for they will increase much unto impiety, and their word creeps on like a canker. Of these are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have erred concerning the truth, saying that the resurrection has already taken place, and they subvert the faith of some. But the firm foundation of God stands, having this seal: The Lord knows those who are his; and let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity. But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold or of silver, but also of wood and of earthenware; and some indeed unto honor, but others unto dishonor. If therefore anyone shall cleanse himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified and useful to the Lord, prepared unto every good work.'
But what is it to cleanse oneself from such, except what he said a little before: 'Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity'? And lest anyone should think that he could perish as though in one great house together with such men, he most vigilantly foretold: 'The Lord knows those who are his'—namely those who, by departing from iniquity, cleanse themselves from the vessels made unto dishonor, lest they perish together with those whom in the great house they are compelled to tolerate. Therefore evil and criminal, carnal, animal, diabolical men suppose that they are given by their seducers what are nothing but the gifts of God, whether sacraments or certain spiritual operations concerning present salvation.
But these men do not have charity toward God, but are occupied about those by whose pride they are seduced, and they are compared to the fornicating woman whom the prophet records as saying: 'I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my garments and my linen and my oil and all things that befit me.' For thus heresies and schisms arise, when the carnal people, which is not grounded in the charity of God, says: 'I will go after my lovers'—with whom indeed, whether through the corruption of faith or through the elation of pride, it basely fornicates.
But for the sake of those who, having suffered difficulties and straits and hindrances in the vain reasonings of those by whom they are seduced, are pricked with fears and return to the way of peace and to seeking God sincerely, therefore he goes on and says: 'Therefore behold, I will hedge up her way with stakes, and I will build up a wall of thorns in her path, and she shall not find her track. And she shall pursue her lovers and shall not overtake them, and she shall seek them and shall not find them; and she shall say: I will go and return to my former husband, for then it was well with me rather than now.'
Then, lest those things which the seducers have should be thought to be intact and coming from the doctrine of truth—through which they seduce men to the falsities of their dogmas and dissensions—lest therefore the intact things which they have should be thought their own, he immediately added: 'And she did not know that it was I who gave her the grain and the wine, and I multiplied to her the oil and the money; but she made silver and gold for Baal.' For she had said above: 'I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread' and the rest—not at all understanding that these things are God's, not men's, whatever intact and legitimate things even the seducers hold.
Nor would they even arrogate these things to themselves and claim them as their own, unless they were in turn seduced by the seduced peoples, when they are believed and such honors are conferred on them, so that through them they may have the power of saying such things and claiming such things for themselves, that their error may be called truth and their crime thought justice—on account of the sacraments and Scriptures which they hold for show, not for salvation. And therefore through Ezekiel it is said to the same fornicating woman: 'And you took of the vessels of your glory, of my gold and of my silver, which I gave you, and you made for yourself male images, and you fornicated with them.'
'And you took my embroidered garment and covered your idols with it, and you set my oil and my incense before the face of your idols, and my bread which I gave you. And I fed you with fine flour and honey and oil, and you set these before the face of your idols for a sweet-smelling savor; and you did these things.' For to the images of her own phantasms, with which she delights to wallow, the carnal soul turns all the sacraments and words of the holy books.
Yet not because those images are false and are doctrines of demons in the hypocrisy of liars, are those sacraments and divine words therefore so to be dishonored as to be reckoned theirs, since the Lord says: 'of my gold and of my silver and my embroidered garment and my oil and incense and my bread' and the rest. Or, because those who err think these things belong to those by whom they are seduced, are we therefore not to recognize whose they are, since he himself says: 'And she did not know that it was I who gave her the grain and the wine, and I multiplied to her the oil and the money'?
For he did not say that she did not have these things because she was a fornicator, but she is said both to have had them, and that they were not her own nor her lovers', but God's, whose alone these things are. Therefore, although she had her fornication of her own, yet those things with which she adorned that same fornication, whether seduced or seducing, were not hers, but God's.
If these things were figured of the Jewish nation, where the scribes and Pharisees rejected the commandment of God in order to establish their own traditions, so that together with the people forsaking God they in a certain manner fornicated—yet such fornication of the people of that time, which the Lord exposed by his rebuke, did not bring it about that the sacraments were theirs which were not theirs but God's, who, speaking to the fornicating woman, says all those things are his; whence the Lord himself sent even those whom he cleansed from leprosy to the same sacraments, that they might offer sacrifice for themselves to the priests, because there had not yet succeeded for them the sacrifice which he himself afterward willed to be celebrated in the Church for all those, because in all those he himself was being foreshown:
how much more ought we, when we find the sacraments of the New Testament among any heretics or schismatics whatsoever, neither to attribute them to those men, nor to reject them as though unrecognized, but—although among a fornicating woman—to recognize the gifts of the lawful husband, and by the word of truth to amend that fornication which is proper to the shameless woman, not to blame those gifts which are proper to the compassionate Lord!
