166 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 



been baptized." As the ordinance works of it- 

 self, it is valid even though it may have been per- 

 formed by a heretic, etc., etc. Innocent III held 

 that, as sin came to infants without their con- 

 sciousness, so they could be freed from it by the 

 power of the sacrament. In accordance with this 

 line of reasoning, he thought that baptism would 

 be effective upon men asleep or mad, if they had 

 previously expressed a purpose of receiving it. 

 (Vid. Hastings: "Encyc. of Religion and Ethics," 

 II, 398.) 



The Council of Trent, building its doctrine 

 upon the tenet of Original Sin, made one distinc- 

 tion of value; though this distinction, so far as 

 I know, has never been developed into a clearer 

 expression of the normal human condition in 

 morals. Its teaching is thus represented: "The 

 guilt of original sin is removed in baptism, and 

 the regenerate are no longer sinful in the eyes of 

 God, though there remains in them a root of con- 

 cupiscence, which is left for them to struggle 

 against. This concupiscence must not be called 

 * sin ' if by the term it is implied that there is any- 

 thing in the regenerate which can properly be 

 called sin. It is sin only in so far as it comes 

 from sin and leads to sin." (do., 399.) This 

 point, that sin remained after baptism, which was 

 supposed to remove it, had caused much trouble. 

 Some were bold enough logicians to simply re- 

 ject the fact. Augustin held that baptism "means 

 the breaking down of the sinful habit, the be- 



