23. [XXI.]—What He Means by Our Birth to an “Uncertain” Life.

Certain brethren, however, afterwards failed not to remind us that Pelagius possibly expressed himself in this way, because on this question he is represented as having his answer ready for all inquirers, to this effect: “As for infants who die unbaptized, I know indeed whither they go not; yet whither they go, I know not;” that is, I know they do not go into the kingdom of heaven. But as to whither they go, he was (and for the matter of that, still is164    Dicebat, aut dicit. These two latter words are not superfluous, as some have thought; they intimate that Pelagius still clave to his error.) in the habit of saying that he knew not, because he dared not say that those went to eternal death, who he was persuaded had never committed sin in this life, and whom he would not admit to have inherited original sin. Consequently those very words of his which were forwarded to Rome to secure his absolute acquittal, are so steeped in ambiguity that they afford a shelter for their doctrine, out of which may sally forth an heretical sense to entrap the unwary straggler; for when no one is at hand who can give the answer, any solitary man may find himself weak.

CAPUT XXI.

23. Sed postea non defuerunt fratres, qui nos admonerent, hoc ideo dicere Pelagium potuisse, quia de ista quaestione ita perhibetur solitus respondere quaerentibus, ut diceret, «Sine Baptismo parvuli morientes, quo non eant, scio; quo eant, nescio:» 0396 id est, non ire in regnum coelorum scio; quo vero eant, ideo se nescire dicebat, aut dicit , quia dicere non audebat in mortem illos ire perpetuam, quos et hic nihil mali commisisse sentiebat, et originale traxisse peccatum non consentiebat. Itaque et ista ejus verba Romam pro magna ejus purgatione transmissa, tam sunt ambigua, ut possint eorum dogmati praebere latibula, unde ad insidiandum prosiliat haereticus sensus, quando nullo existente qui valeat respondere, tanquam in solitudine aliquis invenitur infirmus.