Scotus Academicus, Tomus decimus: De Baptismo, De Poenitentia, De Extrema Unctione

From the preceding Disputation it is already quite clear that the ordinary minister and subject of baptism, as of the other sacraments, is only a human being in the wayfaring state. For since the sacraments are medicines for souls, they can benefit neither the dead nor those who are perfectly healthy; hence they are considered to have been instituted neither for the damned nor for the Blessed who have already reached their final state, but only for human wayfarers, for whom salvation still shines forth. Therefore, by a just and wholly wise divine ordinance, it came to pass that mortal human beings alone should assist mortal human beings through the benefit and ministry of the sacraments. Accordingly, it remains only to determine here who are capable both of administering and of receiving baptism; this we shall indeed explain in the four following Questions.

NOTE 1. Baptism can be administered in two ways: first, solemnly, with all the public rites and ecclesiastical ceremonies customarily employed, when Baptism is publicly conferred by the ministers of the Church; second, without any solemnity, that is, with all ceremonies omitted and only those things employed that are essential to the valid conferral of the Sacrament. Moreover, Baptism can be conferred either in a case of urgent necessity, namely, when danger of death is imminent, or outside a case of necessity, when the person to be baptized is in sound health. Hence two kinds of ministers of the Sacrament can be distinguished: one for solemnity, the other for necessity. Again, among those who administer Baptism solemnly, one may be an ordinary minister, to whom baptizing belongs by his proper office; the other an extraordinary minister, who has this faculty by virtue of his status and delegation. The question, then, is who is a fit minister to confer Baptism solemnly and outside a case of necessity, or without solemnity when necessity is urgent.

NOTE 2. In the administration of the Sacraments, as in many human acts, it is one thing for something to be done validly and another for it to be done licitly. The first concerns the substance of the thing said to be done validly, so that it remains whole and composed of all its parts, without regard to whether the person performing it incurs sin or not. The second concerns the conscience of the person acting, so that the person who carries out the act does not merely perform it as required for it to be whole and perfect in itself, but also performs it in the due manner prescribed by the superior who orders how such a thing is to be done. Here, however, the question concerns both ways of conferring Baptism: whether absolutely all people, whether faithful or unfaithful, are entitled to baptize not only validly but also licitly, both when necessity is urgent and outside a case of necessity.

NOTE 3. Although Lutherans agree with Catholics that any private member of the faithful, even a woman, can baptize in a case of necessity not only validly but also licitly—as Hunnius expressly teaches in his little work On the Sacraments, chapter On Baptism, where he says this is also an article of the Augsburg Confession—the Calvinists nevertheless disagree, along with their heresiarch. In book 1 of the Institutes, chapter 15, although he does not state his view so openly as to make clear whether he speaks only of what is licit or also of what is valid, he acts as though he wished only ministers of the divine Word, pastors of the Church lawfully called, to be able to baptize validly. And if his mind and intention are to be sought from Beza himself, it will be clear that this is so. For in his book Questions and Answers on the Sacraments, question 140, when asked about Baptism administered by private persons not exercising ministry, he replies that it should be considered no more important than whatever a private person might do at will in the name of a king or a republic, or than a play. Yet it is clear enough that what a private person did at will in the name of the king or republic would be null, and not merely illicit, for lack of authority received from it to do so; the same is true of what is merely a play. Hence Beza himself also impudently says, in question 144 of On the Sacraments, that he prefers Baptism conferred by Satan and the devil pretending to be a minister of the divine Word to Baptism conferred by a woman or a private member of the faithful.

First conclusion. — EVERY WAYFARING HUMAN BEING WHO HAS THE USE OF REASON CAN ALWAYS BAPTIZE VALIDLY, AND, IF NECESSITY IS URGENT, CAN ALSO BAPTIZE LICITLY, PRIVATELY AND WITHOUT SOLEMNITY. This is a matter of faith, defined at the Fourth Lateran Council under Innocent III and reported in the chapter Firmiter, where it is decreed: The Sacrament of Baptism, duly conferred by anyone according to the form of the Church, profits both infants and adults for salvation.

The Council of Florence made this definition more explicit and renewed it in the Decree of Eugene, where we read this concerning the minister of Baptism: The minister of this Sacrament is a priest, whose office it is to baptize. In a case of necessity, however, not only a priest or deacon, but also a layman and a woman, indeed even a pagan and a heretic, can baptize, provided that he or she observes the form of the Church and intends to do what the Church does.

We shall speak of the priest and deacon in the next conclusion. Isidore teaches plainly about pagans and unbelievers, as reported in Distinction 1, On Consecration, chapter 23, in these words: The Roman Pontiff judges not the man who baptizes, but the Spirit of God supplies the grace of Baptism, even if the one baptizing is a pagan. Nicholas I teaches the same in his letter To the Bulgarians’ Questions, chapter 104, as reported in the following chapter of the same work, where we read: You say that many in your country were baptized by a certain Jew, and you do not know whether he was a Christian or a pagan; you ask what should be done about them. If indeed they were baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity, or only in the name of Christ, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles, it is clear that they are not to be baptized again. As for heretics, what we said in the preceding Disputation already establishes sufficiently that Baptism conferred by heretics is valid.

Moreover, St. Jerome consistently teaches that Baptism conferred by anyone in due form is valid, in his Dialogue Against the Luciferians, chapter 4, as does St. Augustine in book 2 of Against Parmenian, chapter 13, where he says: If some layman, compelled by necessity, has given Baptism to someone at the point of death—as he had learned it must be given when he himself received it—I do not know whether anyone could piously say it should be repeated. If it is done when no necessity compels it, it is an usurpation of another’s office; but if necessity is urgent, it is either no offense or a venial one. Yet even if it is usurped without any necessity, and anyone gives it to anyone, what has been given cannot be said not to have been given, although it can rightly be called illicitly given.

Tertullian had preceded them in book On Baptism, chapter 17. After saying that the office of baptizing belongs equally first to bishops, then to presbyters, and afterward to deacons, but not to laymen, he adds, addressing a layman: Let it be enough, of course, for you to use this in cases of necessity, whenever the condition of place, time, or person compels it. For the steadfastness of one who comes to another’s aid is accepted when the peril of the one at risk is urgent; otherwise he will be guilty of the loss of a person if he refrains from providing what he could freely have provided.

YOU WILL OBJECT 1. Calvin: Only those can baptize validly to whom the Lord Christ granted the faculty of baptizing. But he gave it only to ministers of the divine Word lawfully called, both because, when the Lord Christ commands Baptism to be conferred in Matthew’s final chapter, he addresses only the Apostles and their successors, and because there he joins the preaching of the divine Word to the administration of Baptism, saying, Go, teach all nations. — I answer, granting the major premise and distinguishing the minor: the Lord Christ gave the faculty of baptizing publicly and solemnly only to the Apostles and ministers of the divine Word, I grant; privately and in a case of necessity, I deny. As for the proof, I say that in that passage the Lord Christ did not give the Apostles the simple power to baptize, which they already possessed and exercised before the Passion, when they were not yet priests or bishops; rather, since they were already bishops, he gave them a special command and at the same time conferred on them the primary right to preach the Gospel publicly and solemnly and to administer Baptism.

YOU WILL OBJECT 2. The decree of the Fourth Council of Carthage, chapter 100: A woman, however learned and holy, must not presume to teach men in an assembly or to baptize anyone. Tertullian likewise teaches in several places that Baptism is forbidden to women, especially in book On Veiling Virgins, chapter 9; book On Prescriptions Against Heretics, chapter 42; and book On Baptism, chapter 17, where he says: The audacity of women who have usurped the right to teach does not thereby also gain for them the right to baptize. — I answer that both the Council and Tertullian proscribe and condemn the audacity and presumption of certain women, especially Marcionists, who usurped the office of baptizing even outside a case of necessity—not only privately, but solemnly as well. Hence, in the passage cited above from On Veiling Virgins, he says: A woman is not permitted to speak in the Church, nor to teach, nor to baptize, nor to offer, nor to claim for herself any part in a man’s office, much less in a priestly office.

YOU WILL OBJECT 3. Gregory II, in his letter to Bishop Boniface, reported in On Consecration, Distinction 1, chapter 52, says: Those whom you said were baptized by pagans, if this is so, we command you to baptize again in the name of the Trinity. Moreover, St. Augustine, in book 2 of Against Parmenian’s Letter, chapter 13, doubts whether Baptism can be given by those who have never been Christians, and answers: Nothing should be rashly affirmed about this without the authority of so great a Council as is sufficient for so great a matter. Finally, in Canon 38 of the Council of Elvira, only those who have been baptized are permitted to baptize, and a bigamist is forbidden to baptize in a case of necessity. For it says: Travelers at sea, or those for whom no church is nearby, may baptize a catechumen placed in danger of illness, if they are faithful, have their own baptism intact, and are not bigamists. Therefore not everyone can baptize validly even in a case of necessity. —

I deny the consequence. As for Gregory II, I say he is speaking of people baptized in a pagan rite, not in the rite of the Church, as the Gloss observes on the aforesaid chapter 52, Distinction 4. The Pontiff himself indicates this as well, for he says there: Anyone who has been baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit must not be baptized again. — As for St. Augustine, I say he does not call into doubt whether Baptism conferred by laymen in a case of necessity is valid. Although he does not dare openly to affirm that it is valid if conferred by someone who has not been baptized, he does not absolutely deny it either; indeed, if he were alive now, he would affirm it expressly. For he says it should not be asserted with certainty without the authority of a Council; but we have the clear authority of the Council of Florence affirming it, and so St. Augustine would now defend that truth along with us. — As for the canon of the Council of Elvira, I say that it means only that in a case of necessity someone who is unbaptized and a bigamist ought not to administer Baptism in the presence of a baptized person who is not a bigamist. Otherwise that Baptism would be illicit and administered sinfully, but it would not on that account be invalid.

Second conclusion. — THE ORDINARY MINISTER FOR CONFERRING BAPTISM SOLEMNLY OR PRIVATELY OUTSIDE A CASE OF NECESSITY IS THE PRIEST ALONE, WHETHER A BISHOP OR A PARISH PRIEST; A DELEGATED MINISTER, HOWEVER, CAN BE ANY PRIEST, AND EVEN A DEACON. Tertullian plainly teaches this in book On Baptism, chapter 7, where he says: The supreme priest, who is the bishop, has the power to give Baptism; next come presbyters and deacons, but not without the bishop’s authority, out of respect for the Church. The Council of Florence also declares this truth in the words cited in the preceding conclusion. So does St. Isidore, in book 2 of On the Offices, chapter 24, and it is reported in On Consecration, Distinction 3, chapter 9¹, where he writes: It is established that Baptism is to be administered by priests alone, and that even deacons are not permitted to perform its rite without a bishop or priest, unless the final necessity of illness compels them when these are far away.

Moreover, the Doctor offers an apt reason for this assertion in Distinction 6, question 1, number 3. Having said, It is fitting that among wayfarers only a priest baptize, and it belongs to a priest alone by virtue of his office, he adds: The reason is that by Baptism the baptized person is received into the fellowship of the Church militant. But receiving someone into a fellowship belongs to the president and one who has authority in that fellowship; therefore, the greater someone’s authority in the Church, the more it would belong to him to receive and introduce people into the Church and, consequently, to baptize. Hence it would belong more to a bishop than to a simple priest, if bishops could suffice; but because bishops are few and those to be baptized many, it is ordinarily granted to all priests. This opinion of the Doctor, which asserts that by virtue of office the faculty of baptizing belongs to all priests, is to be understood, as Hyquaeus aptly observes in his commentary on this passage, number 19, with respect to capacity, and in a case of necessity with respect to the effect or office. Or the distribution is to be understood of individual kinds, with respect to those who have authority over their own district by pastoral care, by the parish priest’s grant, or by the bishop’s authority. For in practice this ministry is now assigned only to priests: a bishop who performs it is rare, except as a privilege for some person such as a prince or a noble.

YOU WILL ASK: What order is to be observed among the ministers of the Sacrament of Baptism?

I ANSWER, with the Catechism of the Council of Trent, part II, title On the Minister of Baptism, that there are three ranks among them: first, bishops and priests are to be placed in the first rank, since they have been given this office to exercise by their own right, not by some extraordinary power. For the Lord commanded this to the Apostles: “Go, baptize.” Although bishops, so as not to be compelled to abandon their more important care of teaching the people, have been accustomed to leave the ministry of Baptism to priests. That priests exercise this function by their own right, so that they can administer Baptism even in the bishop’s presence, is clear from the teaching of the Fathers and the practice of the Church. Since they have been instituted to consecrate the Eucharist, which is the Sacrament of peace and unity, it was fitting that they be given the power to administer everything by which each person could necessarily become a partaker of this peace and unity. If the Fathers at times said that priests had not been permitted the right to baptize without the bishop’s leave, this seems to be understood of the Baptism customarily administered with solemn ceremony on certain days of the year. Deacons hold the second rank among the ministers; many decrees of the holy Fathers testify that they are not permitted to administer this Sacrament without the permission of a bishop or priest. The lowest rank belongs to those who, when necessity compels, can baptize without solemn ceremonies; this group includes everyone, even laypeople, male or female, whatever sect they profess. For when necessity compels, this office has also been permitted to Jews, unbelievers, and heretics, provided that they intend to do what the Catholic Church does in this kind of administration. The faithful must not think, however, that this office has been permitted indiscriminately to everyone, as though no order among ministers ought to be established. A woman should not undertake the administration of Baptism if men are present; nor should a layman when a cleric is present, or a cleric in the presence of a priest. Midwives accustomed to baptize are not to be disapproved, however, if they sometimes perform what otherwise seems more properly a man’s office when, in their presence, there is a man wholly unskilled in conferring this Sacrament. The same is decreed in the Roman Ritual, title On Baptism, section On the Minister of Baptism. After determining, Whenever an infant or adult is in danger of death, anyone may baptize without solemnity, in any language, whether a cleric or layman, even if excommunicated, whether faithful or unfaithful, Catholic or heretic, man or woman, provided that the form and intention of the Church are observed, it immediately adds: But if a priest is present, he is to be preferred to a deacon, a deacon to a subdeacon, a cleric to a layman, and a man to a woman—unless, out of modesty, a woman is preferred to a man to baptize an infant not yet fully born, or if the woman knows the form and manner of baptizing better.

Third conclusion. — THE ONE WHO NECESSARILY BAPTIZES MUST BE PERSONALLY DISTINCT FROM THE ONE BAPTIZED, SO THAT NO ONE CAN BAPTIZE HIMSELF. This is common to all, and Innocent III decreed it in his letter to the Bishop of Metz, as reported in the chapter Debitum, On Baptism and Its Effect, where he writes: You have indeed informed us that a certain Jew, when at the point of death and alone among Jews, immersed himself in water, saying: “I baptize myself in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” He continues: We answer that there must be a distinction between the one baptizing and the one baptized, as is gathered from the words of the Lord, who says to the Apostles, “Go, baptize all nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” The aforesaid Jew must therefore be baptized again by someone else, so that it may be shown that the one who is baptized is one person and the one who baptizes another. To signify this, Christ himself wished to be baptized not by himself but by John. Although, if the man had died immediately, he would have flown straightway to his homeland because of his faith in the Sacrament, though not because he had received the Sacrament of faith. For in Baptism that spiritual generation is celebrated of which the Truth says, “You must be born again,” because “unless someone is born again of water and the Spirit, he will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Therefore, just as in bodily generation, by which offspring are born of man and woman, one person physically begets and another is physically begotten, so in sacramental generation, by which offspring are reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, one person must spiritually beget and another be spiritually begotten. Indeed, whether the body outwardly or the heart inwardly is baptized, both fatherhood and sonship must be found in each case, by which the one baptizing and the one baptized are related to one another. So the holy Pontiff.

