On the Punishment Due to Original Sin

§ I

Whether infants dying with original sin alone suffer the pain of sense?

I suppose as certain of faith that infants dying with original sin suffer the pain of loss, because no one can attain eternal life, which is seated in the clear vision of God, without grace, which infants dying without baptism lack. Whence that, Joann., III, 5: Unless one be born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. And it was defined by the Council of Trent, sess. V, can. 4. But as to the pain of sense, concerning which is the dispute,

I say: Infants dying with original sin itself do not suffer the pain of sense ¹. ¹ 3a p., q. 1, a. 4, ad 2 ; in II Sentent., dist. 33, q. 2, a. 1 ; q. 5 de Malo, a. 2 et 3.

It is proved 1° from the Fathers. Greg. Nazianz., whose authority was so great, Augustine testifying, that he was held the mouth of the Church, orat. XL in lavacrum, distinguishes three kinds of men departing without baptism, of which some contemned baptism, others omitted it by their own negligence, others, namely infants, lacked it through the negligence of others; and concerning the punishment after death of all these he pronounces thus: « I judge that it will be that the first indeed, together with the crimes of others, shall also pay punishments for the contempt of baptism; but the others shall hang punishments indeed, yet lighter, as those who have erred from baptism not so much by perversity of soul as by folly; finally the last, let them be neither visited with heavenly glory nor with punishments by the just judge, seeing that, although they were not signed with baptism, they nevertheless lack wickedness, and have rather suffered than done this loss. For not everyone who is unworthy of punishment straightway merits honor also: even as not everyone who is unworthy of honor straightway merits punishment. »

But this testimony is so open that it cannot be eluded by any tergiversation.

Next Greg. Nyss., in the oration on infants taken away by immature death: « The immature death of infants, he says, shows that those who thus ceased to live will be neither in pains and sadness. »

It is proved 2° by reason. Punishment ought to be proportionate and due to fault; this is per se known. Whence that, Isa., XXVII, 8: In measure against measure: when it shall be cast off, you shall judge it. But the pain of sense is not proportionate nor due to original fault. Therefore.

Proof of minor, in which lies the difficulty, in several ways: 1° Original sin is not through the will of the person, but through the will of nature ¹. Therefore it ought to be punished with the punishment of nature, and not the punishment of person. — I subjoin. But the pain of sense happens through the proper passion of the person; the pain of loss truly is the punishment of nature, and although in the person, is nevertheless not by reason of the person or supposit, but by reason of nature, which is found deprived of grace or original justice, without which the vision of God is not due to them, as a good not owed to the principles of nature. Therefore. ¹ In II Sentent., dist. 33, q. 2, a. 1.

Proof 2° of the same minor. The pain of sense is never due to habitual disposition ² ; for anyone is not punished, whether by God or by men, because he is apt to steal, but because he actually steals. But to habitual privation without every act some damage is due; put the case of one who has not the knowledge of letters, who by this very fact is unworthy of promotion to episcopal dignity. But in the infant there is habitual privation, namely of grace and original justice. Likewise there is only habitual disposition, without every act, namely concupiscence, which makes the infant apt to concupiscence, as Augustine says, while the adult concupisces actually. Therefore to an infant dying with original sin the pain of sense is not proportionate nor due, but only the pain of loss, because evidently he is not fit to be led to the divine vision, on account of privation of original justice. ² Q. 5 de Malo, a. 2.

It is proved 3° of the same minor. The Church in imposing punishments and satisfactions imitates the order and mode of divine justice punishing sins. But the Church imposes no sensible punishment or satisfaction for original sin, nor commands adults who receive baptism to conceive sorrow or sadness about it. Therefore she judges that no sensible punishment is due to this sin or answering to it in the future world.

