effect, that his will in the observance, or in the transgression of the divine precept should be reckoned the will of all posterity. — It is confirmed again from the same Apostle saying in the same place, that in a similar manner Adam harmed us by his disobedience unto the contracting of original sin, as Christ profits us by his obedience unto the obtaining of justification and life; and yet the obedience of Christ does not profit us efficaciously unto justification and eternal life from the sole nature of the thing, but chiefly from the will and institution, by which God willed that it be applied to us, and that it profit unto that end: therefore as the merits of Christ profit these and those unto the justification of life, not from the sole nature of the thing, but from the institution of God, so with Christ covenanting, as we read Isaiah 53.: If he shall lay down his life for sin, he shall see a long-lived seed, and the will of the Lord shall be directed in his hand. Because his soul has labored, he shall see and be filled. In his knowledge the just my servant shall justify many, and their iniquities he himself shall bear. Therefore I will distribute to him very many, and he shall divide the spoils of the strong; because he has delivered his soul unto death, and was reputed with the wicked: so from the same divine institution, and not from the sole nature of the thing, it comes about that the sin of Adam pertains to posterity, and harms them unto condemnation.

Third Conclusion. — Only, and all, the posterity of Adam, who descend from him by the natural way of generation, are infected with original sin, unless by a special benefit of God they be exempted from that common law. This Conclusion embraces three parts, of which the First is of all Catholics, namely that all propagated from Adam contract original sin; and this St. Aug. openly teaches, book 10. De Gen. ad litter., c. 19. and 20., where he affirms that original sin is transfused only through seminal generation. The Council of Trent likewise teaches the same, Sess. 6. c. 3., where it says: Men, unless they were born propagated from the seed of Adam, would not be born unjust. But the assertive reason of this truth is, because Adam alone received justice to be transfused into those who descend from him by seminal generation, or by the natural way of generation: and in its place he transmits sin, and the privation of that original justice.

But the reason why Adam alone was able to infect the whole human nature with his sin, and that none of the posterity can accomplish this with his sin, is threefold: The first indeed, because Adam was not only an individual of human nature, but also the principle of the same nature. The second, because the divine precept was imposed upon him not only as upon a singular person, but as upon the stock of the human race, and the head representing and containing that whole human genus; thence, he sinning, the whole human race seemed to sin. Finally the third reason is, because from the law of equity and justice no one can merit a reward and advantage who has not on the contrary been subject to loss. Whence neither could sons and grandsons merit original justice, Adam conducting himself well, unless they were likewise subject to loss, he sinning: but this cannot be said of other men; for no one is the first principle of his own, nor does the whole nature flourish in him, nor, he meriting, can his posterity become capable of that merit; thence neither, he sinning, ought they to become partakers of his sin. Therefore Adam alone could vitiate the whole nature with his sin; inasmuch as he preceded the lot of all, as also their nature: and presently it is certain, that only those propagated from him by the seminal way contract original sin. — It is to be inferred, that Adam alone is the moral cause of the transfusion of sin into posterity; so that if Adam had not sinned, yet Eve had sinned, posterity would not have contracted original sin. Which holy Scripture indeed openly sufficiently teaches, while it refers the damnation, death, and sin of all men to Adam alone. Thus Rom. 5.: Through one man death, etc. By the disobedience of one man many were constituted sinners, etc. Whence the Apostle, Adam being reckoned as head, so also in Christ all shall be vivified. Similarly the Councils of Milevis, Orange, and Trent, Sess. 5. Canon 2., define that the transgression of Adam harmed not himself alone, but also his progeny, and that he lost sanctity and justice, as much for himself as for us. Which all things ought equally to have been said of Eve, if she had transfused original sin to posterity.

Nor does that of Ecclesiasticus 25. stand in the way: woman is the beginning of sin, and through her we all die. For although not in her, yet through her, as through the devil the inciter of sin, we all die, because by sinning first she was the occasion and irritation of sin for Adam. Which the Wise Man indeed alleges, that he may give warning to a good man, how providently he ought to guard himself against women. — It is to be inferred secondly, with the holy Fathers praised in the first objection of the preceding Conclusion, that Christ the Lord was not liable to original sin; inasmuch as he did not descend from Adam by the seminal way, but was Conceived of the Virgin Mary by the wonderfully operating power of the Holy Spirit. — It is to be inferred finally, that those who would be miraculously created, or formed, either from a rib, or from some part of the body of one of the posterity of Adam, would not contract original sin, as the Subtle Doctor teaches in 2 distinct. 32. n. 6., where he says: A man miraculously formed from the flesh of my finger would not contract original sin, because this Anselm teaches c. 19., where he holds that there are two reasons why Christ did not contract original sin, and one of which would suffice of itself without the other: one, because his flesh was purified in the blessed Virgin: the second, because he was not a natural son of Adam, and therefore was not obligated in Adam. This same is gathered from the Council of Trent Sess. 6. c. 3., where it says: Truly men, unless born propagated from the seed of Adam, would not be born unjust: since by that propagation, through him, while they are conceived, they contract their own injustice. But otherwise it is of men begotten from incubi with virile seed brought from elsewhere; or from parents whose sterility God has miraculously removed, as St. Anselm teaches, book De Conceptu Virginali, c. 16. Because, supposing that miracle, the seed acts naturally in the virtue of the sowing one; thence natural generation follows, and seminal propagation from Adam.

The second part of the Conclusion is against the Calvinists, affirming that children procreated by faithful Parents are by this very fact exempt from the guilt of original sin by non-imputation, so that although they affirm them not to lack habitual concupiscence, in which they constitute the reason of original sin, as is evident from article 11. of their Confession; they nevertheless will that original sin not be in those little ones as in others, namely with the guilt of punishment, and exclusion from the kingdom of heaven: even if no other remedy is applied to them than the sanctity of the parents. But holy Scripture militates against them, which speaks generally, In him all have sinned, Rom. 5.; and the same Paul, although originating from the faithful in part, nevertheless says Ephesians 2.: We also were by nature children of wrath even as the rest, that is, there was no difference between us born of the faithful and others as to being children of wrath; and consequently excluded from the kingdom of heaven. And that was always the tradition of the Church, which therefore judged baptism, even of faithful Parents, necessary unto salvation, according to that of Christ John 3.: Unless one be born again of water, and the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Whence St. August., book De Origine animae, c. 9.: Do not believe, do not say, that infants prevented by death before they are baptized can arrive at the indulgence of original sins, if you wish to be a Catholic.

Finally the third part is of itself clear, namely that all contract original sin unless they be exempted by divine privilege: for God can, by his authority and mercy, exempt whom he wills from the posterity of Adam from the debt and stain of original sin: as indeed by that singular privilege he made the Virgin Mother of God free from that common law and debt of contracting original sin, as we shall prove in the third book of the Sentences, where we shall enumerate the heavenly and divine excellences and prerogatives of the most blessed Virgin.

You will ask: do all the posterity of Adam equally contract original sin?

Let the Seraphic Doctor answer in 2. dist. 33. qu. 1., first supposing three things to concur in original sin; namely the lack of due justice, concupiscence, the foulness of the flesh: and the first to be essential to original sin itself, the second indeed material, and the third causal. If therefore original sin ought to be augmented, it would be necessary that it be intensified by some one of these: but since it has no intensification through any of these, it has to be found equally in all. For as to the lack of due justice it cannot be intensified; for that lack cannot be greater in one than in another, except for a threefold cause: Either because the obligation is stronger, or because there is a greater privation there, or because the mode of privation is more detestable: in none of these modes can the lack be greater in one man than in another; for the obligation is not stronger, because we are all equally obligated in Adam; nor is the privation greater, because by the same gift, namely of original justice, all are stripped by original guilt: nor is the mode of privation more detestable, because all are deprived by the one disobedience of Adam: and thus original sin by reason of the lack of due justice does not admit of more and less, but is in all equally. Similarly it has no intensification as to concupiscence. For if the appetite, or concupiscence, with respect to some delectable thing is intensified in someone, this can be in a threefold way: Either from complexion, or from habituation, or from the contraction of the restraining bond: in the first mode without doubt concupiscence can be augmented, as is evident of the concupiscence of the flesh, which fervors more in the choleric and sanguine than in the melancholic; but such intensification contributes nothing to guilt: for it is not culpable, but natural or penal. Similarly, and in the second mode concupiscence can be intensified in the same man, as is evident in him who is habituated to luxury and to eat good foods, to which he is more prone, and concupiscences more ardently, than he who has not tasted such things: but this intensification does not contribute to original sin, but rather to actual; because original sin is not said of concupiscence in whatever mode, but only inasmuch as it was contracted from origin. In the third mode it cannot be intensified, but has to be found equally in all, for the reason that that restraint of original justice was contracted in all by the deserved guilt of Adam. And since according to that third mode the quantity of original sin is regarded on the part of concupiscence, thence it is that as to concupiscence original guilt is found equally in all in whom it is. Similarly as to the foulness, which is in the flesh, original sin cannot be greater and less: and this is evident; for that any property be intensified there is required a fitness for intensification, both on the part of the receptive subject, and on the part of the property by which it is intensified, and also on the part of the agent: and if any one of these should be lacking, that property has no intensification, as is evident to one considering. But all these are lacking in the matter at hand. For the defect is on the part of the receptive subject: for as a new mirror is infected by a menstruous woman, but after it has grown old it does not receive a new infection from any aspect, so evil nature, existing in the primordial state as it were new, had to be infected by the corruption of the person: but afterwards, as it were grown old, it does not receive a new infection from a new corruption. The defect is also on the part of the agent, because there is no one after the first man whose transgression regards anything but the obligation of a person; thence it is that such guilt has no power to infect the flesh conjoined. The defect is also on the part of the property capable of intensification; for those things whose power is in the terminus have no capacity to receive more and less, as the Philosopher wills: but the foulness of the flesh, inasmuch as it is the principle of the contraction of original sin, has its origin from the lack of original justice: and because that lack is a certain nakedness, and in the naked there cannot be found a more naked, as the nakedness of original justice does not admit of more or less, so neither the foulness of the flesh. And thus it is evident that on the part of the foulness of the flesh original sin has no intensification, nor augmentation in the same or in different persons; nor on the part of concupiscence: nor of the lack of due justice, as has been shown; nor are there more things concurring in original sin. It is manifest therefore that original sin in all, in whom it is found, has to be equal: and the reasons showing this are to be conceded.

