De natura et gratia libri III, cum Apologia contra Catharinum

Having meditated beforehand on all these principles, we at last descend better equipped to the point and article of justification. But this is celebrated not in one way but in four, if you desire clarity,¹ according to the differences of men on whom this benefit of reconciliation is bestowed. For there are four kinds of unjust men to consider. The first is that of infants before the use of reason, who are stained with original fault. The second is that of those in whom the use of reason already shines, yet with only that same stain of origin—namely, those who have not yet used their own will for evil. In the third order are those who have added actual sins to original sin not blotted out. And finally in the fourth are Christians who fall away from the grace of baptism. But concerning the first kind we disputed abundantly with the Lutherans in the former book, chapters 11 and 12, and established that original sin is most fully remitted in baptism, so far that no nature of fault at all remains. But here, where the discourse concerns dispositions, it remains to note two different errors.² The first is Luther’s, who is so tenacious and so zealous a defender of that little phrase of his, “by faith alone,” that he has absurdly sinned against both extremes: while he thinks that for adults, besides that faith, no other work of their own is necessary for justification, and has taught that it is necessary for infants. Nay, he thinks that they, like adults, are justified not by the sacrament but by faith alone. For this is his first article among the assertions addressed to Leo, which we mentioned above: “It is a heretical opinion, but a customary one, that the sacraments of the new law give grace.” And a little later: “For baptism does not save, but the faith of baptism.” Nor indeed (as Roffensis faithfully explains there) does he speak of the habit of faith infused from heaven, but says that even in infants there is a most lively act of believing. This he openly preaches in his Homiliary on the Sunday gospels, and others of his school follow him in many places, although in the Augsburg Confession and the other conferences they have silently passed it over. For it was that man’s invention that we do not receive grace through the sacrament, but through the faith which we give to the word—not of the minister, but of Christ himself—where he instituted the sacraments: for example, “He who believes and is baptized,”³ “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man,” “Whose sins you forgive.” By this faith, assenting that the promise is firm, we are justified. So he explains himself in the same article and in his commentary on Galatians, whose playful and indeed ridiculous words occur when he expounds that passage in chapter 3: “Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” For he says that it is so true that faith is necessary for all—namely, a most lively act—and cannot be had except by hearing, that even infants obtain it by hearing. And objecting to himself that they hear nothing, he answers that nothing is deaf to the word of God, but while it strikes the ears, it pours the Spirit within. I certainly do not know where he could have sought not merely benevolent but open ears into which to empty such a portent.⁴ For who, as another said before me, is so alien from all sense as to fear that he could be persuaded that a little child, in whom there can be no knowledge of God, no discernment of good or evil, indeed no use of reason or cognition of anything, conceives by hearing an act of faith by which he is justified? Add that this heresy besides,⁵ that the sacraments are no cause of justification, but only the faith of the word, manifestly fights not only with the Gospel but with itself. For if that faith is true by which we assent to Christ saying, “Whose sins you forgive,” then his statement is true—namely, that the ministers of the Church forgive sins. And if the faith is true which we give to him saying, “Unless a man is born again,” and “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man,” it follows that the laver of regeneration itself and the sacrament of the body are a cause of justification. For this is what he affirms. Admirable was the audacity (to restrain myself from another word) of that man. To prove that we are justified not through the sacrament but through faith in those words of Christ, he cites that testimony of Augustine: “The word comes to the element, and it becomes a sacrament”—as if he were speaking there of the word of Christ, and it were not most evident that he was speaking of the word of the minister, “I baptize you,” and “I absolve you,” which as the form of the sacrament confers grace.

