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

NOTE 1. Calvin’s opinion that sins are not truly washed away through baptism but merely covered over is erroneous and heretical, since he judges original sin to be nothing other than concupiscence, which persists even in the reborn; although, he says, it is no longer charged to them unto destruction and damnation. Moreover, in bk. 4 of the Institutes, ch. 15, he says: “From this sacrament (baptism), just as from the others, we obtain nothing except insofar as we receive it by faith. If faith is lacking, it will serve as testimony to our ingratitude, by which we shall be brought to account before God because we were unbelieving toward the promise given there. But insofar as it is a symbol of our confession, by it we must testify that our confidence is in God’s mercy, and our purity in the remission of sins, which has been won for us through Jesus Christ, and that we enter the Church of God, so that in one accord of faith and charity we may live united with all the faithful.” By these words he signifies that baptism, like the other sacraments, has no efficacy with respect to the remission of sins, which he attributes solely to the merit of faith. Nor does he hold that the power of faith is wholly present to wash away all sins, since he judges them to persist in the baptized—not only in their appendages, such as the calamities and hardships of this life, but also in the defect of those sins, even if their foulness is not apparent, because they are covered and veiled, as by a royal cloak, by the merits of Christ the Lord, apprehended through faith and applied to us.

NOTE 2. Punishments to be undergone on account of sin, whether one’s own or another’s, are of two kinds: some are eternal, while others are temporal. Eternal punishments are the never-ending torments of hell, by which the reprobate, both angels and human beings, are to be tortured. Temporal punishments are those that come to an end, such as the hardships of this present life, the fire of purgatory, or the torment to be endured after death on account of lesser offenses. Moreover, punishments in this present life are either incurred apart from one’s will or voluntarily assumed. I call punishments incurred, or inflicted, those that are appendages of a nature wounded by sin, such as mortality, illnesses, hunger, and so on. By assumed punishments I mean all those voluntarily undertaken by a repentant person—fasts and other bodily exercises of this sort, against nature’s appetite and inclination—in order to make satisfaction to God who has been offended. The question, then, is whether all such punishments are dissolved through baptism together with sins.

NOTE 3. All theologians agree that sanctifying grace is truly conferred through baptism by the work performed, just as through the other sacraments, in a subject who places no obstacle to receiving it. They also agree that equal grace is conferred upon subjects equally disposed, at least under the ordinary law. Whether God disposes otherwise under the extraordinary law must be determined in the present Question. Moreover, this inequality of grace may be considered either on the part of God who produces it, on the part of Christ who merits it, or on the part of the person who receives it.

First conclusion. — THROUGH BAPTISM ALL SINS WHATSOEVER, BOTH ORIGINAL AND ACTUAL, WHETHER MORTAL OR VENIAL, ARE TRULY WASHED AWAY. This is a matter of faith, as

Is gathered from all those scriptural passages in which the power of remitting sins is attributed to baptism. Thus Acts 2: Let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins, etc. The same is handed down in the Nicene and Constantinopolitan Creeds: I confess one baptism for the remission of sins. It is defined in various councils, especially the Fourth Council of Carthage, ch. 1, where among the articles of faith that a bishop being consecrated must profess, this is to be asked of him: Whether in baptism all sins are remitted, that is, both the original sin contracted and those sins that have been voluntarily committed. And at Florence, in the decree of union, where it treats of the effect of baptism, it says: The effect of this sacrament is the remission of every fault, etc. To show that by “fault” it also means actual venial sin, it adds: Therefore no satisfaction is to be enjoined upon the baptized for past sins; rather, those who die before committing any fault at all immediately attain the kingdom of heaven and the vision of God. But if venial sins too were not blotted out through baptism, it would follow that neither would the punishment due to them be remitted, nor would the baptized person reach the kingdom of heaven at once without satisfaction, since, as we read in Revelation 21, nothing defiled or doing abomination will enter the heavenly city of Jerusalem.

The Council of Trent plainly defines the same truth, sess. IV, in its decree on original sin, where in n. 3 it says: If anyone denies that through the grace of Jesus Christ the Lord, which is conferred in baptism, the debt of original sin is remitted, or even asserts that not everything that has the true and proper character of sin is taken away, but says instead that it is merely scraped away or not imputed, let him be anathema. It then gives this reason for the definition: For in the reborn God hates nothing, since there is no condemnation for those who have truly been buried with Christ through baptism into death. They do not walk according to the flesh, but, having put off the old man and put on the new man, who was created according to God, they have been made innocent, immaculate, pure, blameless, and beloved by God—heirs indeed of God, and coheirs with Christ—so that absolutely nothing holds them back from entering heaven.

