On the Virginal Conception, and On Original Sin: Chapter 25
ON THE VIRGINAL CONCEPTION, AND ON ORIGINAL SIN
means of their own justice make original injustice less serious in their children; and equally, it does not seem that the unjust by means of their own injustice make original injustice more serious in their children. Therefore, if unjust parents cannot by their own sin increase original sin in their children, either in number or in severity, it seems to me that the sins of parents after Adam are not counted in the original sin of infants.
I do not deny that many great benefits of both body and soul are imparted to children on account of the good deserts of their parents, and that because of the sins of their parents, children and grandchildren are tormented in this life by various trials "unto the third and fourth generation,"45 and perhaps further, and that they lose goods even in their souls that might have come to them from their parents if they had been just. (It would require too much space to offer examples here.) But I say that original sin is equal in all naturally conceived infants, just as Adam's sin, which is the cause of their being born in original sin, belongs to all of them equally.
Chapter 25 How the parents' sins harm their children's souls Yet if in fact the parents'sins sometimes harm their children's souls,I think this happens, not because God imputes those sins to the children, or because he leads them into46 certain misdeeds on account of their parents, but rather because he sometimes leaves the children of the unjust in their sins because of their parents' merits, just as he often rescues the children of the just from their sins because of their parents' merits. No one, after all, is free from sin unless
God sets him free. For that reason, when God does not set someone free, he is said to "lead him into" sin, and when he does not soften someone, he is said to "harden"47 him. It does in fact seem rather more reasonable that on account of the parents God should leave a sinful soul, to which he owes nothing but punishment, in its sins so that it should be punished for them, than that he should burden such a soul with someone else's sins and torment him for those.
Therefore, there is no contradiction in saying, on the one hand, that original sin is the same in all, that "the son will not bear the iniquity of the father"48
45 Exodus 20:5.
46 'lead into' is inducere, the same word used in the petition of the Lord's Prayer,"Lead us not into temptation." See Matthew 6:13 and Luke 11:4.
47 Exodus 4, 7–11, and 14, passim; Deuteronomy 2:30; Joshua 11:20; John 12:40; Romans
9:18. See also De concordia 2.2.
48 Ezekiel 18:20.