From the consideration of these and such matters, our fathers, not only before Cyprian or Agrippinus but also afterward, held a most wholesome custom: that whatever divine and legitimate thing they found intact in any heresy or schism, they should approve rather than deny; but whatever was foreign and proper to that error or dissension, they should truly reprove and heal. But those matters which remain to be considered from that letter which was written to Jubaianus must, on account of the limit of this volume, be taken up and treated from another beginning, as I think. BOOK FOUR.
The Church, when compared to paradise, shows us that men can indeed receive her baptism even outside her, but that no one can either attain or hold the salvation of blessedness outside her. For the rivers from the fountain of paradise, as Scripture testifies, flowed out abundantly even to regions beyond it. They are named expressly, and it is known to all through what lands they flow and that they lie outside paradise. Yet in Mesopotamia or in Egypt, whither those rivers reached, there is not that felicity of life which is commemorated in paradise. Thus it comes about that, although the water of paradise may be outside paradise, blessedness nevertheless is nowhere save within paradise.
So then the baptism of the Church can exist outside the Church, but the gift of the blessed life is found only within the Church, which is founded upon the rock and has received the keys of binding and loosing. She is the one who holds and possesses all the power of her Bridegroom and Lord, and by that conjugal power she can bear sons even of handmaids, who, if they be not proud, are called to a share in the inheritance, but if they be proud, they will remain outside. The more, then, since we contend for the honour and unity of the Church, let us not grant to heretics whatever of hers we recognize among them, but rather, refuting them, let us teach that what they have from that unity avails nothing for salvation unless they come to that same unity.
For the water of the Church is faithful and salutary and holy to those who use it well; but no one can use it well outside the Church. To those who use it ill, however, both outside and within, it works unto punishment and does not avail unto reward. And therefore baptism cannot be corrupted or adulterated, even though it be possessed by the corrupt and adulterous, just as the Church herself is uncorrupt and chaste and modest; and therefore to her belong not the greedy, the plunderers, the usurers, whom Cyprian himself testifies in many places of his writings to be not only outside but also within, and who nevertheless, without a change of heart, are baptized and baptize. For this too he says in a certain letter of his to the clergy concerning entreating God, transferring to himself, like holy Daniel, the sins of his people.
For among the many evils which he recounts, he also says this: those who renounce the world in words only and not in deeds, as the Apostle says of certain men: for they confess that they know God, but in their deeds they deny him. These men, then, the blessed Cyprian proves to be dwelling within the very Church, who are baptized with a heart not changed for the better, since indeed they renounce the world in words, not in deeds, whereas the Apostle Peter says: so also does baptism now save you in like manner, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God — which surely they did not have, of whom it is said: those who renounce the world in words only and not in deeds.
And yet he does this, rebuking and reproving them, that at length they may walk in the way of Christ and choose to be his friends rather than the world's. And if they had obeyed him and had begun to live rightly now, not as pseudo-Christians but as true Christians, would he command them to be baptized anew? By no means; but this a true conversion would obtain for them, that the sacrament which
— to those unchanged availed unto ruin, might, once they were changed, begin to avail unto salvation; because neither are those devoted to the Church who seem to be within and yet live against Christ, that is, act against the commandments of Christ, nor are they at all to be judged as belonging to that Church which he so cleanses by the washing of water in the word, that he might present to himself a glorious Church, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing. But if they are not in that Church, to whose members they do not belong, they are not in the Church of which it is said: my dove is one, she is the only one of her mother; for she is without spot and wrinkle. Or let him who can assert that they are members of this dove, who renounce the world in words, not in deeds. Meanwhile, as to what we perceive —
— whence I think it was said: he who observes a day, observes it unto the Lord; for God judges every day. But according to his foreknowledge, who knows whom he has predestined before the foundation of the world to be conformed to the image of his Son, many even who are openly outside and are called heretics are better than many good Catholics; for we see what they are today, but what they will be tomorrow we know not.
And to God indeed, with whom things to come are present, even what they will be already is; but we, according to what each man is at present, inquire whether those of whom Cyprian speaks in the letter I mentioned are to be reckoned today among the members of that Church which is called the one dove and the bride of Christ, without spot and wrinkle — namely, that they did not keep the way of the Lord nor observe the heavenly commandments given them unto salvation, that they did not do the will of the Lord, being intent on patrimony and gain, pursuing pride, given over to rivalry and dissension, neglecting simplicity and faith, renouncing the world in words only and not in deeds, each pleasing himself and displeasing all.