You will say: No evil is in the supreme; because nothing that is supremely evil is: therefore it is not in the supreme: but that which is short of the supreme can be intensified and augmented: therefore original sin is capable of intensification: therefore it can be found greater in one than in another. — The Seraphic Doctor answers, that there is a supreme simply, and a supreme in a genus: and although it does not happen that supreme evil be found in its proper genus; nevertheless supreme evil can be found in someone so deprived of vision, that it cannot be more. So also in the matter at hand it can be understood, that original sin deprives simply of original justice: and therefore its infection is in the terminus, so that although it is not in the supreme, it nevertheless does not follow that it could be intensified; because a defect can be on the part of its receptive subject, or on the part of the agent: and both are here lacking, as su-

You will say 2: One soul has better natural endowments than another, and therefore its corruption is worse; similarly some are more prone to evil, and are more fiercely agitated by the motions of concupiscence; and therefore are more infected with original sin. — I deny the consequence, and to the first I say that although rational souls have gradual perfections according to which one substantially excels another; nevertheless one does not excel another by reason of that purity and innocence unto which they were destined: and therefore since that original innocence was to be transfused equally into all men, so likewise its privation is equal in all. But to the second I say, that truly indeed some men are tossed more fiercely than others by the motions of concupiscence; that, says the Seraphic Doctor, however, does not proceed from original sin more gravely harming and affecting them, but from complexion or habituation; namely because they do not resist their wicked motions, nor oppose them.

Notandum 1. It is more certain than certain that the sin of the first Parent not only shook human nature, stripping it of the charisms divinely bestowed upon it, but also wounded it in many respects. Hence not incongruously very many of the holy Fathers think that the first man, and in him all his posterity, was shadowed forth by Christ the Lord in that Parable of Luke 10, of the man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, who fell among thieves; who stripped him, and having laid wounds upon him went away, leaving him half dead; yet it has not been so ascertained what those principal wounds are which were inflicted upon human nature by sin. Indeed it is agreed that all the miseries of body and of soul with which we are tossed throughout the whole course of our life, as well as death itself, have been derived from original sin upon the whole human race. For had the happy state of innocence stood, man would never have endured death, nor the miseries asserted to attend upon death; for although by the constitution of nature he would have been mortal, as was proved in the preceding Disputation, yet he would nowhere have experienced death, as St. Augustine most excellently teaches, book 6 De Genesi ad litteram, chapter 25, where, having said that Adam was created immortal after a certain mode, he adds:

that which was granted him from the tree of life was not from the constitution of nature, from which he was separated by the tree when he sinned, so that he could die: had he not sinned, he could not die. He was therefore mortal by the condition of his animal body: but immortal by the benefit of his Creator.

Therefore just as death altogether dwelt as an exile from that fatherland of happiness, so misery would be wholly absent — that misery pressing in from every quarter, whether from the soul, or from the senses, or from the body, or from external things, whereby man would be tormented against his will: for to be afflicted against one's will by any evil, whether great or small, is not of the nature instituted in man, but of the punishment of the condemned. Whence St. Augustine, book 1 against Julian, chapter 5, briefly sets forth in these words that total immunity from all bodily inconveniences, whereby before the sin committed by Adam no external sense would in any way have been offended or disturbed either inwardly or outwardly: Far be it, he says, that we should believe there was anything whereby our sense, whether inwardly or outwardly, would be pricked by pain, or wearied by toil, or confounded by shame, or burned by heat, or constricted by cold, or assailed by horror. It is certain therefore that all the miseries of body and of soul flowed forth from original sin itself, as from a virulent fountain of all evils, into the whole human race; but whether it also utterly ruined the natural faculties and powers of man is here to be determined. Therefore

Notandum 2. A threefold genus of natural virtues and faculties can be distinguished in man; namely, intellectual, arbitral, and animal: from which there bursts forth, as it were, a corresponding appetite, whereby he is borne toward that which is agreeable to those very faculties: for the intellective power follows and inquires into truth, that in its attainment it may delight and rest: while the arbitral, or voluntary, pursues the good, shuns evil, and seeks out and desires everything whatsoever that illustrates and confirms the liberty of man: finally the sensitive bursts forth toward that which pleases the senses, that it may derive therefrom a certain delight and felicity. The first assimilates man to the Angels: the second makes him, as it were, equal to God: but the third aggregates him to the brute animals. To the first are opposed ignorance and blindness of mind: to the second captivity and languor in attaining the good and fleeing evil: to the third, the miseries of the senses and the tossing of unbridled concupiscence. But whether, and in what manner, original sin inflicted all these plagues upon human nature must here be opened up.

Notandum 3. There has been implanted in rational nature, by that very fact that it is rational, not only a capacity but also an inclination and native propension toward the good of honesty, which above all among the three genera of goods is consonant with reason. Now this inclination can be distinguished as twofold: one indeed remote and radical, which is the very substance of the rational soul, as it has the character of a nature and, as it were, of a radical principle from which faculties and operations burst forth: the other proximate, by which it is found in the powers and faculties from which operations arise: and those powers are especially the intellect and the will; for the sensitive appetite participates only in something of reason on account of the intimate conjunction it has with the rational part; whence also it has only an imperfect inclination toward the good of honesty; wherefore it stands in need of the moral virtues, which subject it to the rational appetite.

Advertendum moreover that the inclination of these faculties toward the good of honesty can be understood to be diminished in two ways. First indeed intrinsically, and on the part of the subject, if something of entity or intensity be withdrawn from them, just as habits are diminished when they are relaxed. Secondly, on the part of the term, the entity of the subject remaining intact, insofar as, certain impediments supervening, the power is removed from attaining or achieving the term toward which it tended: for the more the power has been hindered by reason of impediments from some act, the less will be its inclination and aptitude for such an act.

These things thus premised, four questions come principally to be resolved in this Question. 1. What wounds were inflicted upon the rational faculty through original sin. 2. Whether it altogether broke the liberty of the arbitral and voluntary faculty. 3. What plagues it inflicted upon the sensitive appetite. 4. Finally, in what manner it altered the inclination toward the good of honesty.

First Conclusion. — There are four wounds especially which original sin inflicted upon the intelligence or human mind.

The first is ignorance of things necessary even for the conservation of natural life itself, wherein infants possess as little as not even the beasts, as St. Augustine elegantly explains in book 1 De Peccatorum meritis et remissione, chapter 38.

The young, he says, of many flocks, although they be very small, do not indeed advance even in understanding as their bodily growths depart, because they have not a rational soul; yet even the tiniest of them both run and recognize their mothers, nor are they brought by care and help to the teats of others for sucking: but they know of themselves, with wonderful facility, those things placed in a suitable position within their mothers' bodies. Contrariwise, man when born has neither feet fit for walking, nor hands apt at least for writing; and unless the nipples of the breast be applied to his lips by the aid of those nourishing him, he does not perceive where they are, and rather than suck at the breasts lying beside him he can only cry from hunger. Accordingly this infirmity of body altogether corresponds to the infirmity of mind; nor would the flesh of Christ have been in the likeness of the flesh of sin unless that flesh had been flesh of sin, under whose weight the rational soul is thus weighed down.

The second wound is fatuity and dullness of mind, which abides in some persons from their very birth; for there is no animal so destitute of knowledge by means of reason suited to its own nature as some idiotic and rude men are born. Lamenting this calamity and misery of the human mind, St. Augustine describes it thus in Epistle 28 to Jerome:

Then some are slow, he says, and forgetful, so that they have not even been able to learn the first elements of letters. But certain ones are of such fatuity that they differ not much from the flocks, whom the common people call fools.

Hence, in book 1 De Peccatorum meritis, chapter 22, refuting those who, following Plato, think that souls, on account of offenses committed elsewhere, are thrust down into bodies congruent with their merits, and therein afflicted more or less, he says thus:

Who, according to those men, who opine that souls, which before this body lived in heavenly places according to the merits of a former life, are burdened by earthly bodies more or less, would not affirm that those who deserved to lose the light of mind so as to become, with senseless reason, brutish — as the common people call them — sinned before this life more wickedly and more savagely?

The third wound is difficulty in learning and in acquiring knowledge. For ignorance has propagated its roots so deep and so high in the talents of certain men that they prefer to live always in the shadows of ignorance rather than to drain so great a labor as occurs in acquiring the sciences. Hence St. Augustine lib. 22. De Civit. Dei, cap. 22. What, he says,

of that which indicates a certain horrible depth of ignorance, from which every error arises, which embraces all the sons of Adam as with a dark bosom, so that man cannot be delivered from it without labor, sorrow, and fear?

Hence, in book 1 De Peccatorum meritis, chapter 36, from this ignorance and difficulty in learning he gathers original sin.

Into that therefore, he says, densest darkness of slowness, where the soul of the infant fresh from the womb — certainly the soul of a man, certainly a rational soul — lies not only without speech, but incapable even of learning things: why, or when, or whence was it thrust thither? If it is the nature of man so to begin, is not that nature already vitiated? Why was not Adam created such? Why was he capable of precept, and knowing how to impose names upon his wife and upon all the animals?... But this one, not knowing where he is, what he is, by whom he was created, from whom begotten, already guilty of offense, not yet capable of precept, is involved and pressed by so great a darkness of profound ignorance that he cannot, even as one awakened from sleep, know these things at least when shown to him, but time must await wherein he may gradually digest this I-know-not-what intoxication, not through one night, as any gravest drunkenness is wont, but through several months and years: which until it be done, we punish so many things in adults and tolerate them in infants that they cannot all be numbered.

