Did not St. Augustine teach that all unbaptized infants are cast into the torment of eternal fire?
No. To understand St. Augustine’s mind on the subject we must notice the circumstances under which he wrote. He was engaged in refuting the Pelagians who denied original sin, and taught that unbaptized infants attained supernatural happiness in a place distinct from heaven. St. Augustine proved the fact of original sin, and denied the existence of any state of supernatural happiness apart from heaven. But he did not suspect the possibility of a third state of purely natural happiness. For him, therefore, it was a question of either heaven or hell for eternity. But he admitted that hell would have two aspects, deprivation of the Vision of God, and positive suffering for personal sins. Whilst insisting that unbaptized infants could not attain to the Vision of God, he declared that he did not see how they could meet with positive suffering. In Epistle 116 he wrote, “I don’t know what to say when you ask what their sufferings will be.” And in his treatise against Julian he says, “Our Lord