The Doctor explains this definition in Distinction 6, question 1, number 2, saying that Pope Innocent adduces together, to confirm this point, a figure, an authority, and a fitting reason. The figure is that Christ, he says, wished to be baptized by John, not by himself, to signify this. The authority is gathered from the words of the Lord saying to the Apostles, “Go, baptize all nations in the name of the Father,” etc., in which he expresses the disciples in the second person and the baptized in the third. The reason suggested there is this: in Baptism that spiritual generation is celebrated of which the Truth says in John 3, “You must be born again.” Therefore, just as in bodily generation one person begets and another is begotten, so in sacramental generation one person must spiritually beget and another be spiritually begotten.

YOU WILL SAY: A priest administers the Sacrament of the Eucharist to himself at Mass; therefore, with still greater reason, someone at the point of death could administer the Sacrament of Baptism to himself. The Doctor denies the consequence in the same place, number 13, and gives the reason for the difference: receiving the Eucharist is not a Sacrament, but sacramental eating or reception; Baptism, however, is a Sacrament.

THEN, OBJECTING AGAINST HIMSELF: A priest at least administers the Sacrament of the Eucharist to himself; therefore, by the same reasoning, he could administer the Sacrament of Baptism to himself. He likewise denies the consequence, because, he says, the administration of the Sacrament of the Eucharist is not a Sacrament, since that Sacrament does not consist in its use; but the administration of the Sacrament of Baptism is the Sacrament of Baptism itself. He gives this reason for the difference: The Sacrament of Baptism consists essentially in its use, not in the water. The Eucharist, however, is something permanent, distinct from the use of the Sacrament. Thus, although someone could be both the minister and recipient of the use of a permanent Sacrament, he cannot do this in a Sacrament that essentially consists in its use.

Fourth conclusion. — SEVERAL PEOPLE CAN BE BAPTIZED TOGETHER BY ONE PERSON LICITLY AND VALIDLY. So says the Doctor in Distinction 6, question 2, number 7, where he says: As to the third member of the division, it is granted that this man, by sprinkling or pouring water on several at once and at the same time pronouncing the form in the plural, saying, “I baptize you,” baptizes them all at once; nevertheless he sins mortally, because he does not observe the form imposed on him by the Church, unless perhaps the necessity were so great that all were in imminent danger of death, and if he baptized each one separately, one of them would die before he had baptized the rest. He adds below: Whether a case of necessity, posited in which several are about to die immediately, would excuse a minister who used the form “I baptize you” from mortal sin is doubtful. Yet this seems reasonable: since it was in the Church’s power to determine this form as the words “I baptize you,” it does not seem that she wished to bind anyone so strictly to that form that the way of salvation would thereby be closed to someone. In the case mentioned, salvation would be closed to one of them if a person could not use the form “I baptize you” without mortal sin; for if it were a mortal sin in that case, no one ought to baptize them in that way, since no one ought to secure another’s salvation by mortally sinning himself. So says the Subtle Doctor, with whom agree Alexander of Hales, St. Bonaventure, and St. Thomas in question 67, article 6, reply to objection 2, where he says that in a case of necessity one could baptize several together with the form I baptize you, for example, if collapse, a sword, or something of the sort threatened, allowing absolutely no delay to baptize everyone individually. This would not change the form of the Church, because the plural is nothing but a doubled singular, especially since Matthew’s final chapter says in the plural, baptizing them, etc.

The reason for this assertion, then, is that in that case nothing required for the validity of the Sacrament is lacking, either on the side of the matter or on the side of the form. For the change in the form from singular to plural, as regards the word you, is required only on the side of the subjects; therefore this change does not invalidate the Sacrament. This can also be confirmed by the action of the Apostles, who, as we read in Acts 2, baptized many thousands of people in one day; for they could not have baptized them one by one.

YOU WILL ASK: Would there be several Baptisms in that case? THE DOCTOR ANSWERS in the same place: It seems so, because there are several people baptized and, consequently, several passive baptisms and thus several actions, and several Baptisms. The Doctor then objects that there is only one form, since the words are pronounced only once. He answers: One may nevertheless more readily grant that there are several Baptisms. In response to the argument, not everything in a thing must be multiplied for that thing to be plural; it is enough that some part of it be multiplied for the whole to be multiplied. Nor is that form simply one, because the word “you” includes within itself the singular, which it doubles several times.

YOU WILL ASK: Can several people also baptize the same person together?

The Doctor answers, number 2, that “several baptizing” can be understood in two ways: either they baptize the same recipient or several recipients. Each case is further subdivided: if the same recipient, either each does the whole act, or one washes and the other speaks the words—for example, if one is mute and only washes, while the other is maimed and speaks the words. The second case is also subdivided: if they baptize several, the recipients may be clearly distinct or not clearly so, as with a monster about which it is uncertain whether it is one person or two. With these points laid down, the Doctor answers that when several baptize together, one speaking the words and the other washing, the Baptism is null. I say, he says in number 5, that if each separately does one thing, and neither does the whole thing by washing and speaking the words together, nothing is done. The only reason is God’s institution: just as he willed there to be one principal agent, so he willed there to be one minister in the complete conferral of the Sacrament. St. Thomas gives nearly the same reason in question 67, article 6, where he says: By the form “We baptize you,” an intention is expressed that several people join in conferring Baptism, which seems contrary to the nature of ministry. For a person baptizes only as a minister of Christ and in his place; hence, just as Christ is one, so there must be one minister to represent Christ. For this reason the Apostle pointedly says in Ephesians 4: One Lord, one faith, one Baptism; and so an intention to the contrary seems to exclude the Sacrament of Baptism. — But if both wash and speak the words at the same time, the Baptism would be valid, because, says the Doctor in number 2, it is not likely that the act of one annuls the act of the other; if what only one of them does would be done, then what each does is done as well when the other does it in the same way. He said pointedly in the same way, that is, while each completes the matter and form simultaneously at the same physical instant. For if one were to administer the matter and form before the other, he alone would baptize validly, and the other’s action would be a true rebaptism. St. Thomas also teaches this in the passage just cited, where he writes: If each were to say, “I baptize you in the name of the Father,” etc., then it is clear that the one who spoke the words first would confer the Sacrament of Baptism. But if they speak the words and immerse or sprinkle the person entirely at the same time, each would baptize insofar as he could; they would not confer two different Sacraments, but Christ, who is the one baptizing inwardly, would confer one Sacrament through both.

YOU WILL SAY 1: One and the same effect cannot proceed from two total causes that are not subordinate. Therefore, if two could baptize together, that Baptism would proceed from two adequate total causes, not subordinate to one another; and so on. — THE DOCTOR ANSWERS, number 3, distinguishing the major premise: an effect cannot proceed from two total causes that effectively produce its form, he grants; from causes that produce the effect only ministerially, he denies. For the effect of Baptism is produced by those two ministers only ministerially: God alone effectively produces sacramental grace.

YOU WILL PRESS: At least each minister brings about the form of Baptism, and in this respect they are two causes, each total. — THE DOCTOR ANSWERS in the same place: If both wash, neither is a total cause of the washing, whether the washing is done by immersion—for then they move the immersed body with one motion caused by the motive power of both; and although either could cause that motion, when they move together neither uses all the motive power he could use, as is apparent when two people carry a single burden² that either could carry alone—or whether it is done by pouring or sprinkling. Although each brings about the water’s flow by pouring³ or sprinkling it, neither brings about the whole flow that results from both pourings or sprinklings.

THE DOCTOR INSISTS IN THE SAME PLACE: Each is a total cause with respect to pronouncing the words, and so, with respect to one part of the exterior effect that is the Sacrament, there would be two total causes; this is impossible for a part of an effect just as it is for the whole. — HE ANSWERS that this scarcely happens: For, he says, it is difficult for the words of one not to be superfluous, so that they are not in themselves part of one Sacrament. To posit two parts of the same kind as parts of one thing that would be complete in itself by having either of them as a part seems superfluous. But it is difficult to determine whose words are superfluous, because by the same reasoning these words and those words are so, and thus either both or neither, since both speak with equal completeness and a similar intention.

Thus the Doctor. He indicates that in that case, if two people were to wash and speak the words together at the same instant, there would be two Sacraments of Baptism, because there would be two complete and perfect sacramental signs. Hence he immediately adds, seek the answer, that is, let the person who prefers the opinion that there are not several Baptisms in such a case seek an answer to the aforesaid objection.

YOU WILL PRESS: The same person cannot be baptized by two numerically distinct Baptisms; therefore in that case there would not be two Baptisms. — I distinguish the antecedent: passively, I grant; actively, I deny. That is, the same person cannot truly receive the twofold effect of baptismal washing, since once original sin has been remitted, it cannot be remitted again, although two people might concur in administering the Sacrament by which that remission is effected. Hence the Doctor concludes in the same place, number 4: The Sacrament of Baptism is baptism no less actively than passively, because the multiplication of baptism actively is not multiplied passively, nor is Baptism, because the passive part is one. This seems probable by the same inference, since the baptized person properly receives the Sacrament; but what he properly receives is passive washing, not active washing, unless one says that they are really the same. — We are not concerned here with the third and fourth members of the aforesaid distinction, since several people can be baptized by several people, or even by one person, validly, as we have just said. The Doctor clearly explains in the same place, number 7, how one should act concerning a monster. He writes: I say that if there is time to discern whether the monster is simply one person or two, a careful inquiry must be made before it is baptized. How? From the parts of the body—for example, whether there are two heads or two backbones—or from the primary indication of the hearts, although that cannot readily be evident while it lives. But even the sign of two heads would not be altogether certain, since it is possible that some small part in the womb was formed throughout except in its upper part, and then parts of the seed would meet in different womb-chambers throughout the lower part, while being distinct in the highest part, where two heads would form, although the rest of the matter would not suffice to form more than one person. In brief, the clearest sign of distinguishing them is by their intellects and wills: if there are two souls, one need not know everything the other knows, or will everything the other wills. Yet it rarely, if ever, happens that there are two souls without two heads or two principal parts of the head, though the converse is not true. If a difference of intellect could be detected in understanding—for example, if some sign showed that the same thing was known and not known—or a difference of wills, as when there was a willing and an unwilling of the same thing, one would without doubt have to hold that there were two souls. But this cannot be judged except in an adult monster, such as one said to have been in France, with two heads, one of which expressed unwillingness toward something the other expressed willingness for: one wished to be restrained and live temperately, while the other wished to indulge and feast; and when one expelled its contents through its own mouth, the other cried out that it was burdened. Having set out these signs of unity or duality of person in a monster, the Doctor establishes this resolution: Of such a monster I say that if certainty can be had and there are parts plainly belonging to distinct persons, each part should be separately drenched, repeating the form in the singular over each. But if certainty cannot be had, at least those parts that principally belong to one person should be baptized with the form in the singular; then the other parts, which do not seem to belong principally to that first person, should be washed with the form to be used for those about whom there is doubt, as laid down in the Extravagant On Baptism and Its Effect, chapter De quibus. But enough about the monster.

NOTE 1. A means for attaining a supernatural end can be called necessary in two ways. First, by necessity of precept: something must be done or possessed in order to attain an end, not because the end could not be attained without that prescribed thing, but because that thing is prescribed as a way to attain the end, so that despising it would be a sin on account of which the end could not be attained. The other is necessity of means, when something is so ordered to attaining an end that, without it, the end cannot be attained. There is this difference between these two kinds of necessity: the latter admits no excuse, but the former admits an excuse, for example, when the precept is invincibly unknown or cannot be carried out for some legitimate reason. We therefore ask whether Baptism must be had by absolutely everyone, adults and infants alike, in both these ways, in order for them to attain eternal beatitude.

NOTE 2. Although everyone admits that Baptism can be supplied both in infants and adults by baptism of blood, that is, by actually undergoing martyrdom, nevertheless no small controversy arises between Catholics and heretics concerning the necessity of Baptism for infants when there is no opportunity to undergo martyrdom. Some heretics absolutely deny that infants are capable of receiving Baptism before the use of reason, and are therefore commonly called Anabaptists. Others, such as Beza in his Questions on the Sacraments, question 121, and the Lutheran Hunnius in his little work On the Sacraments, chapter 11, deny that the infants of Jews, Muslims, and Gentiles are capable of the Sacrament of Baptism while they remain infants. Calvin, however, in his Commentary on the words of the third chapter of St. John, Unless someone is born again of water and the Holy Spirit, etc., denies that Baptism is necessary for everyone by necessity of means, for adults as well as infants, and especially with respect to the infants of faithful parents, whom he holds to be justified and adopted by God before they are even born. For he says in book 4 of the Institutes, chapter 15, number 20: God declares that he adopts our infants as his own before they are born, when he promises that he will be our God and the God of our offspring after us. Their salvation is contained in this word.... Few have noticed how much harm that dogma has caused when badly explained, namely, that Baptism is necessary for salvation, and so they are less on their guard. For when the opinion has prevailed that all are lost who have not been touched by water, our condition is worse than that of the ancient people, as if God’s grace were more restricted under the Law. Christ will then be thought to have come not to fulfill promises but to abolish them, since the promise which then, before the eighth day, was by itself effective enough for conferring salvation would now not be valid without the aid of a sign.

NOTE 3. The necessity of Baptism, especially with respect to infants, can be understood in three ways. First, as regards God’s absolute and extraordinary power, as though God could not save infants except through Baptism. There is no disagreement among theologians on this sense: all agree that God can cleanse them from original sin and advance them to eternal beatitude by another remedy or by the mere good pleasure of his mercy. The second way concerns the common and ordinary law: whether infants to whom Baptism cannot be administered can be helped by another means, namely, by the remedy of the law of nature with respect to the infants of Gentiles, or by circumcision with respect to the infants of Jews, or by the prayers, vows, or some pious work of faithful parents, through which their infants could be saved when Baptism of water cannot be applied to them. The third way can concern some special law: whether, by some singular privilege of God, certain infants are sometimes saved without actually receiving Baptism of water, God supplying its deficiency because of the prayers and vows of parents who could not procure Baptism for their infants.

Three main points, then, must be determined here: first, that Baptism is necessary for absolutely everyone, adults and infants alike, by necessity of means, in reality or by desire; second, that the infants of both the faithful and the unfaithful are capable of receiving Baptism; third, that no other means or remedy can now help infants.

First conclusion. — BAPTISM IS NECESSARY FOR ALL PEOPLE, ADULTS AND INFANTS ALIKE, BY NECESSITY OF MEANS. This is a matter of faith, defined by the Councils of Milevis and Carthage, as is clear from St. Augustine’s Letters 90 and 92, and from the Council of Trent, Session VII, Canon 5: If anyone says that Baptism is optional, that is, not necessary for salvation, let him be anathema.

