Whether actual or habitual faith is in infants, or can be in them
Article X. Whether actual or habitual faith is in infants, or can be in them.
1. First: it is not absolutely impossible for infants to have both actual and habitual faith. Habitual faith is plain enough — in integrity infants would have been born with supernatural habits; in corruption God can create faith's habit in their souls by the Spirit, as in adults.
2. Actual faith is harder. Some deny infants any intellective acts. Others, with Augustine and many Orthodox, grant that God can elicit in them hidden, ineffable acts of faith in a manner known to himself — especially in baptism, where the Spirit works in covenanted infants.
3. Second: possibility does not bind us to assert that every baptized infant actually has faith. Covenanted infants' salvation rests on God's promise and Christ's merit, not on a demonstrable act of faith in them.
4. Third: parents' or the Church's faith is not formally the infants' faith. The Papist fiction of alien faith imputed to infants is rejected. Covenanted infants are saved by God's grace in Christ — baptism its sign and seal — not by alien faith as a formal principle in them.
5. In adults both habitual and actual faith are required for justification: habit as principle, act as the exercise that apprehends Christ.
Latin
ART. X. An fides actualis aut habitualis infantibus insit, aut inesse possit. 1. Assertio prima: Non est impossibile, absolute loquendo, fidem tum actualem, tum habitualem infantibus inesse. De fide habituali res est manifesta: nam infantes, in statu integritatis, nati fuissent cum habitibus supernaturalibus; & in statu corruptionis, DEUS potest per Spiritum Sanctum habitum fidei in infantium animis creare, sicut in adultis. 2. De fide actuali difficilior est quaestio. Nonnulli negant infantes ullos actus intellectus exercere posse. Alii, cum Augustino & multis Orthodoxis, fatentur DEUM posse in infantibus elicere actus fidei occultos & ineffabiles, modo sibi noto — praesertim in baptismo, ubi Spiritus Sanctus in foederatis infantibus operatur. 3. Assertio secunda: Etsi possibile sit fidem infantibus inesse, non tamen tenemur asserere omnes infantes baptizatos actu fidem habere; salus infantium foederatorum nititur DEI promissione & CHRISTI merito, non demonstrabili praesentia actus fidei in iis. 4. Assertio tertia: Fides parentum, seu fides Ecclesiae, non est formaliter fides infantium; nec Papistarum fictio de fide aliena (fide Ecclesiae infantibus imputata) admittenda est. Infantes foederati salvantur non aliena fide tanquam formali principio in se, sed DEI gratia in CHRISTO, cujus signum & sigillum baptismus est. 5. Quod ad adultos attinet, fides actualis & habitualis utraque requiritur ad justificationem: habitus ut principium, actus ut exercitium quo CHRISTUS apprehenditur.
About this text
Robert Baron, Philosophia Theologiae Ancillans (Philosophy in Service to Theology): the first exercise, on being and essence, and the second, on the origin of the soul and the spread of sin — newly rendered from Latin. Later exercises are not in this volume.
English follows locked 1658 Oxford Latin. Prima Art. I-XII from IA PDF leaves ~15-53. Secunda Art. I-XV from PDF leaves 56-107 / printed pp.54-105 (tess+pdftotext+DjVu). No modern English copied. Exercitatio Tertia+ remain.
Catalogue & scope
Wing B887. IA bim_early-english-books-1641-1700_philosophia-theologi-an_baron-robert_1658. Exercitatio Prima Art. I-XII; Exercitatio Secunda Art. I-XV (De origine animae & propagatione peccati). Not whole Philosophia (213 pp). Exercitatio Tertia+ remain.
Witnesses
- Copy-text Locked Latin, Exercitatio Prima Art. I-II tip (Oxford 1658) (Latin)
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This is an AI-assisted study translation. Source fidelity and completeness have not been independently certified. Open Latin on each section (or the Latin source witness link) for the source text. This is not a complete critical edition.