Chapter 25.--Infants are Described as Believers and as Penitents. Sins Alone Separate Between God and Men.
Some one will say: How then are mere infants called to repentance? How can such as they repent of anything? The answer to this is: If they must not be called penitents because they have not the sense of repenting, neither must they be called believers, because they likewise have not the sense of believing. But if they are rightly called believers, [289] because they in a certain sense profess faith by the words of their parents, why are they not also held to be before that penitents when they are shown to renounce the devil and this world by the profession again of the same parents? The whole of this is done in hope, in the strength of the sacrament and of the divine grace which the Lord has bestowed upon the Church. But yet who knows not that the baptized infant fails to be benefited from what he received as a little child, if on coming to years of reason he fails to believe and to abstain from unlawful desires? If, however, the infant departs from the present life after he has received baptism, the guilt in which he was involved by original sin being done away, he shall be made perfect in that light of truth, which, remaining unchangeable for evermore, illumines the justified in the presence of their Creator. For sins alone separate between men and God; and these are done away by Christ's grace, through whom, as Mediator, we are reconciled, when He justifies the ungodly.
[289] See below, c. 26 and 40; also Book iii. c. 2; also Epist. 98, and Serm. 294.
Chapter 26 [XX.]--No One, Except He Be Baptized, Rightly Comes to the Table of the Lord.
Now they take alarm from the statement of the Lord, when He says, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God;" [290] because in His own explanation of the passage He affirms, "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." [291] And so they try to ascribe to unbaptized infants, by the merit of their innocence, the gift of salvation and eternal life, but at the same time, owing to their being unbaptized, to exclude them from the kingdom of heaven. But how novel and astonishing is such an assumption, as if there could possibly be salvation and eternal life without heirship with Christ, without the kingdom of heaven! Of course they have their refuge, whither to escape and hide themselves, because the Lord does not say, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot have life, but--"he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." If indeed He had said the other, there could have risen not a moment's doubt. Well, then, let us remove the doubt; let us now listen to the Lord, and not to men's notions and conjectures; let us, I say, hear what the Lord says--not indeed concerning the sacrament of the laver, but concerning the sacrament of His own holy table, to which none but a baptized person has a right to approach: "Except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood, ye shall have no life in you." [292] What do we want more? What answer to this can be adduced, unless it be by that obstinacy which ever resists the constancy of manifest truth?
[290] John iii. 3.
[291] Ver. 5.
[292] John vi. 53.
Chapter 27.--Infants Must Feed on Christ.
Will, however, any man be so bold as to say that this statement has no relation to infants, and that they can have life in them without partaking of His body and blood--on the ground that He does not say, Except one eat, but "Except ye eat;" as if He were addressing those who were able to hear and to understand, which of course infants cannot do? But he who says this is inattentive; because, unless all are embraced in the statement, that without the body and the blood of the Son of man men cannot have life, it is to no purpose that even the elder age is solicitous of it. For if you attend to the mere words, and not to the meaning, of the Lord as He speaks, this passage may very well seem to have been spoken merely to the people whom He happened at the moment to be addressing; because He does not say, Except one eat; but Except ye eat. What also becomes of the statement which He makes in the same context on this very point: "The bread that I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world?" [293] For, it is according to this statement, that we find that sacrament pertains also to us, who were not in existence at the time the Lord spoke these words; for we cannot possibly say that we do not belong to "the world," for the life of which Christ gave His flesh. Who indeed can doubt that in the term world all persons are indicated who enter the world by being born? For, as He says in another passage, "The children of this world beget and are begotten." [294] From all this it follows, that even for the life of infants was His flesh given, which He gave for the life of the world; and that even they will not have life if they eat not the flesh of the Son of man.
[293] John vi. 51.
[294] Generant et generantur; Luke xx. 34.