The holy Apostle teaches the very same thing plainly in Ephesians 5, where he says: Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her, to sanctify her, cleansing her by the washing of water in the word of life, so that he might present her to himself as a glorious Church, having no spot or wrinkle or anything of this kind, but being holy and immaculate. But how would the Church be immaculate and holy if her baptized children were merely whitewashed tombs, filled inside with the pus and tormentor of sin? The same is taught in 1 Corinthians, ch. 6: Do not, he says, be deceived: neither fornicators, nor those who serve idols, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor men who lie with males, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will possess the kingdom of God; and such indeed were some of you, etc. He adds the efficacy of baptism, which blotted all these things out: But you have been washed, he says, etc. From these words one gathers the truth of faith defined by the councils, namely, that sins both original and actual—that is, those committed before baptism, for these are what Paul is discussing—are blotted out through baptism alone.

The holy Fathers teach the same truth: Pope Martialis, in his Letter to the people of Toulouse, ch. 1: For you are members of Christ, and an immaculate body, in no respect defiled or stained with filth, etc. He adds the reason: For thus you have been sanctified and cleansed by the water of regeneration, etc. Cyprian, on the washing of the feet: From the hidden and most secret gift of the Holy Spirit flows the stream of this grace, washing those whom the inherited stain had infected, so that neither actual nor original stain leaves any trace of itself after that removal, etc. Lactantius, bk. 7, ch. 5: When a human being, purified by the heavenly bath, lays aside infancy together with every stain of his former life, and receives an increase of divine vigor, he becomes a perfect and complete human being. Rheticius of Autun, cited by Augustine, bk. 1 of Against Julian, ch. 3: No one is unaware that this is the chief indulgence in the Church, in which we lay down the whole burden of the ancient crime and erase the former sins of our ignorance, etc. He is speaking of baptism. Jerome, bk. Against Rufinus, ch. 6, and Letter 83 to Oceanus, ch. 2: All adulteries and the filth of public prostitution, impiety toward God, parricide, incest against parents, and the transformed nature of both sexes in extraordinary pleasures are cleansed by Christ’s font, etc. All crimes have been pardoned in baptism, and after the Judge’s indulgence no severity need be feared, since the Apostle says: “And such indeed were some of you; but you have been washed, but you have been sanctified, but you have been justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God”; all sins have been forgiven, etc. St. Ambrose eloquently develops this power of baptism at length in Sermon 131. We select only a few passages: What is that water which consumes flames¹, yet is not itself consumed by sinners, but consumes the fires of Gehenna? When it is poured into people through baptism, it both remains in them and quenches the heat of Tartarus. And a little later: It is no wonder that hell is opened in the sacrament of baptism, since heaven too is then unlocked. For these elements are opened so that freedom and grace may come to Christ’s bath. Freedom is given to those who are to rise again, grace to those who are to reign. The former are rescued from punishment; the latter are taken up into glory, etc. And in bk. 3 of On Those Who Are Initiated, after saying much in praise of the power of baptismal water, he concludes: It is water, then, in which the flesh is plunged, so that every sin is washed away and every vice buried there, etc. St. Augustine teaches the same, especially throughout all the works he wrote against the Pelagians, and most particularly in bk. 1 of To Boniface, against the two letters of the Pelagians, ch. 13. There he reports the Pelagians’ slander against Catholics: that they said baptism does not grant the forgiveness of all sins, nor take away crimes, but scrapes them off, so that the roots of all sins remain in the evil flesh. In response to this slander St. Augustine says: Who but an unbeliever makes this claim against the Pelagians? For we say that baptism grants the forgiveness of all sins and takes away crimes; it does not scrape them off so that the roots of all sins remain in the evil flesh, like hairs shaved from the head from which sins grow again to be cut off—for I have also found them using this image in their slander, as though this were what we believed and said.

