Section CCLXXVII

But if these things are less pleasing and seem unworthy of assent, I have at hand another hypothesis, V., by which I may reconcile with universal restoration the fact of the immature death by which so many infants are snatched away. The author of the work On the Calling of All Nations suggests it to me, and he explains it in these very words¹: “I judge that it is neither irreligious to believe nor unfitting to understand that those men of a few days pertain to that portion of grace which has always been expended upon all nations; and if their parents made good use of it, they themselves would also be aided through them—

—For all the beginnings of little ones, and all those first stages of an infancy not yet rational, lie under the judgment of another’s will; nor can provision be made for them in any way except through others, and it follows that they pertain to the fellowship of those by whose right or perverse affection they are governed. For just as they believe by another’s confession, so by another’s infidelity or dissimulation they do not believe; and since they themselves had a desire neither for the present life nor for the future, just as it was brought about by them—that is, by the parents—that they were born, so it is brought about by them that they are not reborn.” Now this hypothesis is commended no less by the suffrage of him who proposed it than by a perspicuous analogy. It is commended by the suffrage of its author, whom Gelasius, the Roman Pontiff, saluted as a master of the Church²; and then it is commended by that common analogy by which we see the order of nature so constituted that infants are entrusted altogether to the zeal and cares of their parents. By their work and zeal they are conceived, cherished in the womb, come forth into the light, and are formed for the threefold life: natural, moral, and religious. What, then, is more manifestly expressed according to analogy than that, as regards the supernatural life also, they are committed to the work and benevolence of their parents? God aids the parents that they may aid their offspring; he excites the parents lest they fail their children; and he sharpens their love for their offspring lest they omit any part of their duty toward their dearest pledges. If they obey nature and grace, and if they also join their own work with God, the common Father of all, the infants are saved; but if not, the latter indeed perish, yet they do not perish because God failed them and denied his benevolence, but because the blind malice of men overturned the divine οἰκονομίαν, economy.

Furthermore, these things, VI., call another hypothesis into my mind, which I do not wish to suppress in silence and which I willingly submit to the judgment of the readers, that they may determine concerning it. Therefore, I would have the following recalled in order: 1) what we read in James³, “Pray for one another that you may be saved”; 2) what we profess in the Creed⁴—

—“I believe in the communion of saints”; 3) what Paul frequently inculcates⁵, that one body is formed from all, and that it is altogether necessary that the members be solicitous for one another; and 4) what the Church is accustomed to do in baptizing infants⁶. Namely, she is accustomed not to baptize them before she has demanded faith from them, nor to wash them before they have rendered a confession of faith through others⁷. But to what end are these things? That, from these things compared with one another, it may become known that we shall depart minimally from the truth if we judge that, as regards infants, the proximate faculty of participating in restoration depends not only upon parents but also upon the prayers of all and the communion of saints; if we judge that it is a law of the restored order that the salvation of many infants is obtained only when adults cooperate; and if we judge that God willed to provide for them in adults and through adults. Certainly, nothing in these things is discordant with the Christian profession; indeed, there is nothing that does not agree with the doctrine of James, with the article of the Creed concerning the communion of saints, with the custom of the Church, and with the images employed by Paul, which tend to this: that the unity of all be commended, charity be kindled, and the benefits which flow from all unto individuals and in turn flow back from individuals unto all be represented to the life.