Now this difficulty of learning and of undertaking knowledge appears chiefly from this, that although all men by nature desire to know, as Aristotle says in book 1 of the Metaphysics, or as Tullius says in book 1 of the Tusculans: Nature presses upon our minds an insatiable kind of desire of seeing the truth: yet so great is the weakness of the human mind that it knows perfectly neither even the tiniest creature nor the worm; whence Ecclesiastes, chapter 1, deserves to say: All things are difficult: man cannot explain them by speech. But far greater is its ignorance of itself; since the human mind knows nothing less than itself, nay, does not even understand its own works: whence the royal Psalmist, Psalm 18: Who can understand sins? From my secret ones cleanse me. Which indeed is the highest argument of incredible unhappiness, that he himself who sins daily by his own will can scarcely discern whether he has truly sinned, or consented with deliberate will, how often and how much he has offended. But how obscure and meager a knowledge of God human study can acquire, so many erroneous opinions of the Gentiles concerning the nature of God bear witness; since their madness proceeded so far that they attributed divinity not only to viler animals, but even to certain kinds of vegetables and herbs.

Finally, the fourth wound implanted in the human mind by original sin is that very levity and undisciplined agitation of the mind, whereby it comes to pass that we turn over many empty and vain things even against our will. St. Jerome laments this calamity in his Dialogue against the Luciferians, perhaps speaking in the person of another: Hence very often in my prayer, either I walk through the public place, or I reckon accounts from the treasury, or, defiled by a base thought, I carry about things which even boys would blush to utter. And St. Augustine, book 10 of the Confessions, chapter 35:

When, he says, in matters of this kind our heart is the receptacle, and bears the wares of copious vanity, thence also our prayers are often interrupted and disturbed, and before thy countenance, while we direct the heart's attention to thine ears, the matter so great is cut off by trifling thoughts rushing in, I know not whence.

Second Conclusion. — Likewise there are four principal wounds inflicted upon the human will and arbitral faculty by original sin.

The first is that very conversion of love toward self, whereby it comes to pass that all seek their own things and burn with disordered self-love. Thence arise all those deviations of the soul which Saint Augustine enumerates in lib. 22. De Civit. Dei, cap. 22.

Namely, biting cares, perturbations, terrors, mad joys, discords, quarrels, wars, treacheries, angers, enmities, deceits, flattery, fraud, perjury, rapine, perfidy, pride, ambition, envy, homicides, parricides, cruelty, wickedness, lust, petulance, impudicity, impurity, fornications, adulteries, incests, and against nature, of both sexes, so many filthy and unclean things which we are accustomed even to call shameful; sacrileges, heresies, blasphemies, false oaths, oppressions of the innocent, calumnies, circumventions, betrayals, false testimonies, unjust judgments, violences, robberies, and whatever such evils do not come to mind, and yet depart not from the life of man: whence all the works of darkness, although exercised only by wicked men, nevertheless flow forth from that virulent fountain of perverse self-love ingested through original sin.

The second wound is that very great difficulty which each experiences in overcoming vices and cultivating virtues. For although nature itself stimulates toward virtue and withdraws from vice — especially since the natural end of man, as regards the will, is to live according to the dictate of right reason, and therefore to pursue virtue itself — nevertheless men tend toward it with difficulty and hardly: witnesses of which thing are those immense and manifold punishments wherewith both children and adults must be urged, that even against their will they may be stimulated toward virtue and restrained from vices. Hence Augustine, in the passage praised shortly above:

What mean the many rods which are employed to curb the wantonnesses of little ones? What mean Pedagogues, Masters, the rod, the straps, the whip, that discipline whereof Sacred Scripture says, the sides of the beloved sons must be beaten, lest growing untamed, being now hard, they can be subdued soon, or perhaps cannot? What is done by all these punishments except that ignorance may be beaten down and depraved desire restrained, amid which evils we groan in this age? To these is added that incredible negligence in acquiring those things which look toward living blessedly, both in this life and after death: for although men know exceedingly well that the sole felicity, however slight, which they can taste in this mortal life lies stored in the study of virtue; although likewise by the light of faith they know steadfastly that heavenly beatitude is promised only to those living piously; nevertheless experience establishes that most men have nothing less at heart than procuring virtues and eliciting good works, whereby they may attain temporal beatitude and merit eternal: so great evidently a forgetfulness of themselves, so huge a sleep, so unhappy a security has oppressed the human race from the sin of the first transgression.

The third wound is that continual struggle of one's own will against itself, and a certain unstable inconstancy; for since all created things, both superior as the Angels and inferior as cattle, ever will the same or nill the same, pursue good, flee evil, man alone, tossed by his own will alternating, rejects what he had just chosen, and chooses what he had held in contempt. Thence it comes to pass that the superior part of the soul not only suffers perpetual struggle with the inferior, but even conflicts perpetually with herself. Hence St. Augustine, book 8 of the Confessions, chapter 9:

Whence this monster, he says, and why this? Let thy mercy swear, and I ask, if perchance they can answer me, the hiding places of the punishments of men, and the darkest contritions of the sons of Adam. Whence this monster, and why this? The mind commands the body, and it is obeyed at once: the mind commands itself, and is resisted.... I, when I deliberated that I might now serve my Lord, as I had purposed, I was he who willed, I who would not. Nor plainly did I will, nor plainly would I not: the same contended within me, and I was dissipated by myself, and that dissipation befell me indeed unwillingly: yet it showed not the nature of an alien mind, but the punishment of mine.

Finally, the fourth wound inflicted by original sin upon the arbitral, voluntary faculty of man, is that very infirmity and diminution of free choice; for, as St. Augustine teaches in many places, through the sin of the first Parent the free choice of man has been so vitiated that, unless it be quickened and strengthened by divine grace, it is altogether weak and powerless for pursuing and embracing virtue: here he seems to assert that it altogether fell: for as he says in the book De perfectione iustitiae, chapter 4, Nature, conquered in vice into which it fell by will, collapsed in liberty: and in the Enchiridion, chapter 30, Man, ill using free choice, lost both himself and it: and in the Epistle to Vitalis, We have lost free choice for loving God by the greatness of the first sin. These things, however, are not to be so understood, as though St. Augustine wished that free choice had altogether perished through the sin of the first Parent: for he openly teaches the contrary in many places, especially Epist. 47 to Valentinus; The Catholic Faith, he says,

neither denies free choice, whether unto a good life or unto a bad life, nor attributes to it so much that without grace it can avail for anything; and in book 2 to Boniface, chapter 5, he says:

We do not say that the free choice perished from the nature of men through the sin of Adam.

And in book 1 to the same, chapter 2, he teaches openly in what manner man's free choice is held to be diminished through Adam's sin; namely, that he no longer possessed that perfection of liberty which he had in the state of innocence, for acting with the greatest ease whatsoever good, and abstaining from evil; for having said: Which of us says that through the sin of the first man free choice has perished from the human race? He adds:

Liberty indeed perished through sin: but that which was in Paradise, of having full justice together with immortality: wherefore human nature stands in need of divine grace, the Lord saying, if the Son shall make you free, then shall you be truly free.

Whence, when he says that the first man, ill using free choice, lost both himself and it, he signifies quite clearly that he did not lose free choice as to substance, but as to that accidental mode of perfection which he had in the state of integrity and innocence: thus the first man did not lose himself as to substance, but as to accidental and gratuitous gifts: with which in that happy state he was illustrated, and on account of sin despoiled of them. But concerning these things we shall say more in the following Disputation.

Third Conclusion. — Various, but principally four, are the wounds wherewith the inferior part of man, or the sensitive appetite, has been wounded through original sin.

The first is the continual warfare and struggle itself, which concupiscence renews against the higher part of the soul at every moment; for man endures an internal war unceasingly even unto death: wherefore the Apostle, Romans 6, lamenting, exclaims: Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? How fierce, how deadly is that war, the depraved life of many young men bears witness, who burn in an immense fire of most shameful pleasures: the constant courses of lusts also bear witness, whereby the concupiscence of perverse men is irritated and inflamed; likewise the constant mortifications bear witness, whereby men devoted to piety crucify themselves, that with these as it were heavenly arms they may bind and conquer so hostile an enemy.

The second are the innumerable calamities and miseries, and above all the very many kinds of diseases with which we are tossed day by day. Whence St. Augustine, book 1 against Julian, chapter 6, thus addresses him:

Behold, misery of the human race surrounds thy senses. Thou art a man; put nothing human away from thee, and in those things which thou dost not suffer, sympathize with those who suffer; although thou thyself, however great thine earthly felicity may be, dost pass no day without internal war, if indeed thou strivest to fulfill what thou professest. But in those things which thou canst no longer remember, look upon little children, how many and how great evils they suffer, amid what vanities, torments, errors, and terrors they grow up. Then already grown, even those serving God, error assails that it may deceive, labor or pain assails that it may break, lust assails that it may inflame, sorrow assails that it may cast down, pride assails that it may exalt: and who can swiftly expound all things wherewith the yoke weigheth heavy upon the sons of Adam? This evident misery of the nations compelled the Philosophers of the Gentiles, whether knowing or believing something of the sin of the first man, to say that we are born for the sake of undergoing punishments on account of certain crimes committed in a former life....

But the Apostle deems such to be that opinion whereby each soul is believed to be inserted into diverse bodies according to the merits of its former life. What therefore remains, unless the cause of these evils be either the injustice or the impotence of God, or else the punishment of the first and old sin? But because God is neither unjust nor impotent, there remains what thou dost not will, but art compelled to confess: that the heavy yoke upon the sons of Adam, from the day of their going forth from their mother's womb unto the day of burial in the mother of all, would not have been, unless the merit of original guilt had gone before.

