Treatises & Letters 12 part 18/21

We plainly add and append, dearest brother, by common consent and authority, that even if any presbyters or deacons were previously ordained in the catholic Church and afterward stood forth perfidious and rebellious against the Church, or were promoted among heretics by pseudo-bishops and antichrists, by a profane ordination against Christ's appointment, and have attempted to offer outside, against the one and divine altar, false and sacrilegious sacrifices—these too, when they return, are to be received on this condition: that they communicate as laymen and count it enough that they are admitted to peace, who stood forth as enemies of peace; and that they ought not, upon returning, to retain among us the same weapons of ordination and honor with which they rebelled against us.

For it is fitting that the priests and ministers who serve at the altar and the sacrifices be whole and unstained, since the Lord God speaks in Leviticus and says: A man in whom there shall be a blemish and a defect shall not approach to offer gifts to God; likewise in Exodus He enjoins these same things and says: And let the priests who approach to the Lord God be sanctified, lest perchance the Lord forsake them; and again: And when they approach to minister at the holy altar, let them not bring sin upon themselves, lest they die.

But what greater fault can there be, or what defilement more deformed, than to have stood against Christ, to have scattered His Church which He purchased and founded with His own blood, to have—forgetful of evangelical peace and love—fought with the fury of hostile discord against the united and harmonious people of God? Such men, even if they themselves afterward return to the Church, cannot restore and recall with them those who, seduced by them and forestalled outside by death, have perished beyond the Church without communion and peace; whose souls, in the day of judgment, will be required at the hands of those very men who were the authors and leaders of their destruction.

And therefore it is enough that pardon be granted to such returning ones; yet perfidy ought not to be promoted in the house of faith. For what do we reserve for the good and the innocent and those who do not withdraw from the Church, if we honor those who have withdrawn from us and stood against the Church? These things, dearest brother, we have brought to your conscience, both for the common honor and out of sincere love, believing that to you also, for the truth of your religion and faith, those things will be pleasing which are alike religious and true. For the rest, we know that some are unwilling to lay aside what they once imbibed, nor easily to change their purpose, but—while preserving among colleagues the bond of peace and concord—to retain certain things peculiar to themselves which have once been adopted among them.

In which matter we neither use force upon anyone nor impose a law, since each one set over the Church has, in the administration of the Church, the free judgment of his own will, being about to render to the Lord an account of his own action. We desire, dearest brother, that you may ever be in good health. Cyprian to his brother Jubaianus, greeting. You have written to me, dearest brother, desiring that the inclination of our mind be signified to you—what seems to us concerning the baptism of heretics, who, placed outside and established beyond the Church, claim for themselves a thing that is neither of their right nor of their power; which we can reckon neither ratified nor lawful, since it is established that this is unlawful among them.

And since we have already expressed in our letters what we hold on this matter, in order to make a compendium I have sent you a copy of those same letters—both what we decreed in council when very many of us were present, and likewise what I afterward wrote back to Quintus our colleague, who inquired about the same matter. And now too, when we had come together into one—the bishops both of the province of Africa and of Numidia, seventy-one in number—we again confirmed this same thing by our sentence, determining that there is one baptism which is appointed in the catholic Church, and that through this, whoever come from the adulterous and profane water, to be washed and sanctified by the truth of the saving water, are not rebaptized but baptized by us.

Nor does it move us, dearest brother, what you have included in your letter—that the Novatianists rebaptize those whom they solicit away from us—since it in no way pertains to us what the enemies of the Church do, provided we ourselves hold the honor of our power and the firmness of reason and truth. For Novatian, after the manner of apes, which though they are not men yet imitate human things, wishes to claim for himself the authority and truth of the catholic Church, when he himself is not in the Church—nay, has moreover stood forth as a rebel and an enemy against the Church. For knowing that there is one baptism, he claims this one for himself, so as to say that the Church is with him and to make us the heretics.

But we, who hold the head and root of the one Church, know for certain and trust that nothing is permitted to him outside the Church, and that the baptism which is one is among us, where he himself had previously been baptized, when he held both the reason and the truth of the divine unity. But if Novatian thinks that those baptized in the Church must be rebaptized outside, beyond the Church, he ought to have begun with himself, so as first to be rebaptized with an outside and heretical baptism—he who, after the Church, nay even against the Church, opines that men must be baptized outside. But what kind of thing is it, that because Novatian dares to do this, we should think it ought not to be done? What then? Because Novatian also usurps the honor of the priestly chair, must we therefore renounce the chair?

