Chapter 10 — born corrupt from a corrupt parent; infants die of inherent, not alien, sin
Yet I will answer you a few things.
You ask whence it comes that we are born sinners and corrupt?
I answer that we are sinners because we are born corrupt; for in an infant, when he is born, I acknowledge no guilt whose foundation and cause is not inherent corruption.
If again you ask whence it comes that they are born corrupt? I will answer: because we are born of a corrupt parent.
So to one asking, Why was I born a human? I answer, Because I was born of a human; why vicious? Because I was born of a vicious one.
What is born of flesh is flesh.
Of the vice of nature’s sin: the vicious—that is, the sinner—is born only by nature, according to what the Apostle Paul says, As was the earthly man, so also are the earthly; and how, unless by transfusion of seed?
But to these very questions I have already satisfied at length above.
This corruption—which is also commonly called concupiscence, and sin by antonomasia, and sinning sin, and which reigns in the unregenerate and dwells in the regenerate—is our first sin, the spring of the rest.
From it our first guilts born, imputed to us unto death.
Infants therefore die not for an alien sin—namely Adam’s actual sin imputed to them—but for their own inherent, implanted sin.
But, you say, Infants have not yet sinned by their own will, nor by thought, nor by words, nor by deed.
Therefore they have no own sin: the actual, I grant; the habitual, I flatly deny.
Distinguish, then, if you please, between sin that is an act or an omission of an act, and sin that is a propensity, proclivity, habit toward such an act or omission.
Latin
Pauca tamen quaedam respondebo tibi. Quaeris unde fit ut peccatores & corrupti nascantur? Respondeo nos eos peccatores esse, quoniam corrupti nascimur; nullum enim in infante, cum nascitur, reatum agnosco, cuius fundamentum & causa non sit corruptio inhaerens. Si rursus quaeras unde fiat, ut nascantur corrupti? Respondebo quia nascimur ex corrupto parente. Sic quaerenti, cur homo natus sim? Respondeo, quia natus sum ex homine; cur vitiosus? Quia natus sum ex vitioso. Quod natum est ex carne, caro est. De naturae peccato vitio: non nisi natura nascitur vitiosi, id est, peccatrix, secundum quod ait Apostolus Paulus, Qualis terrenus, tales & terreni; & hoc quomodo nisi per seminis transfusionem? Sed his ipsis quaestionibus iam supra pluribus satisfeci. Haec corruptio, quae & concupiscentia, & peccatum antonomastice, & peccatum peccans dici solet, quaeque in irregenitis regnat, in regenitis habitat, primum est peccatum nostrum, scaturigo ceterorum. Ab ea primus noster reatus nascitur, imputata nobis ad mortem. Moriuntur ergo infantes non ob peccatum alienum, videlicet actuale Adami sibi imputatum, sed ob proprium inhaerens, insitum. At, inquis, Infantes nondum voluntate propria peccarunt, nec cogitatione, nec verbis, nec actione. Ergo non habent proprium peccatum: actuale quidem concedo, habituale vero pernego. Distingue igitur, si placet, inter peccatum quod est actio vel omissio actionis, & peccatum quod est ad eiusmodi actionem vel omissionem propensio, proclivitas, habitus.