Hope you won't mind if I add a comment: why not? What harm could come out of it? perhaps the HS would move the unbeliever in the hour of his death to repent and accept God and be forgiven. It was the last spiritual resussitation God offered to him and +Augustine was right in doing what he did.
He was also unclear as to where unbaptized infant go when they die. (Are you prepare to agree with Augustine they go to hell if they're not baptized?)
+Augustine constructed the "original sin" error and passed it on to the entire western Church, from whence sprang many other conceptual errors in escathology and mariology.
Wew Orthodox never had that burden. We never belieevd that merciful God would simply create people to destroy them or to punish innocent children for not being baptized by sending them to hell! They have no deeds to be judged on, so they are innocent. Anything they inherited from our anestral parents' disobedience is mortality, and not their sin.
In the East, Holy Baptism is described as a sacrament of adoption. The Church becomes your spiritual home, where one is helped in his spiritual growth through the (litugical) life of the Church, pastioral care and spiritual (god)parents.
But those of the Protestant/Baptist sola fide persuasion believe that, in order to be saved, one must believe. Thus, unbaptized children, by necessity, must go to hell because they cannot believe.
Augustine answered this by saying the man revived long enough to make it very clear to Augustine he was extremely unhappy with what he had done. A couple of days later the gentleman died. We assume that everyone wants to go to heaven. That is a faulty assumption.
We Orthodox never had that burden. We never believed that merciful God would simply create people to destroy them or to punish innocent children for not being baptized by sending them to hell! They have no deeds to be judged on, so they are innocent.
As FK once wrote, of the billions and billions of people who have walked this earth, if this was true don't you think you would be able to find a sinless man? Abraham thought for sure there should be some righteous people in Sodom.
But those of the Protestant/Baptist sola fide persuasion believe that, in order to be saved, one must believe. Thus, unbaptized children, by necessity, must go to hell because they cannot believe.
There are all sorts of Protestant/Baptists with all sorts of ideas. THIS Reformed Baptist believes that God saves people according to His will and good pleasure. He saves them by His grace and mercy alone and justify that salvation based upon the death of His Son. Whether you're an aborted baby or a 95 year old man who, on his death bed accepts the Lord, everyone comes to God in the same fashion. We are instilled with His faith and mercy through grace.