[Footnote 183: Dispunctio Notarum, 40 etc, Colon. 1699.]
"Joseph Maria de Requesens [Footnote 184] enumerates in his little book on the state of infants many theologians of great name who concede to these infants a certain kind of imperfect natural beatitude.
[Footnote 184: de Statu Parvui. Rom. 1684.]
He says that Richard (of St. Victor) teaches that these children will have more goods and greater joy in their possession than sinners have who possess created goods in this life. Lyra says, that according to the opinion of all doctors they will enjoy a happier life than would be naturally possible in this present world. Almost in the same way speak Origen, Marsilius, St. Buonaventure, Cajetan, and others [{661}] cited by Cornelius à Lapide, who all teach that children dying without baptism lead a happier life than those who are living on the earth. Lessius writes, that although they may be said to be damned because eternally deprived of the celestial glory for which they were created, it is nevertheless credible that their state is far happier and more joyful than that of any mortal man in this life. Salmeron says, these children will rise again through Christ and above this natural order, where they will daily advance in the knowledge of the works of God and of separate substances, will have angelic visits, and will be like our rustics living in the country, so that as they are in a medium between glory and punishment, they will also occupy an intermediate place. Suarez says, that children will remain in their natural good and will be content with their lot; and, together with Marsilius as quoted by Azor, he describes to them a knowledge and love of God above all things, and the other natural virtues. Didacus Ruiz, a theologian of extensive reading, lays down this conclusion: Great mercy will be mingled with the punishment of infants dying in original sin, although not a diminution of the punishment of loss, since that is incapable of diminution; yet in the remission of death which was the punishment directly do to original sin, and would naturally have endured to eternity, so that in spite of this infants will be resuscitated at the day of judgment nevermore to die, endowed with supernatural incorruptibility and impassibility, and they will also supernaturally receive accidental, infused sciences, and will be liberated from all pain, sadness, sickness, temptations, and personal sins, which are naturally wont to arise from original sin. Consequently, they are liberated from the punishment of hell which they might have incurred. Albert (the Great), Alexander (de Hales), and St. Thomas agree with this doctrine. Suarez shows that these children obtain some benefit, in a certain way, from the merits of Christ; and says that it pertains to the glory of Christ that he should be adored and acknowledged as prince and supreme judge on the day of universal judgment even by infants who died without grace. He also considers it more probable that they will understand that they have done neither good nor evil, and therefore receive neither glory nor pain of sense, and also that they are deprived of glory on account of sin (that is, original). He adds the reason of this, to wit, that they may understand the benefit which they received, first in Adam and afterward in Christ, and on this account may worship and adore him. Martinonus adds: when even the demons love God in a certain way even more than themselves as the common good of all, according to St. Thomas, why shall not these children love Christ as their benefactor and the author of their resurrection, and of the benefits which they receive with it through Christ, who is the destroyer of corporeal as well as spiritual death? He cites also what Suarez says, that although one who should speak of the bodies of infants in the same way as of the other damned would say nothing improbable, since St. Thomas speaks of all indifferently, nevertheless since those bodies will have a greater perfection and some gifts or benefits which are not at all due to nature, therefore, in regard to these gifts, Christ may be said to be their model. The same Martinonus subjoins: although those words of the apostle, "In Christ all shall be made alive," Suarez affirms, must be properly and principally understood of the predestined, nevertheless they can probably be applied to a certain extent to these children, inasmuch as they will have in their risen bodies a certain special conformity and relation to Christ, which will be much less and more imperfect in the damned than in the predestined. Nicholas de Lyra affirms that "infants dying without baptism do not endure any sensible punishment, but have a more delightful [{662}] life than can be had in this present life, according to all the doctors, [Footnote 185] who speak concerning those who die in original sin alone."
[Footnote 185: This is true of the great majority, but not of all.]
