For he would not know as future the things which he did not foreknow as to be done. Accordingly, it must be confessed that, just as the little child died, so God foreknew that he would die. For God's foreknowledge is by no means deceived, because just as he foreknew that the world was to be made, and so made it as he foreknew it was to be made: as also in the world itself, the individual things which have been made, or are being made, or are to be made, so were they always to be made in God's foreknowledge just as they have followed in deed, or also are to follow. God, therefore, did not foreknow that anything was to be done by any man which the man was not going to do; just as nothing of the things which men have done, or do, or will at some time do, escaped his foreknowledge.
For the true God is rightly said to foreknow in the works of men those things which are begun in respect of things and persons and times. But where neither thing, nor person, nor time is shown, there is assuredly no work which may be asserted to be divinely foreknown. Now it does not accord with truth that anything should be said to be future in the foreknowledge of God which is so far proved to be nothing, that from being future it is by no means shown to become or to have been present: since indeed that very thing cannot at all have the name of 'future' which is not at some time to be reckoned by the appellation of 'present.' CHAPTER IX. — 18. From a little child, therefore, who did nothing, God foreknew that nothing was to be done.
But why he did not take away from him original sin, this indeed we cannot know; yet that he did this justly we ought by no means to doubt. For although the closed depth of the incomprehensible counsel of God is hidden from us—not only created out of nothing, but also bearing the stain of sin (which, in the sons of God living amid mortality, grace as it were repeatedly wipes away, so frequently does infirmity beget)—yet this is manifest to us, that in God there is no iniquity. For of him it is written: 'God is faithful, in whom there is no iniquity; the Lord God is just and holy' (Deut. 32:4); and in another place: 'The judgments of God are true, justified in themselves' (Ps. 19:9).
To the hidden profundity of these judgments (since 'the judgments of God are a great deep,' Ps. 36:6) we believe also the negligence of parents or of any men to pertain: just as also, for the little child who comes to baptism, we do not doubt that the care of the parents is to be referred to the gifts of divine grace. And if indeed the parents have not been endowed with piety and good conversation, God, who uses well even the evil wills of men, works the benefit of his grace in the little child through the solicitude of evil parents; but if the parents are good, not only does the good will of the parents profit the little child, but there accrues also to the parents themselves the merit of a future reward.
For God, who works both to will and to accomplish according to good will, himself bestows the grace of good will upon parents who believe in him, that they may bear pious solicitude for the little child, until he attains to the life-giving remedy of holy regeneration. Yet neither their running, nor even the pious solicitude of their good will, can suffice, unless God deigns to prevent him with the gratuitous gift of his compassion. Indeed the good will, which is inspired by the Lord in parents for the regeneration of the little child, urges them to run, so that the little child may attain to the ablution of the saving water.
Nevertheless the effect of that regeneration is not of any man that wills nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy, who both stirs up the will of the parents and gives help to those who will. 19. That the little child, therefore, may be redeemed by the work of regeneration, the Redeemer works mercifully; he who both prepares the occasions, and supplies the wills, and grants the persons, and concedes the places. And he works this not in little children alone, but also in the grown. Finally, we read in the book of the Acts of the Apostles (Chapter
8:26) that an angel suddenly warned Philip, stationed in Samaria, to go down into the way that leads from Jerusalem to Gaza, where, to a eunuch passing by—who was not in any way seeking the benefit of regeneration—he not only preached the mystery of the Christian faith, but even delivered to him the sacrament of baptism. Behold how the Holy Spirit, preventing the eunuch by his grace, granted him the person of a truthful preacher. He also gave to Philip the opportunity of preaching, when he mercifully stirred up the eunuch's mind to read Isaiah. He also granted the place, who led them by gratuitous goodness to the pool.
He himself perfected in the eunuch the work of saving grace, by whose illumination that same eunuch believed Christ to be the Son of God, and, coming to the pool, asked for the effect of sacred washing, and departed not only baptized, but also filled with the Holy Spirit. 20. And who admonished Cornelius the centurion, sending an angel to summon the apostle Peter (Acts 10:5), but he who freely poured into the same centurion the gift of his fear and of good work? For that God might have remembrance of his prayers and his alms, he first remembered Cornelius himself—not in any good work of his, but in his own good pleasure—that he might pour into him the gift of his fear, whereby he might inspire in him both the zeal for almsgiving and the affection of holy prayer.
