Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 10 part 5/17

For neither did believers' false good reputation of that same bad man cleanse the receivers, nor did the falsehood of human opinion generate in a man the grace of divine truth. And that testimony which you set down from the Scriptures—'The things that are manifest are for you, but the things that are hidden are for the Lord your God'—these words refute and convict you. For if the things that are hidden are to be left to the Lord our God, how is the conscience of the giver, not only bad but even good, when it is hidden, regarded so as to cleanse that of the receiver? Or if it itself, when it is hidden, is not regarded, what then do you bid the receiver regard, whence his conscience may be cleansed? And so, wake up at last, now at least say: let him regard God.

Why do you fear being humbled, if you glory not in man but in the Lord? 'There is,' you say, 'something I fear. For if, while the giver's conscience lies hidden, I say that the recipient should look to God, and I confess that his conscience was then washed by God, that dreadful absurdity will pursue me: that men are more holily washed when they have hidden bad baptizers than when they have manifest good ones — if it is a man who washes. For the giver's conscience is good and manifest, whereas God is invoked only when it is bad and hidden.' Then say what we say — because this is true, this is sound, this is catholic: that Christ cleanses the consciences of the recipients, whether through the good ministers of his baptism or through the bad, since of him it is written:

Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, cleansing her by the washing of water in the word. 'You answer,' you say, 'how those whom the Church has condemned can baptize.' Already, then, we are departing from Petilian's words, since when he said, 'The conscience of the one who holily gives is what matters, that it may wash the recipient,' and I asked who washes the recipient when the giver's defilement is hidden, no answer could be given me. For it is as much against the truth to say that a man's false reputation can wash, as it would be to say that the reputation itself has this power. But if you ask how those whom the Church has condemned may baptize, I answer that they baptize in the same way as those whom God has condemned baptize, before the Church has passed any judgment upon them.

For he who with perverse mind seems to be within while he is without, has already been judged by Christ himself. For he himself says: 'He who does not believe is already judged.' And the apostle Paul says: 'The Church is subject to Christ.' The Church therefore ought not to prefer herself to Christ, so as to suppose that those judged by him can baptize, but that those judged by herself cannot baptize — since he always judges truthfully, whereas ecclesiastical judges, being men, are for the most part deceived. Both good and bad men baptize, then, so far as concerns the visible ministry; but invisibly, through them, he baptizes whose is both the visible baptism and the invisible grace.

Both good and bad, therefore, can dip in water, but none can wash the conscience save he who is always good. And by this, even without the Church's knowledge, those condemned by Christ because of a bad and defiled conscience are already not in the Body of Christ, which is the Church, since Christ cannot have condemned members. Accordingly, these too baptize outside the Church. For God forbid that all these monsters should ever be counted among the members of that one and only dove; God forbid that they should be able to enter the bounds of the enclosed garden, whose keeper is he who cannot be deceived. Yet if they confess and are corrected, then they enter, then they are cleansed, then they are numbered among the trees of the enclosed garden, then among the members of the one dove — and yet they are not baptized anew;

so also when they come from heretics with that same baptism which they had even outside, but not with that same cleansing which they receive within, so that what was lacking may be supplied, while what was not changed may be approved. 'Your conscience,' you say, 'has been condemned by the crime of your elders' handing-over and offering of incense, and by your own crime of persecution.' As for the traditors and the incense-offerers, who they were that committed this wickedness, you believed not the holy Scriptures but the rumor of men. And if that reputation can be a false good report about wicked men, why can it not also be a false bad report about good men? But concerning persecution, let me answer you here briefly once more what, when I had answered Petilian, you were quite unable to refute.

For in the holy Scripture, which deceives no one, the Church is called God's threshing-floor, and the Lord himself is said to be coming with his winnowing-fan to cleanse his floor, so as to store the wheat in the barn but to burn the chaff with unquenchable fire. Either, then, you rightly suffered persecution, or, if a Christian measure was exceeded, it was our chaff that did it — chaff on whose account the Lord's floor was not to be deserted, lest anyone who fled from the chaff of the floor before the time of winnowing should, being separated from the wheat, become chaff himself. But you, when you tried to refute this testimony, which was not mine but holy Scripture's, said that no persecution could be just;

