b) The Fathers of the Church, both Greek and Latin, unanimously teach that justification effects the forgiveness of sins.
St. Justin Martyr says: “By doing penance, all who desire it can obtain mercy from God, and Scripture calls them blessed in saying: ‘Blessed is he to whom God hath not imputed sin,’ which means that he receives forgiveness of his sins from God, not as you, deceiving yourselves, and others like you aver, that God does not impute [their] sin to them, though they are [still] sinners.”(896) Clement of Alexandria likens Baptism to “a bath in which sins are washed off.”(897) St. Gregory Nazianzen says: “It is called Baptism [βαπτισμός, from βάπτειν, to immerse] because the sin is buried in water, ... and a bath (λουτρόν), because it washes off.”(898) St. Augustine indignantly opposes the erroneous opinion of the Pelagians that Baptism does not take away sins but merely “trims them off.” “Who but an unbeliever,” he exclaims, “can affirm this against the Pelagians? We say, therefore, that Baptism gives remission of all sins and takes away crimes, not merely trims them off (_radere_) in such wise that the roots of all sins may be preserved in an evil flesh, as of hair trimmed on the head, when the sins cut down may grow again.”(899) Pope St. Gregory the Great seems almost to have foreseen the heresy of the Protestant Reformers, for he says: “But if there are any who say that in Baptism sins are forgiven as to outward appearance only, what can be more un-Catholic than such preaching?... He who says that sins are not completely forgiven in Baptism might as well say that the Egyptians did not perish in the Red Sea. But if he admits that the Egyptians actually died [in the Red Sea], let him also admit that of necessity sins completely die in Baptism.”(900)
c) The theological argument may be briefly formulated as follows: We can imagine but two reasons why God should not truly forgive us our sins in the process of justification: inability and unwillingness. To say that He is _unable_ to forgive us our sins would be to assert that the remission of sin involves a metaphysical impossibility. This no Protestant will admit, because all believe that “nothing defiled shall enter into heaven.”(901) To assert that God is _unwilling_ to forgive our sins would be to contradict the plain teaching of Scripture, as set forth above. Consequently there is no reason whatever for assuming that God does not truly forgive us our sins in the process of justification. Furthermore, it would be incompatible with His veracity and holiness to assume that He merely declares the sinner to be “free from sin,” without actually cleansing his soul. It would be a contradiction to assert that a man whom the truthful and all-holy God has declared free from sin, remains steeped in iniquity. Cfr. Prov. XVII, 15: “He that justifieth the wicked [_i.e._ absolves him from his sins], and he that condemneth the just, both are abominable before God.”