Annotatio CXXXVII

”He hath multiplied my wounds, even without cause.” — Job 9:17

Gregory, in book 9 of the Explanations on Job, chapter 16, from these words seems to gather — against the common consensus of Theologians — that infants dying without baptism are punished, sensibly, with the perpetual torments of the damned.¹ For there he left this written: “Some are withdrawn from the present life before they attain to the bringing forth of good or evil active merits of life; whom — because the sacraments of salvation do not free [them] from the fault of [their] origin, and here they did nothing of their own — [yet] they come thither also, unto torments: and because after this death an eternal death also follows, by a hidden yet just judgment upon them, even without cause the wounds are multiplied. For they suffer perpetual torments, who sinned nothing of their own will. Job says, therefore, ‘In a whirlwind he shall break me, and shall multiply my wounds, even without cause,’ as if, openly considering the losses of the human race, he should say: The strict Judge — with what aversion he slays those whom he condemns by the fault of their own action, so also he smites in eternity those whom the guilt of [free] choice does not condemn.”

This Gregory [holds], following, no doubt, the decree of Augustine, who in the book On Faith, to Peter, chapter 27, decreed concerning this matter in these words: “Most firmly hold, and by no means doubt, that not only men now using reason, but also little ones — who, whether they begin to live in the wombs of their mothers and there die, or, born of their mothers, pass out of this world without the sacrament of holy baptism, which is given in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit — are to be punished with the everlasting punishment of eternal fire: because, although they had no sin of their own action properly [committed], they nevertheless drew the damnation of original sin by carnal conception and nativity.” And in the same book, chapter 3, he more openly expresses that infants of this kind are smitten with the same quality of punishment as the Demons and the rest of the damned, saying: “The evil quality of life begins from unbelief, which takes its beginning from original sin; in which [life] whosoever begins so to live, that he ends [it] before his life be loosed by his [Christ’s] obligation — if that soul lived in the body for the space of one age or of one hour, it is necessary that it sustain, with that same body, the interminable punishments of Gehenna, where the Devil with his Angels shall burn forever; where, together with him, [there shall be] also the fornicators who serve idols, the adulterers, the effeminate, the thieves, the avaricious, and all who do the works of the flesh — [all these], if before the end of this life they have not been converted, shall be burned with eternal fires.” Again, in the sermon On the Baptism of little ones, confirming this his opinion by the argument of Gospel authority, he says: “Since the Gospel speaks [of] two parts, Christ made a right hand and a left; being about to say to those on the left, ‘Go, ye cursed, into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the Devil and his Angels,’ [and] about to say to those on the right, ‘Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom’ — no middle place is here left, where you might set the infants; and in the final sentence he says, ‘These shall go into eternal burning, but the just into life eternal.’ Behold, he has expounded to you what the kingdom is, and what the eternal fire: so that, when you confess the little one [is] not to be in the kingdom, you may confess [he is] to be in the eternal fire.”² And this same thing he repeats — in fuller words, but plainly in the same sense — in the fifth book of the Hypognosticon, showing that by the same kind of punishment the little ones not baptized, and adults, and demons, are afflicted.

But as to what pertains to the quantity of the punishment, everywhere he teaches that the torments of infants are the lightest³ — but especially in the fifth book against Julian the Pelagian, speaking thus: “But I do not say that the little ones dying without the baptism of Christ are to be smitten with so great a punishment that it were rather expedient for them not to be born — since the Lord said this not of any sinners whatsoever, but of the most wicked and most impious. For if — as [is plain] because he says it of the Sodomites, and surely willed [it] to be understood not of them alone — one shall be punished more tolerably than another in the day of judgment, who would doubt that the little ones not baptized, who had only original sin and are not aggravated by their own vices, shall be, in the damnation of all, the most lightly [punished]?” This same thing he has also in book 1 On the Merits and Remission of sins, chapter 16, and in the Enchiridion to Laurentius, chapter 93, where he speaks thus: “Most mild, surely, of all, shall be the punishment of those who, besides the sin which they drew as original, added none in addition; and, among the rest who added [sins of their own], each one shall have there a damnation the more tolerable, the less iniquity he had here.” Gennadius, priest of Marseille, thinks that Augustine in this part erred through much-speaking. For in the Catalogue of Illustrious Men [he says]: “Augustine, although he treated the doubt concerning aborted [infants] with less capacity, yet his error — exaggerated (as I said above) by much discourse, [and] by the struggle with enemies — has not yet given [material for] a heresy-question.” These things Gennadius.

St. Thomas, in the Disputed Questions, in the question On the Punishment of Original Sin, article 2, mitigating the propositions of Gregory and Augustine, said that they wished to signify, by “fire,” “Gehenna,” and “torments,” nothing else than the privation of the divine vision — which alone the infants not yet reborn lack; but this privation those fathers called by such harsh names, through a certain excess of speaking, that they might render much more execrable the error of the Pelagians, who preached that in little ones there is no sin at all. But Gregory [of Rimini] But Gregory of Rimini, in the second [book] of the Sentences, distinction 31, question 3, tenaciously holding the sayings of each doctor, judges that they are to be understood according to that rigidity which the severity of the words conveys.⁴