He therefore bestowed on him the grace of pleasing, who found in him that which pleased before himself. For he is the God of whom the Apostle says: 'Now the God of peace, who brought again from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep, in the blood of the eternal testament, our Lord Jesus Christ, make you fit in every good thing, that you may do his will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight' (Heb. 13:20-21). And it was so far a matter of divine grace that Cornelius was admonished to summon Peter to himself, that even to Peter himself the Holy Spirit, when those whom Cornelius had sent came to him, not only commanded that he should go with them, but even, taking away the dread of all doubt, confirmed that they had been sent by him.
Finally, it was thus said to Peter by the Holy Spirit: 'Behold, three men seek you. Arise therefore, go down, and go with them, doubting nothing, for I have sent them' (Acts 10:19). We also read that the apostles, wishing to go into Bithynia and Asia, were forbidden by the Holy Spirit (Acts 16:7). And after the Lord had cast down Saul by his voice (Acts 9:4), he himself visited and sent Ananias to baptize him (ibid., 11). Paul also, writing to the Corinthians, plainly affirms that the holy solicitude by which Titus his disciple busied himself on their behalf was divinely inspired. For thus he says: 'But thanks be to God, who put the same solicitude for you into the heart of Titus' (2 Cor. 8:16). CHAPTER X. — 21.
Since, therefore, by the attestation of the holy Scriptures it is manifest that God—whose will no one resists, whose disposition no one changes, whose judgments no one comprehends—according to the abounding riches of his grace, which he has in goodness above all whom, making them out of the condemned mass vessels of mercy, he sets apart unto honour and glory, procures or denies also to men using reason persons suitable for salvation, holding in some, namely, justice, and bestowing on others mercy; why should we not, in the case of infants to be baptized, most certainly believe and freely proclaim that the diligence of parents pertains to the grace of the Redeemer, but their negligence to the justice of the judging God?
Not because the negligence of a good work is from God, from whom there could never be any cause of an evil work: but because a good will, which is bestowed by God, the more it advances in love, so much the greater solicitude does it bear for the salvation of any soul. But an evil will, which by its own desert either does not receive the grace of love or loses it, does not lay aside the torpor of its negligence, and while it is left in its own darkness, is more and more blinded. 22. When God therefore works mercifully in men, there are also provided the helps of persons and occasions, and the very means of the work is then found for baptizing the little child, when the Lord has determined in him the work of holy washing to be fulfilled.
For God, who cleanses the little child—who neither wills nor runs, who is ignorant of faith and unaware of his own salvation and benefit, in whom there can be no petition of regeneration, no confession of faith—by the gratuitous power of the sacrament; he himself, for the redemption of the little child, stirs up the minds of the parents, or the wills of any of the faithful, so that it may profit even to them who work out their salvation with fear and trembling, unto the reward of a good recompense, through whose pious care the infant is led to salvation. For if he shall not lose his reward who has given a cup of cold water to one of the least of Christ's disciples in his name (Matt.
10:42)—by which in man only the flesh is fed—how shall he not have a reward, who by pious solicitude runs and busies himself that the flesh and soul of the infant may be saved? CHAPTER XI. — 23. Wherefore this good will also must be believed to be divinely given to pious parents, whereby they do not neglect that the fruit of their flesh, which they know to have been carnally brought forth polluted with the contagion of original sin, should be cleansed by spiritual regeneration; and whereby they do not so much desire to have an heir temporally, as they desire and vigilantly endeavour that he be made a co-heir with themselves of Christ; and that the son whom they have of mortal seed, destined mortally to pass away, being reborn of water and the Holy Spirit, they may have as a perpetual brother under God the Father.
