The Literal Meaning of Genesis (continued)
But I should not on that account desert the position of those who are absent if I find something that seems to support it. For they can also say that God foreknows how each soul would live if it were to have a longer life in the body, and thus He provides the ministration of the saving waters for each one who He knows would have lived in a holy manner when he would come to an age at which he could believe, if it were now®? necessary for him to meet an early death by some hidden cause.
It is, then, a mystery beyond human powers of knowing, at least beyond mine, why an infant destined to die immediately or soon after birth is born. This is so mysterious that it can help neither of the two sides whose opinions we are discussing. For we have rejected the opinion which holds that souls are cast into bodies in accordance with the merits of a previous life, so that a soul which had not committed many sins would apparently deserve to be delivered the sooner. We rejected this theory so as not to contradict St. Paul, who testifies that those who are not yet born have done no good or evil.®? Hence, neither those who maintain the transmission of the soul nor those who hold that individual new souls are given to individual bodies are able to show why some die early and others die late. The reason, therefore, is hidden, and so far as I can see it does not support or oppose either opinion.
CHAPTER 16
Further reflections on the need of baptism of infants.
28. Certain writers, when pressed on the subject of the death of infants and when asked why the sacrament of baptism is necessary for all human beings, whose souls have not come from the soul of him by whose disobedience many have been made sinners, ®4 reply that all have been made sinners according to the flesh, but according to the soul those only who have lived an evil life during the time when they might have lived a good one. Moreover, they say that all souls, including those of infants, must receive the sacrament of baptism (without which even infants ought not