On the Merits and Forgiveness of Sins, and on the Baptism of Infants 2.33–2.48

And when we pray to him for his help to do and to perfect righteousness, what else do we pray for than that he may open what was hidden and make sweet what did not delight? For that this too is to be prayed for from him we learned by his grace, when previously it was hidden; by his grace we loved it, when previously it did not delight; so that he who boasts may boast not in himself but in the Lord. For being lifted up into pride belongs to men's own will, not to the work of God; for God neither compels nor helps them to it. There comes first, then, in man's will a certain appetite for his own power, so that he becomes disobedient through pride. If this appetite had not existed, nothing would have been troublesome; and when man did not will this, he would have not willed it without difficulty; but as a just and due penalty there followed such a flaw that it became troublesome to obey righteousness. Unless this flaw is overcome with the help of grace, no one is turned to righteousness; unless it is healed by the working of grace, no one enjoys the peace of righteousness. And by whose grace is it overcome and healed, if not his to whom it is said: “Turn us, O God of our healings, and turn away your anger from us”? And if he does this, he does it by mercy, so that it is said, “He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor repaid us according to our iniquities”; and to those for whom he does not do it, he does not do it by judgment. And who will say to him, “What have you done?”, to whom mercy and judgment are sung by the devout mind of the saints? For this reason he heals even his saints and faithful more slowly in some flaws, so that in these the good delights them less than suffices for fulfilling righteousness in every part, whether when it is hidden or even when it is manifest; so that, as regards the most perfect rule of his truth, no living person is justified in his sight. Nor in this does he will us to be damnable, but humble, commending his grace to us, lest, having attained ease in all things, we should think ours what is his; which error is greatly contrary to religion and piety. Yet let us not therefore think that we must remain in those same flaws, but let us strive watchfully, above all against the very pride for which we are humbled in them, and pray to him ardently, understanding at the same time that both our so striving and our so praying we have by his gift; so that in all things, not looking to ourselves but having our hearts lifted up, we may give thanks to the Lord our God, and, when we boast, may boast in him.

There remains now the fourth question, and when it has been explained, as far as the Lord helps, this so lengthy discourse may at last come to an end: whether anyone who has never had nor will ever have any sin at all not only exists among those born of men, but also could ever have existed or can exist. It is most certain that no such person exists, or has existed, or will exist, except the one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. On this we have already said much concerning the baptism of infants, for if they have no sin, then there not only are innumerable men without sin, but there also have been and will be. Further, if what we treated in the second place has truly been established, that no one is without sin, then surely infants are not without sin either. From which it follows that, even if there could have been someone in this life so perfected in virtue that he came to such fullness of righteousness that he had no sin at all, yet it is not to be doubted that he was previously a sinner, from which he was turned into this newness of life. For in that second place one thing was being asked, and another is proposed in this fourth. For in that one the question was whether anyone in this life would come, through the grace of God and the effort of the will, to the perfect life which is wholly without any sin; but in this fourth the question is whether there was, or could have been, or can be, among the children of men anyone who came to most perfect righteousness not from sin, but was never bound by any sin at all. Therefore, if what we have said at such length about infants is true, there is no such person among the children of men, nor was, nor will be, except the one mediator, in whom propitiation and justification have been set for us, through which, the enmities of sins being ended, we may be reconciled to God. It is not beside the point, then, as far as seems sufficient for the present case, to go back over a few things from the very beginning of the human race, by which the reader's mind may be instructed against certain things which could disturb it.