Those who die in actual sin, and the fallen angels, although in the same state of existence with those who die in original gin only, that is, in the Infernum, or sphere below the supernatural sphere of the elect angels and men, have to undergo a punishment corresponding to their individual demerits. This truth, which is clearly revealed in the Holy Scriptures and defined by the church, is confirmed by the analogies of this present life. The transgressions of law is punished in this world in accordance with the sense of justice which is universal among men. There is no reason, therefore, for supposing that the same principle of retribution is not continued in the future life. Moreover, there is positive proof from reason that it must continue. There has never been a more absurd doctrine broached than that of the Universalists. To suppose that all men are saved on account of the merits of Christ without regard to their moral state or personal merits, is most unreasonable; and subversive of the moral order as well as destructive of the idea of a state of probation. It is equally absurd to imagine that the mere fact of death can make any change in the state of the soul, or that separation from the body causes the soul to make a mechanical rebound from a state of sin to a state of holiness. The soul can be made happy only from its own intrinsic principles, and not by a mere arbitrary appointment of God, or a bestowal of extrinsic means of enjoyment. Sin brings its own punishment, and the state of sin is in itself a state of misery. Plato and other heathen sages taught the doctrine of future punishment, Mr. Alger, who has written the most elaborate work on the subject of the history of the doctrine of a future life which has appeared in recent times, has fully proved the universality of the doctrine of future punishment. Other rationalistic writers of ability have also of late years seen the impossibility of removing this doctrine from the teaching of Christianity and from universal tradition. We have already fully proved that God does not deprive any of his rational creatures of the felicity which is proper to their nature by his own act. It follows from this that it is the creature himself who is the author of his own misery. Existence is in itself a good, a boon conceded from love by the Creator. So far as this good is turned into an evil, it is by a voluntary perversion of the gift of a benevolent sovereign by the subject himself. The punishment which he must undergo in eternity is, therefore, the necessary consequence of his own acts, together with such positive penalties as are required by the ends of justice and the universal good. This doctrine, which is the doctrine of the Catholic Church, based on the clear evidence of Scripture and ecclesiastical tradition, [Footnote 186] is also the doctrine of calm, unbiased reason, and of the common sense of mankind. The probation of the Angels having been finished with their first trial, and the probation of men ending for individuals at death, and for mankind generically at the day of judgment, the epic of grace is closed for ever with the completion of this present cycle of providence; and consequently the state of all angels and men is fixed for eternity. Hell is, therefore, an eternal state out of which there is no possibility of transition into heaven.
[Footnote 186: It is now considered by the best authorities as fully proved that Origen and St. Gregory Nyssen, who have been so often cited by the advocates of the doctrine of universal salvation, did not teach anything contrary to the Catholic doctrine of eternal punishment.]
Heaven, or life everlasting, is the eternal state of supreme, supernatural beatitude, to which the elect angels and men are elevated by the grace of God, and in which they participate in the [{663}] glorified and the deific state of the Incarnate Word, through and ineffable fellowship with the three persons of the Blessed Trinity.
Man being integrally composed by the union of soul and body, and his corporeal nature being hypostatically United with the divine nature in the person of the Word, the resurrection of the body must necessarily precede his complete glorification. The only difficulty which the doctrine of the resurrection of the body presents to the understanding relates to the principal of identity between the earthly and celestial body. This principle of identity, or unity and continuity of life, must be the same with that which constitutes the unity of the body in all the stages of its natural growth; and through all the changes of its material particles, from the instant of its conception to its disintegration by death. It is the soul which is the form of the body, its vivifying principle. The soul and body have an innate correspondence with each other, not only in the generic sense, but in the sense of an individual aptitude of each separate soul for its own body, and each separate body for its own soul. The soul and body act and react upon each other perpetually while the development of both is going on, producing a specific type in each individual which is a modification of the generic type of manhood. The determination of the active force of the soul to the production of this type remains with it after the separation from the body. At the resurrection, it forms anew its own proper body in accordance with this type which is the product of the conjoint action of the soul and body during the earthly life. There is, therefore, the same continuity and identity between the earthly body and the celestial body that there is between the body of the embryo and that of the full-grown man. The celestial body is the same that it would have been if there had been no death intervening between the two corporeal states, but a transformation of the earthly body into the celestial perfection and glorification of its proper type. If this is not all which is included in the definition of the church respecting the identity of the body in the two states, we must believe, in addition to what has been stated already, that there is a material monad which forms the nucleus of the corporeal organization and is a physical principle of identity. This physical principle must contain virtually the whole body, as the germ does the plant; it must be preserved when the body is disintegrated; and reunited to the soul at the resurrection, in order to become the physical germ from which the celestial body is developed.
The natural beatitude of the glorified angels and saints, which is only a more exalted grade of that felicity which is accorded to the inferior intelligent creation, need not be specially noticed. It is the essential and supreme beatitude consisting in the clear, intuitive vision of God, which is the principal subject of the divine revelation proposed by the creed as the object of faith.