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Council of Carthage, aiid later African Fathers, like
Fulgentius ("De fide ad Petrum", 27, in P. L., LXV,
701), intended to teach no mere private opinion, but a
doctrine of Catholic Faith; nor could they be satisfied
with what Scholastics, like St. Bonaventure and Duns
Scotus, said in reply to this difficulty, namely, that St.
Augustine, to whom the text of Fulgentius j ust referred
to was attributed, had simply been guilty of exaggerar
tion ("respondit Bonaventura dicens quod Augus-
tinus excessive loquitur de illis poenis, sicut frequenter
faciunt sancti" — Scotus, "In Sent.", II, xxxiii, 2).
Neither could they accept the explanation which even
some modern theologians continue to repeat: that the
Pelagian doctrine condemned by St. Augustine as a
heresy (see e. g., "De anima et ejus orig.", II, 17, in
P. L., XLIV, 505) consisted in claiming supernatural,
as opposed to natural, happiness for those dving in
original sin (see Bellarmine, ** De amiss, gratise , vi, 1;
Petavius, "De Deo", IX, xi; De Rubeis, "De Peo-
cat. Orig.", xxx, Ixxii). Moreover, there was the
teaching of the Council of Florence, tnat " the souls of
those dying in actual mortal sin or in original sin alone
go down at once (mox) into hell, to be punished, how-
ever, with widely different penalties" (Denz., 693).
It is clear that Bellarmine found the situation em- barrassing, being imwilling, as he was. to admit that St. Thomas and the Schoolmen generally were in con- flict with what St. Augustine and other Fathers con- sidered to be defide^ and what the Council of Florence seemed to have taught definitively. Hence he names Catharinus and some others as revivers of the Pelagian error, as though their teaching differed in substance from the general teaching of the School, and tries in a milder way to refute what he concedes to be the view of St. Thomas (op. cit.,vi-vii). He himself adopts a view which is substantially that of Abelard mentioned above; but he is obliged to do violence to the text of St. Augustine and other Fathers in his attempt to ex- plain them in conformity with this view, and to con- tradict the principle he elsewhere insists upon that " original sin does not destroy the natural but only the supernatural order" (op. cit., iv). Petavius, on the other hand, did not try to explain away the obvious meaning of St. Augustine and his followers, but, in conformity with that teaching, condemned unbap- tized children to the sensible pains of hell, maintaining also that this was the doctrine of the Council of Flor- ence. Neither of these theologians, however, suc- ceeded in winning a large following or in turning the current of Catholic opinion from the channel into which St. Thomas had directed it. Besides Natalis Alexander (De peccat. et virtut, I, i, 12) . and Estius (In Bent., II, XXXV, 7), Bellarmine's chief supporter was Bossuet, who vainly tried to induce Innocent XII to condemn certain propositions which he extracted from a posthumous work of Cardinal Sf rondati and in which the lenient scholastic view is affirmed (see propo- sitions in Do Rubeis, op. cit., Ixxiv). Only professed Aug^stinians, like Noris (loc. cit.), and Berti (De theol. discip., xiii, 8), or out-and-out Jansenists like the Bishop of Pistoia, whose famous diocesan synod fur- nished eiphty-five propositions for condemnation by Pius VI (1794), supported the harsh teaching of Petavius. The twenty-sixth of these propositions repudiated " as a Pelagian fable the existence of the place (usually called the children's limbo) in which the 30uLs of those dj'iug in original sin are punished by the pain of loss without any pain of fire"; and this, taken to mean that by denying the pain of fire one thereby necessarily postulates a middle place or state, in- volving neither guilt nor penalty, between the king- dom of Clod and eternal damnation, is condemned by the pope as being "false and rash and as slander on the Catholic schools" (Denz., 1526). This con- denmation was practically the death-knell of extreme Auf^iLstinianism, while the mitigated Augustinianism of Bellarmine and Bossuet had already l^n rejected
by the bulk of Catholic theologianB. Suares, fof
example, ignoring Bellarmine's protest, continued to
teach what Catharinus had taught — ^that unbaptized
children will not only enjoy perfect natural happiness,
but that they will rise with immortal bodies at the last
day and have the renovated earth for their happy abode
(De vit. et penat., ix, sect, vi, n., 4); and. without
insisting on such details, the great majority oi Catholic
theologians have continued to maintain the general
doctrine that the children's limbo is a state of perfect
natural happiness, just the same as it would have been
if God had not established the present supernatural
order. It is true, on the other hand, that some Catho-
lic theologians have stood out for some kind of compro-
mise with Augustinianism, on the ground that nature
itself was wounded and weakened, or at least that cer-
tain natural rights (including the right to perfect felic-
ity) were lost in consequence of the Fall. But these
have granted for thp most part that the children's
limbo implies exemption, not only from the pain of
sense, but from any positive spiritual anguish for the
loss of the beatific vision; and not a few have been willing to admit a certain limited degree of natural happi-
ness in limbo. What has been chieflv in dispute is
whether this happiness is as perfect and complete as it
would have been in the hypothetical state of pure na-
ture, and this is what the majority of Catholic theolo-
gians have affirmed.
As to the difficulties against this view which pos- sessed such weight in the eyes of the eminent theolo- gians we have mentioned, it is to be observed: (1) We must not confound St. Augustine's private authority with the infallible authority of the Catholic Church; and (2), if allowance be made for the confusion intro- duced into the Pelagian controversy by the want of a dear and explicit conception of the distinction be- tween the natural and the supernatural order one can easily understand why St. Augustine and the Council of Carthage were practically boimd to condenm the locus mediua of the Pelagians. St. Augustine himself was inclined to deny this distinction altogether, al- though the Greek Fathers had already developed it pretty fully, and although some of the Pelagians had a glimmering of it (see Coelestius in August., " De Pec- cat Orig.", V, in P.L., XLIV, 388), they based their claim to natural happiness for unbaptized children on a denial of the Fall and original sin, and identified this state of happiness with the "fife eternal" of the New Testament. (3) Moreover, even if one were to admit for the sake of argument that this canon of the Council of Carthage (the authenticity of which cannot reason- abhr be doubted) acquired the force of an oecumenical definition, one ought to interpret it in the light of what was undertood to be at issue by both sides in the con- troversy, and therefore add to the simple locus medius the qualification which is added by Pius VI when, in the Constitution " Auctorem Fidei ", he speaks of lo- cum ilium' et statum medium expertem culpse et poe- nsB ". Finally, in regard to the teaching of the Coun- cil of Florence, it is incredible that the Fathers there assembled had any intention of defining a question so remote from the issue on which reunion with the Greeks depended, and one which was recognized at the time as being open to free discussion and continued to be so regarded by theologians for several centuries afterwards. What the council evidently intended to deny in the passage alleged was the the postponement of final awards till the day of judgment. Those dying in original sin are said to descend into hell, but this does not necessarily mean anything more than that they are excluded eternally from the vision of God. In this sense they are damned, i. e., they have failed to reach their supernatural destiny, and this viewed ob- jectively is a true penalty. Thus the Council of Flor- ence, however literally interpreted, does not deny the possibility of perfect subiective happiness for those dying in original sin, and tnis is all that is needed from