Nevertheless this laudable will God without doubt bestows on those parents into whom, through the Holy Spirit, he has poured the grace of holy love. They themselves also attain to eternal life, not because they beget in the body of this death sons who are to die, but because, living in the fear of God, they do not neglect to hasten with them to the benefit of the second birth, and, until it be completed in them by work, they travail with Christian love for those whom they have brought forth by human fecundity. Those also, once baptized, they do not allow to dissolve through disgraceful deeds and crimes; but they strive, according to the Apostle's precept, to nourish and bring them up 'in the discipline and correction of the Lord' (Eph. 6:4);
wishing them rather to be pleasing to God than to be rich or renowned in the world. 24. So manifest indeed is it that the grace of baptism ought to be brought promptly to children by their parents, that not only do good and careful believers habitually do this, but even those who do not belong to the number of the sons of God: those, namely, who, though they are reckoned by the name of the faithful, are convicted by their works of denying the faith, since they do the things that cannot accord with faith. For, to say nothing of others, do we not see certain low women hastening anxiously to carry to the grace of baptism their sons conceived not from wedlock but from fornication, and taking pains that none of those born of them carnally should be deprived of spiritual birth?
Thus, together with those whom for the most part they conceive and bear against their will, they run willingly and trembling to the Church; and while they neglect the sin of their fornication and so remain in their iniquities, they nevertheless long that their sons be loosed from the bonds of original sin. So God, being good, causes the pious will of good parents to profit unto the effect of grace, not only for the little ones but even for the parents themselves; while the anxiety of wicked parents He causes to profit toward the advantages of the children, upon whom He confers grace to serve as a soldier. For even those who by their evil works make void in themselves the benefit of baptism are not ignorant of what the grace of baptism confers:
and though in their flesh they yield to deadly lust, yet in the fruit of their flesh they rather yield to the acknowledged truth. 25. But if any Christian parents of little ones (which meanwhile, since it is far removed from religion, is hard to believe), forgetful of Christian charity and of their own salvation no less than of their children's, take no care for the regenerating of their little ones, let them hear the sentence upon this crime not from us but from the Apostle, and would that they might tremble as he says: 'But if any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his household, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel' (1 Tim. 5:8). But just as no one has it from God that he should deny the faith, so also no one is permitted to impute the negligence of any good work to the divine will.
But just as it belongs to the work of divine grace that parents bear pious solicitude for the regeneration of their children, so too it belongs to the divine judgment that God abandons evil wills, when parents so love the bodily welfare of their children that they neglect the wholeness of the souls within them; and they take care that the mortal should live, yet do not fear if their children perish under the guilt of everlasting damnation: wherein they contract the greatest fault, and become spiritually most cruel murderers of their own kin. For by the very torpor of their negligence they serve the profits of the devil, and, pleasing the most wicked enemy, they provoke the good King by their evil works. Therefore let us praise God, whose whole way is mercy and truth (Ps. 24[25]:10),
and as we ought humbly to praise Him when He grants grace, so no one can justly accuse Him when He denies it. For such is His goodness and justice, that by His unmerited compassion He can redeem whomsoever He will: 'for who resisteth His will?' (Rom. 9:19); yet He neither wills at any time, nor is able, unjustly to condemn anyone; because righteous is the Lord our God, and there is no iniquity in Him (Ps. 91[92]:16), and our iniquity commends the righteousness of God, nor is God unjust who inflicts wrath (Rom. 3:5). CHAP. 12. — 26.
Whoever, therefore, wishes to consider the wondrous and incomprehensible power of divine grace, let him rather consider, with a humble and pious heart, how it is that very often parents who are pious, faithful, tireless, and solicitous run swiftly with their little ones to baptism, and yet the little ones die without baptism in the very hands of the hastening parents. Let us therefore consider two little ones who have died without baptism: one whom the harmful carelessness of the parents neglected, the other for whom indeed the pious solicitude of the parents was not lacking, but who, snatched away by the swiftness of death, could not be profited;
who, that is, in the hands of those carrying him, by whom he was being borne to baptism, before he reached the benefit of the future life, met the setting of the present life, and lacked life before he lacked the stain; and was snatched to punishment before he could be led to grace. If of these two it is said that the negligence of the parents harmed him, let it be said why to the other the effect of salvation was denied, one whom neither the will of the parents nor their running could profit. Or is it also said that this one was provided for by God, so that he who was foreseen to become impious should be thought to have been aided by the benefit of a lamentable death? Who would say this? Or who does not see that such a death did not snatch the little one away to damnation, but to salvation?