YOU WILL SAY: Concupiscence remains in the baptized; but the Apostle calls it sin in Romans 6 and 8; therefore not every sin is taken away through baptism. St. Augustine answers this objection of the heretics in the same place: “I believe they are mistaken, or are trying to deceive others, about this concupiscence of the flesh, with which even a baptized person must struggle in a devout spirit, even if he is making the most diligent progress and is led by the Spirit of God. Yet even if this is called sin, it is called so not because it is sin, but because it was made by sin, just as a hand-made work is called someone’s hand, because a hand made it. Sins, however, are those things that are unlawfully done, said, or thought according to the concupiscence of the flesh or ignorance, and which, once committed, still hold people liable if they are not remitted. And this very concupiscence of the flesh is remitted in baptism in such a way that, although it has been drawn from those being born, it does no harm to those being reborn.” The Council of Trent teaches the same excellently in the place cited above, where it says: This holy Synod confesses and holds that concupiscence, or the tinder of sin, remains in the baptized. Since it has been left for the struggle, it cannot harm those who do not consent, but bravely resist it through the grace of Christ Jesus; indeed, whoever has fought lawfully will be crowned. The holy Synod declares that the Catholic Church has never understood this concupiscence, which the Apostle sometimes calls sin, to be called sin because it truly and properly is sin in the reborn, but because it is from sin and inclines to sin. But if anyone holds the contrary, let him be anathema.

YOU WILL OBJECT: St. Augustine, bk. 1 of On Marriage and Concupiscence, using the likeness of a wild olive grafted onto an olive tree, and understanding sin by the former and justice and grace by the latter, says: Because the sin was so great, he says, that there was a great change of nature for the worse, it made the whole human race a wild olive, so that, just as we now see among trees, if divine grace converts any of it into an olive, the defect of the first birth—which was original sin, transmitted and carried over from carnal concupiscence—is remitted, covered over, and not imputed; yet a wild olive grows from it unless it too is reborn as an olive by the same grace, etc. And in ch. 33: Blessed, then, is the olive tree whose iniquities have been remitted and whose sins have been covered; blessed is the one to whom the Lord has not imputed sin, but it has been remitted and covered, and is not imputed until the full change into eternal immortality takes place. It has a certain hidden power by which a bitter wild olive is sown, unless there too the same cultivation by God remits, covers, and does not impute it, etc. By these words St. Augustine teaches that original sin is remitted through baptism in such a way that it is merely covered and not imputed; therefore he judges that sins are not truly washed away by the power of baptism. I deny the inference, for in the same place, from ch. 25 through ch. 33, St. Augustine plainly teaches that sins are truly remitted through baptism with respect to the debt, although they remain with respect to the corrupted inclination, which is concupiscence and the tinder of sin, because it arises from sin and entices to sin. Hence, when he says that sin is covered and not imputed—that is, remitted—he either takes and understands the terms remission, covering, and non-imputation of sins to refer to concupiscence itself, which is not imputed to the olive tree made sweet by Christ’s cultivation through baptismal grace: for that concupiscence, however much it arises from sin and inclines to sin, is not imputed unto damnation to an unbaptized person who does not consent to its perverse and disordered movements; or, if he understands the words “remission, covering, and non-imputation of sins” as referring to the debt of sin, he uses them in the same way as they are used in Psalm 31: Blessed are those whose iniquities have been remitted, and whose sins have been covered, etc.; Blessed is the man to whom the Lord has not imputed sin, etc. There, to be covered and not imputed mean the same as for sin to be remitted through pardon. “Do not understand ‘sins have been covered,’” says St. Augustine in his exposition of that Psalm, “as if sin were covered over and were there, alive,” etc. Other interpreters teach the same: sins are covered in such a way that they no longer exist. For they are covered by charity, justice, and the other virtues, as by a first white and immaculate robe that removes the foulness of sin; for, as the Apostle says, charity covers a multitude of sins. Origen explains it this way in his commentary on Romans 4; Ambrose, On Noah’s Ark, ch. 31; Gregory, Homily 4 on Ezekiel. Therefore, not to be imputed is the same as to be blotted out: sin is imputed as long as it exists, just as St. Paul often says that good works and faith are reckoned as righteousness, and that a wage is imputed as a reward. So St. Bernard, Sermon 1: On the Annunciation: “What has indeed been done, when God does not impute it, will be as though it had never been.”, etc. That is, it has been blotted out, healed, and cleansed through pardon and remission, as is said of sins erased through baptism.