After those first human beings, one man, Adam, and from him Eve his wife, having received God's command, refused to keep obedience, a just and due penalty followed them. For so the Lord had threatened, that on the day they ate the forbidden food they would die the death. Accordingly, since they had received the power of using for food every tree that was in paradise, in which God had also planted the tree of life, and he had forbidden them only that one which he called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, by which name the consequence of experience was signified, what good they would feel if the prohibition were kept and what evil if it were transgressed, they are surely rightly understood to have abstained from the forbidden food before the malicious persuasion of the devil, and to have used what was granted, and so both the other trees and especially the tree of life. For what is more absurd than to believe that they took nourishment from the other trees, but not from that one too, which had likewise been permitted, and which by a special usefulness did not let their bodies, although natural, be changed through the decay of the ages and grow old into death; conferring this benefit on the human body from its own bodily substance, and showing by a mystical meaning what is conferred on the rational soul through wisdom, of which it bore the figure, so that, made alive by its nourishment, the soul would in no way be turned to the decay and death of wickedness? For rightly is it said of wisdom: “She is a tree of life to those who embrace her.” As this tree in the bodily paradise, so wisdom in the spiritual paradise; this one giving vigor to the senses of the outer man, that one to those of the inner, a life-giving vigor without any change for the worse through time. They served God, then, with the piety of obedience strongly commended to them, by which alone God is worshipped. How great this is in itself, and how it alone suffices to guard the rational creature under the Creator, could not have been more excellently made known than by their being forbidden a tree that was not evil. For far be it that the creator of good things, who made all things, and behold, very good, should plant anything evil in the fertility even of that bodily paradise. But in order that it might be shown to man, for whom service under such a Lord was most useful, how great the good of obedience alone was, which alone he had required of his servant, whom it profited to obey not for the sake of the Lord's dominion but rather for the servant's own benefit, they were forbidden that tree, from which, if they had used it without being forbidden, they would have suffered no evil at all; so that what they suffered when they used it after the prohibition might show sufficiently that it was not the tree, harmful by poisonous food, that brought this on them, but only violated obedience.

Before they violated it, then, they pleased God and God pleased them, and, although they bore a natural body, they felt nothing in it moving disobediently against them. For the order of righteousness brought it about that, since their soul had received the body as a servant from the Lord, just as the soul obeyed that same Lord of its own, so its body obeyed it and rendered a service fitting to that life without any resistance. Hence they were both naked and not ashamed. For the rational soul is now ashamed, with a natural modesty, that in the flesh, over whose service it received the right of authority, it cannot, by some weakness or other, bring it about that the members are not moved against its will and are moved at its will. For this reason in any chaste person they are rightly called shameful, because they are roused against the mind, their mistress, as if they were in their own power, as they please; and the bridle of virtue has only this right over them, that it does not let them come to unclean and unlawful corruptions. This disobedience of the flesh, then, which is in the very motion, even if it is not allowed to have its effect, was not in those first human beings then, when they were naked and not ashamed. For the rational soul, mistress of the flesh, had not yet become disobedient to its Lord, so that by a reciprocal penalty it should experience its servant the flesh disobedient, with a certain feeling of confusion and trouble of its own; a feeling which it certainly did not inflict on God by its disobedience. For it is not shameful or troublesome to God if we do not obey him, whose supreme power over us we can in no way diminish; but it is shameful to us that the flesh does not serve our command, because this comes about through the weakness which we deserved by sinning, and it is called the sin dwelling in our members. But this sin is such that it is the penalty of sin. Finally, after that transgression took place and the disobedient soul was turned away from the law of its Lord, its servant, that is, its body, began to have a law of disobedience against it, and those human beings were ashamed of their nakedness, having noticed in themselves a motion which they had not felt before; and this noticing was called the opening of the eyes; for they were not wandering among those trees with their eyes shut. So too it is written of Hagar: “Her eyes were opened and she saw a well.” Then those human beings covered their shameful parts, which God had made members for them, but they themselves made shameful.

From this law of sin is born the flesh of sin, to be expiated through the sacrament of him who came in the likeness of the flesh of sin, so that the body of sin might be made void, which he also calls the body of this death, from which nothing frees the wretched man but the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. For this law, the beginning of death, passed from them to their descendants in the same way as the toil with which all men toil on the earth, and as childbirth with pains for women. For these they deserved by God's sentence when they were convicted of sin, and we see them fulfilled not in them alone but also in their successors, more in some, less in others, yet in all. Since, then, the first righteousness of those first human beings was to obey God and not to have in their members this law of concupiscence against the law of their mind, now, after their sin, our flesh of sin having been born from them, it is counted a great thing by those who obey God not to obey the desires of that same concupiscence and to crucify in themselves the flesh with its passions and desires, so that they may belong to Jesus Christ, who figured this in his cross, to whom by his grace he gave power to become children of God. For he did not give it to all men, but to as many as received him, so that those who had been born to the world by the flesh might be reborn to God by the Spirit. For so it was said of them: “But as many as received him, to them he gave power to become children of God, who were born not of flesh, not of blood, not of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God.”