And because Novatian strives, against what is right, to set up an altar and to offer sacrifices, ought we to cease from the altar and the sacrifices, lest we seem to celebrate things equal and like to his? It is utterly vain and foolish that, because Novatian outside the Church claims for himself the image of truth, the Church should relinquish the truth.

But among us it is no new or sudden thing that we judge those who come from the heretics to the Church to be baptized, since there are now many years and a long age since, under Agrippinus, a man of good memory, very many bishops, gathering into one, established this; and from then to this present day so many thousands of heretics in our provinces, converted to the Church, have not spurned nor hesitated, but rather have reasonably and gladly embraced it, that they might obtain the grace of the life-giving laver and of saving baptism. For it is not difficult for a teacher to instil true and lawful things into him who, having condemned heretical depravity and discovered ecclesiastical truth, comes for this purpose: that he may learn—and learns for this purpose: that he may live.

Let us not give heretics the amazement of our patronage and consent, and they will gladly and promptly obey the truth. Plainly, since I have found written in the letter whose copy you transmitted to me—that it is not to be inquired who baptized, since he who has been baptized could receive the remission of sins according to what he believed—I have not thought this point ought to be passed over; especially since in the same letter I have noticed that mention is also made of Marcion, so that he says those coming even from him ought not to be baptized, because they seem to have been already baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. We ought therefore to consider the faith of those who believe outside, whether according to that same faith they can obtain anything of grace.

For if the faith is one for us and for the heretics, the grace also can be one. If the Patripassians, the Anthropians, the Valentinians, the Apellesians, the Ophites, the Marcionites, and the rest of the heretical pests and swords and poisons of overthrowing the truth confess together with us the same Father, the same Son, the same Holy Spirit, the same Church—then baptism too can be one there, if the faith also is one. And lest it be tedious to run through all the heresies and to recount the follies or insanities of each one—because it does not even delight to say what one either dreads or is ashamed to know—let us for the moment, concerning Marcion alone, of whom mention was made in the letter transmitted by you to us, examine whether the reckoning of his baptism can stand.

For the Lord, after the resurrection, sending out His disciples, instructs and teaches them how they ought to baptize, saying: All power is given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore, teach all nations, dipping them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. He intimates the Trinity, by whose sacrament the nations were to be dipped. Does Marcion hold this Trinity? Does he assert the same God the Father, the Creator, whom we also do? Does he know the same Son, Christ, born of the Virgin Mary—who, being the Word, was made flesh, who bore our sins, who by dying conquered death, who first inaugurated the resurrection of the flesh through Himself, and showed His disciples that He had risen in that same flesh?

Far other is the faith among Marcion, and also among the rest of the heretics; nay, there is nothing among them but perfidy and blasphemy and contention hostile to soundness and truth. How then can he who is baptized among them seem to have obtained the remission of sins and the grace of the divine mercy through his faith, who has not had the truth of faith itself? For if, as it seems to some, one could according to his faith receive something outside, beyond the Church, assuredly he received that which he believed. But believing what is false, he could not receive what is true; rather he received, according to what he believed, things adulterous and profane. This point of profane and adulterous baptism the prophet Jeremiah subtly touches upon, saying:

Why do those who afflict me prevail? My wound is grievous; whence shall I be healed? While it is in the making, it has become to me as deceitful water that has no faithfulness. The Holy Spirit, through the prophet, makes mention of deceitful and faithless water. What is this deceitful and perfidious water? Assuredly that which counterfeits the image of baptism and, by a shadowed pretense, frustrates the grace of faith. But if according to a depraved faith someone could be baptized outside and obtain the remission of sins, then according to the same faith he could obtain the Holy Spirit also, and it is not necessary for him, on coming, that a hand be laid on him so that he may obtain the Holy Spirit and be sealed. For either he could obtain both outside by his faith, or he who had been outside received neither of them.