Second conclusion. — THROUGH BAPTISM EVERY ETERNAL PUNISHMENT IS REMOVED, AS IS EVERY TEMPORAL PUNISHMENT VOLUNTARILY ASSUMED AS SATISFACTION, BUT NOT THAT WHICH IS INCURRED THROUGH BIRTH. This is the common opinion, and the Master of the Sentences teaches it

In In IV Sent., d. 4, where he sets out this conclusion in full so plainly that it is worth transcribing his words here. “It is often asked concerning those who, already sanctified by the Spirit, approach baptism with faith and charity: what does baptism confer upon them? For it seems to do them no good, since they have already been justified through faith and contrition, their sins having been remitted. To this one may properly reply that they have indeed been justified through faith and contrition—that is, cleansed from the stain of sin and freed from the debt of eternal punishment—yet they are still bound by temporal satisfaction, by which penitents are bound in the Church. But when they receive baptism, they are cleansed also from any sins they may have contracted in the interval after conversion, freed from external satisfaction, and receive an increase of assisting grace and every virtue, so that they can then truly be called a new person. The tinder of sin is also further weakened in them. Therefore St. Augustine says in Homily 74 on John that the faith which makes people faithful is given or nourished in the waters of baptism: it is sometimes given to one who does not have it, and it is given to one who already has it so that he may have it more fully. The same is to be understood of the other gifts. Therefore, whoever approaches clean becomes cleaner there, and whoever has anything receives more there. Ambrose shows that all external satisfaction is remitted there, commenting on Romans 11: ‘The gifts and calling of God are without repentance,’ and saying: ‘God’s grace in baptism does not require a groan, lamentation, or any work, but freely pardons everything.’ This must be understood of external groaning or lamentation, for no adult is renewed without interior sorrow; but the external satisfactions and afflictions—that is, the stains of penitents—are remitted there. Baptism therefore confers much even upon one already justified through faith: for one approaching baptism is like a branch carried by a dove into the ark; before, he was within by God’s judgment, but now he is within also by the Church’s judgment. Since sin is blotted out in baptism and external satisfaction is not imputed, one may ask why the penalty to which we have been consigned on account of sin is not taken away. The holy men teach that this happens because, if people were freed from punishment through baptism, they would think that punishment itself was baptism’s reward rather than the eternal kingdom. Therefore, though the debt of sin is removed, temporal punishment nevertheless remains, to provide material for faith and struggle, and an occasion for victory—for no one would conquer without fighting, nor would one fight if baptism made one immortal.”

The Seraphic Doctor also explains and confirms this truth clearly, d. 4, pt. 1, a. 1, q. 2. Having said that baptism removes every eternal punishment due to sins and temporal satisfaction, but not every punishment incurred, because God has not ordained it so, he adds the reason: “It was fitting that he leave such penalties to us in keeping with justice; this was to manifest the justice of divine judgment, to demonstrate the fruit of Christ’s Passion, and to advance the merit of free choice. To manifest the justice of divine judgment: so that the sentence he had pronounced concerning the death of Adam and his descendants would remain unaltered; hence no one escapes it. To show the fruit of Christ’s Passion: for if the Lord were to heal nature and the tinder of sin, a son would be born free from fault and would not need to be reborn through Christ. Therefore, so that all may know their need of his Passion, the sacrament has been given its power from the Passion; or it was ordained for this purpose: to remit personal punishments, not natural ones, because a remedy regards the person, not nature, etc. To increase the merit of free choice: such penalties promote us toward the good in many ways. They are given for the sake of humility: ‘The arrows of the Lord wage war against me, whose indignation,’ etc.; to instill fear: ‘The terrors of the Lord wage war against me.’ Solely for self-knowledge: ‘Affliction alone will give understanding,’ etc.; to spur us toward the good: ‘Rise and depart, for you have no rest here.’ As an example of not sinning: ‘I will set forth my example from my youth.’ For the exercise of virtues: ‘These are the nations that the Lord left behind to instruct Israel.’ So that they may be a sign of the adoption of sons: ‘If you are without discipline,’ etc. They are also left so that no one might take this as a reward in return, lest people come to baptism on this account. For if immortality were granted there, more would come for that reason than for grace, and faith would then have no merit, since human reason would have the proof of it.” Although the grace conferred through baptism does not wholly take away or remove incurred or innate punishments, nevertheless it diminishes them, and concupiscence most of all. St. Augustine teaches in bk. 1 of On Marriage and Concupiscence, ch. 25, that it diminishes more and more from day to day: “Although its debt has already been removed,” he says, “concupiscence nevertheless remains until all our infirmity is healed, as the renewal of the inner person progresses from day to day, when the outer person will have put on incorruption. For it does not remain as a substance, like some body or spirit, but is an affection of an evil quality, like sickness.” And a little later: “Yet this concupiscence is diminished daily in those who progress and practice continence, and all the more as old age approaches.”