Therefore, that we may establish the conclusion according to the truth of the orthodox concerning the first kind of those to be justified:⁶ little children cannot properly be said to be justified by faith, or by any other act of their own, or by a peculiar disposition, but only by the sacrament of faith, as the instrument of Christ’s passion, by which, offering no obstacle, they are regenerated into adoption as sons. But a doubt remains, which the Gospel passage objects to us: “He who believes and is baptized shall be saved.”⁷ There faith is set forth as necessary as baptism. Nay, in the negation subjoined, only faith is resumed without mention of baptism: “But he who does not believe,” he says, “shall be condemned.” There Luther noted that only faith is necessary.⁸ But that we may answer this last point first: the affirmation is the interpreter of the negation, so that it is understood equally: “But he who does not believe, or is not baptized.” But as far as concerns Catholics, a doubt remains whether children also are included under that universality, “He who believes,” since (as we were just saying) it is most known of itself that no one has an act of faith while being baptized. Augustine, book 1 on the Merits of Sins, chapter 26,⁹ while expounding the same passage of Mark, says: “Who does not know that for infants to believe is to be baptized?” Some of our men do not altogether approve this word—namely, that to believe is to be baptized, for one is an act of the intellect, the other a mere passion; and therefore they are counted as two in the Gospel. But Augustine had explained a little before in the same book, namely chapter 19, that same belief of infants in these words: “Little children in a certain way profess faith through the words of those who carry them.” And he repeats almost the same to Boniface, where he says: “In the Church of the Savior little children believe through others, just as from others they drew the sins which are remitted in baptism.” But not even this interpretation appears sufficiently congruous to all. For since “to believe” is an act of the intellect, how can one do it through another, unless by a deformed abuse of the word?

For this reason the expositors of that Gospel passage are divided.¹⁰ For some say that children believe by infused faith. But these, in my judgment, are far from the genuine sense of the Gospel. For where Christ says, “He who believes,” he in no way designates a habit to be infused by God—and least of all that which by nature follows the infusion of justifying grace—but plainly an act which, like baptism itself, is required of the one to be baptized as a necessary preparation for grace. Especially since those infused habits were not known in the Church from antiquity with such great certainty as the catholic faith. For not even the Council of Vienne approves them except as a most probable opinion, although now they are supported by greater authority.¹¹

Others are those who for this reason think that the word “He who believes” is uttered only of adults who are capable of reason. Nor is it altogether without probability if you look at the preceding words. For the context is: “Going, preach the Gospel to every creature. He who believes, etc.” But the Gospel is not preached except to those who have hearing and the judgment of reason. Therefore “He who believes” is understood of them. But for little children it is enough that they be baptized. But certainly, when I consider the matter more deeply, I cannot approve this interpretation.¹² First, because the words are universal, just like that “Unless a man is born again of water and the Holy Spirit.” Nor is it likely that when Christ was handing on to the apostles the form and manner of publishing and propagating the faith, if under those words every age and condition of mortals were not comprehended, he would not at the same time explain that baptism suffices for little children. And what most presses me: the Church, taught by the apostles themselves, would never have appointed sponsors for a child, who, asked in his own name whether he believed, answer “I believe,” unless the apostles themselves, understanding that word to pertain to all, signified by that ceremony that the child believes.¹³ Nor did Augustine do this rashly, but most knowingly, as a matter of great moment, and he strove with such care to explain that little children believe. Saint Thomas holds his judgment as most approved in 3, question 68, in the article where he treats of the baptism of little children.¹⁴

Therefore, as far as I can conjecture from Augustine’s words, “to believe,” as it is necessary for all for justice, is the same as to receive the Gospel by a solemn profession.¹⁵ The difference is that adults receive it by actually believing and confessing the faith, and binding themselves to the laws of Christ; but children receive the same faith by the obligation by which they are bound by the words of their sponsors, which are reckoned as their own. As a minor is bound by the words of his guardian. And so I understand Augustine when he says that they believe—that is, that they solemnly receive the Gospel through the words of those who carry them. Wherefore they receive the Gospel in a certain way through the hearing of their parents, who, applying faith to them, baptize them and their children whom they have in legitimate power. And from this it is plainly gathered that the Anabaptists’ heresy is manifest,¹⁶ who think that children, as soon as the use of reason shines forth, are to be summoned and asked whether they ratify what their parents did concerning them. Nay, they are already truly bound, and therefore are to be compelled to keep the faith and law which they received. Hence when Augustine says¹⁷ that for children to believe is the same as to be baptized, he means nothing else than that baptism is worth the same to them, by which sacrament they are bound to the laws of God, as believing is worth to adults. For in the Hypognosticon, book 5, he openly says that little children are taken up in the faith of believers, not by the obedience of the will but by the exceeding love—namely, of God, who without any act of theirs receives them into his friendship. Thus Augustine. We have therefore that little children, without any proper act or disposition of their own, but only bound through others, are sanctified by the sacrament. And although they are baptized without that solemnity, the baptizer, as minister of the Church, has bound them.