It is manifest, moreover, where and through whom the remission of sins can be given, namely that which is given in baptism. For the Lord first gave this power to Peter, upon whom He built the Church and from whom He established and displayed the source of unity, that whatever he should loose might be loosed. And after the resurrection too He speaks to the apostles, saying: 'As the Father has sent me, so I also send you.' When He had said this, He breathed upon them and said to them: 'Receive the Holy Spirit. If you remit the sins of any, they shall be remitted to them; if you retain the sins of any, they shall be retained.'

From this we understand that it is permitted to baptize and to give remission of sins only to those who are set as overseers in the Church and grounded upon the evangelical law and the Lord's ordinance; but outside, nothing can be either bound or loosed, where there is no one who can either bind or loose. Nor, dearest brother, do we set this forth without the authority of divine Scripture, when we say that all things have been divinely arranged by a fixed law and a proper ordinance, and that no one can usurp to himself against the bishops and priests anything that is not of his own right and power. For Korah, Dathan, and Abiram too attempted to usurp to themselves the license of sacrificing against Moses and Aaron the priest, yet they did not do unpunished what they unlawfully dared.

And the sons of Aaron, who set strange fire upon the altar, were immediately struck dead in the presence of the indignant Lord. This same punishment awaits those who falsely bring strange water into baptism, that the divine judgment may avenge and vindicate it, since heretics do against the Church what is lawful to the Church alone. But as for what some say—that to those who had been baptized in Samaria, when the apostles Peter and John came, only the hand was laid upon them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, and yet they were not rebaptized—we see, dearest brother, that this passage has no bearing at all upon the present matter.

For those who had believed in Samaria had believed with true faith, and within the Church—which is one, and to which alone it is granted to give the grace of baptism and to loose sins—had been baptized by Philip the deacon whom these same apostles had sent. And therefore, since they had already obtained legitimate and ecclesiastical baptism, they ought not to be baptized again; but only that which was lacking was supplied by Peter and John: that, prayer having been made for them and the hand laid on, the Holy Spirit might be invoked and poured out upon them.

This is what is also done among us now, that those who are baptized in the Church are presented to the rulers of the Church, and through our prayer and the laying on of hands receive the Holy Spirit and are perfected with the Lord's seal. There is no reason, therefore, dearest brother, why we should think we must yield to heretics and surrender the baptism that has been given to one and only one Church. It is the part of a good soldier to defend the camp of his commander against rebels and enemies; it is the part of a glorious general to keep the standards entrusted to him. It is written: 'The Lord your God is a jealous God.' We who have received the Spirit of God ought to have a zeal for the divine faith, by which zeal Phinehas pleased God and, deserving well of Him, by the people's perishing soothed the wrath of the indignant Lord.

Why do we count to our credit what is adulterous, alien, and hostile to the divine unity, we who know only one Christ and one Church of His? The Church, expressing the likeness of paradise, has enclosed within her walls fruit-bearing trees; and of these, whatever does not produce good fruit is cut down and cast into the fire. These trees she waters with four rivers, that is, with the four Gospels, by which she bestows the grace of baptism with a saving and heavenly flood. Can he water from the fountains of the Church who is not within the Church? Can he impart the wholesome and saving draughts of paradise to anyone who, being perverse and condemned by himself and banished beyond the fountains of paradise, has withered and failed in the drought of eternal thirst?

The Lord cries out that whoever thirsts should come and drink of the rivers of living water, which have flowed from His belly. Whither shall he who thirsts come—to the heretics, where there is no fountain or river of vital water at all, or to the Church, which is one and is founded by the Lord's voice upon the one who also received its keys? This is the one Church which holds and possesses all the power of her Spouse and Lord. In her we preside; for her honor and unity we fight; her grace and likewise her glory we defend with faithful devotion. We, by divine permission, water the thirsting people of God; we guard the boundaries of the vital fountains.

If we hold the right of our possession, if we acknowledge the sacrament of unity, why do we stand forth as betrayers of the truth, as traitors to unity? The water of the Church, faithful and saving and holy, cannot be corrupted and adulterated, just as the Church herself is incorrupt and chaste and modest. If the heretics are devoted to the Church and established within the Church, they can use both her baptism and the other saving goods. But if they are not in the Church—nay, even act against the Church—how can they baptize with the baptism of the Church?