Then he went on to add: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”; as though saying: This indeed is a great thing that has been done in them, that those who had first been born of the flesh to the world, although created by God himself, should be born to God from God; but far more wonderful is what has been done: that, whereas it was of their nature to be born of the flesh, but of grace to be born of God, in order to bestow this grace he who was born of God by nature deigned also to be born of the flesh by mercy; for this is: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Through this, he says, it came about that we, born of the flesh as flesh, might afterwards by being born of the Spirit be spirit and dwell in God, because God too, born of God, afterwards by being born of the flesh became flesh and dwelt among us. For the Word who became flesh was in the beginning and was God with God. Yet his very sharing in our lower things, so that ours might be in his higher things, kept a certain middle course even in the birth of the flesh: we were born in the flesh of sin, he in the likeness of the flesh of sin; we not only of flesh and blood but also of the will of a man and the will of the flesh, he only of flesh and blood, not of the will of a man nor of the will of the flesh, but born of God. And therefore we go to death because of sin, he to death for our sake without sin. And just as his lower things, by which he came down to us, were not in every way made equal to our lower things, in which he found us here, so also our higher things, by which we ascend to him, will not be made equal to his higher things, in which we are to find him there. For we shall have been made children of God by his grace; he was always Son of God by nature; we, having once turned, shall cleave to God as unequal; he, never turned away, remains equal to God; we partakers of eternal life, he eternal life. He alone, then, even when made man, remaining God, never had any sin, nor did he take the flesh of sin, although from the maternal flesh of sin. For whatever of flesh he took from there, he surely either cleansed it to take it or cleansed it by taking it. Therefore he created the virgin mother whom he would choose, not conceiving by the law of the flesh of sin, that is, not by the motion of carnal concupiscence, but by devout faith meriting that the holy offspring be formed in her; he chose her from whom he would be created. How much more, then, must the flesh of sin be baptized to escape judgment, if flesh without sin was baptized to give an example for imitation!

What we answered above against those who say, “If a sinner begot a sinner, a righteous man too should have begotten a righteous child,” we answer also to those who say that one born of a baptized man ought to have been held as already baptized. “For why,” they say, “could he not be baptized in the loins of his father, if, according to the epistle written to the Hebrews, Levi could be tithed in the loins of Abraham?” Let those who say this note that Levi was not afterwards exempt from tithing because he had already been tithed in the loins of Abraham, but because he was so ordained to the honor of the priesthood that he should receive tithes, not pay them; otherwise his other brothers, who paid tithes to him, would not have been tithed either, since they too had already been tithed by Melchizedek in the loins of Abraham.

But let no one say that Abraham's sons could rightly be tithed, although they had already been tithed in the loins of their father, because tithing was a thing that had to be done often for each person, as the Israelites every year, indeed from all their produce, used to pay frequent tithes to the Levites all their lives; whereas baptism is a sacrament given once, and if anyone had already received it when he was in his father, he must be reckoned as nothing but baptized, since he was begotten of one who had been baptized. Whoever says this, not to argue at length, should look at circumcision, which was done once and yet was done to each individually. As, then, at the time of that sacrament one born of a circumcised man had to be circumcised, so now one born of a baptized man must be baptized.

“But the apostle says,” they say, “Your children would be unclean, but now they are holy; and therefore the children of believers ought not to be baptized at all.” I am surprised that this is said by those who deny that sin is drawn from Adam by origin. For if they take this statement of the apostle so as to believe that children are born sanctified from believers, why do even they not doubt that these must be baptized? Why, in short, will they not confess that some sin is drawn by origin from a sinful parent, if some holiness is drawn from a holy one? And it is not against our assertion, even if holy children are propagated from believers, that we say that, if they are not baptized, they go into damnation, children from whom even they shut off the kingdom of heaven, although they say that they have no sin, either personal or original. Or if it seems unworthy to them that the holy should be damned, how will it be worthy that the holy should be separated from the kingdom of God? Let them rather consider how some sin is not drawn from sinful parents, if some holiness is drawn from holy ones, and uncleanness from unclean ones. For he who said, “Otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy,” said both. Let them also explain how it is just that those born holy from believers and those born unclean from unbelievers are equally not allowed to enter the kingdom of God if they have not been baptized. What good, then, is this holiness to them? For if they admitted that those born unclean of unbelievers are damned, while the holy children of believers cannot indeed enter the kingdom of God unless they are baptized, yet are not damned because they are holy, there would be some sort of distinction; but as it is, they say that those born holy of the holy and those born unclean of the unclean are equally not damned, because they have no sin, and equally separated from the kingdom of God, because they have no baptism. Who would believe that such minds do not see this absurdity?