The conclusion is proved from inconveniences. Since the pain of sense is eternal and most bitter, and children enduring it would be destitute of grace, it could not fail to generate in them grave motions of impatience, anger, despair, hatred and blasphemy against God. But this can neither be admitted nor ought to be admitted in those infants, and it is condemned in Baius, proposition 49 ¹. Therefore. ¹ This proposition is: « And from the dominant habitual will it comes about that an infant dying without the sacrament of regeneration, when he shall have attained the use of reason, will actually hate God, blaspheme God and resist the law of God. »

Nor say that the same follows from the pain of loss. For we shall prove below that children will perceive no pain or sadness from it. Nor does it avail should you say that not all who are afflicted by miseries and afflictions are carried away by motions of impatience, anger, despair, hatred and blasphemy against God. That indeed is true in this life, where miseries, compared with the miseries of the other life, scarcely merit the name of miseries, and those afflicted with them are helped by helps of grace to bear them patiently; which does not happen in hell.

The objections are solved.

Obj. 1°: Matth., XXV, 41, at the last judgment it will be said to all who will be on the left: Depart into everlasting fire. But infants will be on the left. For there will be only two orders of the judged, of which some will be placed on the right, others on the left. Infants will not be on the right. Therefore on the left.

I answer. There are three expositions of this celebrated text, upon which the adverse opinion chiefly relies, which I leave to the judgment of the reader, that he may choose that one which will seem more probable to himself.

1° I distinguish the major. At the last judgment it will be said to all adults who will be on the left: Go into everlasting fire — I concede; to absolutely all — I deny. Therefore there is not described in that place the form of judgment to be observed respectively toward absolutely all, but only the form of the discussion of judgment to be observed respectively toward adults who have reason: I was hungry, and you gave me to eat, etc. I thirsted, and you gave, etc. Under which are understood all personal works good and evil. For these suit adults alone, by no means infants. If thence you infer: Therefore neither do these words: Come blessed, etc., regard baptized infants — I concede. Yet it does not thence follow that they are not to be called into the kingdom by another sentence, just as the unbaptized are not to be excluded by another sentence. And although Aug., serm. 294, cap. 3, n° 3, understands this text also of infants, as I shall say below, nevertheless lib. de octo Quaestionibus Dulcitii, q. 1, he understands it of adults only ¹. ¹ Formerly, de verbis Apostoli, 14.

2° Suppose this place of Matth. to be understood also of infants: under the name of fire (whose bitterness in punishments is supreme) all the pains of hell are comprehended, which for their deserts are of the greatest variety, just as under the name of kingdom, in the prior opinion, is comprehended all the variety of joys in the heavenly kingdom; although, as there the clear vision of God will be common to all, so to all the damned will be common the privation of the divine vision. So Estius on this place, according to which interpretation, under the name of fire is understood indeed the very pain and combustion of fire, but it is not alone, but also other pains, put the privation of vision of God, the remorse of conscience, binding, incarceration, stench, etc.; otherwise, resting precisely in the words, the damned would undergo only the pain of loss and of fire, and no other. It seems certain therefore that Christ under the name of fire comprehended all the pains of hell, not all to be inflicted on all, but fittingly and proportionately to each according to the exigency of his deserts, this to one, that to another.

3° Under the name of fire can be understood, not the punishment of fire specifically, nor any other determinate punishment, but whatsoever punishment in genus and indeterminately. That is frequent enough in the Scriptures. Thus Psal., IXV, 12: We have passed through fire and water. Ibidem, 10: Thou hast proved us by fire, as silver is proved. Deut., IV, 20: The Lord brought you out of the iron furnace of Egypt; in which places by fire is understood whatsoever tribulation. And Josue, VII, 15, when the Lord had decreed Achan to be burned with fire, Josue understood stoning, ibid., 25.