But the opinion of certain others is at the other extreme.¹⁸ These, protected by I know not what cloak of piety, dare to say that children who by some chance die without baptism are nevertheless, by the mercy of God which supplies the lack of baptism, freed from original sin and admitted to the heavenly kingdom. And they think the same both of children already born and of those who in their mother’s womb depart this life before the use of light. And because this matter is spread abroad by the mouths of the common people, I name the most learned Cajetan;¹⁹ yet I am accustomed to name him only by way of honor. For he, otherwise truly worthy of all authority, on question 68 of the third part (yet under correction, and with that religion and modesty of his, asserting nothing pertinaciously), brings forward both as probable. For he says in article 2 that in a case of necessity—namely, where there is no supply of water for the salvation of children (and he speaks of those already born)—the baptism in the desire of the parents seems sufficient, especially with some exterior sign. And afterward in article 11 he adds (under the same censure) that little children in danger in their mother’s womb can be saved in like manner through the sacrament of baptism in the desire of the parents, with some blessing or offering of the child to God, with invocation of the Trinity. “As we have said,” he says, “concerning children who cannot be baptized.” But, with the authority of that distinguished doctor always safe, I do not doubt that both parts of his opinion are false; but I do not know whether the former deserves more approval, at least in those who now assert without hesitation what he had suggested most temperately. It is rather for their sake than to contradict them that I shall set out this matter more closely. And first of all, in both articles Cajetan most openly contradicts Saint Thomas,²⁰ whose interpreter he acts. For in the former place, where he says that the desire for baptism sometimes suffices for salvation, lest he leave anyone an occasion to suspect that the desire of the parents suffices, he plainly explains that where there is no supply of baptism in reality, the desire to receive it is necessary in the one being baptized. For he says: “As when someone desires to be baptized.” Wherefore he leaves no other way of salvation for children. And in the second place, to children not yet born, except those to whom it is given by privilege to receive grace in the womb, he grants no remedy of salvation, because they cannot be baptized, which according to the Gospel is necessary. And lest it be free to say, without sacred Scripture or the universal consent of the Church, that anyone is sanctified in the womb or receives grace, he expresses in the solution to the first argument a restriction concerning those sanctified in the womb—namely, those who are held to be such in the Church. Moreover, to ascend by steps, there are innumerable places in Augustine²¹ where he repeats the same most emphatically. The first is that most common canon on faith, reported to Peter among the decrees, distinction 4, On Consecration, where he says: “Hold most firmly that not only men who use reason, but also little children who either begin to live in their mothers’ wombs and die there, or are already born of their mothers and pass from this world without the sacrament of baptism, which is given in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, are to be punished with eternal fire.” But if someone cavils that this work is not certainly Augustine’s, he mentions almost the same wherever he comes into conflict with Pelagius.²² For Pelagius (as is clear in the Hypognosticon, book 5) did not deny that children must be baptized in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, because that is expressly had in John 3; but he said that those who die before baptism pass into some mansion where they have the felicity of eternal life, because according to him they had contracted no sin. Let every clear-sighted person note²³ therefore that it was always so firmly established in the Church that no little child without baptism in reality (which he cannot have in desire) enters the kingdom of heaven, that not even the Pelagians themselves, denying original sin, dared to say the contrary. Who therefore now, a Catholic acknowledging the original wound, will dare to send an unbaptized child thither, where the heretics, denying it, never thought anyone should be sent? For this reason Augustine did not so much insist on persuading that no little child dying before baptism is received into the kingdom—for he had that as an evangelical confession—but that outside the kingdom there is no life of eternal felicity. Hence in the cited place he first instructs the disputation from that universal sentence of the old law: “The infant²⁴ who has not been circumcised, that soul shall perish from his people.” Since therefore there is a similar sentence in the Gospel,²⁵ “Unless a man is born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he shall not enter the kingdom of heaven,” it comes about that as no one was excepted from the former, so from the latter it is not lawful to exempt anyone. For the former was a figure of the latter. But because they imagined another place where little children without baptism would have eternal life, Augustine strains all his sinews to show that beyond the kingdom and hell there is absolutely nothing but purgatory. And therefore those mansions²⁶ which Christ says are many in his Father’s house all pertain to the kingdom, to which without baptism there is no access for anyone. And he adds a most elegant dilemma.