Chapter Xxviii
CHAPTER XXVIII
Against Those Who Do Not Think That Infants Should Be Condemned There are those who do not wish to accept the view that infants who die without having been baptized should be condemned solely on the basis of the injustice which X have been discussing. Their reasoning is that no one judges infants to be blameworthy for the sin of another person, and infants are not just and rational as long as they remain infants; nor should God judge these innocent babes more severely than men judge them. But it must be replied to men of this opinion that God should act differently with respect to infants from the way man should act. For man should not demand from human nature what he himself has not given to human nature and what is not owed to him by human nature. A man does not justly blame someone else for being born with guilt when such a person cannot be born without guilt and when he can only be cleansed from guilt by another. But God rightly demands from human nature what He has given to it, and what human nature justly owes to Him.
But if we think about it, God's judgment in condemning infants is not much different from the judgment of men. For suppose that some man and his wife, who have been elevated to great dignity and wealth through grace alone and not by their own merit, were both to commit a serious and unpardonable crime, so that they were justly cast down from their position and given into servitude. In this case, who shall say that the children born to them after their condemnation should not also be subjected to servitude, but ought rather to be restored to the goods which their parents freely and justly lost? But this is the situation of our first parents, who through their own fault were justly condemned from happiness into wretchedness, and so begat their children into the same exile. Now, although we ought to judge like cases by like stan dards, to the degree that the transgression of our first parents exceeds that