e an influx of grace and virtues from the Head.
Secondly, because, if this were true, children that die after
Baptism, would not come to eternal life; since according to Rom.
6:23, "the grace of God is life everlasting." And consequently
Baptism would not have profited them unto salvation.

Now the source of their error was that they did not recognize the
distinction between habit and act. And so, seeing children to be
incapable of acts of virtue, they thought that they had no virtues at
all after Baptism. But this inability of children to act is not due
to the absence of habits, but to an impediment on the part of the
body: thus also when a man is asleep, though he may have the habits
of virtue, yet is he hindered from virtuous acts through being asleep.

Reply Obj. 1: Faith and charity depend on man's will, yet so that the
habits of these and other virtues require the power of the will which
is in children; whereas acts of virtue require an act of the will,
which is not in children. In this sense Augustine says in the book on
Infant Baptism (Ep. xcviii): "The little child is made a believer,
not as yet by that faith which depends on the will of the believer,
but by the sacrament of faith itself," which causes the habit of
faith.

Reply Obj. 2: As Augustine says in his book on Charity (Ep. Joan. ad
Parth. iii), "no man is born of water and the Holy Ghost unwillingly
which is to be understood not of little children but of adults." In
like manner we are to understand as applying to adults, that man
"without himself is not justified by Christ." Moreover, if little
children who are about to be baptized resist as much as they can,
"this is not imputed to them, since so little do they know what they
do, that they seem not to do it at all": as Augustine says in a book
on the Presence of God, addressed to Dardanus (Ep. clxxxvii).

Reply Obj. 3: As Augustine says (Serm. clxxvi): "Mother Church lends
other feet to the little children that they may come; another heart
that they may believe; another tongue that they may confess." So that
children believe, not by their own act, but by the faith of the
Church, which is applied to them: by the power of which faith, grace
and virtues are bestowed on them.

Reply Obj. 4: The carnal intention of those who take children to be
baptized does not hurt the latter, as neither does one's sin hurt
another, unless he consent. Hence Augustine says in his letter to
Boniface (Ep. xcviii): "Be