Here you are to be pardoned for not knowing the Scriptures, from which it might have come into your mind with how just a voice it was said: 'Him who secretly slandered his neighbor, this man I persecuted,' and by the Lord Jesus Christ himself in a most excellent prophecy: 'I will persecute my enemies and seize them, and I will not turn back until they fail.' And there are many other divine testimonies which it would be tedious to pursue — provided you do not slander me on account of this word, so that, because I said 'it would be tedious to pursue,' you charge me with being a persecutor of the divine testimonies. You set against me words of the Scriptures — words so often shown to help you not at all:

'Let not the oil of the sinner make fat my head' — though even among you, you cannot deny that there are at least hidden sinners, who nevertheless baptize and are not excepted by these words; for it does not say 'the oil of the manifest sinner,' but simply 'the oil of the sinner' — and: 'They have become to me like deceitful water that has no faith.' Here I marvel at your prudence, how the deceitful water of the hidden dissembler does not seem such to you, whose false reputation you have even believed to profit something for the cleansing of another's conscience — unless it be that that which is not dialectical but plainly sophistical, which you vainly reproached in me as though in a dialectician, you supposed would come to your aid: (if you lie, you tell the truth!)

For what else do you try to assert, when — attributing baptism to the man, whom you refuse to acknowledge as God's — you say for this reason that an adulterer can give true baptism, because by concealing himself he lies that he is chaste? And so, according to you, he then speaks truth in baptism while he lies in his crime, and his water is not deceitful — the water which you want to be in the Church according to the promise of so many prophecies, spread throughout the whole world — whereas Jeremiah called not baptism deceitful water, but deceitful men, according to the meaning that is manifest in the Apocalypse, where, when John asked what those waters shown in the vision were, the answer was that they are peoples. But concerning that testimony which is written:

'He who is baptized by a dead man, what does his washing profit him?' — a testimony which you did not understand, though I set it forth in that letter — attend a little, and see how much you have helped me with your own words. For when you supposed that by 'a dead man' in this place I understood an idol-worshiper, you argued as though I had excepted only those who cannot baptize; and, as far as you could, by repeating that testimony about the oil, you argued that he willed no sinner to baptize who said, 'The oil of the sinner shall not make fat my head,' excepting no sinner. Whence you are the more pressed, as I showed a little before. For if no sinner is excepted, then rebaptize those baptized by hidden bad men once they have been convicted.

Here now you will try to except the hidden sinner, whom holy Scripture did not except. Therefore this whole understanding of yours is convicted of falsity by the truth, since it is shown likewise to contradict even your own intention. For this was not in reality set down in the psalm concerning baptism, but concerning the fawning of a flatterer, as the preceding words sufficiently indicate; for the whole sentence is thus connected: 'The righteous man shall amend me in mercy and shall reprove me; but the oil of the sinner shall not make fat my head.' He preferred, then, to have his head bruised by one truly reproving than anointed by one deceitfully flattering — the words 'oil' and 'anointing' being used figuratively to signify the smoothness of the flatterer.

But what I myself thought in that letter concerning this testimony where it is said, 'He who is baptized by a dead man' — by repeating from it the very words, I shall show sufficiently, as I suppose. For when I was discussing what a catholic Christian ought to answer to these things, when he hears — I said — 'He who is baptized by a dead man, his washing does not profit him,' he will answer: 'Christ lives and dies now no more, and death shall no longer have dominion over him,' of whom it is said: 'He it is who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.' But those are baptized by dead men who are baptized in the temples of idols. For not even they themselves suppose that they receive from their own priests the sanctification which they imagine, but from their gods.

And since these were men and died in such a way that they live neither upon the earth nor in the rest of the saints, they are truly baptized by dead men. Thus far I have transcribed the very words from my letter, in which you now perceive, as I suppose — if only now at least you attend carefully — that I did not call the worshipers themselves dead (although in another way they too are dead), but the false gods whom they worship, because they were men and departed from the body as men, and neither rose again nor had any merit of the life which is promised after this life.

Those, then, who are baptized by these very gods are, as I said, truly baptized by dead men — that is, those who are baptized in their name — because they too suppose themselves sanctified not in the name of their priests but of their gods, about whom they hold vain opinions. But Christ has risen and lives; accordingly, he who is baptized by him is baptized not by a dead man, whether through a good or even through a bad minister, dead in his ruined morals. For he is baptized by him who lives forever, and of whom it is said in the Gospel, which I there also mentioned: 'He it is who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.' This, in my letter, so far as your words indicate, you did not understand; for I will not say that, understanding too little, you wished to defraud. Rather, I marvel

that you did not notice the words there following mine, or thought them to be dissembled away. For a little after I added and said: 'For if in this place I understand by «a dead man» a sinful baptizer, that same absurdity will follow — that whoever has been baptized even by a hidden ungodly man, having been baptized as by a dead man, has been washed in vain. For it does not say «he who is baptized by a manifest dead man», but says simply «a dead man».' This clarification of my words there — whom would it not have roused from sleep, or rather from death itself? And yet it did not rouse you; and moreover, what I had said against Petilian, you, as though speaking against me, even more vehemently confirmed.