²⁷ Since our Savior said both—that in his Father’s house there are many mansions, and that he who is not born again shall not enter the kingdom of heaven—choose, he says, heretic, which of the two you will defend. For if you say that outside the kingdom, which is the Father’s house, there is some mansion where there is eternal life, you contradict the first sentence. But if you send a little child without baptism into a mansion of the kingdom, you oppose the second. I report not the very words but the judgment of Augustine. He pursues the same argument most copiously from chapter 20 of book 1 on the Merits of Sins to the end of the book. I shall not report more of his words, lest I satiate the reader, than what he concludes in chapter 27 on that passage of John 5²⁸: “He who has the Son has life; and he who has not the Son has not life.” “Not only therefore,” he says, “the kingdom of heaven, but neither shall little children have life, if they do not have the Son, whom they cannot have except through his baptism.” But although someone might perhaps prefer Augustine to his own judgment, I nevertheless cannot believe that the authors of this opinion which we reject have considered that it was condemned against Pelagius.²⁹ For these are the words of Pope Innocent in the letter written in reply to the Council of Carthage and Milevis, which Augustine reports against the two letters of the Pelagians, book 2, chapter 4: “But that which your brotherhood asserts they preach—that little children can be given the rewards of eternal life even without the grace of baptism—is execrable.” To these Augustine subscribes,³⁰ saying that whoever deviated from that sentence would be a prevaricator of the Roman Church. And against Julian, book 3, chapter 1, he says that Pelagius himself, fearing to be condemned, condemned those who say that infants, even if they are not baptized, have eternal life. And below, chapter 12, repeating the same judgment: “Hence Pelagius,” he says, “as I mentioned above, unless in the ecclesiastical judgment he had condemned those who say that infants, even if not baptized, have eternal life, would have gone out condemned.” I am not unaware that Pelagius was condemned for another reason—namely, because he denied original sin. Yet since the judgment and very form of the condemnation is this: that an unbaptized child can have eternal life, I do not see how any Catholic can think of any exception from it, unless one which the Holy Spirit has revealed to the Church. For two errors are struck by the same thunderbolt of words: that there is no original sin, and that it can be remitted without baptism. Wherefore, just as from the first part no one is free to make an exception except insofar as the Church defines or permits, so neither from the second. Yet from the second it has hitherto exempted no one. Next, after the authorities³¹ of the saints and the determination of the Church, the very words of the Gospel must be weighed. For since the sentences of the Savior are universal—“Unless a man is born again of water and the Holy Spirit,”³² and “He who believes and is baptized shall be saved,”³³ and “You must be born again”—has anyone dared, I will not say to contradict Scripture, but to be more than rash, and withdraw anyone from them without an express revelation of God through a decision of the Church? Certainly I do not doubt that what Paul says reaches even to such exempters:³⁴ “If I or an angel from heaven should preach another gospel than we have preached, let him be anathema.” Wherefore I cannot but wonder how easily and how boldly³⁵ some have been accustomed to gloss the universal sentences of Scripture so that they are understood by law. Nothing, they say, prevents the opposite from sometimes happening, either by privilege or by the mercy of God. Yet the sincerity of Scripture is such that unless the exception itself is expressed in the same sacred utterance, or is made by the authority of the Church, such a gloss is sacrilegious and a prevaricator. For Augustine would never have dared to withdraw Moses or Paul, who saw God, from that universality, “No one has seen God at any time,”³⁶ and “No man shall see me and live,” unless he had read in the same Scripture concerning the first, as in Exodus 33,³⁷ that he saw the back of God, and concerning the other, that caught up into the third heaven he saw the hidden things of God.