Obj. 2° from Aug. the holy Doctor, serm. 294 ¹, c. 3, n. 3: « The Lord, he says, about to come and to judge the living and the dead, as the Gospel speaks, will make two parts, right and left; to the left he will say: Go into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels; to the right he will say: Come, blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world. This he calls kingdom, that damnation with the devil. No middle place is left where you may place infants. Of the living and the dead judgment will be: some will be on the right, others on the left; I know no other. You who introduce a middle, depart from the middle; let him not offend you who seeks the right hand. And I admonish yourself, depart from the middle, but do not go to the left. » Idem Enchirid., c. 26 ; lib. I de Peccat. meritis, c. 26, and in answer to the words of St. Thomas, q. 5 de Malo, a. 2, ad 1: « It must be said, he says, that under the name of torment, torture, gehenna and cruciatus, or if anything similar be found in the sayings of the saints, is to be largely accepted for punishment, so that species is put for genus. But the saints used such a manner of speaking that they might render detestable the error of the Pelagians, who asserted that in infants there is no sin, nor is any punishment due to them. » In the same manner the sayings of Augustine and of the holy Fathers are interpreted by St. Bonaventure, Scotus, Dionysius Carthusianus, and others. ¹ Formerly, de verbis Apostoli, 14.

§ II. — Whether infants dying with original sin alone perceive any sadness or pain from the privation of the beatific vision?

I say: Infants dying with original sin alone perceive no sadness and no pain from the privation of the beatific vision; they are however not blessed with natural beatitude ¹. ¹ Q. 5 de Malo, a. 3 ; in II Sentent., dist. 33, q. 2, a. 2.

St. Thomas proves the first part of the conclusion with a twofold medium. The first is, quaest. 5 cit.: because infants do not know supernatural beatitude. The second, dist. cit.: because, granted that they recognize supernatural beatitude, it nevertheless would not be intrinsically proportionate to them.

The first reason is proposed thus ² : No one grieves over the loss of a good which he does not know; for of the unknown there is no desire. But infants dying with original sin do not know supernatural beatitude, namely the clear vision of God of which they are deprived; because they had not, nor have faith. Therefore. ² Q. 5 cit.

The second reason of St. Thomas is proposed thus ³. From the fact that someone lacks what exceeds his proportion, he is not afflicted, if he be of right reason, but only from this that he lacks that to which he is in some way proportioned: thus no wise man is afflicted that he cannot fly like a bird, or that he is not king or emperor, since it is not owed to him; he would however be afflicted if he were deprived of that to hold which he had in some way aptitude. But, although man having the use of free choice is proportioned to obtaining eternal life, inasmuch as by proper acts from grace he can merit it, and therefore, if he fall short of this, greatest will be his pain, because he loses what possibly could have been his own; infants nevertheless were never proportioned to having eternal life: because neither was it owed them from the principles of nature, since it exceeds every faculty of nature, nor could they have proper acts whereby they would obtain so great a good. And besides they are of right reason; for they are oblique by no passion, by no personal sin, but such are they as they were before death, since they are not changed through death; before death moreover they had no disordinate act. Therefore they will grieve nothing at all of that lack of divine vision; yea more they will rejoice in this that they will participate much of the divine goodness and natural perfections. ³ Dist. cit.

Nor can it be said that they were proportioned to obtaining eternal life ¹, if not through their own operation, at least through the action of others about them; because they could be baptized by others, as many children of the same condition baptized attained eternal life. For this belongs to grace superexceeding, that anyone be rewarded without his own act. Whence the defect of such grace causes no more sadness in children dying unbaptized than in wise men this, that many graces are not made to them which were made in other similar ones. ¹ Ibid.

It is confirmed. No reason seems to be why exterior punishment of sense is withdrawn from children if interior affliction is attributed to them, which is much more penal ². ² Ibid. de Malo.

Proof of the second part of the conclusion. Natural beatitude cannot stand with aversion from God as author of nature; for natural beatitude consists in free amicable conversion and union with God as author of nature. But infants, by reason of original sin, are averted from God, even as author of nature. Therefore. — Proof of minor. Adam, by sinning, was averted from God, not only as supernatural author, but even as natural author, because whoever sins against God as supernatural author sins against him as natural author, since the natural law commands obedience to every superior legitimately commanding. But such in children is the habitual aversion, such as was actual in Adam, in whom they sinned. Therefore.