The third kind of evils which original sin introduced into the animal portion of man is the very need of food and drink, and that so great as sometimes to drive men even to frenzy. Hence St. Augustine, lib. 22. De Civit. Dei, cap. 22.

Hath not, saith he, the foul ardor brought thirsty men even to this, that they have drunk human urine, or even their own? Hath not hunger brought them to this, that they could not abstain from the flesh of men, nor from men not slain and burnt, but killed by themselves for the moment, nor yet strangers merely, but even mothers devouring their own children with incredible cruelty, which raging hunger wrought?

Fourth and last is the very savagery of the whole universe against man; for not only the brute animals, which from the beginning ought to have obeyed man in all things, immediately after his sin withdrew from his dominion and lay snares for his very life in countless ways, but also the elements themselves of things and the heavens fight against him; for as St. Augustine observes in the place just praised,

Scarcely can it be told how great are those losses which befall the race of men from heats, colds, tempests, rains, floods, lightning, thunder, hail, the bolt, chasms of the earth, oppressions of ruins, eruptions of fires, and likewise so many poisons of plants, of waters, of winds. What evils do they suffer who sail! what they who journey over land! what the tillers of gardens and fields! How many and how great calamities are feared for the fruits of the fields from heaven and earth, or from most pernicious animals!

Fourth Conclusion. — Original sin vitiated man's native inclination toward honest good; not indeed intrinsically, and as to entity, but extrinsically, and as to ready operation, namely by subjecting certain obstacles, through which he may not attain that good so promptly and readily.

This Conclusion consists of three parts: the First of which appears from all those texts of Scripture whereby the very inclination of man toward evil is proved. For the sense and thought of the human heart are prone to evil from its youth, saith God, Genesis 8. Which truth St. Paul plainly expounds, Romans 7:

I know that there dwelleth not in me, that is to say, in my flesh, that which is good. For to will is present with me; but to accomplish that which is good, I find not. For the good which I will, I do not; but the evil which I will not, that I do. Now if I do that which I will not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that when I have a will to do good, evil is present with me. For I am delighted with the law of God, according to the inward man: but I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind, and captivating me in the law of sin, that is in my members.

The second and third part are likewise evident, namely that that natural inclination toward virtue, or honest good, is not diminished intrinsically by original sin: since the substance of the soul and its faculties, namely intellect and will, can suffer no intrinsic loss, seeing that they are incorruptible and indefectible as to entity, whence no substantial change, no defect can occur in them. Hence the whole repugnance to the attainment of honest good is extrinsic: for original sin, by taking away original justice, turns man away from his last end: but that aversion renders him not so prompt to operate rightly: therefore by original sin the promptitude, aptitude, and inclination of rational nature toward honest good is diminished. The major is evident; the minor is proved: the last end stands related to operable things in the same way as first principles stand to speculative matters: but the intellect lacking assent to the premises is not so apt and prompt to assent to conclusions as when furnished with that assent to the premises: therefore neither does the will averted from the last end become so prompt and ready to pursue the honest good as while it adhered to the last end. Wherefore original sin, by taking away original justice, whose rein kept the powers of man free from the raging motions of concupiscence, is indirectly, and as it were by removing an obstacle, the cause that such powers tend with unbridled impetus toward their objects and burst forth into illicit affections.

Whence four wounds in general are reckoned to human nature from original sin: namely ignorance in the intellect; malice in the will; weakness in the irascible, and unbridled commotion of concupiscence itself in the concupiscible.

To be noted 1. That although the kinds of torments in Hell whereby the reprobate are to be tormented are diverse, yet all of them are reduced chiefly to three heads, namely the pain of loss, of sense, and of the worm. The first is the very privation forever of the divine vision and fruition; the second, horrible torment from hellish fire, cold, and other ministering creatures of divine justice that torment; the third, finally, is the ever-tormenting bite and stimulus of conscience. The first answers the aversion from God; the second, the conversion to creatures; the third, the internal delight which is made apart from the dictate of reason and the divine law, whereby the sinner sins in the very aversion from God and conversion to creature: now it is certain that by this threefold punishment adult reprobates are to be tormented, as can be shown by very many texts of Scripture, above all from that of Matthew 25, Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels: and also from that of Mark 9, Their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished: whether however infants departing this life with original sin alone are to be punished by this threefold pain must be determined in the present place.

To be noted 2. That it is certain indeed, and altogether undoubted among Catholics, that all departing this life, even with original sin alone, are punished with the pain of loss. For this rests on most manifest texts of Scripture, especially from that of John 3, Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. And 1 Corinthians 15, For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive: that is, as no one is freed from the death contracted through Adam unless he be united to Christ through baptism as to his head, and incorporated into Him as His member; so no one can attain eternal life except through this incorporation. Finally from that of Apocalypse 20, Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection; in these the second death hath no power: but unbaptized infants have no part in the first resurrection: therefore over them the second death, namely the want of the divine vision, which is life eternal, hath power.

Likewise it has been defined in Councils: first indeed the Palestinian, or Diospolitan, as St. Augustine testifies, book De gestis Pelagii, c. 8, where he relates that Pelagius was compelled to anathematize that assertion, that infants, even if they be not baptized, have eternal life. But this being denied, saith St. Augustine, what will remain but eternal death? Likewise the Council of Carthage in Augustine, num. 90: Whoever, it saith, denies that little children are freed from perdition through the baptism of Christ, and receive eternal salvation, let him be anathema. Likewise the Council of Milevis in the Epistle in Augustine 92. The like it repeats writing of the Pelagians:

If little children be imbued with no sacraments of Christian grace, that they shall have even eternal life they do not presume to contend.

The same the Florentine teaches in the last session, writing:

The souls of the dead who depart with actual mortal sin, or with original sin alone, presently descend into hell, yet to be punished with pains unlike one to the other.

Finally the Council of Trent, session 5, especially Canon 1, repeating the doctrine of the preceding Councils, anathematizes those who assert that little children draw nothing from Adam of original sin, which must needs be expiated by the laver of regeneration for the attaining of eternal life.

The same all the Holy Fathers teach, especially as many as pressed hard upon the calamity of the Pelagians or Semi-Pelagians. Above all St. Augustine, book 1, De origine animae, chapter 9. To unbaptized infants, he saith,

let no one promise a middle place, where one listeth, as it were, between damnation and the kingdom of Heaven, or some quiet or felicity whatsoever: for this the Pelagian heresy promised them.

And book 2, chapter 12, he saith:

The authority of the Catholic Councils, and of the Apostolic See, most justly condemned Vincentius, the heretical Pelagian, because they dared to give to unbaptized infants a place of quiet and salvation, even outside the kingdom of Heaven, etc.

To these subscribe St. Prosper, book 2, De vocatione gentium, c. 8. What is it, he saith,

that so great a multitude of infants is alienated from perpetual salvation, as many as in these ages thousands of men are left outside the eternal rite?

And St. Fulgentius, book De fide ad Petrum, chapter 2. Infants, he saith,

to whom there can be inherent no proper merits of will, either good or evil, are held by an indissoluble bond in eternal damnation.

The same holds St. Anselm, book De Conceptu Virginali, chapter 27, and all the rest, followers and disciples of St. Augustine. These things I have noted at somewhat greater length, that thereby it may appear how execrable, and how much to be condemned, is the assertion of Calvin, Zwingli, and other heretics, whereby they teach that the whole human nature has been so restored through Christ, that not only the children of the faithful, as Calvin wills, but even of infidels, as Zwingli asserts, in the Declaration on original sin, though dying without baptism, can attain eternal life.

To be noted 3. That although all Catholic Doctors agree that infants departing this life with original sin alone are to be condemned to the pain of loss and perpetual want of the divine vision; nevertheless they controvert among themselves whether those infants also suffer any pain of sense and of the worm; in the resolution of which difficulty there are chiefly four diverse opinions of Authors.

The first indeed, most rigid, contends namely that those infants departing with original sin are deprived not only forever of the vision and fruition of God, but also punished with the very pain of the fire and worm of eternity: yet more mildly than damned adults, forasmuch as they are infected with lighter guilt. Thus above all taught Gregory of Rimini, in 2 dist. 3. For this same opinion fought keenly our Florentius Conrius, Archbishop of Tuam, in the Treatise published at the end of Jansenius's work De statu parvulorum sine baptismo decedentium ex hac vita: in which Treatise he contends that the opposite opinion is not only false, but also bordering on heresy, and that original sin, as he himself says, is utterly evacuated. To him subscribe very many Moderns; above all our Poncius in the Commentary on distinction 33, where n. 77 he congratulates himself that while still a youth he had enjoyed the grave and religious conversation of the aforesaid Most Illustrious Conrius; in whom, he saith,

I experienced several proofs of supreme humility joined with so great profundity of doctrine, which I admire even now, and often recall for my own profit.