The Subtle Doctor teaches the same, d. 1, q. 7, n. 1. Having said that in all the baptized grace is not remitted equally, nor is the same amount of sin diminished, he explains how this diminution of the tinder of sin, or of concupiscence, takes place. He writes: “Because the tinder of sin,” he says, “is in the flesh, or in some bodily power, it cannot be formally diminished by grace, which is in the soul, since there is no formal opposition between it and grace, as they are not apt to be in the same subject. But the tinder of sin is said to be diminished with respect to the effect it customarily causes in the soul, namely sin: as grace increases, the tinder of sin has less efficacy for inclining one to sin.” He explains this by the example of a small stone tied to an eagle’s wings: “For,” he says, “if the eagle’s power of movement increased, although the stone’s weight did not diminish (since opposites are not present, nor do they exist in the same subject), nevertheless the stone’s weight is diminished with respect to its effect: the greater the strength in the wing, the less the stone impedes ascent or flight.”

Third conclusion. — BY ITS OWN POWER, UNDER THE ORDINARY LAW, BAPTISM CONFERS EQUAL GRACE UPON SUBJECTS EQUALLY DISPOSED, BUT UNEQUAL GRACE UPON SUBJECTS UNEQUALLY PREPARED; NEVERTHELESS, UNDER THE EXTRAORDINARY LAW IT IS POSSIBLE FOR UNEQUAL GRACE TO BE CONFERRED IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF THIS SACRAMENT UPON SUBJECTS EQUALLY PREPARED.

The first part of this conclusion remains sufficiently proved from the preceding Disputation, where we expressly proved that the sacraments confer unequal grace upon subjects unequally prepared. It is also most certain from the Council of Trent, sess. VI, ch. 7, where, speaking of the righteousness for which baptism is the instrumental cause, it says: Which, he says, the Holy Spirit distributes to each as he wills, and according to each person’s own disposition and cooperation.

Reason also supports this: for a sacrament confers grace by the work performed, like a natural cause, which certainly produces a more perfect effect the more perfectly disposed it finds its subject. And it was surely fitting that Christ the Lord institute the sacraments in such a way that one who approaches with greater fervor and more perfect devotion receives more grace than one who approaches the sacrament with a slack disposition. For this gives people an incentive to dispose themselves properly for receiving the sacrament, as they consider that greater grace is conferred by the work performed according to each person’s own disposition. For just as a stone and glass, though equally distant from the sun, receive unequal light—the glass receiving more than the stone—the cause of this greater illumination is the subject’s greater capacity, even though the sun is equally the efficient cause of that greater illumination.

