gmas
mentioned by M. Nicole, namely original sin and eternity of punishment, are
only harsh and unjust to outward appearance, while the damnation of
children dying without actual sin and without regeneration would in truth
be harsh, since it would be in effect the damning of innocents. For that
reason I believe that the party which advocates this opinion will never
altogether have the upper hand in the Roman Church itself. Evangelical[175]
theologians are accustomed to speak with fair moderation on this question,
and to surrender these souls to the judgement and the clemency of their
Creator. Nor do we know all the wonderful ways that God may choose to
employ for the illumination of souls.

94. One may say that those who condemn for original sin alone, and who
consequently condemn children dying unbaptized or outside the Covenant,
fall, in a sense, without being aware of it, into a certain attitude to
man's inclination and God's foreknowledge which they disapprove in others.
They will not have it that God should refuse his grace to those whose
resistance to it he foresees, nor that this expectation and this tendency
should cause the damnation of these persons: and yet they claim that the
tendency which constitutes original sin, and in which God foresees that the
child will sin as soon as he shall reach years of discretion, suffices to
damn this child beforehand. Those who maintain the one and reject the other
do not preserve enough uniformity and connexion in their dogmas.

95. There is scarcely less difficulty in the matter of those who reach
years of discretion and plunge into sin, following the inclination of
corrupt nature, if they receive not the succour of the grace necessary for
them to stop on the edge of the precipice, or to drag themselves from the
abyss wherein they have fallen. For it seems hard to damn them eternally
for having done that which they had no power to prevent themselves from
doing. Those that damn even children, who are without discretion, trouble
themselves even less about adults, and one would say that they have become
callous through the very expectation of seeing people suffer. But it is not
the same with other theologians, and I would be rather on the side of those
who grant to all men a grace sufficient to draw them away from evil,
provided they have a sufficient tendency to profit by this succour, and not
to reject it voluntarily. The objection is made that there has been and
still is a