Question Three. Whether One Should Administer the Baptismal Sacrament when there is Presumption that the Baptizing Poses a Danger to the Bodily Life of him who Receives it

61. After this the question is asked, without arguments, whether one should administer the baptismal sacrament when there is a presumption that the baptism poses a danger to the bodily life of him who receives it.

62. I reply: either this presumption is certain and taken from certain signs, as that if someone, who does not have water that he could get hold of save from a bridge, were to throw the child to be baptized into a river or a well, it is something certain because, as concerns the idea of such an act, death naturally follows it because submersion does.

63. And I say that when death is in this way presumed, in no way should anyone propel or throw him in, because then by doing this one will sin mortally; and everyone is more bound to avoid mortal sin in himself than to seek his neighbor’s salvation, because ordered charity is directed toward oneself more [n.59].

64. It is also said that someone so thrown into water would not be baptized, because washing is ordered to the life of the one who is washed; but such submersion is not so ordered.

65. In such a case, therefore, some rags should be lowered into the well or the river (if no vessel were to hand in which water could be drawn up), and out of these rags water should be squeezed whereby such a child might be baptized.

66. But if the presumption of imminent death, or of accelerating death, because of the baptism, is not certain but slight or perhaps irrational (as if the child or adult is set at the point of death), I say that he who has a conscience about accelerating the death of such an infirm person, through baptizing him, has an erroneous conscience, and that makes him perplexed if no one else is present to do the baptizing. For no one is perplexed by the divine law, but there can be a perplexed person in case of an erroneous conscience, for if [the one not baptized] die without baptism he is damned; therefore, the other is bound by necessity of salvation, if no one else be present, to baptize him lest he be damned; for he is bound to love more the eternal life of the other than his temporal life.

67. Therefore, if he were to sin by not saving another’s bodily life in a case of necessity, as by permitting him to be submerged (refusing to extend a hand to draw him out), much more would he sin mortally by permitting the other to be damned because of lack of baptism. Also, if while his erroneous conscience stand that he would accelerate death by baptizing him, then after he baptize him he sins mortally, because according to his conscience he is performing homicide.

68. What then? It is necessary, if no one else be present who could do the baptizing, to dismiss that conscience, because in the case in question there is no other remedy for avoiding mortal sin.

69. It is also sufficiently reasonable that the presumption is fatuous and irrational, because it would not much harm even someone severely infirm for a little of the water to be poured on his head; and if perhaps cold water would harm him, at least lukewarm water would not harm him, because the most tender children are bathed as a remedy in lukewarm water.

70. But is someone who baptizes with this erroneous conscience irregular if death follow afterwards?

71. I reply: he is not irregular, because no ecclesiastical law as to this matter renders him irregular unless he is truly a murderer; but he is not in truth a murderer. However, after the death of such baptized person, while the conscience stands, he is bound to hold himself irregular, because he holds himself a homicide; but when the conscience ceases or is removed he should not seek dispensation, because he was never irregular.

72. And if you ask whether a cleric more than a layman needs to beware of baptizing an infirm person set at the point of death, I reply: neither needs to beware, because neither is transgressing a divine precept about not killing, nor does a cleric incur any punishment expelling him from the clerical state.

73. But if both are equally supposed to have an erroneous conscience, neither could simply baptize, because the divine precept equally binds both, and each is, according to his conscience, acting against this precept; however, a cleric would, according to his false opinion, believe that he is incurring another penalty over and above mortal sin, and therefore he himself has more things for retraction in this case than the layman does.