The second opinion teaches that infants dying in original sin will indeed be punished with no pain of fire and of sense: yet that they will suffer the pain of the worm, or of sadness and sorrow, for the loss of eternal beatitude. This taught Abulensis on chapter 25 of Matthew, Bellarmine book De statu peccati, chapter 6, and others. The third affirms that infants thus departing are indeed deprived of the eternal vision and fruition of God, yet will have after the day of judgment a certain temporal beatitude, inasmuch as they will inhabit the earth as it were an earthly Paradise, full of wisdom and instructed in moral virtues, and refreshed also by the companionship and apparitions of Angels. Thus Catharinus book De statu Parvulorum decedentium sine baptismo; Albertus Pighius in the first Controversy on original sin; which opinion Salmeron also deems probable on chapter 5 of Romans. Fourth and last, the opinion teaches indeed that infants departing in original sin are to be punished with the eternal want of the vision and fruition of God, and likewise to be destitute of all natural beatitude: yet not to be tortured with any pain of sense or of the worm. Thus the Subtle Doctor with the Master of the Sentences in 2 dist. 33, and St. Thomas in the same place qu. 1. art. 1 and 2, and likewise the Seraphic Doctor Bonaventure in the same place art. 2. qu. 1, where, having reported the first opinion on this matter, he subjoins:

that position is milder which accords better with piety, faith, and the judgment of reason: that because infants departing with original justice lack justice, and the grace of the Holy Ghost, which is the first inheritance of eternity, they are deprived forever of the vision of God: but because in her was the inheritance, therefore they are placed in the place of naught, namely hellish; but because they had not in themselves actual delectation of sin, neither in spirit nor in flesh, therefore they feel not the harshness of the pain of fire.

That we may subscribe to which opinion, as the more probable, let there be

One Conclusion. — Infants departing this life with original sin alone suffer no pain of sense, nor of the worm, or remorse of conscience.

Proof is made first from Sacred Scripture: for Apocalypse 18: How much she hath glorified herself, and lived in delicacies, so much torment and sorrow give ye to her: but little ones have in no wise glorified themselves, nor have they been in any delicacies: therefore they deserve no torment and sorrow. Likewise in Isaiah at the end, and Mark 9, fire is joined with the worm: Their worm, he saith, dieth not, and their fire shall not be extinguished; but it is evident that little ones will suffer no punishment from the bite of the worm, that is, from a conscience of an evil work pricking and afflicting the soul; therefore it is credible that they will also suffer no punishment of material fire.

Proof is made second from the authority of the Holy Fathers, and especially of St. Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 10 on holy Baptism, where, having enumerated three kinds of men dying without baptism — of whom some despised baptism; others omitted it through their own negligence; and the third, that is, infants, lacked it through the negligence of others — he pronounces thus concerning the punishment of all of them:

I judge that it will come to pass that the first indeed shall pay penalties both for their other crimes and for the contempt of baptism: but the others shall pay penalties indeed, yet lighter, as those who departed from baptism not so much by depravity of soul as by folly: lastly, the final ones shall be touched neither by heavenly glory nor by punishments from the just Judge; inasmuch as, although they were not signed with baptism, they nevertheless lack wickedness, and have suffered this loss rather than made it: for not everyone who is unworthy of punishment straightway receives the honor he merits, just as not everyone who is unworthy of honor straightway merits punishment.

Conrius replies, chapter 15. First indeed, that Gregory there defines nothing about our controversy, but only says that those who have not received baptism will not have its effect, namely eternal life. Second, that they ought not to be punished with torment on account of that defect committed in not receiving the Sacrament, as they are to be punished who despised or neglected to receive baptism. On the contrary, Gregory manifestly asserts that these little ones are to be touched neither by heavenly glory nor by punishments on account of the loss of baptism, which they suffer involuntarily; and he says the reason why they are not touched by punishments after this life is that they lack wickedness, that is, that they are not culpable by their own iniquity. And therefore Nicetas the ancient, his Commentator, gathers from these words that infants dying without baptism are not to be tortured by the punishment of fire. A middle grade of those, he saith, who feel neither the sweetness of the heavenly kingdom nor are tortured by any punishments: in which also the little ones who have not been washed by baptism shall be placed. The same St. Gregory of Nyssa teaches, Oration 1 On Infants who are snatched away prematurely, near the end, whose words are these:

The untimely death of infants suggests to us that it must not be understood to be with pains and mourning for one who has so ceased to live: nor that he is in equal lot and the same condition with those who have been purged in this life by every virtue.

And the same must be said of adults, if any likewise die with original sin alone: for since their condition is equal to that of infants, the same must be judged concerning the punishment of both. The same truth St. Augustine openly teaches in many places, but especially book 3 De libero arbitrio, chapter 23, where he says:

The unskillful say, what need was there that he should be born, who departed this life before he had entered upon the merit of that life? Or of what sort shall he be accounted in the future judgment, for whom there is a place neither among the just, since he did nothing rightly, nor among the wicked, since he sinned nothing?

To whom it is answered, embracing the whole, that the most orderly connection of the whole creature, whether through places or through times, cannot have been superfluously created, of whatever sort a man may be, wherein not even one leaf of a tree is superfluously created; but indeed it is superfluous to complain of the merits of him who merited nothing. For it must not be feared lest life could be a certain middle thing between a rightly done deed and sin, and the sentence of the Judge cannot be a middle thing between reward and punishment. In which words St. Augustine does not assign some middle place between Heaven and Hell to those dying with original sin alone, but a middle sentence between the reward which is due to those who by their own will have merited something of good, and the punishment which is due to those who by their own will have bred punishment for themselves: wherefore, as Bellarmine says,

little ones dying without baptism shall not be without the punishment common to original and actual sin, whereby the grace of God is lost, which punishment is the privation of the divine vision; but they shall be free from that punishment which is proper to actual sin, which punishment is called of fire, or of sense.

Nor does it matter that in Epistle 28 to Jerome, and in the book De dono perseverantiae, chapters 11 and 12, he says that in that place he did not doubt of the damnation of little ones; but that he was unwilling to touch that question about which there was no contention between himself and the Manichees, against whom he was fighting. That, I say, does not matter: for there he says nothing else was certain to himself than punishment in general, and the damnation of little ones. But it is one thing that their damnation is certain, which is most certain among all Catholics; and another thing concerning the species and quality of the punishment, concerning which there have been various opinions of Catholics hitherto, and concerning which he himself doubted even after the arising of the Pelagian heresy, in many places, as in the same Epistle 28, where he says thus: But when we come to the punishments of little ones, believe me, I am pressed by greater straits, and I find not at all what I should answer. And book 5 contra Iulianum, chapter 11: I do not say, he saith,

that little ones dying without the baptism of Christ are to be punished with so great a punishment that it would rather have been expedient for them not to be born.

And a little after:

Who would doubt that unbaptized little ones, who have original sin alone, shall be in the most light damnation of all? Which, of what sort and how great it shall be, because I cannot define, yet I dare not say that it would be more expedient for them to be nothing than to be there. Certainly it would rather be expedient for them not to be, than to burn in the fire of Hell forever: for who would choose this, if he be wise?

This same truth the supreme Pontiffs taught, and especially Innocent III, as is related book 3 Decret. de baptismo, et eius effectu, chapter maiores. Where, teaching that an adult sleeping or out of his mind is not to be baptized — for he is held to be in baptism whoever would have actual sin together with original — he subjoins this reason of his assertion and resolution: Moreover, he saith,

the punishment of original sin is the privation of the vision of God: but the actual punishment of sin is the everlasting torment of hell: whence if to anyone the first were remitted, the other not remitted, such a one would not be without the vision of God on account of the original remitted, and would be tormented in hell forever on account of the guilt of actual crime: but these, as incompossible things, by no means suffer one another: nay, they are adverse to each other mutually.

In which words the Pontiff openly teaches that no other punishment corresponds to original sin than that very privation of the vision of God: as the punishment of sense and the torments of hell correspond to actual sin; and therefore, since infants are guilty of no actual sin, neither ought they to be tortured by any punishment of sense or of conscience.

Conrius replies, chapter 16. That the Pontiff indeed says truly that the punishment of original sin is the privation of the vision of God; but does not say that this is the sole punishment, nor exclude the punishment of eternal torment: just as, when he says the punishment of actual mortal sin is the torment of everlasting hell — likewise. On the contrary, the Pontiff speaks of one who is at once infected with original sin while actual mortal sin remains habitually in him: and he says that in such a one the former sin cannot be remitted while the latter remains; likewise he speaks of how any remission is made in reality according to the law laid down by God, namely through the infusion of justifying grace, which gives the right to hereditary eternal life. From which it follows that if to anyone having actual mortal sin original sin were remitted through baptism granted to him — as indeed it ought to be remitted, if baptism were to be administered to him; since baptism ought to be administered for no other reason than that of washing away original sin — it would follow, I say, that he would have a right to the vision of God on account of the remission of original sin, and at the same time the debt of lacking it, and of suffering the eternal torment of hell on account of actual sin, which two things are incompossible, as the Pontiff truly says; who, since he sets these two in opposition to each other — namely, that original sin merits the privation of the vision of God, but actual mortal sin merits the everlasting torment of hell — must be understood to mean the first member of this division exclusively: so that the sense is, that original sin merits only that privation, but actual mortal sin merits the ultimate torment of hell: otherwise that division and opposition between these two would be altogether null, and the Pontiff would conclude nothing, if he meant that both original and actual sin merit both punishments. Nor does it matter that for actual mortal sin both these punishments are owed, namely the privation of the vision of God, and the torment of fire and worm. For thence it does not follow that the Pontiff's reasoning is weak; since he argues ad hominem, and demonstrates most excellently against those who contended that baptism ought to be administered to those sleeping or out of their minds who had actual mortal sin, that it ought not to be administered to them; because plainly it would be frustrated of its effect; since it could not remit original sin without the actual mortal sin: but as actual mortal sin was committed by voluntary deliberation, so it must be blotted out by voluntary penance: and since those asleep and out of their minds are incapable of such penance, they are also incapable of receiving baptism: otherwise, as the Pontiff most excellently concludes, if baptism had its effect in them, namely the remission of original sin, without the remission of actual sin, which ought to be washed away by contrition at least virtual, it would follow that a man so baptized would at once become an heir of the heavenly kingdom on account of the original sin remitted, and condemned to the torments of hell on account of the actual, which things being incompossible, the Pontiff rightly gathers that baptism ought not to be conferred upon him; whereby it is manifest how wrongly the glossator, and also certain moderns, have said that the Pontiff's reasoning is superficial.

