Chapter 8.—The Catholic Faith Concerning Infants.

What do they say to these things who dare also to write their mischievous impieties, and dare to send them to the Eastern bishops? Cœlestius is held to have given consent to the letters of the venerable Innocent; the letters themselves of the prelate mentioned are read, and he writes that infants who are not baptized cannot have life. And who will deny that, as a consequence, they have death, if they have not life? Whence, then, in infants, is so wretched a penalty as that, if there is no original fault? How, then, are the Roman clergy charged with prevarication by those forsakers of the faith and opponents of grace under Bishop Zosimus, as if they had had any other view in the subsequent condemnation of Cœlestius and Pelagius than that which they had in a former one under Innocent? Because, certainly, since by the letters of the venerable Innocent concerning the abode of infants in eternal death unless they were baptized in Christ, the antiquity of the catholic faith shone forth, assuredly he would rather be a prevaricator from the Roman Church who should deviate from that judgment; and since with God’s blessing this did not happen, but that judgment itself was constantly maintained in the repeated condemnation of Cœlestius and Pelagius, let them understand that they themselves are in the position wherein they accuse others of being, and let them hereafter be healed of their prevarication from the faith. Because the catholic faith does not say that the nature of man is bad in as far as he was made man at first by the Creator; nor now is what God creates in that nature when He makes men from men, his evil; but what he derives from that sin of the first man.

8. Quid ad haec dicunt isti, qui suas calumniosas impietates audent etiam scribere, audent et orientalibus episcopis mittere? Tenetur Coelestius litteris venerabilis Innocentii praebuisse consensum: leguntur ipsae memorati antistitis litterae, scribentis non baptizatos vitam parvulos habere non posse. Quis autem negabit id esse consequens ut mortem habeant, qui non habent vitam? Unde ergo in infantibus ista miserabilis poena, si nulla originalis est culpa? Quomodo igitur ab istis fidei desertoribus et oppugnatoribus gratiae, Romani clerici praevaricationis arguuntur sub episcopo Zosimo, quasi aliud senserint in damnatione posteriore Coelestii et Pelagii, quam quod sub Innocentio in priore senserunt? Quia utique cum litteris venerabilis Innocentii de parvulis, nisi baptizarentur in Christo, in aeterna morte mansuris, catholicae fidei clareret antiquitas; profecto Ecclesiae Romanae praevaricator potius esset, quicumque ab illa sententia deviasset: quod Deo propitio, quoniam factum non est, sed ipsa constanter repetita Coelestii et Pelagii damnatione servata est; intelligant se isti esse unde alios criminantur, et aliquando a fidei praevaricatione sanentur. Malam quippe hominum esse naturam, non dicit catholica fides, in quantum homo a Creatore primitus institutus est; neque nunc quod in illa Deus creat, cum homines ex hominibus facit, 0577 hoc est malum ejus; sed quod ex illo vitio primi hominis trahit.