the apostles. For they CHAP.VI. be, as they did invidiously represent. Year after confessed that without baptism they could not come to the kingdom of God, but must eternally be separated from God and from their parents: but they would not call this condemnation. He judged that they were under condemnation, but so gentle, that probably that state would be better than no being at all; and consequently, that they or their parents would have no reason to wish that they had never been born. St. Austin does so generally observe this rule of speaking with great caution and tenderness of the degree of their condemnation; that when Erasmus came to revise his works, he quickly found that the de Fide ad Petrum was none of his°; for this reason among others, because the author (who is since 410. known to be Fulgentius) does express the condemnation of infants that die unbaptized in such rigid terms, as that whether they die in their mother's 'womb, or after they are born, one must hold for 'certain and undoubted, that they are ignis æterni supplicio sempiterno puniendi, to be tormented 'with the everlasting punishment of eternal fire;' and again, interminabilia gehennæ sustinere supplicia: ubi Diabolus, &c. to suffer the endless tor'ments of hell; where the Devil with his angels is to burn for evermore. This,' says Erasmus, 'never read any where else in St. Austin; though he does frequently use the words punishment, condemnation, perishing.' 6 I • Erasmi Censura ad istum librum. [See this, among the supposititious pieces, in the Appendix to tom. vi. p. 19, &c. of the Benedictine edition.] Year after stles. Erasmus' observation is true for the general. Yet CHAP.VI. it must be confessed, that in one sermon of his, where he is eagerly declaiming against the Pela- the apogians, who taught that infants were baptized not for eternal life but for the kingdom of heaven, and that if they die unbaptized they will miss of the kingdom of heaven indeed, but have eternal life in some other good place; he confutes their opinion thus: Our Lord will come to judge the quick and the dead: and he will make two sides, the right and the left. To those on the left hand he will say, Depart into everlasting fire, &c. To those on the right, Come, receive the kingdom,' &c. He 'calls one the kingdom; the other, condemnation * with_the_Deril. There is no middle place left where you can put infants.'-And afterward; Thus I have explained to you what is the kingdom, and what ererlasting fire: so that when you confess the infant will not be in the kingdom, you * must acknowledge he will be in everlasting fire. But these words came from him in the midst of a declamatory dispute. He would, if he had been to explain himself, have said, as in other places, that this fire would be to them the most moderate of all. Though he speak of this matter one or two thousand times, yet he never, as I know of, mentions the word eternal fire in their case but here. So that we must either conclude that the heat of controversy carried him in that extempore sermon beyond his usual thought; or else we must conclude, by Erasmus' rule, that that sermon is none of his. De verbis Apostoli, Serm. 14. [294. edit. Benedict. op. tom. v. p. 1185.] the apostles. CHAP. VI. It was the foresaid book of Fulgentius, (which Year after asserts this dogmatically, and over and over,) being commonly joined with his works, and taken for his, that fixed on him in after-ages the title of Durus infantum pater: The father that is so hard to 410. infants.' It was Fulgentius, that lived one hundred years after, and not he, that most deserved that name. Whereas Grotius observes, that St. Austin never expressed any thing at all of their condemnation, not even to those lesser pains, till after he had been heated by the Pelagian disputes; seeming to intimate that he was not of that opinion before; but took it up then in opposition to the Pelagians: I have shewed beforet what St. Austin himself says to that imputation; for it was objected by some in his lifetime. VI. I shall here make a short excursion beyond my limits of four hundred years: and see how the opinions of men did come to some abatement of this 433. rigour after the time of Fulgentius, who died anno 533. 500. In pope Gregory's time, anno Dom. 600, the opinion of their being tormented continued. For he speaks thus": Some are taken from this present life before they come to have any good or ill deserts by their own deeds: and having not the sacrament of salvation for their deliverance from original sin, though they have done nothing of their ' own here, yet there they come ad tormenta, to s Annot. in Matth. cap. xix. 14. t Part i. ch. 15. sect. 3. §. 2. u Lib. ix. Exposit. Moral. in Job. cap. 16. [c. 21. tom. i. p. 303. edit. Benedict.] 'torments.' And a little after; perpetua tormenta CHAP.VI. percipiunt, they undergo eternal torments.' Year after stles. The same, or at least the opinion of moderate the apotorments, continued down to Anselm's time: for he 290. speaks thus on that subject;-Though all shall 'not be equally tormented in hell. For after the day of judgment, there will be no angel or human 'person, but what will be either in the kingdom ' of God, or else in hell. So then the sin of infants is less than the sin of Adam: and yet none can be 'saved without that universal satisfaction, by which 'sin, be it great or small, is to be forgiven.' Thus far it continued. But about this time the doctrine of the church of Rome and the western world took a great turn in this point: and they came over to the opinion of the Greek doctors that I mentioned. For Peter Lombard, anno Dom. 1150, 1050. determines, that the proper punishment of original sin (where there is no actual sin added to it) is pœna damni, non pœna sensus, the punishment of loss, (viz. loss of heaven and the sight of God,) but not the punishment of sense, viz. of positive ⚫ torment.' Pope Innocent the third confirms this, by deter- 1100. mining that the punishment of original sin is 'carentia visionis Dei, being deprived of the sight of God and of actual sin the punishment to be * gehennæ perpetuæ cruciatus, the torments of an 'everlasting hell.' * Lib. de conceptione Virginis et peccato originali, cap. 22. * Lib. 2. Sentent. Distinct. 33. Decret. lib. 3. cap. de Baptismo, can. Majores. CHAP. VI. the apostles. Then Alexander de Ales and Aquinas, and so Year after the whole troop of schoolmen, do establish the same by their determination. They suppose there is a 1130. place or state of hell or hades, which they call limbus, or infernus puerorum, where unbaptized infants will be in no other torment or condemnation but the loss of heaven. 1155 6 But they did not know what to do with that authority of the book de Fide ad Petrum which I mentioned, and which they took to be St. Austin's, which says; We must believe most firmly, and 'make no question of it, that they are tormented 'with eternal fire.' Yet see the power of distinctions. Alexander de Ales answers, To be punished with that fire may be understood two ways: ' either on account of the heat of it, or of the dark'ness of it. They that have actual sins will be punished with the heat: but the other, only with the darkness of it, as wanting the sight of God,' &c. Now darkness without heat is, one would think, but improperly expressed by fire. But he says, (and true enough,) that if we do not under'stand it so, it will be contrary to what St. Austin says at other places of the mildness of their • punishment.' This was, as I said, the general opinion of the schoolmen. Yet Gregorius Ariminensis (who is 2 Summa, part. 2. Quæst. 122. membr. 10. * Parte tertia, Quæst. 1. Art. 4. b Loco citato. c Lib. 2. Distinct. 31. Quæst. 3. [See Gregorius de Arimino in primo et secundo sententiarum, fol. Venetiis 1503. part. ii. fol. 104, &c.] |