The truth of this conclusion is gathered from the words of the Lord Christ in John 3: Unless someone is born again of water, etc. By these words the Lord Christ signifies that after the Law has been promulgated, no one can attain eternal salvation unless he has been reborn through the water of Baptism. Tertullian plainly taught this truth in book On Baptism, chapter 12, where he says: It is prescribed that no one obtains salvation without Baptism, especially on the basis of that declaration of the Lord who says, “Unless someone is born of water, he will not have life.” Hence, in the following chapter, speaking of those who asserted that faith suffices for salvation, he says: Here those most wicked people raise their questions and say, “Baptism is not necessary for those for whom faith is enough; for Abraham too pleased God without any water, by the Sacrament of faith.” He answers: Salvation may have existed formerly through bare faith, before the Lord’s Passion and Resurrection. But when faith was enlarged to include belief in his Birth, Passion, and Resurrection, an enlargement was added by the Sacrament: the seal of Baptism, as it were the clothing of faith, which formerly was bare. In these words Tertullian plainly exposes that impious Calvinist assertion by which they contend that a person can be justified through faith even without Baptism.

St. Ambrose draws the same truth from that same saying of the Lord Christ in book 2 of On Abraham, chapter 11. After citing the aforesaid words of St. John, Unless someone is born again, etc., he says: He certainly excepts no one: not an infant, nor anyone overtaken by some necessity. The other holy Fathers agree: St. Jerome in the Dialogue Against the Pelagians; Gregory Nazianzen in his Oration on Holy Baptism; Basil in his Exhortation to Baptism; and especially St. Augustine in Letter 28 to St. Jerome, where he writes: Whoever says that even infants will be given life in Christ if they depart this life without participating in his Sacrament plainly opposes apostolic preaching and condemns the whole Church. That is why there is haste and a rush to baptize infants: there is no doubt that they cannot otherwise be given life in Christ. And in book 3 of On the Origin of the Soul, chapter 9: Do not believe, do not say, do not teach that infants overtaken by death before they are baptized can attain pardon for original sins, if you wish to be Catholic.

The Pelagians recognized this truth as so manifest that, although they denied that Baptism was necessary to erase original sin—which they did not admit existed—they nevertheless consistently maintained its great necessity for attaining the kingdom of heaven, as St. Augustine testifies in several places, especially book 1 of The Unfinished Work Against Julian, chapter 53, where he reports Julian’s words: We, then, confess Baptism’s grace to be so useful to all that we strike with an eternal anathema all who think it is not necessary even for infants. Hence St. Augustine, in Sermon 14, On the Words of the Apostle, after saying in chapter 7, addressing a Pelagian: You say, and so do I, that an unbaptized infant does not enter the kingdom of heaven. Let us both resist that common enemy who says that an unbaptized infant enters the kingdom of heaven, and let us raise the shield of faith against his most treacherous darts, adds in the following chapter: Come, let us say together to this man: “Are you a Christian?” “I am a Christian,” he says. “Hear the Gospel, you who wish to send unbaptized infants into the kingdom of heaven. Hear the Gospel: Unless someone is born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he will not enter the kingdom of God. It is the Lord’s sentence; only a non-Christian resists it.”

THE CALVINIST DANIEL REPLIES to chapter 4 of Bellarmine’s On Baptism that it cannot be inferred from this saying of St. John that Baptism of water is absolutely necessary. For, he says, the particle and must be taken disjunctively as or, so that the meaning of the Lord Christ is, “Unless someone is born again of water or of the Holy Spirit, he will not be saved,” and there are thus two means of salvation: one, rebirth through the water of Baptism, and the other, rebirth through the grace of the Holy Spirit. — First, against this, all the holy Fathers take the particle and not disjunctively but conjunctively, as can be seen in St. Cyprian’s Letters 72 and 73, St. Ambrose’s book On the Holy Spirit, chapter 11, and St. Augustine’s Tractate on John, tractate 11. Thus water and the Holy Spirit are required for spiritual rebirth. Second, if this Calvinist reply were true, it would follow that spiritual rebirth could take place through the mere application of elemental water, with the Holy Spirit excluded. For where two things are prescribed and said to be necessary only disjunctively, either one is sufficient to attain that for which they are ordered and prescribed; it is not necessary to do both together, since this is the nature and condition of a disjunctive precept, as can be seen by examining every disjunctive law. Therefore, if the particle and in Christ’s words is to be taken disjunctively, it will follow that just as, according to the Calvinists, the spiritual rebirth assigned there to the words of the Holy Spirit suffices without external washing, even by desire and intention, so mere external washing, even with the Holy Spirit excluded, will suffice for spiritual rebirth and the attainment of beatitude—nothing more absurd could be conceived. Third, if Baptism is not absolutely necessary for infants to attain eternal salvation, this is especially because, as we said above from Calvin in the third note, the infants of the faithful are incorporated into Christ by virtue of their descent from faithful parents. But this is plainly false, not only on the authority of the holy Fathers, who, as we just said, absolutely declare Baptism necessary for the salvation of all infants, but also by reason. For either this spiritual generation takes place immediately through God without any aid of a Sacrament, in view of the faith of the parents, or it takes place in view of the covenant God made with Abraham and his descendants in these words of Genesis 17: I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations, as an everlasting covenant. The faithful succeed to this covenant under the New Law, as the Apostle indicates in Romans 4 and Galatians 3, saying that those who are of faith are sons of Abraham, and that only they are to be blessed with faithful Abraham. But neither can be said. Not the first, because the Calvinists themselves, along with Beza in question 126 of On the Sacraments, plainly deny it. Beza teaches that this rebirth takes place only through the intervening faith of pious parents, by whose piety infants already born or yet to be born are reckoned within the covenant. Nor the second, because, according to the Calvinists, it is false that all those born of faithful parents, even the holiest, belong to this covenant, as Beza expressly teaches in the same place, question 123, confirming it with the example of Esau and also with everyday experience. Therefore they must admit that it is false that infants are holy and do not need Baptism of water to be reborn in Christ merely because they are born of faithful parents. — This is confirmed: if the formal reason for the sanctification of infants were that they were born of faithful parents, it would follow that this incorporation into the covenant of the Lord Christ, and the holiness corresponding to it, ought to be found in all infants born of faithful parents. Since the Calvinists do not admit this, neither should they admit anything else. — Nor does the aforesaid passage from Genesis help them: however much it is understood of Abraham’s spiritual offspring, it does not follow that the infants of the faithful can be sanctified without Baptism. Rather, the contrary follows: just as under the Mosaic Law no one was considered Abraham’s spiritual offspring without circumcision or another remedy to cleanse original sin, so under the Law of the Gospel no one should be reckoned among Abraham’s offspring unless cleansed from the same sin by Baptism. Moreover, just as, despite descent from faithful parents, Jewish infants had to be circumcised, so now they must be baptized.

THEY WILL OBJECT 1. The words of the Lord Christ in Matthew 19: Let the little ones come to me, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. Therefore, they say, children can be saved without Baptism. — I deny the consequence, since there the Lord Christ was speaking of the children of Jews and other faithful people, who had been justified by the Sacrament of Circumcision or by the remedy of the law of nature. Again, the Lord Christ said this to signify that, on account of their age, those little ones had none of the actual malice that excludes them from the kingdom of heaven, unlike adults, to whom he contrasts them. Or I say with St. Augustine, in book 1 of On the Merits of Sins, chapter 19, that the Lord praised the life of little children when he said that the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these, meaning truthfully that he placed the likeness of humility in their early age.

THEY WILL OBJECT 2. St. Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 7, where he calls the children born of the faithful holy, saying: The unbelieving husband is sanctified through the faithful wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through the faithful husband; otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. Therefore Baptism is not necessary for children born of the faithful. — I deny the consequence, first because the Apostle does not say that their children are holy from the womb, or holy from their mother’s womb, as the heretics claim. The contrary appears from the same Apostle: in Romans 9, speaking of Jacob and Esau, although they came from faithful and holy parents, he says: Before they were born or had done anything good or evil personally, so that God’s purpose according to election might stand, not from works but from the one who calls, it was said to her, “The elder will serve the younger,” as it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” St. Augustine asks in Letter 105: What did God hate in Esau before he had done anything evil, if not original sin? And in book 1, To Simplician, question 2: God does not hate Esau the man; God hates Esau the sinner. — Moreover, in Ephesians 2 the same Apostle testifies of himself: We too were by nature children of wrath, like the rest. Yet he was indeed born of faithful parents, as he himself indicates in Galatians 1: I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my people, being an exceedingly zealous adherent of my ancestral traditions. — Finally, the Apostle says that the children of the faithful are holy for the same reason that he says an unbelieving husband is sanctified through a holy wife, and vice versa. But, says St. Augustine, considering the same sentence of the Apostle in book 2 of On the Merits of Sins, chapter 26: I do not think anyone understands these words so faithlessly, whatever he understands them to mean, as to think that an unchristian husband need not be baptized, has already attained remission of sins, and has entered the kingdom of heaven, because he is said to be sanctified in his wife, if his wife is a Christian. Hence he concludes in book 3, chapter 12: This must be held without doubt: whatever that sanctification may be, it is not effective for making people Christians and remitting sins unless they are made faithful through Christian and ecclesiastical instruction and the Sacraments. For unbelieving spouses, however much they cling to holy and just spouses, are not cleansed from iniquity, which compels those separated from the kingdom of God to come under God’s condemnation; nor are infants born of any holy and just parents absolved from the debt of original sin unless they have been baptized in Christ. We ought to speak all the more earnestly for them because they are less able to speak for themselves. — I therefore judge that we should say with St. Augustine, in book 2 of On the Merits of Sins, chapter 26, that the Apostle is speaking of a certain external sanctification, just as the same Apostle says in 1 Timothy 4 that the foods by which we sustain ourselves in this life are sanctified through the word of God and the prayer with which we pray before nourishing our little bodies; and just as everything else joined to sacred things acquires holiness in some way or is considered holy, according to Romans 11: If the first fruits are holy, so is the whole batch; and if the root is holy, so are the branches. The Subtle Doctor explains this very well in Distinction 1, question 3, number 4, where he writes: A fruit, insofar as it is something belonging to a tree, follows the condition of the tree; yet insofar as it is something in itself, it can have conditions opposite to those of the tree itself: the fruit can be soft while the tree is hard. So here, since justice and injustice concern a person in himself, not as locally joined to or separated from another person, justice can belong to a child even if it does not belong to the mother, and vice versa.

THEY WILL OBJECT 3. If infants must necessarily be baptized to attain salvation, it is especially because the Lord Christ said, Unless someone is born again, by which sentence he seems to bind absolutely everyone to receive Baptism. But this is not so: first, because several people in the New Testament were saved without Baptism of water, as is clear of Zechariah, Elizabeth, Anna, and Simeon; second, because the Lord Christ also said in equally universal terms in John 6: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man ... you will not have life in you. Yet we do not include infants in this general sentence; therefore they should not be included in the earlier sentence either. — I deny the minor premise. As for its first proof, I say that all those saints lived and died before the New Testament was completed through the death of the Lord Christ, and consequently before Baptism of water became necessary for people by necessity of means to attain salvation. Nor does it matter that the Lord Christ spoke the words unless someone is born again before his death: he did not say them for the time when he was then speaking with Nicodemus, but only for the time when the Law of the Gospel had been sufficiently promulgated. As for the second, I say that the two sayings of the Lord Christ are not parallel as regards the universality of their obligation. Children are capable of spiritual rebirth, to which the Sacrament of Baptism is ordered, but not of spiritual nourishment, to which the Eucharist is ordered. For spiritual nourishment was instituted to restore all that is lost from spiritual strength through daily sins. Since no such loss occurs in infants, spiritual nourishment should not occur in them either.

Second conclusion. — INFANTS OF THE FAITHFUL AND OF THE UNFAITHFUL ALIKE ARE CAPABLE OF RECEIVING BAPTISM. This is a matter of faith, defined by the Fifth Council of Carthage, the Second Council of Milevis, the Council of Gerona, Canon 5, the Second Council of Braga, Canon 7, the Council of Vienne, and the Fourth Lateran Council under Innocent III, as reported in the chapter Firmiter, On the Supreme Trinity, in these words: The Sacrament of Baptism, duly conferred by anyone according to the form of the Church, profits both infants and adults for salvation; and most recently by the Council of Trent, Session VII, Canon 13, in these words: If anyone says that infants, because they do not have the act of believing, are not to be counted among the faithful after receiving Baptism, and that therefore they are to be baptized again when they reach the years of discretion, or that it is better to omit their Baptism than to baptize them in the sole faith of the Church when they do not believe by their own act, let him be anathema.

This truth is gathered from Sacred Scripture, specifically from those passages where entire households are said to have been baptized. Thus, in Acts 16, verse 5, it is said of Lydia: When she had been baptized, and her household. And there, in verse 33, it is said of the jailer in whose prison St. Paul had been confined: He was baptized, and immediately all his household. And in 1 Corinthians 1: I baptized the household of Stephanas. Who could reasonably doubt that in these households, baptized as a whole, there were some little children initiated into Baptism by the Apostles? Therefore infants really are capable of Baptism.

Innocent III had defined the same truth in the chapter Maiores, where he says: Since circumcision was conferred by the Lord’s command on adults as well as infants, lest Baptism, which succeeded it and is more general because both men and women are baptized, appear to have a lesser effect, it is to be conferred on adults and infants alike.

The holy Fathers teach the same: Dionysius in the final chapter of The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy; Irenaeus in book 2, chapter 36, where he pointedly says, All who are reborn in Christ are saved: infants, children, young people, etc.; Origen, who says in chapter 6, The Church received from the Apostles the tradition of giving Baptism even to little children. St. Augustine teaches the same—omitting the others—in book 4 of On Baptism, chapter 23, where he writes: The whole Church holds as a tradition that little infants are baptized, although they certainly cannot believe unto righteousness or confess with the mouth unto salvation, as the thief could. Indeed, they interrupt the very sacred words with which the mystery is celebrated in them, by crying and wailing; yet no Christian has said that they are baptized to no purpose.

Reason also supports this: first, because little children can be saved, as is clear from Matthew 19: Let the little children come to me, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these; second, because the Church venerates the Innocents who were slain as saints and martyrs; finally, because they can share in Adam’s sin, and therefore also in Christ’s grace. But, as was said in the first conclusion, after the Law of the Gospel has been sufficiently promulgated no one can be saved without Baptism. Therefore Baptism can truly profit little children as well.

