Dist. 1, Part 2, Art. 1, Q. 1
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/4/d/1/q/bon-sent-IV-d1-p2-a1-q1
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### ARTICLE I.
### *On the remedy against original sin in the time of the natural law.*

### QUESTION I.
### *Whether informed faith would suffice for the remedy of original [sin].*

And that informed faith would not have sufficed is shown thus.

1. Nothing pleases God except from charity; but the profession of informed faith is without charity: therefore it was not pleasing to the Lord: therefore on account of it, or [on account of] its merit, he did not infuse justification into the little child.

2. Likewise, if someone can merit for another, nevertheless he merits more efficaciously for himself: therefore if the parents, through informed faith, could not merit justification for themselves, then neither [could they] for the child.

**On the contrary:**

1. Through informed faith one merits and performs the working of miracles and obtains bodily health for another: therefore if God is equally and more inclined to heal spiritually than bodily, it seems that through informed faith spiritual health can be obtained for him at least who cannot prepare himself for health.

2. Likewise, if it could not [be obtained], three unfitting [consequences] would follow from this. The first, that an actual sin would be imputed to the son, who would otherwise be cleansed, if the parents were without sin. The second, that since no one is certain whether he is in charity, there would be for him no certainty about the cure of the child: therefore he ought always to cure [him] and to offer the remedy. The third, that the child ought rather to be said to be cleansed in the charity of the parents than in [their] faith; which Gregory does not say.

### CONCLUSIO.

> The informed faith of the parents in the natural law could probably be a remedy for little children.

**I respond:** To this some have said that the faith of the parents was a remedy for the child not principally by reason of the *act of believing,* but by reason of the *thing believed* itself, from which, insofar as it is believed, virtue flows into all the Sacraments. And since the thing believed is never informed but uniform with respect to informed and formed faith; therefore through faith, however informed [it be], provided nevertheless it were true, a remedy was given to the child.

Otherwise, however, it can be said that it was not the *thing believed itself* that was the remedy, but the *profession of faith* itself, which comes about either by an act of faith or by an exterior act, that was the disposition for the cure; and this [profession] is [found] in circumcision and in baptism, because there is there a profession of faith by the very *deed;* but the profession of faith which the parents made was reckoned to the child out of divine mercy. And because the profession of faith in one having original [sin] only sufficiently disposes for grace, even if it be not made in charity — for one having original [sin], since he is not bound to be contrite, prepares himself for grace from the will to believe alone and from the captivity of the intellect; so too the child is prepared by the merit of congruity; for in justification

or in the cure of a child the merit of congruity is required rather than [that] of condignity, just as also in the justification of an adult — therefore I say without prejudice that the informed faith of the parents could be a remedy for the child.

1. To that, then, which is objected, that informed faith does not please God; it must be said that it does not please God as something meritorious from condignity, yet it does please [him] as something dispositive from congruity.

2. To that which is objected, that informed faith does not suffice for the remission of one's own guilt; it must be said that this does not hold: because a greater disposition is required for this, that an actual [sin] be remitted, than [for] an original [sin], because it was committed from a greater guilt; therefore contrition together with faith is required, but in one having original [sin] faith suffices. When therefore he says: each one merits more for himself than for another; it must be understood [with] the other conditions remaining equal.