the sacrament of the Mediator, because through it Christ imparts to the soul the grace of God,
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25 . But before they reach the age at which they can live in accordance with the spirit, they need to receive the sacrament of the Mediator, so that what they are not yet able to do through their own faith can be done through that of those who love them. It is by his sacrament, you see, that even in the age of infancy they are absolved from the punishment of original sin, and without its help they will not even succeed as young men and women in taming fleshly lust, and in winning, after bringing it to heel, the reward of eternal life—except by the gift of the one whose favor they are eager to win. That is why it is right and proper for an infant to be baptized while still alive, so that the soul's association with "the flesh of sin" may not be to its disadvantage, seeing that by sharing in the flesh the infant soul is rendered incapable of savoring anything in accordance with the spirit. Its being affected, not to say infected, like this weighs upon the soul even when it has stripped off the body, unless it is purged while still in the body through the unique sacrifice of the true high priest.23
Wrestling with the problem of infants dying unbaptized
15, 26. "So then," someone will say, "what if their people do not bother about this, being either unbelievers, or simply careless?"
Well, the same could be said about adults; they too, after all, can die suddenly, or be taken ill among people where nobody will come to their assistance by seeing they are baptized.
"Yes, but these," he says, "have their own personal sins which they need to be absolved from; and ifthey have not been forgiven them, nobody would dream of saying that they are being struck off undeservedly for wrongs they have deliber ately committed during their lives. But the soul which has contracted a kind of contagion from 'the flesh of sin' cannot in any way have this put down to its account, if it has not been created from that first soul that sinned; so why will it be forbidden entry to eternal life if (it is not, after all through any sin, but by nature that it has been made in this way, and given to the flesh by God as the giver) nobody has come to its assistance by baptizing an infant? Or perhaps this will not in fact do it any harm? Then what good does it do a soul to be assisted in this way, if not being so assisted does it no harm?"
23. This section puts in a nutshell almost the complete doctrine of the sacrament of baptism. 1t is the sacrament of the Mediator, because through it Christ imparts to the soul the grace of God, standing as mediator between God and humanity (1 Tm 2:5); it is the sacrament of faith, because it presupposes that those being baptized believe in God and Christ and trust them, and with what we now call confirmation (in those days regarded as part of the baptismal rite) it sets the seal of the Holy Spirit on their faith; this faith can if necessary be professed vicariously by others on behalf of the one to be baptized, being seen as indeed the faith of the Church, which is in the sacrament giving birth to the new Christian; finally, what is effective in the sacrament is the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, purging or atoning for all sin, including original sin (see Rom 6:3-11).