YOU WILL SAY 1. When the Lord Christ commissioned his Apostles to preach the Gospel, he said in Matthew 19¹: Go, teach all nations, baptizing them, etc. One can therefore argue as follows: only those are capable of receiving Baptism who are capable of receiving instruction, for ministers must teach before baptizing; consequently, the person to be baptized must first be taught before being baptized. But children before the use of reason are not capable of instruction; therefore they are not capable of Baptism either. It is confirmed: a person must first believe the mysteries of faith before being baptized, for the Lord Christ says, Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved. There he wishes faith to precede as necessary for Baptism. Hence St. Jerome says on the aforesaid text of Matthew: It cannot happen that the body receives the Sacrament of Baptism unless the soul has first received the truth of faith. But children cannot believe; therefore they cannot be baptized. — I answer that both these sayings of the Lord Christ are to be understood of adults. In baptizing them he wished this order to be observed: they were to be instructed in matters of faith before receiving Baptism. For he had first said in Mark 16, Preach the Gospel to every creature—that is, to adults, whom he commissions to instruct and baptize so that, having received instruction, they are prepared to believe the mysteries of faith before being baptized. Yet even in adults an act of faith is not required for the validity of Baptism, as will be clear below; it suffices that they receive the habit of faith infused by God, of which little children too are capable. Accordingly they believe at least habitually and profess the faith, if not through an act of faith, then at least through the Sacrament of faith they have received. Innocent III explains the aforesaid text in this way, as reported in the chapter Maiores. After saying that the authority in 1 Peter 4, Charity covers a multitude of sins, is to be understood only of adults, who have a multitude of sins, not of little children, who are held only by original sin, he immediately adds: The same solution applies to the authority, “Whoever believes and is baptized,” etc., since little children cannot believe, but adults can; otherwise the first clause would refer to some people and the second to others. Although some concede that little children believe not by an act but by the habit of faith they receive in Baptism, many other words likewise, according to common usage, refer not to an act but to a capacity. — The Subtle Doctor expresses both these interpretations above in replying to this argument from the final chapter of Mark: Whoever does not believe will be condemned. A little child cannot believe; therefore he cannot be saved through Baptism; therefore he is baptized in vain. As to the other point, he says, it is clear that it must be understood of adults from what precedes it: “Whoever believes and is baptized.” Or one can say that whoever does not believe, either actually or habitually, will be condemned, because, according to the Apostle in Hebrews 11, “Without faith it is impossible to please God,” etc. Little children, however, although they cannot have an act of faith, can have its habit. — Or one can answer otherwise with St. Augustine, in book 1 of the Unfinished Work Against Julian, chapter 6: just as little children are guilty through another’s will, namely Adam’s, so too they are faithful through another’s faith, since they believe through their godparents, who answer and make their profession on their behalf. For, he says, it is true that they believe through others (and for this reason they are called faithful throughout the whole Church), so they certainly do not fall under what the Lord says, “Whoever does not believe will be condemned.” They would therefore be condemned if they did not believe through others, since they cannot believe by themselves. Or, as he explains this truth more clearly in Sermon 14, On the Words of the Apostle, chapter 11: The one wounded by another’s deed is healed by another’s words. “Do you believe in Jesus Christ?” the question is asked. “He believes,” the answer is given. For one who cannot speak, who is silent and weeps, the answer is given, as though prayerfully seeking help, and it avails. Far be it from the hearts of any Christians to doubt this: the answer is given, and it avails. By a certain shared participation the Spirit communicates; one believes in another, because one sinned in another.

YOU WILL SAY 2. They are incapable of that which belongs to observing the Law of the Gospel. But infants are incapable of this obligation and observance; therefore they are incapable of Baptism as well. — I distinguish the minor premise: they are incapable of this obligation for the time when they are baptized and before they grow up, I grant; once they reach adulthood, I deny. Hence the Council of Trent, Session VII, Canon 14: If anyone says that such baptized infants, when they have grown up, are to be asked whether they wish to consider valid what their godparents promised on their behalf when they were baptized, and that if they answer that they do not, they are to be left to their own choice, and not compelled in the meantime to live as Christians by any other penalty than exclusion from receiving the Eucharist and the other Sacraments until they repent, let him be anathema.

Third conclusion. — AFTER THE LAW OF THE GOSPEL HAS BEEN SUFFICIENTLY PROMULGATED, THERE IS NO OTHER REMEDY (EXCEPT MARTYRDOM) FOR WASHING AWAY ORIGINAL SIN, NOR ANY ORDINARY MEANS OF ATTAINING SALVATION THAT COULD PROFIT LITTLE CHILDREN, WHETHER OF THE FAITHFUL OR UNFAITHFUL, EVEN WHEN IN DANGER, EXCEPT BAPTISM. This is the common teaching of Catholics, directed not only against Calvinists but also against Cajetan. In his Commentary on question 68, article 2, Cajetan teaches that, when there is no opportunity to baptize infants, the desire for Baptism conceived by their parents or others sufficiently profits them for salvation. He explains this there as follows: In such a case a parent ought to mark the infant with the sign of the cross, invoking the Trinity, and thus offer the dying child to God in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And on article 11 he adds: Little children in danger in their mothers’ wombs can be saved through the Sacrament of Baptism, not actually received, but received in the desire of their parents, together with some blessing of their offspring or an offering of the child to God with invocation of the Trinity. This commentary was, of course, expunged from Cajetan’s writings by order of the Supreme Pontiff St. Pius V.

The truth of this conclusion is clear from what was said in the first conclusion, where we showed that the necessity of Baptism is general and applies to absolutely all people, whatever their age or condition. It is proved further from 1 Peter, chapter 3, where he compares the necessity of Baptism of water to Noah’s ark: In it, he says, a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water; Baptism, corresponding to this, now saves you also. Two words in this passage must be observed: now saves. For St. Peter compares the time after the Gospel of the Lord Christ was promulgated, or the time of the Christian Law, with the time of Noah, and Baptism of water with Noah’s ark raised up by water. Thus, just as in Noah’s time only those were saved from the floodwaters who were enclosed in that ark, while the others perished, so after the solemn promulgation of the Gospel, which had already taken place when St. Peter wrote this, no one can be saved—except by martyrdom—unless he has received Baptism in reality or by desire. St. Augustine understood St. Peter’s text this way in book 12 of Against Faustus, chapter 14, where he writes: Noah with his household was delivered through water and wood, just as the household of Christ is delivered through Baptism, signified by the Passion of the cross. So did St. Jerome in Letter 57 to the Supreme Pontiff Damasus, where, speaking of the Catholic and Roman Church, he says: Whoever eats water outside this house will be profane; if anyone is not in Noah’s ark, he will perish while the flood reigns.

This is confirmed by the authority of the holy Fathers, especially St. Ambrose, book On the Calling of the Gentiles, chapter 8. He says: It is not right to believe that little children who have not obtained the Sacrament of rebirth belong at last to the company of the blessed, since the Lord said in John 13², “Unless someone is born again,” etc. St. Augustine teaches similar things in various places, especially book 1 of On the Merits of Sins, chapter 23, where he says: Let no one promise infants eternal salvation by any choice of our own apart from the Baptism of Christ, when divine Scripture, which is to be preferred to every human ingenuity, does not promise it. Likewise St. Fulgentius, in book On Faith to Peter, chapter 26: Hold most firmly, and do not doubt in any way, that not only people who already use reason but also little children—whether they begin to live in their mothers’ wombs and die there, or are born from their mothers and depart from this life without the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, which is given in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit—are to be punished with the everlasting torment of eternal fire. St. Bernard teaches the same in Letter 77, where he expressly says that, at the very time he was writing, no reason could be offered to show that Baptism was not necessary even for infants: But now, he says, since the sound of their preaching has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world, because what has been heard cannot be ignored, contempt is plainly without excuse. Nor is it an objection that, when speaking of the time after the Apostles promulgated the Gospel, he seems to leave to God’s judgment whether Baptism was then absolutely necessary for infants: whether it was so or not is for God, not me, to determine. This, I say, is no objection: a little later he writes of infants born after the aforesaid promulgation of the Gospel by the Apostles: Indeed, infants who, because their age prevents them, cannot have faith—that is, a conversion of the heart to God—consequently cannot have salvation if they die without receiving Baptism.

CALVIN OBJECTS, in book 4 of the Institutes, chapter 15, number 20: The condition of Christians is not worse than that of the ancient people, nor is God’s grace more restricted under the Gospel than under the Law. Otherwise Christ will be thought to have come not to fulfill promises but to abolish them, not to save people but to condemn them. But, notwithstanding the precept of circumcision under the Old Law, when necessity pressed before the child’s eighth day after birth, applying the remedy of the law of nature sufficed for the child’s salvation, namely, the parents’ faith attested by some visible sign. Therefore, by the same reasoning, indeed all the more under the Law of grace, notwithstanding the precept of Baptism, applying the same faith together with a sign and invocation of the most holy Trinity suffices for a little child who cannot be baptized. — I deny the parity, and the reason for the difference is that under the Old Law God expressly prohibited circumcising a child before the eighth day. It was therefore fitting to leave the remedy of the law of nature available for those in danger before that day. The case is different under the Law of grace: since God wished Baptism to be instituted so that it could be applied to infants as soon as they were brought into the light, it should not seem surprising if he left no other remedy to be applied to them. Nor does it follow from this that the condition of infants under the Law of the Gospel is worse than under the Mosaic Law or the law of nature. The remedy of Baptism is not only more effective and confers a far more abundant and more worthy sanctifying grace; it is also more general, since it is administered throughout the universal Church spread across the world, and easier, since water, the matter of Baptism, is very common and it is much easier to wash with it and pronounce a few words of the baptismal form than to apply a visible sign and an act of supernatural faith, which were required for the remedy of the law of nature. Add that at that time not as many people could assist infants as can now: the remedy of the law of nature could be administered and applied only by the faithful, whereas Baptism can be administered not only by the faithful but also by heretics, Jews, and pagans. — Nor does it follow that Christ came rather to condemn than to save people, if all peoples and nations to whom the Gospel has not yet been preached, and to whom the necessity of receiving Baptism has not become known, are deprived of every other remedy for obtaining remission of original sin. This, I say, does not follow. For, for example, the Americans and other peoples to whom the Gospel has not yet been announced, whether infants or adults, are not condemned because Christ came for their condemnation, nor because they lack faith in Christ or have not received his Sacraments, but because of the sins—both original and actual—with which they depart from this temporal life. St. Augustine teaches something similar in book On Nature and Grace, chapter 2, where, treating a similar argument and considering the Apostle’s words in Romans 10, How will they believe in one of whom they have not heard? Or how will they hear without someone preaching? Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. But I ask, have they not heard? Their sound has gone out into all the earth, etc., St. Augustine adds: But before this began to happen, before preaching itself finally reached the ends of the whole earth—for there are still remote nations, although, as we are told, very few, to whom this has not yet been preached—what will human nature do, or what has it done, when it either had not yet heard that this would happen or it has not yet happened to it, except by believing in God, “who made heaven and earth,” by whom it naturally understands that it too was made, and by living rightly fulfills his will, though it has not been imbued with faith in the Passion and Resurrection of Christ? If this could or can be done, then I too say what the Apostle said about the Law: “Then Christ died for nothing.” For if he said this of the Law received by the one nation of the Jews, how much more justly is it said of the law of nature received by the whole human race? If righteousness comes through nature, “then Christ died for nothing.” But if Christ did not die for nothing, then human nature as a whole can in no way be justified and redeemed from God’s most just anger—that is, punishment—except through faith and the Sacrament of Christ’s blood. And in chapter 4: Hence those who are not delivered through it, either because they have not yet been able to hear, or because they have refused to obey, or even, while unable to hear because of their age, have not received the “washing of rebirth” which they could have received and through which they would have been saved, are justly condemned. For they are not without sin, whether the sin they inherited originally or the sin they added by evil conduct: “For all have sinned,” either in Adam or in themselves, “and they lack the glory of God.” And in the following chapter: The whole mass, therefore, owes punishment; and if the punishment of condemnation owed by all were paid to them, it would doubtless be paid justly.... Who, then, could be so madly insane as not to give ineffable thanks to the mercy that liberates whom it wills, and not to be able rightly to find fault with the justice that condemns absolutely everyone? These are the words of St. Augustine.

YOU WILL OBJECT 2. A law or privilege remains in force as long as its revocation has not reached the ears of those who use it. But the remedy of the law of nature is a privilege or indulgence whose revocation has not yet become known to those peoples to whom the Gospel has not yet been sufficiently preached. Therefore the remedy of the law of nature may still remain in force among them. — I answer the major premise by saying that privileges are of two kinds: some are granted without any time limit; others are granted only for a fixed and definite time. Those of the first kind do require their abrogation or revocation to become sufficiently known to those to whom the privileges were granted. The opposite is true of privileges of the latter kind: as soon as the time fixed for them has elapsed, they immediately cease to be in force without any notice or promulgation. The privileges or remedies of both the law of nature and the Mosaic Law were of this kind. For the Law and the Prophets lasted until John, who was the last prophet of the Old Law and, as it were, the twilight and dawn of the Law of the Gospel. Hence the Apostle says in Galatians 3: The Law was established because of transgressions until the offspring should come, that is, Christ. Therefore, when Christ came, promulgated the Law of the Gospel, and instituted other Sacraments and means necessary for salvation, the obligation of the Old Law ceased at once, as did the efficacy of all its Sacraments. Hence the Apostle says in Hebrews 7: When the priesthood is changed, the law must necessarily be changed as well.

YOU WILL PRESS: From what has often been said, a law does not bind before it is promulgated or received; therefore the Law of Baptism does not bind those to whom it has not yet been sufficiently promulgated. — I distinguish the antecedent: it does not bind as a precept or command whose omission is a special sin and is imputed as guilt and punishment, I grant; it does not bind as a means or remedy necessary for attaining the end, I deny. For as soon as something is ordained by a superior as necessary for attaining an end, so that the end cannot be attained if it is omitted, other means immediately become useless. Therefore the precept to receive Baptism does not bind those to whom the Law of the Gospel has not yet become known in the sense that its omission brings some new debt of guilt; but Baptism is necessary by necessity of means for attaining beatitude, so that salvation cannot be obtained if that means is omitted.

YOU WILL OBJECT 3. The will that is sufficient, on the part of its free choice, for sinning is also sufficient for justifying. But the will of the first man is sufficient for infants to be judged to have sinned with him; therefore the will of parents will also be sufficient for their infants to attain justification through the parents’ vows and devout intentions. — I distinguish the major premise: if that will is the same in its moral character and as an act of free choice, both with respect to meriting good for someone and with respect to demeriting evil for him, as was the will of the first man, who, insofar as he was the head of the whole human race, morally contained all our wills with respect to meriting or losing original justice for us, I grant; if the will is not of this kind, I deny. The contrary is evident in that very first parent. His will and freedom were the same in their physical nature when he sinned and when he repented; yet they were not the same in their moral character, because when he repented he no longer had the standing of head of the human race. Therefore his will, which was sufficient for all his descendants to be infected by his sin, was not so sufficient that they could all be cleansed of sin through his repentance.

NOTE 1. There are two kinds of unbelievers. Some gave their name to Christ in baptism, but through heresy and apostasy fell away from the Church and the Catholic faith; for heresy is a kind of unbelief, as the leading theologians commonly teach. Others, however, have never professed the Catholic religion, nor through baptism been made children of the Church and members of the mystical body of Christ the Lord. Such are the Gentiles, Jews, Muslims, etc. The present difficulty concerns both groups: whether their children may be baptized not only validly but also licitly, without their consent.