Just as men are wont, by unknowingly trying to work out an arrow that has been shot in, to fix it even higher and deeper. For you asserted that by 'a dead man' none is to be understood but a sinful baptizer, and that no sinner is to be excepted; and therefore what I was saying is concluded against you: that neither can a hidden one be excepted where none is excepted. Rebaptize, then, those who have been established to have been baptized by hidden sinners — those who can be helped while living and knowing, so that it now harms these alone. But those who either are unaware or have died beforehand, so that they can no longer be baptized when their bad baptizers are afterward made manifest — baptize, I say, once the adulterer is betrayed and condemned, those who have been established to have been baptized by him while he lay hidden;

for they were baptized by a dead man — you said that every sinner without any exception is to be understood as one who cannot baptize, adding the testimony about the oil of the sinner. You said it, you wrote it: hear yourself, read yourself. If every sinner, as a dead man, cannot baptize, neither can a hidden one. For it is not the case that, because he is hidden, he is therefore alive, since he is even much more deeply consumed by the lie of dissimulation. For he would be called less dead if he at least confessed; but in him is fulfilled what is written in another place: 'From a dead man, as from one who is not, confession perishes.'

Of those established to have been baptized by this dead man, sunk in so great a depth of death, you do not rebaptize; yet of those baptized by men who in the farthest lands heard neither the name of Caecilian nor of Majorinus nor of Donatus, you do not in the least hesitate to rebaptize, if you can, objecting to them: 'He who is baptized by a dead man, what does his washing profit him?' — calling those men dead to whom the very breath of African corpses, whosesoever those may have been, could not reach, while not thinking him dead who can conceal his own crime, though Scripture cries out: 'From a dead man, as from one who is not, confession perishes.' Is it so, that because he is feigned he is not dead — when rather, on account of that very feigning, being void of the spirit of life, he has utterly expired, Scripture again saying:

'For the Holy Spirit of discipline will flee the feigner'? Go on still defending these dead men and saying that they live, so that you too may die the worse by that very false defense. 'They are dead,' you say. But what should one do who, being about to be baptized, approached them in ignorance? Let him now do what he should — when, that man being betrayed, he has recognized himself to have been baptized by a dead man. For if his conscience could not be harmed on this account, because it did not know, now it begins to be harmed, because it has come to know — just as if a man unknowingly were clothed in a tunic got by robbery: from the moment he knows, that becomes a garment of iniquity, and he himself becomes iniquitous unless he casts it off; and one who unknowingly married another man's wife becomes an adulterer from the moment he learns it, unless he departs from her. Let this man too, then, cast off the baptism which he has come to know he received from a dead man.

For he has something he can do: he can still be baptized again. Finally, whether he knew or did not know that he was baptized by a dead man, what does his washing profit him? It is a strict statement, as you yourself also cry out; it excepted no one. 'By a dead man,' I say, 'he was baptized; his washing profits him nothing.' Cleanse the man by baptizing him, you who are alive — or rather cleanse yourselves from this error, lest by holding such opinions you perish. For you contend, as it were against me, so as to say that no one is excepted in what is written: 'the oil of the sinner,' and 'he who is baptized by a dead man' — and you do not perceive that by struggling you are tightening the knot by which you are bound.

For this is what I am doing, this is what I am urging, from this I am pressing you hard to change your foolish and perverse opinion: that in the oil of the sinner and in the baptism of the dead man, no dead man, no sinner is excepted — just as you, on my behalf as it were against me, declare. For thus not even the hidden one is excepted, whereby everything you say is overthrown; and so those who taught you such things are compelled to rebaptize all whom they can find in this life to have been baptized by hidden bad men. What are you doing? Where do you turn? Your own words are recited back to you. For not only did you fail to refute mine when I said them, but, not knowing that you were reading what was mine, you yourself said this very same thing in other words as though your own, and — that it might be more diligently heard and considered — you wrote it, so that it might be recited to you as often as you please.

