On the Virginal Conception, and On Original Sin: Chapter 26
BASIC WRITINGS
and "everyone will bear his own burden,"49 that each will receive "according to his deeds" in the body, "whether good or evil,"50 and also, on the other hand, that God visits the sins of the parents on the children "unto the third and fourth generation" (even if this happens in the soul) and whatever else we read that seems to indicate that the sins of the parents harm the souls of their children. Indeed, the soul of the child does not die for its father's sin, but for its own; nor does anyone bear "the iniquity of his father," but his own iniquity,when he is left in his own sins;no one bears anyone's burden but his own, and no one receives according to his father's deeds, but according to his own deeds in the body.Yet, since it is because of his parents' sins that he is not set free from his own evils, the evils that he bears are imputed to his parents' sins.
Chapter 26 How, nevertheless, no one bears the sin of his father, but his own sin
Now if someone objects that all who are not saved by faith,which is in Christ, bear the iniquity and burden of Adam—meaning by this to prove that either infants should likewise bear the iniquities of their other ancestors or else they should not bear Adam's—let him pay close attention to the fact that infants do not in fact bear Adam's sin, but their own. Adam's sin was one thing and the sin of infants is another,since they differ in the way I have explained.Adam's sin was the cause; the sin of infants is the effect.Adam lacked the required justice not because anyone else abandoned it but because he abandoned it; infants lack it, not because they themselves left it behind, but because someone else left it behind.So Adam's sin is not the same as the sin of infants.And when the Apostle says, in the passage I quoted above, that "death reigned from Adam to Moses even over those who did not sin in the likeness of the transgression of Adam," he makes it quite clear that the sin of infants is something other than the sin of Adam, just as he indicates that their sin is less than his.
It follows, then, that when an infant is damned on account of original sin, he is damned on account of his own sin and not Adam's.For if he did not have sin of his own, he would not be damned. In this way, therefore, he bears his own iniquity and not Adam's, even though he is said to bear Adam's iniquity on the grounds that the iniquity of Adam's sin was the cause of the infant's.
Now this cause of infants' being born in sin was in Adam; it is not in their other ancestors, for in them (as I have explained) human nature does not have the power to reproduce just children. Hence it does not follow that there is
49 Galatians 6:5.
50 2 Corinthians 5:10.