for whom the damnation was assuredly not lightened, but the redemption was denied; nor was it provided that he should be tormented less, but he was snatched away lest he be delivered. Was not here also the pious will and running of the parents from God, but for this reason did not profit, because it was not from God that the little one should be baptized? He who, by a deep and just judgment, poured into them indeed a religious affection for their child, but did not will to bestow upon the little one the remedy of life. For into holy David also (2 Sam. 18:5) He Himself poured the gift of charity, so that he commanded his son Absalom to be spared, lest he die in his impiety; but it was not from God that the impious Absalom should be preserved for future repentance. The pious will of the holy man therefore displayed what it owed;
but the divine justice wrought what it knew ought to be. 27. If anyone also consider this with a pious mind, will he not, just as he is soothed by the sweetness of divine mercy, so be terrified by the depth of divine judgment? For sometimes a little one is even born to the faithful, and to them, as we have already said, who are solicitous with pious faith and charity for the redemption of their child, he dies before he is washed with sacred baptism.
But another, born of unbelievers, whose salvation the parents do not even lukewarmly desire but do not desire at all, that same little one, nevertheless, by the order of the heavenly dispensation, is either violently taken away from his parents, or perhaps stolen, and is led to holy baptism by the pious charity of some believers, and as soon as he has been baptized, departs from this life. If the original cause of these little ones be regarded, both are equally children of wrath, since both are held bound together by the one bond of original sin. But where the cause of the two is utterly equal, the merits surely cannot be pronounced unequal. There is therefore no diversity of cause in the infants that would make one chosen and the other rejected.
But if the will of the parents be considered: those who are Christians solicitously willed that their son be baptized, and most urgently ran; yet their son, forestalled by death before he was baptized, was assigned to eternal fires. But he who was born of unbelievers, led against the will of his parents to the grace of baptism, was made an heir of God and a joint-heir of Christ. What did God foresee to be future in these, that to the one the love of the parents could confer nothing, while to the other the cruelty of enemies profited much? Who can penetrate this depth of the judgments of God? Yet who does not here acknowledge both the mercy of gratuitous goodness and the justice of divine severity?
For where in the two little ones there are neither any merits in their acts, nor any dissimilar cause in their origin, it is indeed manifest to us that both were bound by the bonds of original sin, but hidden why both were not absolved. CHAP. 13. — 28. Let us therefore know that it is unsearchable to us why, with one left behind, God freely snatches the other from that mass of perdition. Yet most certainly we ought to know that the Lord, compassionate and merciful, patient and of great mercy, and true, so bestows mercy on the one whom He delivers, that in Him whom He condemns He in no way passes over justice and truth. The absolved therefore has received grace, which let him ever praise;
but the condemned finds justice, in which he has nothing to accuse, so that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world made subject to God (Rom. 3:19), when the one acknowledges in his goods the grace of God going before, while the other in his damnation finds not a false foreknowledge of future works which he was not going to do, but the true fault of the first parent. 29. Someone will say: Why did God not bestow gratuitous mercy on both, since one guilt bound them both? To whom, saving the incomprehensible height of the judgments of God, we answer: For this reason neither were both delivered nor both condemned;
because God, who can neither ever will evil nor be silent at it, commanded that from the one the debt be exacted by just severity, but ordered that to the other it be remitted by gratuitous goodness. For in two who are equally impious, of whom one is absolved and the other condemned, in the one absolved is recognized the gratuitous benignity of God, which can, without any merits of works, freely release every sin; but in him who is condemned appears the justice of God, to whom no sin can ever be pleasing. Therefore neither can the merciful absolution be culpable, nor the punishment unjust. Goodness, which is overcome by no malice, absolves the guilty; equity, which delights in no iniquities, punishes the guilty.
God therefore, when He saves men, bestows grace upon His own good works; and when He punishes sinners for their iniquities, He repays justice to human evil works: in the former restoring what they were made, but in the latter judging what they have done. For all have sinned and lack the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). Because even those who have not sinned by their own proper works draw original sin from the transgression of the first man. 30. But let us not esteem the secret of the divine will, by which He justifies one impious man and condemns another, to be unjust for the reason that it seems hidden to us; but rather let no one doubt that it is divine and just, for the reason that no man is able to investigate it.