For no small or trifling thing is granted to heretics when their baptism is accepted by us as valid, since from it begins all the origin of faith, and the saving entrance into the hope of eternal life, and the divine condescension for the purifying and quickening of God's servants. For if anyone could be baptized among the heretics, surely he could also obtain remission of sins. If he obtained remission of sins, he was sanctified; if he was sanctified, he was made a temple of God; if he was made a temple of God, I ask, of what God? If of the Creator, he could not be, for he did not believe in Him. If of Christ, neither can he become His temple who denies that Christ is God. If of the Holy Spirit—since the three are one—how can the Holy Spirit...

...the Holy Spirit be at peace with him who is an enemy either of the Son or of the Father? Accordingly, in vain do certain men, who are overcome by reason, oppose custom to us, as though custom were greater than truth, or as though in spiritual matters that ought not to be followed which has been revealed for the better by the Holy Spirit. For one who errs in simplicity can be pardoned, as the blessed apostle Paul says of himself: 'I who was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and insolent, but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly.' But after inspiration and revelation have been given, whoever persists, knowingly and wittingly, in that wherein he had erred, sins without the pardon of ignorance. For he relies upon a certain presumption and obstinacy, when he is overcome by reason.

Nor let anyone say, 'We follow what we have received from the apostles,' since the apostles handed down only one Church and one baptism, which is established only in that same Church; and we find no one, after he had been baptized among heretics, admitted by the apostles into that same baptism and received into communion, such that the apostles might seem to have approved the baptism of heretics. For as to what some allege, as though it pertained to the support of heretics that the apostle Paul said: 'Nevertheless in every way, whether by occasion or in truth, let Christ be proclaimed'—we find that this too can avail nothing toward the patronage of those who support and applaud heretics.

For Paul was not speaking in his epistle about heretics or about their baptism, such that he might be shown to have set down anything pertaining to this matter. He was speaking about brethren—either those walking disorderly and contrary to ecclesiastical discipline, or those keeping the evangelical truth out of the fear of God.

And some of them he described as having spoken the word of the Lord steadfastly and fearlessly, but others as being involved in envy and dissension; some as having kept benevolent charity toward him, but others as having harbored malevolent dissension—yet he himself bore all things patiently, provided that whether in truth or by occasion the name of Christ, which Paul was preaching, might come to the knowledge of very many, and that the new and still untrained sowing of the word might increase through the preaching of those who spoke. Furthermore, it is one thing for those who are within the Church to speak of the name of Christ; it is another thing for those who are outside and act against the Church to baptize in the name of Christ.

Wherefore let him who is an advocate for heretics not bring forward what Paul said about the brethren, but let him show whether Paul thought that anything ought to be conceded to a heretic, or whether he approved their faith and baptism, or whether he laid down that the faithless and blasphemers could receive remission of sins outside the Church. But if we consider what the apostles felt about heretics, we shall find that in all their epistles they execrate and detest the sacrilegious depravity of heretics. For since they say that their word creeps like a cancer, how can that word give remission of sins which creeps like a cancer to the ears of the hearers?

And since they say that there is no fellowship between righteousness and iniquity, no communion between light and darkness, how can either darkness illuminate or iniquity justify? And since they say that such men are not of God but are of the spirit of antichrist, how do they perform spiritual and divine things, they who are enemies of God and whose breasts the spirit of antichrist has besieged? Wherefore, if, leaving behind the errors of human contention, we return to the evangelical authority and to the apostolic tradition with sincere and religious faith, we understand that nothing is permitted, toward the grace of the Church and toward salvation, to those who—scattering and assailing the Church of Christ—are named adversaries by Christ Himself, and antichrists by His apostles.

Nor is there any reason why anyone, to circumvent the Christian truth, should set forth the name of Christ so as to say, 'Wherever and however men have been baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, they have obtained the grace of baptism'—when Christ Himself speaks and says: 'Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven,' and again warns and instructs beforehand, lest anyone be easily deceived by false prophets and false christs in His name. 'Many,' He says, 'shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive many'; and afterward He added, saying: 'But beware. Behold, I have foretold you all things.' Hence it appears that those things are not to be received and assumed at once which are boasted in the name of Christ, but those which are done in the truth of Christ.

