of an opposite will, is laid down in the broadest way by St. Augustine[1], in answer to an African Bishop, who felt some difficulty how the sponsors could declare so positively that "the child brought to Baptism believed in God, and the rest, whereas it had no knowledge of God, and the sponsors or parent knew not whether it would hereafter believe and do these things." "The little one then," St. Augustine says, "although he have not as yet that faith which consists in the will of the believer, is made a faithful one by the Sacrament of faith itself. For as he is answered for as believing, so also he is called faithful, not by assenting to the substance thereof by his mind, but by receiving the Sacrament of that substance of faith. But when the man shall begin to understand, then he will not repeat that Sacrament, but will understand it, and be conformed by the harmony of his will to its truth. In the meantime the Sacrament will avail to protect him against the power of the enemy; so that if he should depart out of this life before he have the use of reason, he shall (the love of the Church recommending him through that very Sacrament) be freed, through this Christian succour, from that condemnation which 'by one man entered into the world.' This he who believes not and thinks that it cannot be, is wanting in faith, though he have the Sacrament of faith; and far to be preferred before such an one is that little one, who, though he have not as yet faith formed in his conception, yet at least puts no bar of any thought opposed to it; whence he receives the Sacrament beneficially." St. Augustine's controversy with those who held Pelagian doctrines, makes us still further acquainted with the views of the Church on this subject. For it furnishes us—not with the opinion of St. Augustine as an individual, (although a pillar of the Church,) nor even as an indication (as an individual may be) of the tenets of his time, nor again with what people term an hyperbolical expression of gratitude for the institution which he loved, (as in peaceful times men speak less guardedly,) but—with a direct attestation of the doctrine of the whole Church, as stated against
- ↑ Ep. 99. § 10.
