Chapter 195 — How these defects are handed down to posterity

The good of original justice was conferred by God on the human race in its first parent, yet in such a way that it was to be transmitted to his posterity through him. But when a cause is removed, the effect is removed as well. Therefore, when the first man stripped himself of this good by his sin, all his descendants were likewise deprived of it. And so thenceforward, that is, ever since the sin of the first parent, all men come into the world bereft of original justice and burdened with the defects that attend its loss.

Nor is this in any way against the order of justice, as though God were punishing the sons for the crime of their first father. For the punishment in question is no more than the withdrawing of goods that were supernaturally granted by God to the first man for transmission, through him, to others. These goods were not owed to others, except insofar as these goods were to be passed on to them through their first parent. In the same way a king may give a soldier an estate, which will be handed on by him to his heirs. If the soldier then commits a crime against the king, and so deserves to forfeit the estate, it cannot afterwards pass to his heirs. In this case the sons are justly dispossessed in consequence of their father’s crime.