Hear, then — these are surely your own words —: 'But if,' you say, 'it pleases you to except only the idol-worshiper, what of him of whom it is said: I do not want the oil of the sinner to anoint my head? Is even here that sinner only he who worships an idol, or whoever admits what is not lawful? But if you think the sinner to be only the idol-worshiper, then a Christian, if he does something against the law, will not be said to have sinned? But if nothing more foolish or absurd can be said, it is openly foretold that not the idol-worshiper alone, but whoever among all men is a sinner, may not usurp for himself the right of baptism.' These, to be sure, which I have inserted, are your words.

I did not except the idol-worshiper, but I said that their gods themselves are dead, by whom to be baptized profits nothing; for they suppose themselves to be baptized by these very gods, in whose name they think themselves cleansed. But you excepted no sinner. And if in this place the sinner and mortal man who baptizes is to be understood, then, excepting no sinner, you have without doubt excepted no hidden one either: 'It is openly foretold,' you say, 'that not the idol-worshiper alone, but whoever among all men is a sinner, may not usurp for himself the right of baptism.' Hear yourself, then. You said 'whoever is a sinner'; you excepted neither the manifest nor the hidden.

Accordingly, with what face do they compel to be baptized after a manifest sinner, who refuse to do so after a hidden one, where they assert that no one is excepted? Flee, therefore, brother, from the insane understanding to the sound one, so that in this testimony about the oil of the sinner — as the earlier words of the same psalm prescribe — you may understand the smooth softness of a deceitful flatterer. For thus both no one will be excepted, and the hidden bad baptizer will not run up against insuperable straits. So too in the other testimony, where it is said:

'He who is baptized by a dead man, what does his washing profit him?' — either examine diligently the ancient manuscripts, and especially the Greek ones, lest perchance these very words, written otherwise, may from the preceding and following context of the discourse suggest another sense; or else let us understand as 'the dead' — as I said — those in whose name the worshipers of idols are baptized, so that you may understand each one to be baptized by him in whose name he believes himself to be cleansed. For thus there too no one is excepted; for no dead god of the pagans can cleanse those who believe in him. But if in this place you understand every sinful man to be dead, so many things that you do not want follow you, that you cannot find how you yourself may live, since John says:

'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us' — so that you would find no man at all by whom you might be baptized, if you wished to avoid every sinner. And yet, if you understood by 'a dead man' none but a heretic or schismatic, so that whoever is baptized among them is baptized by a dead man (of whom it is said: he who is baptized by a dead man, what does his washing profit him?) — which you see with what headlong presumption it is so taken, as if it were said:

'he who is baptized by a heretic or schismatic' — not even so would it be against us, who confess that the baptism of Christ profits a man nothing if he is baptized among heretics or schismatics, attributing baptism to those very men by whom he is baptized; but that it then begins to profit him when he passes over to the Body of Christ, which is the Church of the living God. For then, under that same baptism which even outside was Christ's, but placed outside profited nothing, the cleansing will profit — not from him by whose hands he was dipped, but from him into whose members he was inserted. Nor shall I dread that overly severe statement of yours, by which you said:

'Whoever among all men is a sinner may not usurp for himself the right of baptism' — except that you find no one who can truthfully say in the Lord's Prayer, 'Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors,' unless he confesses himself to be a sinner. I would like to question one by one those who baptize among you, whether they are altogether not sinners. For any one of them can answer me: 'I am not a traditor, I am not an incense-offerer, not an adulterer, not a murderer, not a worshiper of idols, not, finally, a heretic, not a schismatic'; but 'I am not a sinner' — I do not know whether anyone could be found, even in heretical pride, who would dare to say it, dare to think it;

I do not know whether anyone is so blinded by so great a swelling of arrogance that — I will not say he professes it aloud — but even silently within himself judges that the supplication is not necessary for him in which we say to God: 'Forgive us our debts.' For we do not pray for the forgiveness of those debts which we trust were once forgiven in baptism, but assuredly for those without which human frailty does not exist, however much we may be vigilant in observing the Lord's precepts. Finally, let whoever wishes take on the effrontery of this shamelessness and say: 'I am not a sinner; from the time when all things were forgiven me in baptism, no sin can be found in me.' I rather believe John, and far more confidently answer:

'You deceive yourself, and the truth is not in you.' Nor does this headlong and deceitful profession achieve this — that sins should not be found in you — but that those which are found should not be forgiven. If, then, you are already baptized, I would like to know whom you have found who would say, against the apostle John, 'I have no sin.' For if you could find any such person, how were you baptized by him who was deceiving himself and in whom the truth was not? But if, being not unmindful of some kind of humility, he said that he was a sinner, how, according to your statement, did he usurp for himself the right of baptism? For you said, and you were not in the least afraid even to write, that whoever among all men is a sinner may not usurp for himself the right of baptism.

