Chapter V.
On the corruption of original sin.
After the fall of the first parent, some things must be said about the transmission of original sin. Concerning which, first the mode of corruption must be considered, second the mode of transmission, third the mode of healing.
The mode by which the human race is corrupted through original sin is as follows. For everyone begotten through intercourse is born by nature a child of wrath, because deprived of the rectitude of original justice; on account of whose absence we incur with respect to the soul a fourfold penalty, namely weakness, ignorance, malice, and concupiscence; which four are inflicted on account of original sin: which spiritual penalties are indeed accompanied in the body by manifold suffering, manifold deficiency, manifold toil, manifold disease, and manifold pain. To these penalties follows the penalty of death and reduction to ashes, the penalty of the lack of the vision of God and the loss of heavenly glory, not only in adults, but also in unbaptized children: who indeed are punished with "the mildest penalty" among all the rest, because they have only the penalty of loss without the penalty of sense.
The reason for understanding the aforesaid is this: because, since the first principle does all things from itself and according to itself and for itself, it is necessary that it be most good and most upright, and thereby most merciful and most just: and hence it is that all his ways are mercy and truth, or judgment. But if God had from the beginning created man in such great miseries, there would be neither mercy nor justice, namely that he would oppress his own work with such great misery, with no preceding fault. Similarly, if he were to fill us with such great miseries, or permit us to be filled, without fault, divine providence would govern us neither mercifully nor justly. If therefore it is most certain that the first principle is most upright and most clement both in producing and in providing: it is necessary that he so made the human race that from the beginning there was in it neither fault nor misery; it is also necessary that he so governs that he does not permit misery to be in us except on account of some preceding fault. Since therefore it is most certain that from our origin we contract manifold misery of punishment, it is certain that we are all born by nature children of wrath, and thereby deprived of the rectitude of original justice, which privation we call original fault .
And because every fault denotes a withdrawal from the unchangeable good and an approach toward the changeable good: and to withdraw from the unchangeable good is to withdraw from the highest power, truth, and goodness: but to approach the changeable good is to tend toward it through love more than is due: hence it is that one who loses original justice incurs weakness, ignorance, malice, and concupiscence.
Again, because one who abandons the unchangeable good for the sake of a changeable good becomes unworthy of both: hence it is that by reason of the lack of original justice, the soul loses temporal rest in the body through manifold corruption and death, and at last is separated from the vision of eternal light, losing the felicity of glory both in soul and in body.
Finally, because the lack of this justice in those being born is not through a movement of their own will nor through actual delight: hence it is that to original sin there is not owed after this life a punishment of sense in hell, for the reason that divine justice, which is always accompanied by superabundant mercy, does not punish above what is deserved, but below it.
This must be believed to have been the view of blessed Augustine, although his words outwardly, on account of his detestation of the error of the Pelagians, who granted them some measure of felicity, may seem to sound otherwise. For in order to lead them back to the mean, he inclined more abundantly toward the extreme.