Likewise Eugenius IV taught in the letters of union with the Greeks, when he defines that the souls of those who depart in actual mortal sin, or in original alone, descend straightway into hell, yet to be punished with unequal punishments; unequal, that is, according to the inequality of sins, so that those who depart in actual mortal sin are punished with the privation of the divine vision, and moreover with sensible punishments of fire and other torments: but those who pass away with original sin alone suffer no sensible punishment whatsoever, but only the punishment of loss, namely the privation of the divine vision. For the Pontiff cannot be understood to speak of an inequality of punishments according to intensity, because in that way even actual sins are punished with unequal punishments.

The Doctor proves this truth in book 2, distinction 32, n. 2, where, having said: This seems to be the opinion of the Masters, that the damned for original sin alone will have no punishment of exterior sense, as fire, he proves it with a threefold reason: the first indeed,

because, he saith, the damned for original sin alone will have no punishment of exterior sense, as fire, who have had no inordinate delectation, to which delectation the bitterness of afflicting fire might correspond as its proper punishment: neither will they have any interior punishment, as sadness, because if they were sad over their state — since sadness, according to St. Augustine, is over those things which happen to us against our will: therefore they would involuntarily sustain their state, and would will the opposite, and thus would murmur against the divine disposition, and thus would have an inordinate disposition of the will, which seems absurd. For the divine sentence is disposed, that wheresoever the tree shall fall, there it shall be, in Ecclesiasticus. Therefore since these have had no inordinate volition in that state, it follows that they will have no interior sadness. Moreover, if they were sad over the privation of beatitude and the divine vision, since they despair of it, because they will have no hope; therefore they would have the gravest punishment among the punishments of all the damned, namely sadness from desperation. It seems also that the punishment of sadness is simply greater to man, as it is distinguished against pain [dolor], than any other punishment of sense: because as the will is more the appetite of man, inasmuch as he is man, than the sensitive appetite: so whatever he does, or suffers, according to the will, he simply does and suffers more inasmuch as he is man, than according to any other appetite; and thus he simply suffers more if he be sad, than if he feel pain: and thus it does not seem that any sadness should be posited in them.

So the Doctor, whose words and opinions it has pleased to transcribe here, that it may appear how wrongly certain men affirm him to have thought otherwise.

The Angelic Doctor proves this same truth with various reasons: First indeed: the punishment of sense corresponds to sin according to conversion to a changeable good; for although such a punishment is owed even to aversion from God found in personal sin, this nevertheless proceeds from the fact that such aversion is not a pure aversion, but partakes somewhat of conversion, because it is voluntary by the act of one's own will, and by reason of this participation the punishment of sense is owed to it: but in original sin there is not a conversion to a changeable good, even by participation, since such sin is not voluntary by the act of one's own will, but only by the will of the head: therefore the punishment of sense is not proportioned to original guilt. Second reason: that guilt which does not render one worthy of vituperation and rebuke, much less renders one worthy of any sensible and positive punishment, since this is sharper and harsher: but through original sin no one becomes worthy of reprehension and vituperation: therefore neither of sensible and positive punishment, or of the torment of eternal fire. The major is evident: the minor is proved from Augustine, book De duabus animabus, chapter 11, where he openly teaches that He who did not do what He could cannot be worthy of any reprehension; and he subjoins that this is so known and perspicuous to everyone, that Pastors chant it in the mountains, and Poets in the theaters, and the unlearned in circles, the learned in libraries, and Masters in schools, and High Priests in sacred places, and mankind in the whole orb of the earth. But infants have contracted original sin in such wise that they could not fail to contract it: therefore according to the mind of St. Augustine they are worthy of no rebuke or reprehension. So Gonetius after St. Thomas. I add that the sin of origin does not take away in man the natural order, but the supernatural, namely conversion to God through the gift of grace, which is of the supernatural order. It is just, therefore, that the punishment corresponding to original sin be only the privation of a supernatural good, such as the lack of the vision of God; and not the infliction of sensible punishment, whereby the creature serves God as vindicator and avenger, to punish that natural disordination which the sinner actually caused in the nature of things, using creatures against the prescription and glory of God. Moreover the Church, in enjoining due satisfaction and punishment for sins, imitates the order and manner of divine Justice in punishing offenses: but the Church imposes no positive punishment on account of original sin; therefore it is a sign that neither does divine justice inflict any sensible punishment on account of it.

The Assertors of the contrary opinion object 1. various texts of Scripture, by which they strive to prove that little ones are to be tortured with eternal fire and punishment together with those sinning actually. First indeed, that of Matthew 25, wherein the universal Judgment is described, to which all Gentiles are said to be gathered; and one part of them to be stationed at the right hand, and the nobler place, the other truly at the left, or baser; and those at the right are to be called into the kingdom; but to those who will be at the left the Judge shall say: Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire: but little ones passing away with original sin are not at the right hand, nor to be called into the kingdom: therefore they are to be stationed at the left, and thrust into eternal fire with the other reprobate. It is confirmed from the same St. Matthew, chapter 13, where, the parables having been premised — of the wheat to be gathered into the barn, and the cockle to be cast into the fire, and of the net cast into the sea gathering good and bad fishes — Christ infers: So shall it be at the consummation of the world: the Angels shall go out, and shall separate the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire, where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth: which are signs of a most grievous punishment of sense and remorse of conscience: but little ones dying without baptism are not to be reckoned among the just: therefore they are to be placed with the wicked and sinners, and with them cast into the furnace of fire. Moreover, from the same chapter 3, the Precursor of Christ the Lord, speaking of Him as the future Judge, saith: Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly cleanse his floor; and will gather his wheat into the barn; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire: but little ones dying without baptism are not grains to be brought into the barn: therefore they are to be fuel of the unquenchable fire to come. I deny all these consequences; and to the first text I say with St. Augustine, book Contra Donatistas, chapter 4, and book De Fide, et operibus, chapter 15, and elsewhere, that by those words of Matthew there is described chiefly the form of the future judgment of those who lived in the Church; and therefore the aforesaid words do not regard little ones dying with original sin, inasmuch as they lived nowhere in the Church. Nor does it matter that in the same chapter it is read: All Gentiles shall be gathered before him: for often in Scripture the word all is used for the far greater part, such as the multitude of adults in respect of infants; in which sense St. Paul, 2 to the Corinthians 5, saith: We must all be manifested before the tribunal of Christ, that everyone may render the things proper to his body, according as he hath done, whether it be good or evil. But little ones cannot render the good or evil works proper to their body, since they have elicited none at all: and therefore that word all does not regard them, but only adults. — That this, however, is the genuine evangelical sense, appears from the text: both because the Lord there compares the good and the wicked to sheep and goats, which are numbered in the same flock of the same shepherd: but it is evident that the flock of Christ the good Shepherd is none other than the Church, in which indeed there are good and wicked, but all baptized and faithful; while all the unbaptized are excluded; and therefore those infants who pass from the living with original sin: and because those stationed at the left shall hear the sentence of the Judge thundering against them, Go into everlasting fire; they shall hear also the cause of their damnation, namely that they did not do works of mercy toward the poor, the Judge saying, For I was hungry, and you gave me not to eat, &c. But the little ones of whom we speak can neither be judged nor damned on account of those omitted works of mercy: hence that sentence of the Judge, Go into everlasting fire, does not regard them. Finally, because this very thing St. Augustine openly teaches in the places soon to be praised: for in book De fide, et operibus, chapter 15, he saith: Therefore he saith he will separate all the Gentiles which shall have pastured mixed together in the same pastures, that it may appear they shall say to him: Lord, when saw we thee suffering this and that, and did not minister to thee? They who believed in him, but cared not to work good works. And in book Contra Donatistas: We shall act, he saith, so that the cause and person of the cockle may not prejudice the cause and person of the wheat: although they be threshed together in the same floor, until they be separated by the last winnowing: so that the cause and person of the goats may not prejudice the cause and person of the sheep: although the mixed flocks be kept in common pastures, until by the supreme Shepherd in the last judgment some be separated to the left, others to the right: so that the cause and person of the bad fishes may not prejudice the cause and person of the good fishes, although they be held within the same nets, to be separated on the extreme shore, that is, at the end of the sea, which signifies the end of the world: by which parables and figures the Church was foretold as about to have good and wicked together until the end of the world. Therefore, according to the opinion of St. Augustine, the formula of the judgment described by Matthew does not regard all men whatsoever, but only adults. — Hereby is manifest the easy solution of both texts alleged in confirmation; since by the floor, the net, the field, is signified not the universe, in which all men dwell, but the Church alone, in which the faithful act.

The adversaries urge, that if that passage of Matt. 20 [25] is understood not so much of little ones stained with sin as of adults, it will follow that it can in no wise be gathered from Scripture that they are to be stationed at the left, to be judged and damned: since neither do the Councils decree it, nor does Scripture elsewhere make mention of a separation of those to be judged into two parts, right and left. The minor, they say, cannot be denied salva fide: for all men whatsoever must be stationed before Christ the Judge in the general Judgment, to be judged. — I answer 1. by denying the minor: for Catholic Doctors are not wanting who affirm that those little ones will be present at that universal judgment, not indeed to be judged, since they have done nothing of good or evil that should come into judgment, but only to assist at the rendering of judgment, and to exhibit honor to Christ, as Abulensis teaches, question 323, on the preface of the Matthew chapter: or as St. Thomas affirms in I. dist. 47. q. 1. art. 3. ad 3: Children dying before the perfect age are to be present at the judgment, not to be judged, but to see the glory of the Judge. — I answer 2. that even if those children should be present at the judgment to be judged, thence it does not follow that they are to be placed at the left or right; for it can be said that they are to be stationed in a certain middle place, just as their state is middle between the good and the wicked, who are to be judged concerning their own acts.

