FIFTH ARTICLE: THE CONDITION OF THE OFFSPRING IN THE STATE OF INNOCENCE

With regard to the body, children born in the state of innocence would enjoy perfect subjection of the body to the soul and they would be equipped for the acts suitable to childhood, because their parents would transmit human nature as they had received it.

With regard to the soul, if men persevered in the state of innocence, would they be born with original justice and sanctifying grace even though neither the soul nor grace are carried over by generation?

St. Thomas replies by quoting these words of St. Anselm: "If man did not sin, those whom he generated would be just at the same time that they received a rational soul."[1473]

St. Thomas explains: "I reply by saying that man naturally generates a being similar to himself in species. Hence in the case of whatever accidental things follow upon the nature of the species it is necessary that the children resemble their parents, unless some error take place in the operations of nature, which would not have happened in the state of innocence. In particular accidents however, it is not necessary that the children be like the parents. But original justice, in which the first man was established, was an accident belonging to the nature of the species, not indeed caused by the principles of the species but as a certain gift divinely conferred on the entire nature. This is clear when we recall that opposites belong to the same genus. But original sin, which is the opposite of that original justice, is said to be the sin of the nature, and hence is carried on by the parents to the offspring. Because of this the children were like the parents with regard to original justice."

"In replying to the second objection, in which some say that the children were not born with gratuitous justice (grace), which is the principle of meriting, but only with original justice: since the root of original justice, in whose righteousness man was created, consists in the supernatural subjection of reason to God, which makes man pleasing by grace, it is necessary to say that if the children are born in original justice, they are also born in grace, as we said above about the first man, who was established in grace. But this did not make it a natural grace, because it was not transmitted by virtue of the seed but was conferred on man as soon as he received a rational soul, just as, when the body is disposed, God infuses the rational soul, which similarly is not passed on by the parents."

In the state of innocence men were not confirmed in grace when they were born, because the children at the time of their birth had no more in the way of perfection than their parents.[1474] Children born in the state of innocence were not perfect in knowledge, but in time they easily acquired perfect knowledge.[1475]