Chapter 65 [XXXV.]—In Infants There is No Sin of Their Own Commission.

Will this also be questioned, and must we spend time in discussing it, in order to prove and show how that by their own will—without which there can be no sin in their own life—infants could never commit an offence, whom all, for this very reason, are in the habit of calling innocent? Does not their great weakness of mind and body, their great ignorance of things, their utter inability to obey a precept, the absence in them of all perception and impression of law, either natural or written, the complete want of reason to impel them in either direction,—proclaim and demonstrate the point before us by a silent testimony far more expressive than any argument of ours? The very palpableness of the fact must surely go a great way to persuade us of its truth; for there is no place where I do not find traces of what I say, so ubiquitous is the fact of which we are speaking,—clearer, indeed, to perceive than any thing we can say to prove it.

CAPUT XXXV.

65. In parvulis non esse peccatum propriae vitae. An vero et hoc quaeritur , et de hoc disputaturi et tempus ad hoc impensuri sumus, ut probemus atque doceamus quomodo per propriam voluntatem, sine qua nullum vitae propriae potest esse peccatum, nihil mali commiserint infantes, qui propter hoc vocantur ab omnibus innocentes? Nonne tanta infirmitas animi et corporis, tanta rerum ignorantia, tam nulla omnino praecepti capacitas, nullus vel naturalis vel conscriptae legis sensus aut motus, nullus in alterutram partem rationis usus, hoc multo testatiore silentio quam sermo noster proclamat atque indicat? Valeat aliquid ad se ipsam persuadendam ipsa evidentia: nam nusquam sic non invenio quod dicam, quam ubi res de qua dicitur, manifestior est quam omne quod dicitur.