For as to the fact that in the Gospels and in the epistles of the apostles the name of Jesus Christ is introduced for the remission of sins, this is not as though the Son alone, without the Father or against the Father, could avail anyone; but it was that, to the Jews who boasted that they had the Father, it might be shown that the Father would profit them nothing unless they believed in the Son whom He had sent—for those who knew God the Creator as Father ought also to know the Son, Christ—and that they should not flatter and applaud themselves over the Father alone without the acknowledgment of His Son, who also said: 'No one comes to the Father but by me.' But that it is the knowledge of the two which saves, He Himself makes manifest, saying:

'This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.' Since therefore, from Christ's own preaching and testimony, the Father who sent must first be known, and then afterward Christ who was sent, and there can be no hope of salvation unless the two are known together, how are those judged to have obtained remission of sins who, with God the Father not known—nay, even blasphemed—are said to be baptized among heretics in the name of Christ? For under the apostles the case of the Jews was one thing, the condition of the Gentiles another. The Jews, because they had already received the most ancient baptism of the Law and of Moses, had also to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, according to what Peter says to them in the Acts of the Apostles, saying:

'Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children and to all that are afar off, as many as the Lord our God shall call.' Peter makes mention of Jesus Christ, not as though the Father were omitted, but that the Son might be joined to the Father. Finally, when, after the resurrection, the apostles are sent by the Lord to the nations, they are commanded to baptize the Gentiles in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

How then do some say that one baptized as a Gentile—outside the Church, nay even against the Church—merely in the name of Jesus Christ, by whomever and however, can obtain remission of sins, when Christ Himself commands the nations to be baptized in the full and united Trinity? Unless indeed it be that one who denies Christ is denied by Christ, but one who denies His Father, whom Christ Himself confessed, is not denied; and one who blasphemes Him whom Christ called his Lord and his God, is rewarded by Christ and obtains remission of sins and the sanctification of baptism!

But by what power can one who denies God the Creator of Christ obtain remission of sins in baptism, when Christ received that very power, by which we are baptized and sanctified, from the same Father—the Father whom He called greater, by whom He asked to be glorified, whose will He fulfilled even to the obedience of drinking the cup and undergoing death? What else, then, is it but to wish to be a partaker with the blaspheming heretics, to defend and assert that one who in the name of Christ grievously blasphemes and sins against the Father and Lord and God of Christ can receive remission of sins?

What, next, is the nature of this—that he who denies the Son does not have the Father, while he who denies the Father is held to have the Son—when the Son Himself testifies and says: 'No one can come to me unless it be given him by the Father'? So that it is manifest that no remission of sins can be received in baptism from the Son which it is certain the Father has not given, especially when He again repeats the same and says: 'Every plant which my heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up.' But if the disciples of Christ are unwilling to learn from Christ how great a veneration and honor is owed to the paternal name, let them learn at least from earthly and worldly examples, and know that Christ did not set this down without the greatest reproach:

'The children of this world are wiser than the children of light.' In this world, if anyone hurls an insult at someone's father—if, contumelious and impudent, he tears at his honor and his good name with a slanderous mouth—the son is indignant and angry, and tries to avenge the wrong done to his injured father with all the strength he can. Do you think that Christ grants impunity to the impious and the sacrilegious and those who blaspheme against His own Father, and forgives their sins in baptism—those who, it is certain, even after being baptized, still heap up the same curses against the person of the Father, sinning with the unceasing wickedness of a blaspheming tongue? Can a Christian, can a servant of God, either conceive this in his mind, or believe it by faith, or utter it in speech? And where will the divine precepts of the Law be, which say:

'Honor your father and your mother'? Unless indeed the title of father, which is commanded to be honored in man, may be violated with impunity in God. Where will be that which Christ Himself sets down in the Gospel and says: 'He who curses father or mother, let him die the death'? Unless indeed He who orders those who curse their carnal parents to be punished and put to death, Himself gives life to those who curse the heavenly and spiritual Father and are enemies of the Church their mother. A thing accursed and to be detested is utterly asserted by certain men—that He who threatens that anyone who shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit will be guilty of eternal sin, is said by the saving baptism to sanctify those who blaspheme against the Father, God.