B. About an Adult who is not Willing

70. If the adult dissents in both ways, I say that he does not receive the sacrament, because God says through Wisdom, Proverbs 23.26, “Sons, give me your heart,” as he does not want anyone who is altogether unwilling to be ascribed to his family; but someone who receives baptism is ascribed thereby to the family of Christ.

71. Nor is it necessary here to distinguish between the one who cries out or protests his dissent by an exterior sign and the one who does not cry out, because if in real truth there is dissent, it is altogether the same as regard God and the truth; but as to the judgment of the Church (which judges of things manifest and presumes that one who keeps silent consents), he who cries out will not be compelled to observance of the Christian religion, but he who does not cry out will be compelled.

72. Nor can the Church here be accused because an injury is done to him who wills against [baptism] but does not cry out; for it is a lesser evil to him that he keep the Christian Law than that he be permitted to act with impunity against it; because it is a lesser evil to do good things against one’s will and to escape evil things than to do freely and with impunity evil things and to lose good things.

73. But if the adult dissents in a certain respect but consents simply (and does so, I say, not only to the washing [of baptism] as if to a certain bath, but to the washing in the way the Church intends to do it), he receives the sacrament, because simply he is willing, although in a certain respect unwilling.

74. And about such an adult the Council of Toledo speaks, which is cited in Decretals III tit. 42 ch.3, Gregory IX, “Those who now a long time ago were compelled into Christianity (because it is already clear that they have been made associates in the divine sacraments) should be compelled to keep the faith that they by necessity took up, lest the name of the Lord be blasphemed and the faith they took up be held as cheap and contemptible.”

75. An example of this: whatever is the way that someone is able to consent to the washing [of baptism], the washing is received in the way in which it is conferred by the Church - and yet, let that someone be unwilling (provided he could escape torments), because he does not believe the washing is worth anything.

76. An example can also be taken from him who does not believe that the words of the ritual formula can have any effect, yet he concedes to the intoner of them that he is saying the formula over him with the intention with which he is wont to say it, saying in his heart ‘Let the formula be worth as much as it can be worth’ - this person should truly be said to have been intoned over; and if such formula intoned over someone were said to be ‘consecration of him to the devil’, he would also be consecrated to the devil.

77. Now the difference of this case, ‘he who dissents in a certain respect’, from the preceding one [n.70], is plain, because he who is simply dissenting does not at all receive the sacrament; and for this reason he would, when the dissent ceases, have to be baptized simply; but he who simply consents, though he dissent in a certain respect, has been baptized, and therefore when this dissent in a certain respect ceases, he is not to be baptized again.

78. But if someone consents only negatively [n.68] I say that he receives the sacrament, because God wills not to bind man to what is impossible or (according to the state of this life) to something too difficult. But now ‘not being distracted’ seems too difficult for man in this state of life, because, according to Augustine On Free Choice 3.25 n.255, “It is not in our power what things when seen we are touched by;” therefore God willed not to set down the salvation of man with the condition ‘if he not be distracted’. Therefore, he did not want to oblige anyone, in receiving baptism, not to be distracted [on distraction, cf. Scotus Lectura III d.17 n.26].

79. And so it is universally with all the other sacraments; for the priest, in confecting the sacrament [of the eucharist], is not obliged (I mean, necessarily) to the fact that he not be distracted; for a distracted priest truly confects, provided however that before, while he was robing, he intend to celebrate mass according to the manner of the Church.

80. And if you ask, let it be that someone not consenting actually yet consenting virtually (in the way that the example about the celebrating priest is posited [n.79]), receive the sacrament, does not he too surely receive it who consents only in habit (and the distinction between these, habitually and virtually, is plain in Ord. II d.41 n.10)? And let it be that he does, does not he too surely receive it who only negatively does not consent, and he too surely who only negatively does not dissent, because he has neither the opposite habit nor the opposite act?

81. About the first [he who consents only in habit] it could be said that such a one is judged to be consenting in habit because he at sometime had actual consent with no dissent intervening. And such a one, though using reason, receives the sacrament, because he does not for any condition seem to be less capable if he is using reason than if, having used it before, he is not using it now. But in such a one who is not using reason now, yet having used it before, habitual consent would also be sufficient; therefore, here too.

82. About the second [he who negatively neither consents nor dissents, n.80], although it were difficult to find such a person, especially one who had sometime thought of baptism before, because either it would have pleased him then to be baptized or it would not have pleased him (indeed would have displeased him), and according to his last movement he would be judged to be such in habit for the future; yet if someone were wholly not consenting nor dissenting, both actually and in habit, and yet he is using reason, he would not be capable of baptism; for from the fact he is using reason he ought to have, or have had, some devotion for the sacrament, if it has to be valid for him - for otherwise he would seem to be contemning it.