But to return to the Gospel passage. If it were lawful to affirm that original sin is remitted to anyone without baptism in reality or in the desire to receive it, one could with equal ease say that someone impenitent could by the mercy of God be freed from actual sin. For the words are the same: “Unless a man is born again,” and “Unless you repent.” But it is no more repugnant to God to remit actual sin without repentance than original sin without baptism. And although actual sin is greater, original sin is also true fault.

But the argument I shall subjoin, even if it stood alone, could sufficiently persuade me: namely, the custom of the Church. For unless baptism were so necessary that without it no one could be saved in any way, the Church would never have instituted the baptism of little children—and that institution is the apostles’, since Dionysius says in the last chapter of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy: “Our divine leaders”—namely, the apostles—“approved that infants be received to baptism.” And the argument is of this kind. For little children before the use of reason there was no religion that required baptizing them; nay, it would have been far more decent to wait until they could give themselves to the law by their own will and choice, which they were to observe. Therefore unless the apostles had judged that the danger of damnation hung over them if they were taken from life at that age, or that the desire of the parents sufficed at the time of baptizing, they would never have decreed the sacrament for them. And this reasoning Augustine explains in the letter to Jerome, which is 28, whose words I have therefore reserved for this place: “Whoever,” he says, “says that little children also, who depart this life without participation in his sacrament, will be quickened in Christ, comes indeed against the apostolic preaching and condemns the whole Church. Wherefore, since there is haste and running to baptize little children, it is because it is believed without doubt that otherwise they cannot be quickened in Christ. But he who is not quickened in Christ remains in the same damnation. Of which the Apostle says: ‘By the offense of one, unto all men to condemnation.’” Consider, pious reader, how the opinion we refute contradicts both the apostolic preaching and the institution of the Church, which therefore hastens and runs to the baptism of little children because it believes without doubt that otherwise they cannot be saved.

Nor certainly is there lacking even a scholastic refutation against these men. For to speak of the child in the mother’s womb, let us grant that the mother who perceives the danger of the fetus uses toward it that blessing which these men wish. Then according to their judgment it will receive grace. Suppose afterward it happens that the infant does not die but is born safe. Certainly baptism would then be in no way necessary, since it is born in grace. In the same way I shall argue concerning the one already born, if where there is no supply of water he receives grace through that blessing. For there would be no need to apply baptism afterward; for the Church would not have bound the Fathers to baptize the child except that grace be conferred on it. It is otherwise with an adult, who cannot be saved unless he desires to be baptized; and therefore he is bound afterward to fulfill the commandment. But those who would answer³⁸ that such children are justified by the mere approach of death at the very moment they depart would show themselves, if I may say so with leave, more inept than men with whom one should deal seriously. For if they understood that those who did not depart in grace would have glory, they would not be heard. But if they imagined that they receive grace at that point, as is the grace bestowed on martyrs of most full remission, it would be a rash assertion that a little child, not killed for Christ but dying by chance, without any act of his own or sacrament applied from without, is wiped clean of original stain. Finally, the last argument³⁹ is of this kind. Since after the coming of Christ there is now no other remedy or sacrament for conferring the grace of regeneration besides baptism, truly if anyone could by the mercy of God receive grace without it, the lot of all would be equal, and thus the negligence of parents would harm them nothing; but whether they proposed to baptize them or not, whether they were already carrying them to baptism and were snatched away by death on the way, or the children died suddenly by some other chance without their parents’ knowledge, no one would perish. Nay, there would be no distinction whether one was born to faithful or to unbelieving parents, because the latter are bound by no law to do anything. And therefore, unless baptism itself in reality were necessary for them, the negligence of parents in the matter would harm nothing;⁴⁰ nor conversely, without the actual administration of baptism, would their diligence and piety profit anything, since there is no nature of merit there. And that the desire in the parents to confer it suffices is a new invention, not only nowhere found among the Fathers, but most dissonant from them, from the institution of the Church, and certainly from the Gospel. Let us conclude therefore that wherever it is held, whether in councils, as now in our Council of Trent, chapter 4, or among the Fathers, that baptism suffices in reality or in desire, it is to be understood precisely of the desire to receive it which the one to be baptized himself has.