Accordingly, simply showing forth the humility of our heart, let us sing mercy and judgment to the Lord with the prophet (Ps. 100[101]:1): tempering the intention of our scrutiny so far, that we do not wish to discuss what we are not able to comprehend. For holy Scripture admonishes us, saying: 'Seek not things too high for thee, and search not things too mighty for thee; but the things that the Lord hath commanded thee, think on them always, and in many of His works be not curious' (Ecclus. 3:22). For in truth the labor of superfluous scrutiny is expended in vain, where no abundance of discovery avails; and noxious curiosity slips forthwith into guilt, when human weakness does not measure its own limit.
Rather, in this most profound secret of the divine will, let us know that nothing else befits our salvation, than that with David each one of us should humbly say: 'Thy knowledge is become wonderful to me; it is strong, and I cannot attain to it' (Ps. 138[139]:6). With blessed Paul also let us join the effect of a religious cry, who says: 'O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are His judgments, and how unsearchable His ways! For who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been His counsellor?' (Rom. 11:33-34). In which place blessed Paul fittingly, before he spoke of the incomprehensible judgments of God, set forth first the height of His wisdom and knowledge.
By which words indeed he stopped every voice of human rashness, complaining and to some degree striving against the just judgment of God. For it is certain that it pertains to the person and office of a judge, both that in examining a cause he should not neglect knowledge, and that in judging he should not forsake the right path of wisdom; lest at any time he be convicted, ignorant, of rashly bearing judgment against a truth unknown, or be caught suppressing a truth known through foolish perversity. God therefore is neither unknowing, so as to judge rashly; nor unwise, so as to condemn anyone unjustly; concerning whom the prophetic authority cries out: 'The Lord is just, and hath loved justice; His countenance hath beheld equity' (Ps. 10[11]:8). CHAP. 14. — 31.
Accordingly, in all His works God is worthy of eternal praise: because to all whom He calls according to His purpose and justifies, He freely remits their iniquity; but in all whom He appoints, He retains an irreprehensible equity. But the cause of the elder and of the little ones who, without baptism, complete the course of the present life in unbelief, is one, as far as concerns the communion of original sin; and from this both will go into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels, because in them the handwriting, by which the wickedness of the deceiver has subjected them to himself, the grace of the Saviour has not blotted out.
But in this the cause of the elder is the worse, that, having received the faculty of using reason, they reject or neglect the saving remedy of regeneration, without which they will not only be unable to obtain the kingdom, but will even lie subject to graver punishments. For such men, despising the benignity of God, according to their hardness and impenitent heart, treasure up to themselves wrath in the day of wrath and of the revelation of the just judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his works (Rom. 2:5-6): so that they burn in the eternal fires not only for original sin, in which even little ones dying without baptism, who have done nothing good or evil, are to burn;
but also on account of their own evil will they are tormented so much the worse, the more they add of their own iniquity. In that original sin indeed eternal death embraces both; but on these the penalty is heaped up on account of the malice of their wills and acts. For it is worse not to seek the benefit of redemption by an impious will, than to be unable to come to it wholly through the impediment of tender age; and he is more heavily pressed who adds his own burden to that taken from the first parents, than he who bears only another's. 32. But that those who are stripped of the burdens either of original or even of their own sins are anticipated by the grace of God, no Christian ought to doubt.
In the bounty of which grace certain men, having taken up a lesser consideration of things, err not lightly, thinking that it is given equally to all men: so that they even greatly diminish the benefits of that very grace, as they themselves do, while they do not believe that it is the work of that very grace in man, that grace should be received by man: which is given from God for no other purpose, than that it may first work good will in man; and that it may be so great in each one who receives, as God pours by His gratuitous compassion into the heart of the receiver. CHAP. 15. — 33. It is therefore fitting, dearest brethren, that in each and every opinion in which we are doubtful through the cloud of some obscurity, we cleave to the definitions of the holy Fathers;