The second part, together with the first, is excellently explained and proved by the Doctor in In IV Sent., d. 4, q. 7. Having supposed that three causes concur in baptismal grace—namely, God as efficient cause, Christ’s Passion as meritorious cause, and the recipient as material or passive cause—and having said that the equality or inequality of grace may be considered on the part of any of these, he first explains that, even if under the ordinary law God confers equal grace through baptism upon those equally disposed, “nevertheless, he says, because God predestined different elect persons to different degrees of glory, and did so before determining this sign to confer this or that amount of grace, and because greater grace may reasonably be conferred upon one ordained to greater glory, God can, in determining the truth or certainty of this sign, arrange to confer upon one recipient precisely the grace required for the sign’s certainty, and a greater grace upon another whom he predestined to greater glory. But that further degree will not be conferred by the power of baptism; rather, it will be given through a special divine benevolence. For this reason it may be said that, on the part of the principal cause, the effect regularly is simply equal, since it is given by the power of baptism; for it is assumed that, under the common law, the first grace is not given in greater measure without some difference beyond the principal cause.” By these words the Doctor asserts that, beyond the common effect of grace conferred upon all the baptized by the power of baptism under the ordinary law, God can confer greater grace upon someone through a special will and special benevolence toward that person. This excess would not indeed come from baptism’s power as the ordinary instrument for producing grace, but from God’s benevolence, which can also cause that effect by the work performed through a sacrament specially taken up for this purpose, although God could produce it independently of a sacrament. Therefore the Doctor does not say that, as a matter of fact, greater baptismal grace is given to one predestined to greater glory, as Sotus falsely attributes to him, d. 6, single q., a. 6; he speaks only of what is possible, and in this he seems to agree with Alensis, pt. 4, q. 21, memb. 3, and St. Bonaventure, d. 4, pt. 2, a. 2, q. 3. “As for the meritorious cause,” the Doctor says, n. 4, “one may say that this meritorious cause can work more efficaciously toward grace in one way than in another: either because it is offered more particularly for one person, as regards the intentions of the one offering it, than for another; or because, as regards its execution, it is offered in effect for one and not for another, except in divine foreknowledge. In the first way, Christ is commonly held to know all that God knows by the knowledge of vision and, consequently, to know all the elect and the degree of glory to which they were elected. He could therefore offer his Passion more fully for those predestined to greater glory, especially since he offered himself for the human race so that divine predestination might be fulfilled in them. In the second way, Christ’s Passion cooperates more efficaciously for us, who are under the Law of the Gospel, than for the Fathers under the Law of Moses, because a service rendered for the sake of a greater good to be rewarded is more acceptable than a benefit foreseen. In this second way, there is an inequality among those receiving grace through circumcision and baptism, because the meritorious cause was applied unequally to them, and perhaps also among those baptized before and after the Passion. If, however, there is an inequality of grace among some baptized now in the first way—that is, because of a special offering in Christ’s will—it is uncertain whether this actually occurs, though its possibility has been shown.” In these words the Doctor explains how the grace conferred in baptism can be unequal on the part of the one offering or on the part of the thing offered. On the part of the one offering, namely Christ the Lord, who seems to have offered his Passion differently for the reprobate and for the predestined: for the former he offered it as regards sufficiency, but for the latter also as regards efficacy, since he knew who they were—those to be saved on account of final righteousness or condemned on account of final impenitence. On the part of the thing offered, there too could be an inequality of grace, because the Passion of Christ the Lord was applied differently to the Fathers under the law of nature and the written law than it is applied to the faithful under the Law of the Gospel. Hence the grace conferred through circumcision was different, and far less than that conferred through baptism, because Christ’s Passion was applied unequally. Moreover, the Doctor does not determine whether in fact greater grace is conferred under the Law of the Gospel upon one baptized person than another by reason of the one offering it or the thing offered, as Sotus and some others wrongly claim; he speaks only of what is possible, as Scholasticus notes very well. As regards the recipient of baptism, the Doctor says, n. 5, that those baptized are either infants or adults: “Comparing one infant with another, since they have no movement of their own, they have no inequality on their own part with respect to the grace they receive. Yet one infant’s parents may have greater devotion than another’s toward their own child; or this may be so of others ministering at or assisting in the baptism. On account of their merits, God can confer greater grace upon one infant than another, but this is not by the power of baptism, but by merit. In this way perhaps the prayers of St. Nicholas’s parents merited greater grace for him, which, even while he was an infant, was the beginning of so remarkable an effect that for two days each week he was content with only a single feeding. In this respect it is more desirable for a child to be baptized by a good priest than by a bad one, because the prayers of a good priest, of which he says many before and after baptism, are more readily heard and are of greater benefit to the one for whom they are offered than the prayers of a bad priest. But if those baptized are adults, since through their own movement they can be unequally disposed, and since grace is conferred in the sacrament in proportion to the recipient’s disposition, an unequal effect follows. If you compare an infant with an adult, ordinarily the infant has no merit, whereas an adult, however slight his will may be, seems to have personal merit so long as he consents to receive the sacrament and places no obstacle; and to that extent he is more disposed than an infant, and so on. But suppose an adult sins venially throughout the whole time of baptism; he seems then to be in some way ill-disposed, while an infant has no ill-disposition at all; therefore in that case the infant will receive greater grace. I answer: venial sin does not prevent grace from being infused, nor prevent a meritorious act from occurring at the same time. Yet because the soul cannot be equally and perfectly intent upon several acts at once, a good act accompanied by a venial sin is less intense, and therefore less meritorious, than it would be without any venial sin. For the present question it follows that, if an adult does not place the obstacle of mortal sin and consents to receive baptism, he has a certain disposing movement that an infant lacks, notwithstanding that he has a venial sin at the same time.” This last statement of the Doctor signifies that there is no inequality of baptismal grace on the part of the recipient if the recipient is not an adult, except perhaps extrinsically—for instance, through the intercession of the parents, sponsors, or minister, whose faith and merits could obtain greater grace for the baptized infant, not by merit of condignity but by merit of congruity, as Scholasticus notes very well. For no mere creature can merit grace of condignity for another. The Doctor himself also asserts this in d. 4, q. 2, n. 4, where, responding to the second argument, he says: “As a matter of fact, grace is given to no one except through some meritorious cause that merited his first union with God, and this meritorious cause is Christ. But besides this cause, no other intrinsic cause in the recipient that is united to God before he receives grace needs to be posited.”