But consider a little how this which the apostle said when dealing with another matter, “Otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy,” is not contrary to our view, or rather to the view of the apostle himself, who said, “From one, all to condemnation,” and “From one, all to justification of life.” Sanctification is not of one kind only; for I think that catechumens too are sanctified in a certain way of their own by the sign of Christ and the prayer of the laying on of hands; and what they receive, although it is not the body of Christ, is nevertheless holy, and holier than the foods by which we are nourished, since it is a sacrament. Yet the same apostle said that even the foods which we use from the necessity of sustaining this life are sanctified by the word of God and prayer, the prayer with which we pray when about to refresh our poor bodies. Just as, then, this sanctification of foods does not bring it about that what has entered the mouth does not go into the belly and is not discharged into the privy through the corruption by which all earthly things are dissolved (which is why the Lord also exhorts us to another food, which is not corrupted), so the sanctification of a catechumen, if he has not been baptized, does not avail him for entering the kingdom of heaven or for the forgiveness of sins. And for this reason that sanctification too, of whatever kind it may be, which the apostle said is in the children of believers, has nothing at all to do with this question of baptism and of the origin or forgiveness of sin. For he says in that very place that unbelieving spouses are sanctified in believing spouses, speaking thus: “For the unbelieving husband is sanctified in the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified in the brother; otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy.” No one, I think, understands so unbelievingly, whatever he understands in these words, as to think on this account that even a husband who is not a Christian, because his wife was a Christian, need no longer be baptized, has already come to the forgiveness of sins, and will enter the kingdom of heaven, because he was said to be sanctified in his wife.

Whoever is still troubled as to why those are baptized who are born of the baptized, let him take this briefly. Just as the generation of the flesh of sin through the one Adam draws to condemnation all who are generated in that way, so the regeneration of the Spirit of grace through the one Jesus Christ leads to the justification of eternal life all who, predestined, are regenerated in that way. And the sacrament of baptism is surely the sacrament of regeneration. Therefore, just as a man who has not lived cannot die, and one who has not died cannot rise again, so one who has not been born cannot be reborn. From which it follows that no one could be reborn in his parent without having been born. But if he has been born, he must be reborn, because “unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” It is necessary, then, that even an infant be imbued with the sacrament of regeneration, lest without it he depart this life to his harm; and this is done only for the forgiveness of sins. Christ too showed this in that very place, when, asked how these things could be, he recalled what Moses did in lifting up the serpent. Since, then, through the sacrament of baptism infants are conformed to the death of Christ, we must confess that they are freed from the serpent's bite, if we do not wish to stray from the rule of the Christian faith. Yet they received this bite not in their own personal life, but in him on whom it was first inflicted.

Nor let this deceive anyone, that his own sins do no harm to a parent after his conversion; “how much more,” they say, “can they do no harm to his son!” But those who think this do not notice that, just as his own sins do no harm to the parent because he has been reborn of the Spirit, so, to one who has been born of him, unless he is reborn in the same way, what has been drawn from the parent will do harm; because renewed parents, too, beget carnally not from the firstfruits of newness but from the remnants of oldness, and the children, propagated wholly old in the flesh of sin from the remaining oldness of their parents, escape the damnation due to the old man by the sacrament of spiritual regeneration and renewal. For this above all, because of the questions which have been raised on this matter or may still be raised, we must note and remember: that in baptism only a full and perfect forgiveness of all sins takes place, but the quality of the man himself is not wholly changed at once; rather, the spiritual firstfruits, in those who advance well, as newness grows day by day, change into themselves what is carnally old, until the whole is so renewed that even the natural weakness of the body comes to spiritual strength and incorruption.