NOTE 2. Unbaptized unbelievers fall into three classes. Some are so independent that they live under the dominion of no Christian prince. Others are subject to Christian princes with respect to civil dominion, and have the rights of citizens in those provinces and cities over which Christian princes hold sway. The rest are subject to them by despotic and servile subjection, as are those who by right of war, purchase, or some other just title become the chattel of Christian princes and are servilely subject to their authority. It is asked whether the children of each of these three kinds of unbelievers may be baptized both validly and licitly while their parents are unwilling and object.

NOTE 3. The children of such unbelievers may be considered either in extreme danger of death or outside such danger. Moreover, they may be placed in a situation where, whether taken from their parents lawfully or unlawfully, they are transported elsewhere and never to be restored to their unbelieving parents; or they may be viewed in a situation where, after receiving baptism, they would be returned at once to their unbelieving parents, and would live under their dominion, care, and upbringing. — Finally, by “infants” may be understood not only those who have not yet attained the use of reason, but also those who are not yet independent, but are subject to authority and committed to the guardianship and care either of parents or of guardians. The present difficulty concerning all these cases is to be determined in the conclusions that follow.

First conclusion. — THE CHILDREN OF ANY UNBELIEVERS MAY BE VALIDLY BAPTIZED AGAINST THEIR PARENTS’ WILL. This is the common opinion among theologians, with the exception of a few who affirm the contrary with Durandus. St. Augustine teaches it plainly in Letter 13, which is addressed to Boniface, around the middle, where, after saying, “Little ones are presented to receive spiritual grace not so much by those in whose arms they are carried—although also by them, if they too are good believers—as by the whole society of the saints and faithful. For they are rightly understood to be presented by all who are pleased that they are presented and whose holy and undivided charity helps them toward communion with the Holy Spirit. Thus the whole mother Church, which is in the saints, does this: as a whole she gives birth to all, and as a whole she gives birth to each.” A little later he adds: “Let this not mislead you into thinking that the bond of guilt inherited from Adam can be broken in no other way than by parents presenting little ones to receive the grace of Christ.” He had given the reason for this earlier, saying: “But that he may be regenerated through the service of another’s will, when he is presented to be preserved, the one Spirit does this, by whom the one presented is regenerated. For it is not written, ‘Unless anyone is born again by the will of his parents, or by the faith of those presenting or ministering,’ but ‘unless anyone is born again of water and the Spirit.’” As if he were saying that, just as the parents’ consent—or anyone else’s consent apart from Adam’s—is not required to contract original sin, so neither is anyone’s consent or faith, apart from the Church’s faith and the minister’s consent, required for the remission of the original sin contracted: the minister baptizes in the name and by the authority of the Church and Christ. For, as the Apostle says in Romans 5, “If death reigned through one man because of one man’s offense, much more will those who receive an abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.”

YOU WILL SAY 1: That baptism cannot be valid which is done to the injury and detriment of the parents. But such would be the baptism of children performed against their parents’ will. Therefore, etc. — I deny the major premise: for that act is not intrinsically injurious to the parents, nor is it enough to make the baptism invalid. If a priest baptizes the infant of a faithful person without the parish priest’s knowledge or against his opposition, that baptism is performed to the injury of the parish priest, yet it is no less valid. Therefore, however much injury might be done to the parents when their children are baptized against their will, the baptism will nevertheless not be invalid. This is confirmed by the practice of the Church, which nowhere rebaptizes infants baptized against the will of their unbelieving parents; indeed, whenever it can, it removes them from their parents and, once they have grown up, compels them to observe the precepts of the Christian faith and the Church, as Innocent III decrees in the chapter Maiores, On Baptism: “It is necessary,” he says, “that they be compelled to keep the faith which they received under constraint, lest the name of the Lord be blasphemed and the faith they received be held cheap and contemptible.”

YOU WILL SAY 2: An adult cannot be validly baptized against his own will; therefore neither can an infant be baptized against the will of his parents. — I distinguish the antecedent: on the sacrament’s side, I deny it; on the subject’s side, insofar as the subject must be capable of a means ordained to salvation, I grant it. For God has decreed that no one who has the use of reason is justified unless willing, as St. Augustine teaches admirably in Sermon 15, On the Words of the Apostle, ch. 11: “Without your will,” he says, “the righteousness of God will not be in you. The will is indeed not yours, even though it is in you; righteousness is not yours, but God’s. The righteousness of God can exist without your will, but it cannot exist in you except through your will.” And below: “Therefore, he who made you without you does not justify you without you: so he made you without your knowing, but justifies you when you are willing.” But concerning an infant, who is incapable of exercising his own will, he says in On the Words of the Apostle, Sermon 14, To the words, he says: “By another’s words he is healed, because by another’s deed he is wounded. ‘Does he believe in Christ?’ the question is asked, and the answer is given, ‘He believes.’ For one who cannot speak, for one who is silent, who weeps and by weeping somehow prays for help, the answer is given, and it counts.” By whom is the answer given? You will ask: by those presenting him. What if no one presents him, but the minister alone baptizes? It is rightly understood that the whole mother Church, which is in the saints, answers; for, as we just said from the same holy Doctor in Letter 23, “As a whole she gives birth to all, and as a whole she gives birth to each,” through the will of the minister who baptizes in his own name and in Christ’s. Thus the baptism of the children of any parents is valid, however unwilling and objecting those parents may be, provided the proper matter, form, and intention of the minister are present.

Second conclusion. — THE CHILDREN OF HERETICS AND SCHISMATICS, AND ALSO OF THOSE UNBELIEVERS WHO ARE THE CHATTELS OF CHRISTIANS, MAY BE BAPTIZED NOT ONLY VALIDLY BUT ALSO LICITLY AGAINST THEIR PARENTS’ WILL. This is the common opinion concerning both parts of the conclusion, especially the first: for the Church has the power to compel by force all the baptized to observe the Gospel Law. By the very fact that they have been baptized, they are subject to the Church’s power and jurisdiction; for by reason of their baptismal character they are in some way members of its mystical body. Consequently, they may be compelled to conform themselves to the practices and laws by which that mystical body is governed. Hence the Church has always approved those most just and holy enactments of Christian princes by which heretics were subjected to exile or other penalties unless they returned to the Church’s fold. Therefore, all the more may the Church baptize their children against their parents’ will.

The second part is also established: for slaves, or chattels, together with their children, are subject to the real dominion of those under whose power they are enslaved, so that their master may at his pleasure sell such children, just as he may sell their parents, or separate them from their parents. For the offspring follows the womb. The children of slaves become slaves by the title of birth. Therefore their master can subject them by baptism to the jurisdiction of the Church. — This is confirmed: if anything were an obstacle, it would chiefly be the parents’ natural dominion over their children, by reason of which such subjection of the children to the Church’s authority could not occur without their parents’ consent. But this is no obstacle. For, just as parents are free by natural law yet are deprived of their freedom by the law of nations, so, although by natural law they have power over their own children, they are nevertheless lawfully deprived of that power by the law of nations and by the law of war or purchase, so that their master can sell their children and separate them from their parents’ company. Therefore, all the more can he present them to the Church for baptism. And he not only can, but must procure baptism for them, since he succeeds to the parents’ right and thus assumes the obligation to provide what is necessary for salvation where such parents fail their children. Add that the children of slaves are considered to belong to their master’s household and family, and consequently he is bound in conscience to procure and provide for them what is necessary not only for bodily life but also for the soul. For, as the Apostle says in 1 Timothy 5, “If anyone does not care for his own, especially the members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” — The same must be said of the children of parents where one is a believer and wants his child baptized, while the other is an unbeliever and refuses. In that case one must act for the good of the child, as the Fourth Council of Toledo decreed, canon 62¹, which reads: “Jews who have Christian women in marriage are to be admonished by the bishop of that city to become Christians if they wish to remain with them. If, when admonished, they refuse, they are to be separated. The children born of such unions, however, are to follow the faith and status of their mother. Likewise, those born of unbelieving women and faithful men are to follow the Christian religion, not Jewish superstition.” The reason for this decree is that each parent has a right over the child, and both are responsible for the children’s care, even in spiritual matters. Consequently, the child should rather be entrusted to the parent who would lawfully raise the child for salvation than to one who would raise the child for ruin and damnation. Gregory IX answered the bishop of Strasbourg accordingly, and this is reported in the final chapter On the Conversion of Unbelievers. Among other things, he says: “Since a son is in his father’s power and follows his family, not his mother’s, and is at an age when he should not remain with persons who may be suspected of plotting against his safety or life, and boys after three years should be brought up and remain with a father who is not suspect; and since the boy’s mother, if he were to remain with her, might lead him into the error of unbelief; above all in favor of the Christian faith, we answer that the same boy is to be assigned to his Christian father.”

Third conclusion. — THE CHILDREN OF UNBELIEVERS WHO ARE SUBJECT TO CHRISTIAN PRINCES ONLY IN CIVIL AND POLITICAL MATTERS MAY LICITLY BE BAPTIZED AGAINST THEIR PARENTS’ WILL, IF THE PRINCE ORDERS OR CONSENTS TO IT. This is the opinion of the Doctor in In IV Sent., d. 4, q. 9, n. 2, where he says: “I say briefly, then, that if the prince acted with due caution—namely, so that the parents, learning beforehand what was going to happen, would not kill their children, and so that he would have the baptized children brought up religiously—it would be well done.” He says the same in Reportata, q. 2, in the same place.

The Doctor proves it by an argument: A superior’s precept must be obeyed despite the opposition and contrary will of an inferior. But baptizing children is God’s precept, whereas the parents’ opposition is the will of a human being inferior to God. Therefore, notwithstanding such a will in unbelievers, their little ones may licitly be baptized. The Doctor proves both the major and the minor: “For,” he says, “God has a greater right of dominion over the little one than the parents do. For in ordered powers universally, an inferior power does not bind in matters contrary to a superior, as St. Augustine teaches in On the Words of the Lord, Homily 6, cited in the final chapter of Book 2: ‘If a power commands you to do what you ought not to do, this person surely disdains that power by fearing a greater power.’ And he explains this by the examples of a curator and a proconsul, a proconsul and an emperor, and an emperor and God. Therefore, if someone has the government of a commonwealth, he ought, as far as he can, to compel everyone to be subject to a higher lord rather than a lower one, when the lower resists the higher in such dominion. Just as an emperor ought to judge that someone must obey a proconsul, disregarding the curator’s command—that is, the proconsul’s inferior—if the latter contradicts the proconsul; so, too, if these powers were arranged under the same dominion, namely, if someone were the slave of Titius and Titius of Peter, the emperor ought rather to compel the slave to serve Peter, who is superior to Titius, than Titius, if Titius wished to use that slave against Peter’s dominion. Therefore, above all the prince ought to be zealous to preserve the dominion of the supreme Lord, namely God; and consequently the prince not only may, but must, take little ones away from the dominion of parents who wish to raise them against the worship of God, their supreme and most worthy Lord, and must devote them to divine worship.”

THE THOMISTS REPLY: The major premise is true when the superior wills his precept to be obeyed notwithstanding a contrary will and any right of the inferior; but it is otherwise when the superior wills his own precept to be obeyed without violation of the inferior’s right. They say this is the case here: for when God commands that all, even little ones, be baptized, he wills this precept to be observed without violating the natural right a father has over his child, because grace does not destroy nature but perfects it. — But this answer is entirely empty. For although God did not explicitly command that baptism be administered to little ones even against their parents’ will, he nevertheless commands it at least implicitly, since he instituted and ordained baptism as a remedy necessary to each and every person for salvation. By that very fact, he sufficiently granted little ones the right to receive baptism, and therefore they cannot be forcibly prevented from it without injustice. Thus, although parents do not sin against justice by failing to procure baptism for their little ones, but only against piety or charity, they nevertheless truly sin against justice by preventing a minister ready to confer baptism, to which their little ones have a right. It is just as, although one is bound only by charity to correct his neighbor, the person who forcibly prevents me from that correction would nevertheless sin against justice, because he would obstruct the execution of a duty divinely entrusted to me; for God has charged each person with his neighbor.

It is proved a second time: If anything were an obstacle preventing the children of unbelievers from being baptized against their parents’ will, it would be chiefly that this would clearly injure the parents, against natural right and paternal authority, which they have over their children so long as the children lack the use of reason, no less than over their own possessions. But this argument is worthless, both because a prince can deprive his subjects of such dominion over their possessions when they abuse it, while parents who refuse to have their children baptized abuse their dominion over them against God’s honor and the children’s salvation. “For he does not bear the sword without cause,” St. Paul says in Romans 13, “as an avenger to bring wrath upon the one who does evil.” What greater evil is there than depriving someone of a remedy necessary for salvation? Therefore unbelievers can be deprived of such paternal right and dominion over their children, and consequently their infants can licitly be baptized. And because, if an unbelieving father wished to kill his child, the infant could be forcibly snatched from his parent’s hands and removed from his power, notwithstanding natural right; therefore, all the more if the parent refuses to have the child baptized, so that through baptism the child may escape eternal death. For spiritual life is far more excellent than bodily life. The antecedent is clear: the power to defend the innocent belongs to everyone by natural right. But children are innocent and are exposed to the greatest harm if they are not baptized. Therefore by natural right it is licit to baptize them against their parent’s resistance.

THE THOMISTS REPLY that a prince can indeed deprive his subjects of the dominion they have over their children when they abuse it against the Law of Nature, but not when they abuse it against a supernatural law unknown to them, such as the law obliging them to baptism. Since civil power is purely natural and derives from human beings, it cannot extend beyond natural right to supernatural law and its observance, such as the law concerning reception of baptism. Consequently, no prince can deprive them of their natural right and dominion over their children when they abuse it against supernatural law and the children’s salvation. — On the contrary, natural right cannot bind to the detriment of the law of faith. For whatever is contained in natural right is included, at least implicitly, in the Decalogue, and is reduced to the precepts of the virtues, all of which are confirmed by the Gospel Law. Moreover, every law is prescribed and ordered to the end of charity and salvation; therefore no law binds to the detriment of faith and charity. Hence piety, on which the entire right of a parent over a child is founded, does not bind against charity and salvation; and consequently grants the parent no right over the child against the precept to receive baptism, which the Gospel Law prescribes as a means necessary for salvation. Second, the faith received does not diminish a faithful person’s paternal right over his own children. Otherwise a baptized and faithful person would be worse off than a Gentile or a Jew with respect to authority over his children. But our opponents agree with us that the children of Catholics and even of heretics may licitly be baptized against their parents’ will, with the authority of the prince and the Church, notwithstanding the parents’ natural right over their children. Therefore the children of unbelieving subjects too may licitly be baptized without prejudice to paternal right, if the prince’s authority is given, however much the parents refuse. This is confirmed because a parent’s having been baptized gives the prince no additional right over that baptized parent’s children, any more than over the children of an unbaptized parent; nor does the child of a baptized parent have a greater right to receive baptism than the child of an unbaptized parent. Therefore, if the former may licitly be baptized, why not the latter as well? Third, a child who has the use of reason may licitly be baptized if he consents, however much his parents refuse. But the child’s use of reason neither obstructs nor diminishes paternal jurisdiction over him. Therefore, without prejudice to paternal jurisdiction, a child who lacks the use of reason may also be baptized. The major premise is established: for no one is bound to obey his parents in matters opposed to his salvation, as Christ the Lord teaches: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother … he cannot be my disciple.” That is, as St. Gregory explains, “let us not fail to know that we must hate and flee those whom we suffer as adversaries on the way of God.” If, then, a son can be removed from his father’s company and dominion at an age when he can render obedience to him and be useful to him, so that he may watch over his own salvation, all the more can he be removed from his father’s authority in the weak infancy when he is merely a burden to his parents, so that his salvation may be secured.

