Chapter 10: Bellarmine — free-action participation; Confession XI; reatus vs habit
Bellarmine's proof runs: whatever we say clings in little children from sin — guilt, aversion, loss of grace, or anything else — cannot be vice in them, cannot even exist, unless it came from a free act in which they somehow shared. Is that not to deny that the hereditary blot in infants is truly sin enough to damn them, as our Confession states in Article XI? Let him continue. First: guilt is a relation that follows an act — how can it stand in someone who had no share in the act? The argument would hold if the only sin were actual sin, and the only guilt what follows an act at once. But there is also habitual sin, and guilt that follows a habit.
Latin
Eam probat Bellarminus, Nam, inquit, quicquid dicamus in parvulis ex peccato haerere, sive reatum, sive aversionem, sive gratiae privationem, sive quid aliud; nullo modo parvulis vitio dari, ac ne esse quidem poterit, nisi processerit ab actione libera, cujus actionis illi aliquomodo participes fuerint. Nonne hoc est negare, vitium haereditarium, infantibus inhaerens, esse vere peccatum iis damnandis sufficiens, uti nostra pronunciat Confessio Artic. XI. Sed pergat. Nam primo, reatus, cum sit relatio consequens actionem, qui fieri potest ut existat in eo, qui non est particeps actionis? Valeret sane hoc argumentum, si nullum esset peccatum nisi actuale, nullus reatus nisi proxime actionem consequens. Nunc autem est etiam peccatum habituale, & reatus consequens habitum.