"Be assured," writes St. Augustine, "and doubt not that not only men who have obtained the use of their reason, but also little children who have begun to live in their mother's womb and there died, or who, having been just born, have passed away from the world without the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, must be punished by the eternal torture of undying fire." To make the doctrine clearer, he illustrates it by the case of a mother who has two children. Each of these is but a lump of perdition. Neither has ever performed a moral or immoral act. The mother overlies one, and it perishes unbaptized. It goes to eternal torment. The other is baptized and saved.

This appears sufficiently from the seasons in which, for instance, autos da fé in Spain took place. In the Gallery of Madrid there is a painting by Francisco Rizzi representing the execution, or rather the procession to the stake, of a number of heretics during the fêtes that followed the marriage of Charles II., and before the King, his bride, and the Court and clergy of Madrid. The great square was arranged like a theatre, and thronged with ladies in Court dress. The King sat on an elevated platform, surrounded by the chief members of the aristocracy.

Limborch, in his "History of the Inquisition," relates that among the victims of one auto da fé was a girl of sixteen, whose singular beauty struck all who saw her with admiration. As she passed to the stake she cried to the Queen: "Great Queen, is not your presence able to bring me some comfort under my misery? Consider my youth, and that I am condemned for a religion which I have sucked in with my mother's milk."