YOU WILL SAY 1: If the children of unbelievers were baptized against their parents’ will, either after baptism they would have to be taken away from their parents’ society and company to be raised among the faithful, or they would have to be left with their unbelieving parents. But neither is licit. The first is not licit because it involves a manifest injury: parents are stripped of the natural right they have over their children, who are under their power so long as they lack the use of reason. Yet evil must not be done so that good may come. The second is not licit either, because it would tend to the detriment and profanation of baptism. For there would be a danger that unbelieving parents would infect these children with their most wicked rites and, when they reached adulthood, force them to renounce baptism. Therefore, etc. — I deny the minor premise: for if there were a danger of their being subverted, such infants could be removed from their parents’ dominion and company, for the reason just given. For if a son who has reason and freedom can withdraw from his parents’ company and care to look after his own salvation, at an age when by natural duty he is bound to obey and serve his parents, all the more may he licitly be removed from their presence at an age when, lacking reason, he can render them no service at all, but can impose much burden and labor on them. Moreover, even without any removal or separation, provision can be made for the infant until he reaches the use of reason, since parents are bound to provide the child with everything necessary for natural life, and in that condition they can do nothing to him that would harm his salvation.

YOU WILL SAY 2: Christ the Lord wished no one to be brought to the Catholic faith by force, but freely and without any compulsion, whether one’s own or another’s. Therefore little ones, so long as they have no will other than their parents’, cannot be brought into the Christian religion through baptism against their parents’ resistance. Gonet proved the antecedent, disputation 3, art. 3, § 3. First, he says, no one can be compelled to the faith that leads to eternal life; therefore the Gospel Law, which is received in the heart only through faith, must not be imposed by injury, fear, and violence. Second, since Christ’s intention was to persuade the whole world to the faith—not just any faith, but one that works through love alone—and since nothing is more contrary to charity, or love, than force, injury, and fear, it was fitting that no one be compelled to it by such violence. Third, lest the faith, which exceeds the powers of natural reason, become hateful when preached to the nations by force, and be thought a kind of tyranny and a fabrication of the devil contrary to reason. Fourth, so that by this excellence our law would shine when compared with Muhammad’s perfidy: for the latter, as something that could be persuaded by no reason, was thrust upon the world by force and arms; but our faith, through weak and meek men and by the force and power of truth alone, conquered the world and overcame philosophers and emperors. Thus Chrysostom says admirably in Sermon 3, On Pentecost: “Fishermen traversed the world and, finding it weak, restored it to health; finding it in ruin, they restored it to stability—not wielding shields, not bending bows, not shooting arrows, not distributing money, not trusting in eloquence, but possessing the kingdom of heaven, having no human comforts, yet having the Lord with them. Sheep traversed the whole world among wolves; the sheep were not wounded by the beasts, but rather the wolves were changed into the meekness of sheep.” — I answer: I deny that the antecedent can be maintained. For although God freely called all those invited to the banquet under the parable of the householder, nevertheless he commands: “Go out into the roads and hedges, and compel them to come in, so that my house may be filled.” Hence St. Augustine asks in Letter 48 to Vincentius: “Do you think that no one can be compelled to righteousness, when you read that the householder said to his servants, ‘Compel all whom you find to come in’?” Hence the Doctor says, n. 2: “I would believe it to be done religiously if the parents themselves were compelled by threats and terrors to receive baptism and afterward to preserve what they had received. For even if they were not true believers in their hearts, it would nevertheless be a lesser evil for them not to be able to keep their unlawful law with impunity than to be able to keep it freely. Likewise, if their children were raised well, they would be true believers in the third and fourth generation.” He proves this from the decree of the Fourth Council of Toledo, where we read in canon 56²: “Concerning the Jews, the holy synod decrees that henceforth no one is to use force to make them believe. ‘For God has mercy on whom he wills, and hardens whom he wills.’ For they are not to be saved unwillingly, but willingly, so that the form of justice may be preserved intact. For just as a man perished by obeying the serpent through the will of his own free choice, so each person is saved by believing through the conversion of his own mind when God’s grace calls him. Therefore they are to be persuaded to convert, not forced; not driven, but moved by the free will of their choice. As for those who were compelled long ago to become Christians, as happened in the time of the most religious prince Sisenand, since it is now established that they were joined to the divine sacraments, received the grace of baptism, were anointed with chrism, and became sharers in the Body and Blood of the Lord, they ought to be compelled to keep the faith they received by force or necessity, lest the name of the Lord be blasphemed and the faith they received be held cheap and contemptible.” Although the Council forbids compelling Jews and other unbelievers to receive the faith and baptism, nevertheless, by using the word henceforth, it signifies that this had not always been illicit; and therefore such compulsion, whatever it may be, is not illicit by the nature of the thing, nor by natural or divine law. Hence it adds in the same place: “As for those who were compelled long ago to become Christians, as happened in the time of the most religious prince Sisenand,” etc. “Therefore,” says the Doctor above, n. 3, “in this he approves him as a religious prince,” not because of his outstanding faith and other acts of piety, of which there is no mention there, but “because he compelled unbelievers to the faith.” By the same reasoning, all those Catholic princes who enacted very severe laws against unbelievers and even heretics unless they returned to the Catholic Church are celebrated with praise. Add that if such compulsion were illicit by natural and divine law, it would be chiefly because it would lead to a fictitious and merely external reception of baptism. But it often happens that those compelled in this way receive baptism not only fictitiously but sincerely; for, as St. Augustine says in Letter 60, “It has benefited many—as experience has shown and continues to show—to be first compelled by fear or pain, so that afterward they may be taught, or may put into practice what they had already learned in words.” He proves this for many cases, and especially by the example of the conversion of St. Paul, writing: “When he had called Peter and the other Apostles by the word alone, Paul, formerly Saul, afterward a great builder of his Church but previously a dreadful ravager, he restrained not only by his voice, but also cast him down by his power; and, to urge him, raging in the darkness of unbelief, to desire the light of the heart, he first struck him with bodily blindness.… Where is what these people are accustomed to cry out: ‘It is free to believe or not to believe. Whom did Christ attack? Whom did he compel?’ Behold the Apostle Paul: let them recognize in him Christ first compelling and afterward teaching, first striking and afterward advising.… If the Church did not compel her lost children to return, how did those lost children compel others to perish?” etc. The holy Doctor proves the same point by the example of a sheep that has strayed from the flock, which, once found, it is right to bring back to the Lord’s fold by the threat of blows or even by pain if it wishes to resist. He also proves it by the parable of the householder commanding his servants to compel those they find on the roads and hedges—that is, in heresies and schisms—to come in.

Nor should you say that this is true of heretics, who gave their name to Christ through baptism, but not of unbaptized unbelievers. For although St. Augustine’s chief aim in that letter is to show Boniface, a military man to whom he addresses it, that heretics, especially Donatists, may lawfully be compelled to return to the Church, nevertheless his arguments prove the same concerning any unbelievers. Hence he had written earlier: “If horses and mules, which have no understanding, resist with bites and kicks the people who handle their wounds, and although people are often endangered between their teeth and hooves and sometimes tormented, they do not abandon them, but through medicinal pains and discomfort bring them back to health, how much more must one person not abandon another, a brother not abandon a brother, lest he perish forever, when, once corrected, he can understand what a benefit is being done to him, even as he complains of suffering persecution?” Hence he concludes: “When emperors enact bad laws in favor of falsehood against the truth, those who believe rightly are proved and those who persevere are crowned. But when they enact good laws in favor of the truth against falsehood, those who rage are intimidated and those who understand are corrected. Therefore, whoever refuses to obey the laws of emperors enacted against God’s truth earns a great reward; but whoever refuses to obey the laws of emperors enacted in favor of God’s truth earns a great punishment.” The Subtle Doctor’s opinion is therefore not absurd when he judges that it is sometimes not illicit to compel unbelievers to embrace the faith, especially when that compulsion will benefit their descendants, since their children will eventually become fully Catholic. For he does not mean that every kind of compulsion, in every circumstance, is permitted by divine law, but that it may be moderate where and when right reason dictates that it tends not to the destruction of the faith but to its building up, not to hatred but rather to love, unless the Church has decreed otherwise.

NOTE 1. The present difficulty chiefly concerns four dispositions of an adult who approaches to receive baptism: namely, faith, which excludes all unbelief and error; consent, which admits no coercion; sincere will, which removes pretense and dissimulation; and finally penance, which draws the soul back from sins and turns it toward God. It is most certain, moreover, that faith is required in an adult to obtain the grace of justification. For in the last chapter of Matthew, when Christ commissions the Apostles to convert the nations, he commands: Go, teach all nations, baptizing, etc.; here he wills instruction to precede baptism because faith is necessary: For faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of God, that is, preaching. Hence, at the end of Mark: He who believes and is baptized will be saved. Therefore, when the Eunuch asked for baptism, Philip said to him, Acts 8: If you believe, you may. When the Eunuch replied, I believe, Philip at once baptized him. All the holy Fathers held this truth with equal certainty, requiring a confession of faith from catechumens as a necessary disposition before baptism. Such were St. Dionysius, bk. On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, ch. 2; Origen, hom. 5 on the bk. of Numbers; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 2; Basil, bk. 3 Against Eunomius; Chrysostom, on ch. 15 of 1 Corinthians; and the other Greek Fathers. The Latin Fathers also support them: Tertullian, On the Spectacles, ch. 4; Cyprian, ep. 70 and 76; Ambrose, bk. On the Holy Spirit, ch. 11; Jerome, Dialogue Against the Luciferians, ch. 5; and St. Augustine, bk. On Faith and Works, chs. 9 and 20. Councils likewise decree the same: “the Council of Laodicea, can. 19 and 47; the Sixth Synod of Constantinople, ch. 7; and, most recently, the Council of Trent, sess. VI, ch. 6, establishes faith as the first disposition of an adult toward justification, giving the reason in ch. 8: because it is the root and foundation of justification. Faith is not, however, necessarily required beforehand in the recipient for him to be validly baptized, as St. Augustine teaches admirably in bk. On Baptism, ch. 11, where he says: When the integrity of the sacrament is at issue, it does not matter what the recipient believes, or with what faith he is imbued. It matters greatly, indeed, for the way of salvation; but it matters nothing to the question of the sacrament. For it can happen that a man possesses the sacrament intact and yet has a perverse faith.”

NOTE 2. Following the Subtle Doctor, In IV Sent., d. 4, q. 1, n. 2, an adult may be distinguished in two ways: one adult by age alone, the other by both age and reason. The first is someone who, although he has reached full age, is not yet in possession of reason, either from birth or because, though he once had the use of reason, he does not have it when the occasion to receive baptism arises, while it is hoped that he will have it at some time. The second is one who presently enjoys full and perfect reason. The question is raised of both: whether either may be baptized without consent. Moreover, according to the same Doctor, In II Sent., d. 41, q. un., there are three ways of consenting or dissenting: actual, virtual, and habitual. Actual consent is that by which someone in fact wills and consents, and determines to do or receive something. Virtual consent is consent once elicited actually and not revoked, but which remains operative because it moved the will to bring about an effect by applying the means; such is the consent of someone who is distracted while carrying out what he had resolved by a determinate act of will to do. Habitual consent is an ineffectual will by which someone does indeed will an effect, but does not apply the means during the time in question, although he removes the obstacle of a contrary will, either negatively, by suspending an act of nonconsent, or positively, by eliciting an act of dissent. For, as the Doctor teaches in the aforesaid d. 4, q. 1, n. 3, someone can be said not to consent in two ways: either contrarily or negatively. Negatively, he merely withholds actual consent; contrarily, he posits actual dissent. He gives this reason for the distinction: because it is not the same to not will and to will against. For not willing means suspending an act of willing, whereas willing against means positing an act of not willing. Again, someone who dissents contrarily, or positively, dissents either simply, so that he would not want the action under any circumstances, or only in a certain respect, so that he would not want the action if there were no danger to avoid. Thus, the Doctor says in the same place, someone who throws his goods into the sea to escape drowning simply wills to throw them overboard: for by commanding, his will moves his motive power to throw them, and freely moves itself, since it cannot be compelled. He therefore throws them overboard as one who simply wills it, but does not will it in a certain respect, that is, conditionally, because if he could, he would rather save his life by another means. The question, then, is which of these kinds of consent is required and sufficient for receiving the sacrament validly.

NOTE 3. According to the Doctor, ibid., q. 5, n. 2, someone can intend and perform an act dissemblingly in two ways. For dissembling, as it occurs in human acts, consists in someone outwardly pretending or presenting as intended something he does not intend inwardly: in words it is called a lie, and in deeds dissimulation. In the common usage of theologians it is called pretense. With respect to receiving a sacrament, this is twofold. The first occurs when the recipient truly has no intention at all of receiving the sacrament, although outwardly he feigns that he wills to receive it. The second concerns the prior disposition for receiving the sacrament rightly: the recipient feigns that he has this disposition, although he lacks it—for example, when he feigns belief in the mysteries whose faith is required, yet does not believe them; or feigns repentance for sins committed before baptism, though in fact he does not repent; or when, in the very reception of the sacrament, he sins mortally through an evil interior intention.

With these points established, four matters remain to be determined: first, whether and when an adult who is not in possession of reason may licitly be baptized; second, whether an adult who does not consent truly receives baptism; third, whether one who approaches baptism dissemblingly receives its effect; fourth, whether an impenitent person can receive baptism rightly.

First conclusion. — AN ADULT DEPRIVED OF REASON FROM BIRTH, IF HE DOES NOT HAVE A LUCID USE OF REASON, IS BAPTIZED VALIDLY AND LICITLY. This is the Doctor’s teaching in the aforesaid q. 1, n. 2, where he explains this difficulty so clearly that I am glad to transcribe here not only his doctrine but his very words. He says: “The same must be said of that adult as of a child, with this single difference: if it is hoped that he will at some time be cured and use reason, that time should be awaited, so that he may receive the sacrament with greater reverence. But if it is despaired that he will ever attain the use of reason, the sacrament should be conferred on him at once, because God excludes no one from the remedy of salvation. Of the second, namely, one who does not now use reason but once did, I say that he is now supposed habitually to consent or dissent according to how he stood in health immediately before this impediment: that is, if he then actually consented, he is judged now to consent habitually; if he then actually dissented, he is judged now to dissent habitually. I said immediately, so that no contrary movement of the will intervened between that act and this impediment. Thus, I say universally that someone in this habitual state can receive the sacrament just as he could before, when he was in one state or the other. How someone in an actual state can be baptized will be said at once in the third member. But is it expedient to baptize such a person? For many things are lawful that are not expedient, 1 Corinthians 6. I answer: if it is hoped that he will return to the use of reason, it is more expedient to await the time when he will use reason; for example, in the case of someone asleep it is expedient to await the time of waking, and in the case of a madman the time of a lucid interval. But if this is not hoped—for example, in the case of someone who has fallen into a permanent impediment to the use of reason—it is expedient to baptize him, provided that he is capable of baptism; otherwise he would be exposed to the danger of damnation. How someone is capable of it will be said at once concerning one who uses reason.” Thus the Doctor.

