blocked? But perhaps those who insist on the lightness of this view25 can
BookX 415 reason known only to himself he has wished to be born in the body and has then a short while later withdrawn from the body.
So when they give this kind of answer, how else can they be rebutted, except by saying that this also makes us unsure about the salvation of those who, after living a good life, have died in the peace of the Church, if people are to bejudged not only on the kind of lives they have lived but also on the kind they would live if they had been able to live longer? l mean, if God takes account of what we deserve for future as well as past crimes and misdemeanors, then death will not deliver us from liability for them if it overtakes us before we have committed them, nor has any benefit been conferred on the one who was snatchedaway lest viciousness should change his understanding (Wis 4:11). God, after all, has foreknowledge of his future viciousness; so why will he not be judging him rather with reference to this, if it is because he foreknew the soul of a dying infant, were it to live, would live a life ofloyal faith and love, that he hasjudged it should be assisted through baptism, lest it be disqualified by the filthy backwash of sin from the body?
29. Or is it because this little loophole is my invention that it can be so easily blocked? But perhaps those who insist on the lightness of this view25 can produce either scriptural evidence or arguments of reason to dispel this uncer tainty, or definitely to show how their idea does not go against what the apostle says to commend with all possible earnestness the grace by which we are saved: Just as all die in Adam, so shall all be brought to life in Christ ( 1 Cor 1 5:22); and: Just as through one man's disobedience many were constituted sinners, so through one man 's obedience many shall be constituted asjust (Rom 5:19). And by these "many being sinners" he clearly wishes us to understand "all," with no exceptions, since he says about Adam a verse or two earlier on: in whom all sinned (Rom 5:12). So that other party, which favors souls being derived from the stock of one man, has every right to think that that "all" proves that the souls of infants cannot be excepted, as does the practice of coming to their aid with baptism, unless it can be rebutted either by some sound, clear argument ofreason which is not repugnant to the holy scriptures, or by the equally clear authority of the scriptures themselves.
25. The view—just to remind the reader—that souls are inserted by God into bodies without being derived through parents from the soul of the first man, Adam.