The argument to the contrary⁴¹ is one, and it is covered by a kind of veil of piety. For they judge it not fitting to the divine goodness that God should not have provided for that order and state of children who die in the womb before they are fit for baptism, by instituting some remedy of salvation. And it is almost the same concerning those who, already brought forth into the light, die prematurely without baptism through lack of water or other negligence. But it is a wonder that the most pious Fathers of the Church never acknowledged this kind of piety—especially when the Pelagians were so hostile to the Church with this same Achilles, as may be seen in the places cited above in Augustine:⁴² namely, against the two letters of the Pelagians, book 2, chapter 7. For they said that the grace of God was rather fate or acceptance of persons, if of two adults without any merit God helped one to be converted and not the other; and of two little children, without the diligence of one or the negligence of the other, the first is washed by baptism and the other is left. To these Augustine answers that there is no cause but the will of God, who is debtor to no one; and therefore he does no injury to anyone if he chooses this one and forsakes that one. And he discusses the same more fully in book 1 on the Merits of Sins, chapter 21, where he says: “Why he comes to this one and does not come to that one can be a hidden cause, but it cannot be unjust.” For Paul, struck by the stupor of this depth, said: “O the depth of the riches.” Therefore, he says, our necks must be submitted to the authorities of the Scriptures.⁴³ And truly, if this argument were as urgent as these men think, it would extend very widely, even to those of adult age. For while out of the nations, or out of any unbelievers whatsoever, God leads some by the light of faith into the way of justice by a wonderful chance, and according to our judgment a fortuitous one, leaving others in their darkness; and among Christians, when two lie in the same bed defiled by equal fault, a sudden thunderbolt extinguishes one, while the other survives, struck with fear, and afterward bears the fruit of repentance—to what cause, I ask, can we refer this, except that “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated”? And that from the same bed,⁴⁴ from the same field, from every age and occupation of mortals, one is taken and the other left? And as in adults it is to be imputed to each one’s own fault that he is not taken, so also in little children it is to be imputed to the fault contracted from Adam. For God allows nature to act by its own motions. He himself made no law that some should end life in the womb or before baptism. And therefore if anyone dies naturally, nothing is detracted from his goodness. Cajetan draws a last argument⁴⁵ from the old law. For then little children who died before the eighth day, by the faith of their parents applied by another rite than circumcision, were cleansed from original sin; therefore a similar thing must now be confessed of those who die before baptism. But the argument is none—nay, it turns back upon its author. For then circumcision was forbidden by law before the eighth day because of injury. And therefore God, the author of the law himself, ought not to have left without a remedy little children snatched away by death. But in the evangelical law this is rather the case: that no day is fixed for baptism, but the child is permitted to be baptized as soon as it is born—nay, in necessity it is commanded. The testimony is that unless through baptism itself in reality, salvation lies open to no little child.