Objection 2. That passage of Apoc. 20, where it is said: I saw a great and white throne, and one sitting upon it, and from his face heaven and earth fled away, and the rest of the dead great and small standing in the sight of the throne, and books were opened, and the book of life was opened, and he who was not found in it was cast into the pool of fire: but an unbaptized little one is not found in the book of life: therefore he is cast into the pool of fire. — I answer that that passage of the Apocalypse, as it is customarily alleged by the Adversaries, is not proved by right faith, but is truncated and mutilated; for after the words alleged in the objection, And another book was opened, which is of life: there is subjoined: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books according to their works, and the sea gave up the dead that were in it: and death and hell delivered up their dead that were in them: and judgment was made of each one according to his works: whereby it is evident that John speaks only of adults to be judged according to their works good or evil: and concerning these same he afterwards adds, and whosoever of them was not found written in the book of life was cast into the pool of fire. Moreover, in the following chapter, the reward of the victors having been premised, the Apostle declares whom he had said to have been cast into the pool of fire, namely the fearful, unbelieving, murderers, &c. Nor does it stand in the way that he says there that the great and the small are to be judged: since John there understands the small not by age or stature, but by dignity and rank; that is, vile and abject men, such as servants, rustics, and handmaids; for he soon subjoins there that those small, equally with the great, are to be judged according to the works of each: and therefore by the small he does not understand infants, but only plebeian men. Hence Apoc. 19, inviting the birds to devour the flesh of the free and of servants, he adds, of the small and of the great: as if he said of plebeians and of nobles or princes.

Objection 3. Various contexts of St. Augustine: First indeed from Sermon 14 De verbis Domini (sic), where he openly affirms little ones dying without baptism to be going into eternal fire, according to that sentence of the Lord, Go ye cursed, &c.; and he grants that the damnation of the said little ones does not consist in that exclusion alone from the kingdom of Heaven, without all pain and molestation: and thus that it is not only true damnation, which the Pelagians denied, but also the damnation of fire; The Lord will come, he saith there, chapter 3, and will judge of the living and the dead, and, as Frangellim? speaks, he will make two parts, the right and the left: to the left he shall say, that they go into eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his Angels: to the right he shall say, Come ye blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom, &c. This he names the kingdom, that the damnation with the devil: no middle place is left where thou mightest place infants, &c. And chapter 4: Then these shall drink into everlasting combustion: but the just into life everlasting: Behold he hath set forth to thee, what the kingdom is, and what eternal fire: so that although thou confessest the little one shall not be in the kingdom, thou shouldst confess him to be going into eternal fire. And a little after: He terrified them with the threat that they shall be in everlasting fire, whither without doubt they shall go, if they are not corrected; but he terrified them so much only because they shall not be in the kingdom, that when they saw themselves to lose the hope of the kingdom, they might not see anything else to follow except the punishment of eternal fire. Moreover, from the same St. Augustine: they who shall not rise with a glorious body shall suffer eternal punishments: but little ones passing away with original sin shall not so rise: therefore, etc. The antecedent is proved from book 6 Contra Iulianum, the chapter where he saith: But in those who shall not rise unto life, concupiscence shall be not felicitously, but penally; not because then shall anyone be cleansed from it: but because then it shall yield to the wicked not into delectations, but into torments. And in Epistle 146, which is to Consentius: Therefore, he saith, those who shall rise to judgment shall not be changed into that corruption which can suffer no corruption of pain, for that is of the sons and of the saints: but these shall be tormented with perpetual corruption, because their fire shall not be extinguished, and their worm shall not die. — The Seraphic Doctor answers, and with him the Subtle Doctor, art. 1. q. 1. ad 1, that Augustine in those words does not intend to say that little ones are tormented sensibly; but he intends to manifest their punishment as to the privation of the vision of God, and also as to the vileness of place, and he expresses this very abundantly, saying more, and intending less to be understood. Nor does he speak thus without cause: for this serves to extirpate that heresy which said that little ones are punished with no punishment. Whence as it is taught in morals, that he who wishes to arrive from one extreme at the middle ought, as it were, to incline toward the other extreme, as the Philosopher teaches; so also blessed Augustine, that he might extirpate that heresy which said little ones immune from all punishment, and reduce them to the middle, namely to the punishment of the privation of the vision of God, asserted simply that they are damned eternally with other sinners. But he explained this his meaning in the Enchiridion, where he said their punishment to be most mild. Thus St. Bonaventure. — The Subtle Doctor adds that much weight is to be given to the consideration against which heretics the Holy Fathers had the matter in hand; for wishing to extinguish the heresies springing up, they inclined to the other extreme; as Augustine against Arius seems to incline toward Sabellius, and conversely: likewise acting against Pelagius he seems to incline toward Arius (I think it should be written Manicheus) and conversely. — In a similar manner St. Thomas answers in 2. d. 33. q. 2. art. 1. ad 1, and q. 5 De malo art. 2. ad 1, where he says that the name of torment, fire, punishment, hell, torture, or anything similar, in the sayings of St. Augustine and of the other Holy Fathers, is sometimes to be taken in a wide sense for punishment generically; so that the species is put for the genus, and therefore the Saints used this manner of speaking so as to render detestable the error of the Pelagians, who asserted that there is no sin in little ones, nor any punishment owed to them. The same solution the weightier Theologians each and all hand down: Aureolus, Richard of Mediavilla, John Major on the same distinction 33, and Tostatus in the Defensorium, chapter 18.

The Notators of the Dogmatists respond, that to assert that St. Augustine and the other Holy Fathers disputing against heretics sometimes spoke excessively, is the same as to say they were accustomed to lie, that they might recall lying heretics to the truth; and thus by their example and deed approved the heresy of the Priscillianists, which asserted that lying is sometimes licit. How greatly St. Augustine execrated this is evident from his book to Consentius. — But truly I answer that one can be understood to speak excessively in a twofold manner: First indeed knowingly, that is, asserting something against his own mind which would be altogether alien from the truth: secondly unknowingly, and beside his mind, speaking indeed as he felt, but carried away by the heat of disputation sometimes declining to the other extreme. The first is to lie, and to go against one's mind: for he lies who speaks against his mind, whether he say what is true in reality, or what is false. The second truly is to be deceived; for he is deceived who says that to be which is not, or that not to be which is: even if he speak as he feels, and therefore does not lie. In the first manner the Holy Fathers fighting against heretics did not speak, inasmuch as they judged that they were always saying what is true: but that it befell them in the second manner the cited Princes of Theology affirm, and also very many moderns, with Cardinal Sadoleto book 3. Epist. 5, Genebrard epist. to Charles 9, Claude de Sainctes Bishop of Évreux in the book on the Atheisms of Calvin, &c., some of whom, besides the sayings of St. Augustine, confirm it with examples of many others, as of St. Jerome, who, writing in defense of Virginity against Julian, spoke more harshly concerning second marriages; St. Chrysostom, who, writing against the Anomoeans, seems to deny that God is to be beheld in Himself by the Blessed; Dionysius of Alexandria, who, wishing to confute Sabellius, inveighed so sharply against his heresy that he seemed to some to have divided the divine essence from the persons, and to have furnished Arius matter for his heresy: by which name also he was accused before St. Dionysius the Pope. Epiphanius the Deacon confirms this same concerning the cult of sacred images in the second Nicene Synod, act 6; and he adds generally that our holy Fathers, who expound to us the saving will of God, were accustomed to teach us the observance of the commandments by way of exaggeration; and to prepare hearers toward that commandment at which their scope tends, and to extol and magnify it. Theodoret confirms this matter with an example adduced, tom. 4. pag. 170, where he says the Holy Fathers often declined to the contrary part when they joined battle against the enemies of the Church. The very thing happens also to husbandmen, cultivators of plants: who, when they see some plant bending awry, not only erect it to the straight rule; but even bend it beyond the straight line toward the other part, that from a more vehement inclination to the contrary it may be brought to an upright state.

Objection 4. Little ones are punished in this life with punishment of sense: therefore also in the other. The antecedent is established by the very experience, whereby we see little ones brought into this light subject to all the miseries of the present life. But the consequence is proved: if little ones after death were immune from punishment of sense, it would follow that they are of better condition in the other life than in the present: but the consequent seems absurd. — It is confirmed: little ones beyond the punishment of loss in the other life suffer also the punishment of the prison, since they will be detained in the pool of fire: again, they will be servants of the devil and of sin; for Christ saith, John 8: He that com-mitteth sin is the servant of sin, which must be understood not only of actual sin, but also of original, as Trent teaches, session 5: that man at once lost the sanctity and justice in which he had been constituted, and incurred through the offense of the transgressor of this sort the wrath and indignation of God: and therefore death, with which God had before threatened him, and with death captivity under his power, who afterwards had the empire of death, that is, of the devil, &c., let him be anathema: but little ones are not freed from this servitude in this life, when they depart in the state of original sin: therefore neither in the other; and therefore beyond the punishments of loss and of the prison, they will have also the punishment of a most infamous servitude; they will live, namely, forever under the dominion of the devil, and consequently beyond the punishment of loss they will pay other punishments. — I answer to the first, distinguishing the antecedent: little ones are punished in this life with punishment of sense per se, I deny: per accidens, I concede; for death and the other corporal miseries of human nature are not punishments strictly per se for original guilt; but only the lack of original justice, which bestowed immortality and impassibility; and forthwith, that being removed, it is no wonder if death and temporal and corporal miseries overflow into the whole human race as appendices of nature itself. But since in the other life nothing is done by the power of nature, but according to the order of divine justice, whether in the soul or in the body; it does not follow, that if miseries pervade all men in this life per accidens and by reason of infirm nature, therefore also some corporal punishments ought to torture them in the other life; since in the other life nothing is done except by divine ordination: but it is not established that God has ordained those sensible punishments for mulcting original sin alone. Whence, in proof of the consequence, I deny the major: for although little ones in the other life suffer no punishment of sense, thence it does not follow that they are of better condition than they are in the present: for it far excels, with corporal miseries to have some hope of enjoying God, than to be without those miseries with desperation of that divine fruition. — To the confirmation I say that those little ones will be under the power of the devil so far as they will be deprived of supernatural beatitude, and will have the punishment of loss; but thence it does not follow that they will suffer any sensible molestation, interior or exterior; since those punishments are only appendices of actual sin.