But if that dove does not recognize them among her members, and if to such men, should they remain in the same perversity, the Lord will say: I never knew you; depart from me, you who work iniquity — they seem to be in the Church, but they are not; rather, they even act against the Church. How then can they baptize with the baptism of the Church that which profits neither themselves nor those who receive it, unless they be inwardly changed by a true conversion, so that the very sacrament which did not profit those who received it, while they renounced the world in words, not in deeds, begins to profit when they too have begun to renounce it in deeds? So likewise those whose separation is open, since among the members of that dove neither these nor those are today, but perhaps some of them will be in the future.
We therefore do not accept the baptism of heretics, in that we do not baptize after them; but that which we recognize to be Christ's, even in evil men, whether openly outside or secretly separated within, we receive with due veneration, once those men are corrected in the matter wherein they went astray. But just as I seem to be pressed when it is said to me: 'Does a heretic then remit sins?', so I too press when I say: 'Does he then who keeps not the heavenly commandments — the greedy, the plunderer, the usurer, the envious, renouncing the world in words, not in deeds — remit sins?' If it be by the power of God's sacrament, then as the one does, so does the other;
but if by his own merit, then neither the one nor the other; for that sacrament is recognized to be Christ's even in evil men, but in the body of the one dove — uncorrupt, holy, and modest, having no spot and wrinkle — neither the one nor the other is found. And just as baptism does not profit the recipient who renounces the world in words, not in deeds, so it does not profit him who is baptized in heresy or in schism; but to each, when corrected, that begins to profit which before did not profit, yet was nevertheless present in him. He who is baptized in heresy, therefore, does not become a temple of God. Is he then, for that reason, to be held as unbaptized? For neither does the greedy man baptized within become a temple of God, if he has not withdrawn from his greed. For they who become the temple of God
they surely possess the kingdom of God. But the Apostle says, among many things: neither the greedy nor the rapacious shall possess the kingdom of God. Indeed, in another place the same Apostle compares greed to the service of idols: and greed, he says, which is the service of idols. This meaning the same Cyprian so amplified in his letter to Antonianus, that he did not hesitate to compare the sin of those who, in time of persecution, had professed by written declarations that they would offer incense, to greed. So then he who is baptized in heresy in the name of the Holy Trinity does not become a temple of God, if he has not withdrawn from heresy, just as neither does he who is baptized in greed in the same name become a temple of God, if he does not withdraw from greed, which is the service of idols.
For this too the same Apostle says: what agreement has the temple of God with idols? Let there be no inquiry, therefore, on our part as to of what god he becomes the temple, whom we say does not become the temple of God. Nor yet on that account is he not baptized, nor does his error, unclean as it is, bring it about that the holy sacrament is not holy, which he received consecrated by the words of the Gospel; just as neither can that man's greed, which is the service of idols and a great uncleanness, bring it about that the baptism he receives is not holy, even if he be baptized by another equally greedy man through the same evangelical words. 'Accordingly,' he says, 'in vain do certain men, who are overcome by reason, object 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.' This is plainly true, that reason and truth are to be preferred to custom. But when truth supports custom, nothing ought to be held more firmly. Then he follows on and says: 'For pardon can be granted,' he says, 'to one who errs in simplicity, as the Apostle Paul says of himself: who was first a blasphemer and a persecutor and injurious, but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly. But after inspiration and revelation have been given, he who perseveres, wittingly and knowingly, in that wherein he had erred, sins without the pardon of ignorance. For he relies on a certain presumption and obstinacy, when he is overcome by reason.' This is most true, that the sin of him who sins knowingly is far graver than of him who sins unknowingly.
And therefore the holy man Cyprian, not only learned but also teachable — which, in the praise of a bishop whom the Apostle designates, he himself so understood, that he said this too was to be esteemed in a bishop, that he should not only teach knowingly but also learn patiently — I doubt not that, if he had treated this question, long and much debated in the Church, together with those most holy and most learned men through whom it afterward came to pass that the ancient custom was confirmed even by a plenary council, he would without hesitation have shown not only how learned he was in those things which he had perceived with most firm truth, but also how teachable in those things which he had less noted.
