CHAPTER III
corrupted burdens the soul* (Wis. of Sol. 9:15), so that the soul is not able even to understand justice (especially when the soul is rather weak., as in infancy or in the mother's womb),, it seems necessary for the human nature which is born in infants to have both the obligation to make satisfaction for that first sin which it was always able to avoid and the obligation to have that original justice it was always able to keep. Nor is the inability of human nature in infants to discharge these obligations any excuse, for human nature brought this debt upon itself when it deserted justice in our first parents.
Human nature was complete in our first parents, and so it is always under the obligation to have the ability which it received for the sake of keeping justice. Hence, original sin can be ascribed even to infants.
Let me also mention all the sins of our recent ancestors which are reckoned 'unto the third and fourth generation.' (Ex. 20:5) For although it can be debated whether or not such sins are to be understood as part of original sin,,
I would not wish to appear to be lightening the seriousness of original sin on account of these. So I shall regard original sin to be of such gravity that no one can show it to be even more grievous.
CHAPTER III
That Sin Exists Only in a Rational Will However, whether all the sins of our recent ancestors are part of original sin, or whether they are something less, I think that original sin cannot be asserted to be in an infant before he has a rational will, any more than justice can be asserted to be in Adam before he was a rational man. For if Adam and Eve had begotten offspring before they sinned, justice still would not and could not have been in the seed until it was formed into a living man. If, therefore, the seed of a man is not capable of being just before it becomes
a man, then the seed is also not able to receive original sin before it becomes a man.
Certainly we should not doubt that original sin is injustice. For if every sin is injustice, and if original sin is a sin, then original sin is injus tice. However, if someone says that not every sin is injustice, then he should also assert that it is possible for there to be a certain sin in someone and yet, at the same time, no injustice. But such an assertion is incredible.
Moreover, someone may say that original sin is not an unqualified sin; and he may argue that the words 'original sin' are to be understood like the expres sion 'depicted man* /a portrait/; for a depicted man is not really a man, but only a depicted man. But from this argument, it would immediately follow that an infant, who has only original sin, is free from sin; and then the Son of the Virgin would not be the only man who was without sin both in His mother's womb and at His birth. If this were the case, then either those infants who have only original sin and die without baptism would not be condemned, or else they would be condemned without sin. But we believe neither of these alternatives.
So we must conclude that every sin is injustice, that original sin is an un qualified sin, and that therefore original sin is injustice. Or again, if God condemns a man only because of his injustice, and if He condemns someone be cause of original sin, then it follows that original sin is nothing other than injustice. But if this is true, and if injustice is nothing other than the absence of required justice (for injustice seems to be only in a nature which does not have justice though it ought to), then original sin is clearly in cluded in the definition of 'injustice.'
But if justice is 'uprightness of will kept for its own sake,' and if up rightness can only be in a rational nature, then even as no nature except a
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