The same point is gathered from the Roman Ritual, title On Baptism, where we read: “Let the insane and the mad not be baptized, unless they have been such from birth; for then the same judgment must be made about them as about infants, and they can be baptized in the faith of the Church. But if they have lucid intervals, let them be baptized while they are in possession of their minds, if they wish. If, however, before becoming insane they showed a desire to receive baptism, and danger to their life is imminent, let them be baptized even if they are not in possession of their minds. The same must be said of someone suffering from lethargy or delirium: he is to be baptized only while awake and understanding, unless danger of death is imminent, if he had previously shown a desire for baptism.” Here it first forbids the baptism of an insane or mad person; second, it permits it if he is permanently insane; third, even if he is not permanently insane, if he desired baptism while he had lucid intervals, then he may be baptized even in insanity, provided there is danger to his life.

Second conclusion. — AN ADULT WHO IN NO WAY CONSENTS RECEIVES THE SACRAMENT INVALIDLY; BUT IT IS OTHERWISE IF HE CONSENTS AT LEAST IN A CERTAIN RESPECT. This is the common teaching as to

The first part, moreover, is explicitly taught by Innocent III, ch. Maiores, On Baptism and Its Effect, where he says: But he who never consents, but wholly contradicts, receives neither the reality nor the character of the sacrament, because explicitly to contradict is more than to consent not at all. He proves this by analogy: Just as, in fact, someone incurs no stain of guilt if, while wholly contradicting and protesting, he is forced to burn incense to idols. — In the same place the Pope decrees likewise concerning someone who receives the sacrament of baptism while asleep or insane, without revoking his prior will never to receive baptism: But sleepers, he says, and the insane, if before they became insane or fell asleep they persisted in contradiction, because the intention of contradiction is understood to endure in them, and if they emerged in this state (or, alternatively, were immersed), do not receive the character of the sacrament.

The reason for this truth is drawn from the will of Christ the Lord. He could, absolutely speaking, have instituted the sacraments so that they would benefit even those who were unwilling; yet the understanding of the Doctors and the Church leads us to conclude that he did not institute them in this way. The Doctor gives the fitting reason in In IV Sent., d. 1, q. 1, n. 3, where he says: “If, then, someone dissents in both ways—negatively and contrarily, simply and in a certain respect—I say that he does not receive the sacrament. For God says through the Wise Man, Proverbs 23: My son, give me your heart, not wishing anyone wholly unwilling to be enrolled in his household. By receiving baptism, however, one is enrolled in the household of Christ.” The Doctor adds: “Nor is it necessary here to distinguish between someone who protests and manifests his dissent by an outward sign and someone who does not protest; for in truth, if there is dissent, it is altogether the same with respect to God. Yet with respect to the judgment of the Church, which judges what is manifest and presumes consent in the one who is silent, one who protests will not be compelled to observe the Christian religion, whereas one who does not protest will be compelled. Nor can the Church be accused of wronging someone who is unwilling yet does not protest. For it is a lesser evil for him to observe the Christian Law unwillingly than to be permitted with impunity to act against it: it is a lesser evil to do some good things unwillingly and to avoid evils than freely and with impunity to do evil and omit good.”

YOU WILL SAY 1: Innocent III, in the same ch. Maiores, says: There are some who say that sacraments which by themselves obtain their effect, such as baptism and order, and other similar sacraments, are conferred not only on sleepers and the insane, but also on unwilling and resisting people—not as to the reality, perhaps, but as to the character—since not only children, who do not consent, but also those who dissemble, who dissent in their heart though not in their speech, receive the sacrament. Therefore baptism can be validly administered to unwilling and resisting people. — I deny the inference; for this is not the opinion of the Supreme Pontiff Innocent, but only a report of what others think. Hence he immediately adds: But those people are challenged with this: those who were immersed while unwilling and resisting would at least, by reason of the sacrament, belong to the jurisdiction of the Church; hence they would reasonably be compelled to observe the rule of the Christian faith. Yet it is contrary to the Christian religion that someone who is always unwilling and wholly opposed should be compelled to receive and observe Christianity. For this reason, some distinguish not unreasonably between one unwilling person and another, one coerced person and another: the person violently drawn by threats and punishments, who receives the sacrament of baptism lest he suffer harm, receives, like one who approaches baptism dissemblingly, the impressed character of Christianity. By these words the Pope grants that only someone unwilling in a certain respect can indeed be baptized validly, but not one who is compelled absolutely to receive baptism.

The second part is proved by the same Doctor in the same place: someone who dissents only in a certain respect, that is, through fear of incurring some evil if he did not receive the sacrament, is truly baptized: “But if, he says, he dissents in a certain respect yet consents simply—and consents not merely to that washing as to a sort of bath, but to the washing in the manner in which the Church intends to perform it—he simply receives the sacrament, because he is simply willing, although he does not will it in a certain respect. The Council of Toledo speaks of such a person, as cited in the Extravagantes, On Baptism and Its Effect, ch. Maiores: those who were long ago compelled to become Christians, since it is now established that they have been joined to the divine sacraments, must be compelled to keep the faith they received under duress, lest the name of the Lord be blasphemed and the faith they received be held in contempt. An example of how someone can consent to receive that washing in the manner in which it is conferred by the Church, and yet would not want it if he could escape the torments, is someone who does not believe that words of an incantation can have any effect, yet allows the enchanter to say those words over him with the intention with which he usually says them, saying in his heart, let them have whatever power they can. Such a man would truly be said to have been enchanted; and if that incantation were said over someone consecrated to the devil, he would be consecrated to the devil. The difference between this member, dissenting in a certain respect, and the preceding member is clear: the one who dissents simply does not receive the sacrament at all, and so, once his dissent ceases, he would simply have to be baptized. But this man, because he consents simply, although he dissents in a certain respect, is baptized, and when that dissent in a certain respect ceases, he is not to be baptized again. If someone does not consent only negatively, I say that he receives the sacrament if he consents virtually; for God did not wish to bind a person to what is impossible, or excessively difficult in the condition of this life. Now, in this condition, it does not seem excessively difficult for a person not to be distracted; for, according to Augustine, bk. 3, On Free Choice, it is not within our will not to be affected by what we see. Therefore God did not wish to make human salvation depend on the condition that one not be distracted. Nor, then, did he wish to bind someone who is not distracted while receiving baptism. The same applies universally to the other sacraments. A priest, too, is not necessarily bound, when consecrating the Eucharist, not to be distracted. For he truly consecrates while distracted, provided that earlier, when vesting, he intended to celebrate Mass according to the custom of the Church.”

And if you ask whether, given that someone who does not consent actually but does consent virtually—in the manner of the example of a priest celebrating—receives baptism, one who consents only habitually also receives it, the distinction between virtual and habitual consent is clear from bk. 2, d. 41. And suppose that he does: does someone who merely does not consent negatively also fail to dissent negatively, since he has neither an actual nor a habitual contrary act? — As to the first, one could say that such a person is judged to consent habitually, because he once had actual consent and no dissent intervened; and such a person, even if he is now using reason, receives the sacrament. For someone who uses reason does not seem less capable on account of any condition than someone who used it earlier but does not use it now; yet in the latter case, though he does not use it now, habitual consent would suffice. Therefore it suffices in this case too. As to the second, although it would be difficult to find such a person, especially one who had once thought about baptism—for either he would then have liked to be baptized, or he would not have liked it, indeed would have disliked it, and in the latter case his habitual consent or dissent would be judged to persist thereafter—nevertheless, if someone were wholly without consent or dissent, both actually and habitually, and yet were using reason, he would not be capable of baptism. For, since he uses reason, he must have some devotion toward the sacrament if it is to benefit him; otherwise he would seem to hold it in contempt.

From all this the Doctor determines chiefly five things. First, that someone who dissents negatively or contrarily is not baptized validly. Second, that someone who dissents only in a certain respect is truly baptized, because he is held to consent simply. Third, that virtual consent suffices for someone to be baptized not only validly but rightly: for if virtual intention suffices in the minister, it does so much more in the recipient, since the recipient requires less intention than the minister, as we said when treating the necessity of a minister. Fourth, habitual consent suffices for valid reception of the sacrament, because a past will is always held to persist until it is revoked. Innocent teaches the same in ch. Maiores, where he says that the insane and sleepers who have already consented and have not afterward dissented are baptized validly. Councils also decree the same. The Third Council of Carthage, ch. 31, says: Let the sick be baptized if they cannot answer for themselves, when those near them have testified to their will. The same must be done with penitents. The First Council of Orange decrees the same in ch. 11, elsewhere numbered 12: Someone who suddenly becomes mute may, as prescribed, be baptized or receive penance if he has testimony of a prior will in the words of others, or of a present will in his own gesture. Fifth and finally, someone who is indifferent—that is, who neither consents nor dissents—does not receive the sacrament.

YOU WILL SAY 2: Innocent, in the aforesaid ch. Maiores, says: The sacramental character is impressed by the action when it finds no contrary object of the will opposing it. But in someone who neither consents nor dissents there is no contrary will; therefore the character of baptism is impressed in him, and consequently he is baptized validly. Furthermore, no consent is required to receive extreme unction; therefore none is required for baptism either. — I answer the first point: by “contrary will” Innocent also means a negative will. For he says: “But he who never consents, but wholly contradicts, receives neither the reality nor the character of the sacrament”; the words but wholly contradicts are not added as a qualification of doubt, but as an intensification, as Hiquaeus rightly observes in the same place. For the case proposed concerned people who, having been invited to baptism, were dragged to it; he says their baptism is null because, he says, to contradict is more than to consent not at all. Here he also assumes that someone who consents is baptized validly, for one who consents is not considered unwilling. As to the second, I say there is no parallel: extreme unction presupposes no consent other than the general consent of a faithful and penitent person, who, at the very point of death, is reasonably presumed to wish all means conducive to salvation to be applied to him. Hence the Roman Ritual, under the title On the Sacrament of Extreme Unction, teaches: It is to be administered to the sick who, while sound in mind and in possession of their senses, asked for it, or would probably have asked for it, or gave signs of contrition, even if afterward they lose speech, become insane, die, or are insensible.

Third conclusion. — AN ADULT GUILTY OF AN ACTUAL MORTAL SIN MUST NECESSARILY DO PENANCE AND TRULY BE SORRY FOR THE SINS COMMITTED IN ORDER TO RECEIVE BAPTISM WORTHILY AND RIGHTLY. This is the common teaching among theologians, and

It is proved first from Sacred Scripture. In Acts 2, when St. Peter saw the Jews to whom he had preached ready to do whatever he prescribed as necessary for their salvation, he said: Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Hence the Council of Trent, sess. VI, ch. 6, declares penance necessary in an adult approaching baptism, so that he may receive its effect worthily. For, speaking of the preparation necessary for justification, it says: They are therefore moved against sins by some hatred and detestation, that is, by that penance which must be performed before baptism. Accordingly, in can. 3 it defines: If anyone says that without the prevenient inspiration of the Holy Spirit and his help a person can believe, hope, love, or repent as he ought in order that justification and grace be conferred on him, let him be anathema. And with good reason: for every justification of a sinful person, as something most supernatural, requires beforehand a supernatural disposition, at least in its manner. Hence the same Council, sess. XIV, ch. 1, says: Penance was indeed necessary in every age for all people who had defiled themselves with mortal sin, in order to attain grace and justice; this was also necessary for those who had asked to be washed by the sacrament of baptism, so that, casting away and amending their perversity, they might detest so great an offense against God with hatred of sin and pious sorrow of soul.

“The Subtle Doctor defends the same truth. For in d. 1, q. 5, n. 2, he says: In another way someone can be dissembling by showing himself disposed to receive the sacrament, while inwardly he is not disposed: either because he does not have right faith, or because he has some mortal sin presently in act or committed in the past, for which he feels neither attrition nor contrition at all. He is speaking of the sacrament of baptism, and therefore assumes that baptism does not justify an adult guilty of an actual sin without prior attrition or contrition.”

YOU WILL SAY: The same Doctor seems to assert that sorrow for sin is not absolutely necessary for an adult sinner, but only the will to receive the sacrament, without present complacency in sin. For he says in In IV Sent., d. 14, q. 3, a. 3: Just as, then, an adult can obtain the first grace that erases original sin in either of two ways—either from a good movement that disposes him to it by way of congruous merit, or from receiving the sacrament—so too in the present case, etc. This is explained as follows: for the first reception of grace, some movement meritorious by way of congruity is required; for the second, nothing is required but voluntary reception of baptism, without dissimulation—that is, with the intention of receiving what the Church confers—and without an act or will of mortal sin. Thus, in the first case some inward work, in some way accepted as congruous merit, is required; in the second, only an outward act together with removal of an inward impediment. Therefore, one who has been attrite for some time, etc. — Some answer these words by saying that the Doctor does not assert that penance is unnecessary for the worthy reception of baptism, but only that perfect contrition, which justifies outside the sacrament, is not required; that distinction is indeed the chief subject of the whole discussion. Hiquaeus, however, says in his Commentary that this appeal is unnecessary, since the Doctor speaks clearly if we distinguish the parts of his argument and consider its aim. — At the beginning of that article he rejects the Master’s opinion in d. 18, asserting that the Evangelical Priest does not remit sins but declares them remitted. The Doctor attacks this because it detracts from the sacrament of penance: on that account it would never remit sins, but would presuppose them remitted by true contrition, and consequently it would not be the second plank after shipwreck. He then sets out the opinion of the Alensis, who says that a congruous disposition is so required for the sacrament of penance that sin is remitted through the sacrament, yet God has not bound his power to the sacraments so that he cannot remit sin without them through a perfect disposition outside the sacrament; for it is an act of greater mercy to institute two ways and means of remitting sin than to restrict it to only one. The Doctor then gives the example of an adult’s baptism and the remission of original sin through those two ways: either through a good movement of the will as congruous merit, or through actually receiving baptism, excluding dissimulation. From this he proves that a sinner after baptism is likewise justified in either of two ways, either through contrition or through the sacrament of penance, on the supposition of attrition; this is indicated by the clause so too in the present case, etc., that is, concerning the sacrament of penance. He adds a fuller explanation: This, he says, is explained as follows: for the first reception of grace—namely, by an adult justified from original sin outside the sacrament—some movement meritorious by way of congruity is required, etc. — In the words just quoted, then, the Doctor means nothing other than that an adult who has committed no actual sin requires no other disposition for receiving the effect of baptism than a sincere will to receive that sacrament. For he speaks only of the way in which original sin is remitted, as his words make clear; he is not speaking there of actual sin, whose removal requires, beyond the will to receive the sacrament of baptism, penance or sorrow for committing that sin.