Objection 5. Adam by sinning incurred not only the punishment of loss but also the punishment of sense: but he transfuses to posterity every punishment which he himself merited by sinning: therefore little ones passing away with original sin become subject to both punishments. — I deny the minor: for although the whole sin of Adam is transfused to posterity, it does not however inhere in them physically as perpetrated by their own will, or admitted or accepted by actual and personal consent: but only morally, inasmuch as what was done by Adam, as head of all and representing the person of all, is held to have been done by all posterity morally existing in him. Wherefore that sin has not the same mode of existing, nor the same condition; but one far different in Adam and in posterity: and therefore it does not follow that it ought to have in them the same punishment, and beyond the privation of grace and glory to have annexed the punishment of eternal fire: for punishment ought to be proportioned to guilt, according to Isaiah 27: In measure against measure when it shall be cast into her: but the defect which is transmitted by origin, having the character of guilt, since it is only a subtraction of a supernatural good, not however of a natural good, therefore merits no other punishment than the privation of that end toward which the supernatural good subtracted ordered.

Objection 6. Christ suffered grievous torments on account of original sin: therefore there corresponds also to this sin the punishment of sense. — I deny the consequence; for Christ suffered those punishments not only on account of original sin, but also on account of actual, signally of Adam and Eve, to whom the punishment of sense corresponded. Further, if original sin merited any punishment of sense, it can be said that it could be remitted and compensated through the death and sensible punishments endured by Christ the Lord unto that end: for debts can be variously compensated, as when satisfaction for a debt of money is made through services; and therefore even if the punishment of sense had been in some degree owed to original sin, thence it does not follow that little ones are now subject to it.

Objection 7. He who departs from the living with original sin ought to undergo a graver punishment than he who, created in the state of pure nature, would depart in the same: but the latter would incur the punishment of loss; since he would be deprived of eternal felicity: therefore the former beyond the punishment of loss ought to be adjudged to others, and therefore he ought to pay punishments of sense. — I distinguish the major with the Doctor, d. 38. q. 2. n. 1: he ought to suffer something graver which in both would have the character of punishment, I deny; that he would have only the character of punishment in him who is infected with sin, it concedes. For although man dying in the state of pure nature would lack forever the vision of God: nevertheless that lack would not inhere in him after the manner of a punishment, since it would not inhere in him by reason of sin. Which the Doctor indeed explains with this evident example: if someone had in mind to bestow some benefit upon two men, and one of them offended his benefactor, on account of which offense he would revoke his will of conferring the benefit upon both; in this hypothesis each would be defrauded of the benefit, yet under a diverse aspect: for he who had not offended would not be deprived of that favor on account of demerit: but on account of the good pleasure of him who had promised, and who no longer has in mind to confer the benefit upon him: whence, saith the Doctor, these would be unequal in that aspect of privation; for one would be deprived because guilty; the other truly not so. The same must be said in the present case.

Objection finally: Venial sin is far lighter than original: but the former is punished with the punishment of sense in the other life: therefore much more is original to be punished with a similar punishment. — I distinguish the major: Venial is lighter than original as to the guilt of fault, which corresponds to aversion from God and the privation of grace, I concede: as to the guilt of punishment which corresponds to voluntary conversion to creatures through inordinate delectation, I deny. And the minor denied, the consequent likewise must be distinguished: since the punishment of sense corresponds to one's own will, and to conversion and inordinate delectation, it is no wonder if venial sin be punished in the other life with punishment of sense, but original only with the punishment of loss.

You ask 1. What should be thought concerning the state of little ones passing from this life with original sin, namely whether they have any pain from the loss of eternal beatitude?

The Seraphic Doctor answered, dist. 33. q. 2, that although little ones have cognition of the lost beatitude, they will nevertheless be affected with no actual pain and no mourning, which he proves thus: «For those departing, he saith, in original alone hold as it were a middle place between those having grace, and those with actual guilt: and since the state of retribution ought to respond to the state of the present life, the souls of little ones ought to be placed in such a state, that they hold as it were a middle place between the blessed and those tortured with eternal fires. Since therefore the blessed lack the evil of sensible punishment, and therewith have the vision of God, while the damned on the contrary are in darkness, and are punished with sensible punishment: little ones, according to the right order of divine equity, ought to communicate in one with the damned, and in the other with the blessed: but they cannot communicate with the blessed in having the divine presence; because then they would communicate in nothing with the damned. For the presence of the vision of God does not stand together with sensible punishment: therefore they communicate with the blessed in this, that they lack all exterior or interior affliction: but with the damned in this, that they are deprived of the vision of God and of corporeal light. Little ones therefore, constituted by the just divine judgment as it were in the middle between the blessed and those simply wretched, know this, yet so that on the one side consideration generates desolation, on the other consolation: thus their cognition and affection are balanced with equal scale by divine judgment, and are perpetuated in such a state, that neither sadness casts them down, nor joy refreshes them: but herein the admirable order of divine Wisdom is shown forth, whereby she knows how to dispose all things in their places, and to order them to her glory. For as mercy is manifested chiefly in the blessed, and justice shines forth chiefly in the damned, so in these both mercy and justice are at once manifested. And hence it is clear that God does not make in vain souls which He knows will go out from the body before the reception of baptism. For God does all things unto the manifestation of His glory. — Therefore divine equity and immutability will consolidate them perpetually in the same state, both as to body and as to soul, whether as regards the cognitive part or the affective, so that they neither advance nor fall short: neither rejoice nor are sad: but remain always thus uniformly, that they may be matter for praising the divine judgment, which is so equitable and just, that no good remains unrewarded, and no evil unpunished, and most perfectly holds the middle between superfluous and diminished». Thus the Seraphic Doctor.

You ask 2. In what place will little ones dwell after the universal judgment, and what will be their exercise and occupation?

I answer that it seems more probable that they are to be shut up in certain subterranean places; for in those things which depend altogether upon the divine will, nothing is to be asserted except what God Himself has revealed through the Scriptures, or made known by sacred tradition, or the holy Fathers have taught by constant authority, or Councils have defined: but by none of these is it established that a middle place between heaven and hell is to be assigned to little ones after the last animadversion of the supreme Judge upon the reprobate: nay, the sacred Scriptures signify no more than two abodes of men after the day of the last judgment: one indeed in heaven with the blessed Angels, the other in hell with the demons; which are also the two cities, namely Jerusalem, and Babylon. And this St. Augustine testifies with very many witnesses: but especially book 1 De peccatorum meritis, et remissione, where he saith: «Nor is there any middle place for anyone, so that he could be otherwise than with the devil, who is not with Christ. Hence the Lord Himself, wishing to take away from the hearts of ill-believers that I know not what middle state which certain men were eager to attribute to unbaptized little ones, so that they should be in life eternal as it were by the merit of innocence, but because they are not baptized should not be with Christ in His kingdom, brought forth the definitive sentence to stop these mouths, where he saith: he who is not with me is against me». And Sermon 11 De verbis Domini, not far from the beginning: «No one, he saith, is left a middle place, where thou mightest place infants. Of the living and the dead judgment shall be made; some shall be at the right, others at the left; I know no other. If therefore there shall be a right and a left, and we know no middle place in the Gospel, behold, at the right is the kingdom of heaven. Possess, he saith, the kingdom: what is not there, is at the left. What shall be at the left? Go ye into eternal fire». — The Author of the Hypognosticon, who is either Augustine or another, ancient and learned by the consensus of all, book 5, beyond the middle: «The first place, he saith, the faith of Catholics believed by divine authority to be the kingdom of the heavens, whence, as I said, the unbaptized is excluded: the second, gehenna, where every apostate, or one alien from the faith of Christ, shall experience eternal punishments. A third we know not at all; nay, we shall not find it to be in the Holy Scriptures. Suppose, O Pelagian, a place from the workshop of thy perverse dogma, where little ones alien from the grace of Christ could possess the rest and glory of life». — But although they be thrust down in tortuous fashion into the internal places, and inhabit the uppermost part of the fire of hell, as some conjecture with the Angelic Doctor: thence nevertheless it is not consequent that they should be agitated by any punishment of sense, on account of the reasons expressed above. Although likewise their will is habitually averted from God: nevertheless it will be so actually rectified that they will nowhere pray, as is to be gathered from the following article from three Pontiffs condemned among the propositions of Baius. «From the habitual dominant will it comes about that a little one departing without the Sacrament of regeneration, when he shall have attained the use of reason, will actually hate God, blaspheme God, and repugn the law of God». — More probable indeed, I said, these things seem to us; for Authors of greater weight are not wanting who think more benignly concerning the state of these infants, namely Catharinus, Suarez, our own Smisinegius, tract. 3 De Deo uno, disp. 6. n. 399, and Lessius book 3 De divinis perfectionibus, chapter 22, where he indeed brought forth various things which, if they be true, the state of those infants will not so much be to be mourned. For he thinks that they will receive the sentence of the Judge, but a benign one, and will be heaped with natural goods both in body and in soul; and therefore will have illustrious knowledge not only of the whole Universe, but also of spiritual things, and even of God Himself, whose perpetual praisers and lovers they will be: whence he concludes it to be credible that their state will be far more felicitous than that of any mortal man in this life. But all these things are most uncertain; therefore to be believed with the less certainty.