This law of sin, which the apostle also calls sin when he says, “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its desires,” does not remain in the members of those who have been reborn of water and the Spirit as though its forgiveness had not taken place, where an entirely full and perfect forgiveness of sins takes place, all the enmities by which we were separated from God being slain; but it remains in the oldness of the flesh as something overcome and destroyed, unless by unlawful consents it in some way comes to life again and is recalled to its own reign and dominion. From this oldness of the flesh, in which this law of sin is, or the sin now forgiven, the life of the Spirit, in whose newness the baptized are reborn by God's grace, is so far distinguished that it was not enough for the apostle to say that such people are not in sin, unless he also said that they are not in the flesh itself, even before they depart from this mortal life. “For those who are in the flesh,” he says, “cannot please God; but you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.” Yet just as those who turn its members to good works use well that very flesh, although corruptible, in which flesh they are not, because they neither think nor live according to it; just as, finally, those use well even death, which is the penalty of the first sin, who spend it bravely and patiently for their brothers, for the faith, for any true and holy righteousness; so also believing married people use well even that law of sin, which, already forgiven, remains in the oldness of the flesh: by virtue of being in the newness of Christ they do not allow lust to master them, and by virtue of still drawing the oldness of Adam they beget mortally children to be regenerated immortally, with that propagation of sin by which those who have been reborn are not held liable, and from which those who are born are loosed by being reborn. As long, then, as the law of concupiscence remains in the members, while it remains its guilt is loosed; but it is loosed for him who has received the sacrament of regeneration and has already begun to be renewed. But what is born from that remaining oldness of concupiscence needs to be reborn in order to be healed; because believing parents, both born carnally and reborn spiritually, begot children carnally; and the children, before they were born, how could they be reborn?

Do not be surprised that I said that, while the law of sin remains as concupiscence, its guilt is loosed through the grace of the sacrament. For just as wicked deeds, words, and thoughts, as regards the motions of mind and body themselves, have already passed and do not exist, yet, though they are past and no longer exist, their guilt remains unless it is loosed by the forgiveness of sins; so, on the contrary, in this law of concupiscence, not yet past but still remaining, its guilt is loosed and will not exist, when the full forgiveness of sins takes place in baptism. Finally, if departure from this life follows at once, there will be nothing at all to hold the man liable, all that held him having been loosed. Just as, then, it is not surprising that the guilt of past deeds, thoughts, and words remains before the forgiveness of sins, so, on the contrary, it ought not to be surprising that the guilt of remaining concupiscence passes away after the forgiveness of sins.

Since this is so, since through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin death, and so it passed to all men, until the end of this carnal generation and corruptible age, whose children beget and are begotten, there being no man, set in this life, of whom it can truly be said that he has no sin at all, except the one mediator, who reconciles us to our Creator through the forgiveness of sins, this same Lord of ours has denied this remedy of his, in no period of the human race before the last judgment still to come, to those whom by most certain foreknowledge and most just beneficence he predestined to reign with him in eternal life. For before the birth of his flesh, the weakness of his passion, and the power of his resurrection, he formed those who existed then for the inheritance of eternal salvation by faith in these things as future; by faith in them as present he formed those who were there when they took place and saw what had been foretold fulfilled; and by faith in them as past he does not cease to form those who came afterwards, and ourselves, and those who are yet to come. There is one faith, then, which saves all who are saved by being reborn from carnal generation into spiritual, a faith ending in him who came to be judged and to die for us, the judge of the living and the dead. But the sacraments of this one faith have been varied through various times, according to what was fitting to signify.

He is therefore the same Savior of infants and of adults, of whom the angels said, “To you is born this day a Savior,” and of whom it was said to the virgin Mary: “You shall call his name Jesus; for he will save his people from their sins”; where it is plainly shown that he was named by this name by which he was called, Jesus, because of the salvation which he grants us; for Jesus in Latin is Savior. Who is there, then, who would dare to say that the Lord Christ is Jesus only for adults and not also for infants? He came in the likeness of the flesh of sin to make void the body of sin, in which, most weak, with infant members fit or suited for no use, the rational soul is weighed down by a wretched ignorance. This ignorance I would in no way believe was in that infant in whom the Word became flesh to dwell among us; nor would I suspect in Christ as a little one that weakness of mind itself which we see in little ones. For through this weakness, when they are disturbed by irrational motions, they are restrained by no reason, no command, but sometimes by pain or the fear of pain, so that you may see plainly that they are children of that disobedience which moves in the members warring against the law of the mind and does not subside when reason wills; indeed, it too is often checked by bodily pain, as by being beaten, or is repressed by fear or some such motion of the mind, yet not by the command of the will. But because there was in him the likeness of the flesh of sin, he willed to undergo the changes of the ages, beginning from infancy itself, so that that flesh too might seem able to have come to death by growing old, had he not been killed as a young man. Yet this death is rendered in the flesh of sin as a debt of disobedience, but in the likeness of the flesh of sin it was undertaken by the will of obedience. For when he was about to go to it and suffer it, he said: “Behold, the prince of this world comes and will find nothing in me; but that all may know that I do the will of my Father, rise, let us go hence.” Having said this, he went on to the death he did not owe, having become obedient unto death.