YOU WILL ASK: Must that penance be an act of perfect contrition, or does attrition suffice? — I answer, attrition suffices, since the sacrament of baptism has in itself the power to remit sin and regenerate a person, as the Council of Trent teaches in sess. VI, ch. 4. After saying that the justification of the ungodly is a translation from the state in which a person is born as a child of the first Adam into the state of grace and adoption as children of God through Jesus Christ our Savior, the Council immediately adds: After the Gospel has been promulgated, this translation cannot take place without the laver of regeneration or the desire for it. By these words the Council attributes the power to regenerate either to the sacrament itself when actually received or to the desire to receive it. This desire means nothing other than perfect contrition; therefore the Council holds that baptism actually received has the power to justify, and does not necessarily presuppose that the person has already been justified through perfect contrition. This is confirmed by the fact that the same Council, in the preamble to sess. VII, says of the sacraments: Through them all true justice either begins, increases once begun, or is restored once lost. Justice begins through no sacrament other than baptism, which is the first of all the sacraments and their gateway, just as it is the entrance to the Church; therefore, etc. The Council of Florence also adds, in the decree of Eugenius, where it speaks of baptism’s effect: The effect of baptism is the remission of every original and actual sin. Consequently, it holds that baptism has in itself the power to remit any sin, and need not necessarily presuppose its remission through perfect contrition. — The Subtle Doctor had taught this doctrine long before either Council, in In IV Sent., d. 14, q. 4, n. 6, where he says: It is therefore said that God requires a congruous disposition—that is, perfect contrition—in order to confer grace on the sinner through the sacrament of penance, not because he binds his power to the sacraments and so cannot confer grace through the sacrament without that prior and congruous disposition that would suffice; this is an act of greater mercy, namely, to institute two ways by which a sinner may be justified rather than restrict him to one. Just as, then, an adult can obtain the first grace that erases original sin in either of two ways, either from a good movement that disposes him to it by way of congruous merit or from receiving baptism, so too in the present case, etc.

YOU WILL SAY: Through sin a person turns away from God as his ultimate end; therefore, to be freed from sin, he must turn toward God as his ultimate end, and hence through an act of charity and contrition. — I deny the final inference. For through imperfect contrition, or attrition, if it excludes the will to sin and is accompanied by hope of pardon, the sinner sufficiently turns toward God as his ultimate end in order to obtain remission of sin through the sacrament of baptism. The Doctor explains this clearly in In II Sent., d. 37, q. 1, n. 8, where he says: “Turning away from the ultimate end can be understood in two ways, either formally or virtually. Formally, it may be contrary or negative: the will either does not will that end, and such not-willing is hatred, or fails to will what it ought to will, and such failure to will is an omission of the precept You shall love the Lord your God. Virtually, it occurs when something is necessary for attaining the ultimate end and the will, by turning away from that thing, thereby turns away virtually from the end; just as an intellect denying a conclusion virtually turns away from a principle, and a sick person is said to turn away from health when he turns away from a bitter drink without which health cannot be had. In itself, the first kind of turning away is of the same nature, and it is not formally included in every sin; for hatred of God is a particular sin. The second kind of turning away is common to every mortal sin, because in every such sin the will is disordered with respect to something necessary for the end.” Thus the Doctor. I infer: but by the attrition just described, the will, previously turned away from God through sin, is rightly ordered with respect to everything necessary for attaining the ultimate end; therefore such attrition immediately disposes the sinner to obtain remission of sins in the sacrament of baptism. The inference is evident. The inference’s premise is proved from Christ’s words in Matthew 19:17: If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.

Fourth conclusion. — ONE WHO APPROACHES THE SACRAMENT OF BAPTISM WITH FEIGNED PIETY IS INDEED BAPTIZED VALIDLY, BUT DOES NOT RECEIVE SANCTIFYING GRACE UNTIL THAT PRETENSE, OR OBSTACLE, HAS BEEN REMOVED. This is the common teaching, and

The first part is taught by the Doctor in d. 4, q. 5, where he says in n. 2: “I say that God does not justify one who is unwilling, according to Augustine’s saying: He who created you without you will not justify you without you. This person, who presently has an obstacle against grace—for example, unbelief, or some sin that he commits then by an act of will, or that he committed earlier and in no way regrets—receives grace in no way, according to Augustine in the passage cited above: Everyone who has been constituted the arbiter of his own will, etc. The saying in Wisdom 1, The Holy Spirit of discipline will flee from the deceitful, is understood of such a person.” By these words the Subtle Doctor indicates that the perverse will of someone who approaches baptism dissemblingly is an obstacle to receiving sanctifying grace; on this there is certainly no controversy.

Moreover, St. Augustine explains this truth admirably in bk. 1 of On Baptism, ch. 12. He teaches not only that pretense is an obstacle preventing the one to be baptized from receiving sanctifying grace, but also that when the pretense departs, baptism revives and the baptized person receives the sanctifying grace that baptism has the power to produce. He says: “What if he approached baptism itself dissemblingly: were his sins remitted or not? Let them choose whichever they wish; either answer is enough for us. If they say they were remitted, how then will the Holy Spirit of discipline flee from the deceitful, if he worked the remission of sins in this deceitful person? If they say they were not remitted, I ask: if afterward, with his heart stricken, he confessed his pretense in true sorrow, would he be judged to need baptism again? If it is most foolish to say so, let them acknowledge that a person can be baptized with the true baptism of Christ, yet the persistence of his heart in wickedness or sacrilege can prevent the abolition of sins. Thus they should understand that people can be baptized in communities separated from the Church, where the baptism of Christ is given and received in the same celebration of the sacrament; yet at that time it does not benefit them for the remission of sins, until, reconciled to unity, they are stripped of the sacrilege of dissension by which their sins were held and not permitted to be remitted. For just as, in the case of one who had approached dissemblingly, it happens that he is baptized again¹, but is cleansed by that very pious correction and truthful confession—something he could not receive without baptism—so that what had been given before begins then to benefit him for salvation, when that pretense has departed through truthful confession, so too this person, who received the baptism of Christ, which those who separated themselves lost, as an enemy of the charity and peace of Christ in some heresy or schism—by which sacrilegious crime his sins were not remitted—when he has corrected himself and come to the fellowship and unity of the Church, is not to be baptized again. For by that very reconciliation and peace it is granted that the sacrament, received in schism when it could not benefit him, begins now to benefit him for the remission of his sins in unity.” He says similar things in bk. 3, ch. 13, and bk. 6, ch. 5. Hence, in the conference held at Carthage 54 against the Donatists, we read: Therefore those who have his baptism outside the communion must come to Christ, not so that what was lacking may be supplied, but so that what was present may become beneficial—namely, for salvation, remission of sins, and the justification of the soul. — The author, whoever he is, of the sermon On the Passion, cited by Cyprian, agrees with him. Among other things he says: Although those who receive the sacraments are unworthy, the reverence due to the sacraments prepares a nearer approach to God; and when they return to their heart, the gift of washing is established and restores the effects of its gifts. — Gregory agrees, bk. 5, ep. 61, cited in De consecratione, d. 4, can. 44: The holy thing, he says, which they obtained among heretics then receives its cleansing power in them, when either they receive the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands or, because they profess the true and holy faith, they are joined to the heart of the universal Church. — St. Isidore of Seville says similar things in bk. 2 of Offices, ch. 24: A heretic does indeed have the baptism of Christ, but because he is outside the unity of faith it benefits him nothing; when he enters it, the baptism he had outside, to his destruction, at once begins to benefit him for salvation.

YOU WILL ASK: What effect does baptism, when it revives, have once the pretense and the obstacle of the recipient’s indisposition have been removed? — The Doctor answers in the aforesaid q. 5, n. 1: “And if someone objects, he says, how will this person have baptismal grace or any effect of baptism? One answer may be that this pretense is removed only through true penance; once it has been removed, baptism has its effect with respect to all sins preceding baptism that were not, however, the cause of the pretense at baptism. For example, someone committed seven mortal sins before baptism; when he comes to baptism, he is attrite for six, but takes pleasure in the seventh at that moment or has no attrition at all for it. That seventh sin alone is the (positive) cause of his pretense at baptism. Therefore he must truly repent of that seventh sin, both in itself and insofar as it was the cause of his pretense at baptism. I say this because perhaps he sinned with a new mortal sin—or perhaps, because he could be excused by ignorance, he showed irreverence toward the sacrament of baptism by receiving it with such pretense. But when that pretense departs, having been an impediment to baptism’s effect, God confers baptismal grace as a remedy against the other sins, which would have been erased in baptism if the pretense had not intervened.” And a little later: “Just as God would first have been present to his sign to cause or give its effect when it was received, had there been no impediment in the recipient, so he is always afterward ready to be present to the one who received that sign, to cause its effect when the impediment ceases. How could he more clearly and splendidly grant baptism the remission of every guilt and punishment when the pretense departs?” Since this account was not free from the difficulty that he raises and probably resolves in the same place, he weighed the matter with his customary acumen and devised a second and third account.

Second, I say, in n. 7, where he says: “Another account may be given: when someone truly repents of that pretense, a more perfect grace is infused in him than the grace infused solely by virtue of penance; that is, it includes within itself the perfection of both penitential and baptismal grace. In this way baptism has its effect, because grace equivalent to baptismal grace is given to the penitent for his pretense, together with the grace he merits by repenting.” But he immediately objects: “Against this it is argued that the person would then gain an advantage from his pretense, greater than if he had not then dissembled and afterward fallen into a sin like that pretense. For if he had fallen and now repented, he would have no grace now except solely by virtue of penance; but you say that the one who then dissembled at baptism has, when repenting, almost a double grace.” Accordingly, because of these disadvantages that follow from this opinion, he does not consider this reasoning absolutely acceptable. Therefore, in n. 8, he proposes another opinion to explain this sort of revival of baptism.

In a third way, he says, chiefly with respect to the principal question, it may be said that the penitent for his pretense receives grace solely by virtue of penance, and no more than if he had not dissembled at baptism but had fallen into sin afterward and risen again through penance. For it is not likely that equal grace would not be given to someone repenting of an equal or lesser sin. This person who fell after baptism, although in one respect he sinned more seriously than the dissembler, nevertheless the dissembler sinned more seriously in another respect, because he showed irreverence toward the sacrament. The words spoken about the effect of baptism obtained by the penitent for his pretense are therefore to be understood not as meaning that in that penance he receives any grace by virtue of baptism—for its reception was dead, and what is dead cannot revive—but that he is released from the precept to receive baptism because he fulfilled it. That fulfillment, however, did him no good for salvation before this penance.

From all this the Doctor proposes three accounts by which one might understand how the sacrament of baptism revives in its effect for someone who received it with feigned piety. The first account is that through the penance performed by someone who received baptism with feigned piety, the sin of that feigned piety is remitted, while the other sins committed before he received baptism are remitted by virtue of the baptism he received, to which God is present—that is, God, who is always present to the sacrament and moves it to produce its effect, namely, remission of sin and infusion of sanctifying grace. He would truly have produced this effect in the very act of receiving baptism, had the obstacle of feigned piety not stood in the way. The Doctor attacks this account in the same place: Because, he says, no mortal sin that remains after baptism can be erased without penance, for according to Jerome penance is the second plank after shipwreck. But those other sins, which are not the cause of the pretense, remain after baptism; therefore they are not erased except through penance. Or, if you suppose that they are erased through baptism when the impediment to baptism’s effect is removed, why cannot that pretense, which caused the impediment, itself be removed through baptism when the impediment ceases? He proposes two answers to this objection in the same place. First, penance and baptism act together as a single, adequate cause for the remission of all sins, both those that preceded baptism and the pretense itself. Thus, if the person who approached baptism dissemblingly had previously committed six mortal sins and added a seventh through that pretense in receiving baptism, God would remit the six earlier sins in view of the baptism he received, and the seventh in view of penance. Hence the Doctor says in n. 6: On this account it would have to be said that those sins are not erased either as to guilt or as to punishment, and that there is no need to have contrition, confession, or satisfaction for them, but only for that seventh sin, which caused the pretense. — To the second part of the objection, namely, that those seven mortal sins remain in the person after baptism, he answers that they do not all have to be removed through penance: because, he says, none of them caused the others to have already been erased. But that seventh sin caused neither itself nor the others to be erased. It is therefore reasonable that baptism be ineffective with respect to that one, but effective with respect to the others: for it formally impedes baptism’s effect, whereas the others do not. The proposition that a mortal sin committed after baptism is not erased except through penance must then be understood of a sin committed after baptism, or of one adhering absolutely—that is, one for which there was neither contrition nor attrition at baptism or afterward. Since this answer still suffers from various difficulties and objections, the Doctor therefore proposes a second account to explain this sort of revival.

The second account of how that pretense is erased is that baptismal grace is restored not in itself but equivalently: when someone who approached baptism with feigned piety rises again through penance, more abundant grace is conferred on him than he would have received by penance alone, precisely because that grace is equivalent to baptismal and penitential grace together. Yet he receives no grace by virtue of baptism by the work performed, but only by way of a prior disposition; in this case baptism serves as a disposition toward the more abundant grace to be produced by the work performed through penance—not solely through the penance’s own power, but on account of the baptism received as a prior disposition. Baptism is said in this case to serve as a disposition toward grace because, through the character received, the baptized person is marked with a new dignity, by reason of which he is enrolled in the household of Christ and thereby is more readily accepted for that grace than someone who has not been baptized. This is also signified by the author of the sermon On the Lord’s Supper, cited by St. Cyprian. Speaking of those approaching baptism, he says: Although those who receive are unworthy, the reverence due to the sacraments prepares a nearer approach to God; and when they return to their heart, the gift of washing is established and restores the effects of its gifts; there is no need to seek or repeat the saving sacrament by any other means. — But the Doctor objects to this account that it cannot be accepted, because, he says, it would follow that someone who had approached dissemblingly gains more from his pretense than if he had not then dissembled and had afterward fallen into a sin like that pretense. For if he had fallen and now repented, he would have no grace now except solely by virtue of penance; but you say that the one who then dissembled at baptism has, when repenting, almost a double grace. The Doctor answers this objection in two ways. First, it is false that he gains an advantage from his pretense; indeed, he suffers a greater loss: For at the time of baptism and afterward, until he repents, he is a child of hell, and all his works are dead. But if he had not dissembled, at that time and afterward until his fall he would have been a child of the kingdom, and his works would have been living, by which he would have merited an increase of grace and glory. Second, he denies that someone who falls after receiving baptism rightly and rises again through penance gains any advantage from his fall, although he recovers baptismal grace and something more, as he teaches admirably in d. 22, where he treats the revival of merits through penance; we too have openly defended the same truth.

The third account the Doctor proposes of baptism’s revival through subsequent penance is that the penitent receives grace by virtue of penance, through which his sins are remitted: the pretense itself directly, and the other sins indirectly. He receives no grace by virtue of baptism, because he received it unworthily. It does not follow from this that baptism does not benefit the convert for salvation. Although it does not benefit him with respect to grace, it does benefit him with respect to fulfilling the precept; observance of the precept contributes to salvation when that person who dissembled performs penance. For through the baptism he received he becomes a child of the kingdom and a member of Christ, and is not bound anew by the precept of baptism. Hence the Doctor observes in the same place: Someone who actually sins mortally can fulfill an affirmative precept even in that very act. For an affirmative precept determines the act as to its substance, but not as to its extrinsic end or other circumstances that can be separated from the substance of the act insofar as it falls under the precept. Since this question of the revival of the sacraments must be taken up again when we speak On the Sacrament of Penance, I judge that we should forgo a fuller examination of it here.