But if you are not yet baptized, either correct this most empty statement, or seek angels by whom you may be baptized. But let us suppose that you, being convicted, have corrected it thus: 'Whoever among all men is a sinner in that crime which our people object, may not usurp for himself the right of baptism.' Neither is this against us, because, even if such a one has usurped it and has given baptism, I say that he ought not to have usurped it for himself, but I do not say that he has not given it. But he who has received it — if a good man from a bad man, if a faithful man from a treacherous one, if a pious man from an impious one — it will be pernicious to the giver, not to the receiver. For that holy thing judges the one who uses it badly, and sanctifies the one who uses it well.

But if he too who received it received it wickedly, not even so is the sacrament rescinded, but, once acknowledged, it will profit him when corrected — the sacrament which harmed him while perverse. For thus I shall suppose you to have said, no longer 'whoever is a sinner,' because, unless I am mistaken, you now perceive how rashly it was said, but: 'A sinner, such as our people describe, whoever among all men he be, may not usurp for himself the right of baptism' — just as it is written: 'But to the sinner God says: Why do you declare my justifications and take up my testament through your mouth?' And, to show to what kind of sinner he said this — lest all men should abstain from preaching his word, men who dare neither to feel nor to say that they are not sinners — there follows, and he describes him:

'But you hated discipline and cast my words behind you. Your mouth abounded in malice, and your tongue embraced deceit. If you saw a thief, you ran with him, and with adulterers you set your portion. Sitting, you spoke against your brother, and against your mother's son you laid a stumbling-block.' To such a sinner, then, he says: 'Why do you declare my justifications and take up my testament through your mouth?' — as though he said: 'You do this in vain; as far as it concerns you, it does not profit you; this will avail you for the judgment of damnation, not for the merit of salvation.'

Yet if, even while such a sinner declares God's justifications and takes up his testament through his mouth, those who hear from his mouth believe, do, and profit — will they not, though he is reproved, be praised; though he is blamed, be justified; though he is damned, be crowned — since they took care to obey the Lord who says: 'Do what they say, but do not do what they do; for they say and do not do'? As, then, this sinner, if he usurps for himself the right of preaching the divine testament, profits himself nothing, but to those who hear and do it profits not he himself but what he preaches — so also he who ought not to have usurped for himself the right of baptism harms himself, who has badly usurped a good thing, not him who has well received the good thing.

You see that not only were you unable to refute what I said against Petilian, but with how great a light of truth is refuted in every way what you yourself said against me. And still you go on and say that we make our cause not upright and in some way confess ourselves to be sinners, since, when the right of baptism is objected to us — by what license we claim it for ourselves — we treat not of the merit of deeds, not of innocence of life, but say that it is permitted to anyone whatever. Note, to be sure, from what has been said, that we do not say it is permitted to anyone whatever, but that there is a penalty for him who handles the holy thing unlawfully, and that he is to be corrected —

not that the holy thing which he handles unlawfully is unlawfully to be rescinded — just as we wish men who do not lawfully use the law to be corrected, but do not hold the law itself to be void; just as we reprove one who unlawfully takes up God's testament through his mouth, yet do not deny or tear the testament itself. Nor do we therefore confess that we have sinned, because in the sinner we disapprove what is his own, but honor what is God's — because in one who believes in God we do not wish him to depend on hidden human things, but we admonish him to glory in the Lord of whom he is certain. For neither did the apostle distrust his own bad conscience, but he did not wish the hope of the believer to be placed in man, and he steadfastly located it in God, when he said:

'Neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but he who gives the increase, God.' We therefore, saying what is written — 'Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory' — do not accuse our own conscience; but you, wishing the hope of those who are baptized to be placed in the morals of men, do not recognize your own pride. What of this, that you even dare to make mention of the blessed Cyprian, as though he were the author of your division — he, so great a defender of catholic unity and peace? First be in the Church which Cyprian is established to have held and preached, and then dare to name Cyprian as the author of your opinion. First imitate the piety and humility of Cyprian, and then bring forward the council of Cyprian.