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Although if we compare such a one even with him who in the Catholic Church itself receives deceitfully, it would be strange if it were doubted which is to be preferred to the other. For what the intent of the one truthfully giving profits to the one deceitfully receiving, I do not see. But let us suppose someone giving also deceitfully: since both the one handing on and the one receiving act deceitfully in the very Catholic unity, is this baptism the more to be accepted, or that which is given in a mime, if there be someone who, suddenly moved, receives it faithfully—or, as far as the men themselves are concerned, does it differ greatly between one believing in a mime and one mocking in the Church, while to the integrity of the sacrament itself it makes no difference?
For if it makes no difference to the integrity of the sacrament, in the Catholic Church itself, whether some perform it deceitfully or truthfully—since both nevertheless perform the same thing—why it should make a difference outside, I do not see, when he who receives has been changed not by cloaking himself in pretense, but by religion. Or do the others, truthful, among whom it is done, avail more to confirm the sacrament than those false ones, by whom it is done and in whom it is done, avail to frustrate it? And yet, if it be afterward discovered, no one repeats it, but either that pretense is punished by excommunication, or is healed by penance.
But it is safe for us not to advance in this matter by any rashness of opinion in those things which have been begun in no regional Catholic council, and terminated in no plenary one; but rather to assert with the confidence of a secure voice that which, in the governance of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ, has been strengthened by the consent of the universal Church.
Nevertheless, if perchance someone should urge me—set in a council where a question of such matters was being debated, with no such predecessors going before whose opinions I would rather follow—to say what I myself thought, if I were disposed in the manner in which I was when I dictated these things, I would in no way doubt that those have baptism who, wheresoever and by whomsoever it was consecrated with the words of the Gospel, had received it without their own pretense and with some faith—although it would not profit them unto spiritual salvation if they lacked charity, by which they would be grafted into the Catholic Church; for 'if I have,' he says, 'faith so that I could remove mountains, but have not charity, I am nothing';
sicutiampraeteritismaiorumstatutisnondubitoetiamilloshaberebaptismum, qui, quamuisfallaciteridaccipiant, inecclesiatamenaccipiuntuelubiesseputaturecclesiaabeisinquorumsocietateidaccipitur, dequibusdictumest: exnobisexierunt.
just as, following the past statutes of our forefathers, I do not doubt that those too have baptism who, although they receive it deceitfully, nevertheless receive it in the Church—or where the Church is thought to be by those in whose fellowship it is received—of whom it is said: 'They went out from us.'
But where there would be neither any such fellowship of those believing, nor would he who received there so believe, but the whole thing were carried on in play and in mime and in jest, whether the baptism which was so given ought to be approved—I would judge that the divine judgment must be implored through the oracle of some revelation, with concordant prayer and with groanings poured out in suppliant devotion, in such wise indeed that I would humbly await those who were to give their opinions after me, lest they bring forward anything already explored and known. How much more, then, am I now to be received as having said this without prejudice to a more diligent inquiry or a greater authority! But now, as I think, it is time to conclude these books also, concerning the question of baptism, with a due ending.
Here the Lord our God shows us, through the peace-loving bishop Cyprian and those who agreed with him, how greatly catholic unity is to be cherished, so that in the matter wherein they held a different opinion — until God should reveal that too — they chose rather, though holding divergent views, to bear with one another than to sever themselves from the others by an impious schism. Here the mouths of the Donatists are utterly stopped, even if we say nothing of the Maximianists. For if the wicked contaminate the good within unity, then not even Cyprian himself has found any Church with which he might be associated. But if the wicked do not defile the good within unity, then the sacrilegious Donatist puts forward no cause for separation.
But if so many others who work the works of the flesh — the kind that those who do them shall not possess the kingdom of God — nonetheless have baptism and hand it on, then the heretics too, who are numbered among those works, have it and hand it on; and since they did not lose it by departing, they could also hand it on by remaining, yet as fruitlessly and unprofitably, such men to such, as those others, their equals, in this: that they shall not possess the kingdom of God. And just as, when they are corrected, baptism does not begin to be present where it was lacking, but to profit where it was already present, so it is also with the heretics. Hence Cyprian and those who thought as he did could not prescribe against the catholic Church, which they were unwilling to cut off. But that they held a different opinion does not alarm us, since together with them we venerate Peter also;
and because they did not withdraw from unity, we rejoice, since together with them we are built up upon the rock. (Page 152, line 10, ed. Knoell.) THE SEVEN BOOKS ON BAPTISM. Against the Donatists, who strive to defend themselves by the authority of the most blessed bishop and martyr Cyprian, I wrote seven books on baptism, in which I taught that nothing avails so well to refute the Donatists and to stop their mouths entirely — lest they defend their schism against the catholic Church — as the letters and the deed of Cyprian. But wherever in these books I have made mention of a Church 'having no spot or wrinkle,' it is not to be taken as though it already were such, but rather as one that is being prepared, that it may be such when it shall appear also in glory.
For now, on account of certain instances of ignorance and weaknesses of her members, she has occasion whereby the whole Church may daily say: Forgive us our debts. In the fourth book, when I said that suffering can take the place of baptism, I gave a not sufficiently fitting example of that thief, since it is uncertain whether he had been baptized. In the seventh book, concerning the vessels of gold and silver set in a great house, I followed the meaning of Cyprian, who took these as the good, but the wooden and earthen ones as the wicked, referring to the former what is said, 'some indeed unto honour,' and to the latter what is said, 'but others unto dishonour.'
But I rather approve what I later found or noticed in Tyconius: that in both kinds certain ones are to be understood as unto honour — not only, that is, the gold and silver ones — and again in both kinds certain ones as unto dishonour — not merely the wooden and earthen. 5. This work begins thus: 'In those books which I wrote against the letter of Parmenianus...'