And yet, since it is most manifest that one who sins knowingly sins much more gravely than one who sins in ignorance, I could wish someone would tell me: if one man should fall into heresy, not knowing how great an evil it is, and another should not withdraw from greed, knowing how great an evil it is, which of them is the worse. I can also put it thus: if one man, not knowing, should rush into heresy, and another, knowing, should not withdraw from idolatry — since the Apostle also says: greed, which is the service of idols, and Cyprian himself understood the same sentence in no other way, as I said, writing to Antonianus where he says:
'Nor let the new heretics flatter themselves in this, that they say they do not communicate with idolaters, when among them there are both adulterers and defrauders, who are held guilty of the crime of idolatry. For this know and understand, that every fornicator or unclean person or defrauder, who is an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God; and again: mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth: fornication, uncleanness, and evil concupiscence, and greed, which is the service of idols.' I ask, then, which sins more gravely: he who has fallen into heresy unknowingly, or he who has not withdrawn from greed, that is, from idolatry, knowingly.
According indeed to that rule by which the sins of the knowing are preferred to the sins of ignorance, the greedy man, with his knowledge, prevails in wickedness. But lest perhaps the very magnitude of the crime in heresy do what the admission of a knowing man does in greed, let the unknowing heretic be made equal to the knowing greedy man — although the testimony which he himself adduced from the Apostle does not seem to show this. For what do we detest in heretics but blasphemies? But wishing to show that the sins of the ignorant pertain to the ease of pardon, he adduced from the Apostle where he says: who was first a blasphemer and a persecutor and injurious, but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly.
But if, as I said, both sins can be weighed equally — the blasphemy of the ignorant and the idolatry of the knowing — and by the same sentence let both be judged: he who, in seeking Christ, fell into a plausible discourse of falsehood, and he who, knowingly, resists Christ speaking through the Apostle: since every fornicator or unclean person or greedy man, which is the service of idols, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Why, in the former, are baptism and the evangelical words disapproved, but in the latter approved, when each is found alien to the members of that dove? Or is it because the former, being openly a wrangler outside, must not be admitted, while the latter, a crafty flatterer within, must not be cast out? But as to what he says: nor let anyone say:
'What we received from the apostles, this we follow,' seeing that the apostles handed down but one Church and one baptism, which is established only in that same Church — this does not so much move me to dare to reject the baptism of Christ even when found among heretics (just as, when I find the Gospel itself among them, I must approve it, though I detest their error), as it reminds me that there were certain men even in the times of holy Cyprian who said that the custom against which the African councils were being held — of which he too said a little before: 'in vain do certain men, who are overcome by reason, oppose custom to us' — had been handed down by the apostles.
Nor do I find why this custom, which after Cyprian was confirmed even by a plenary council of the whole world, was so robust — and so before his time — that the same Cyprian found it thus; so that, when a man endowed with such great knowledge sought authority for changing it, which he might follow, he could find only the council of Agrippinus, held some few years before him, in Africa alone.
And since he saw that this did not suffice him against the usage of the whole world, he seized upon these arguments, which we — now strengthened by the antiquity of that very custom and by the authority of the subsequent plenary council, and considering them more diligently — find to be probable rather than true, though to him they seemed true, laboring as he was in a most obscure question and wavering about the remission of sins: whether it could fail to take place in the baptism of Christ, and whether it could take place among heretics. Wherein, if something was less revealed to him, it was that the greatness of his charity, by which he did not forsake unity, might be proved;
not on that account ought anyone dare to set himself before such great supports of his, such merits of virtues, and so great an abundance of graces, merely because, admonished by the firmness of a universal council, he sees something which that man did not see, since the Church did not yet have a plenary council on this matter — just as no one is so insane as to set himself before the merits of the apostle Peter, because, instructed by the letters of the apostle Paul and strengthened now by the very custom of the Church, he does not compel the Gentiles to judaize, which Peter had once compelled. We do not, therefore, find that anyone was admitted by the apostles in the same baptism, and communicated, when he had been baptized among heretics.
But neither do we find that anyone coming from heretics, who had been baptized among them, was baptized anew by the apostles. But that custom, which even then men, looking upward, did not see instituted by later authorities, is rightly believed to have been handed down by the apostles; and there are many such things which it would be long to recount. Wherefore, if they said something to the purpose, to whom Cyprian, wishing to persuade them of what seemed good to him, said: 'nor let anyone say: what we received from the apostles, this we follow' — how much more robustly do we now say: 'what the custom of the Church has always held, and what this disputation could not dissuade, and what a plenary council confirmed, this we follow'!
To this it is added that, when the arguments from both sides of the disputation and the testimonies of the Scriptures have been well examined, it can also be said: 'what truth has declared, this we follow.' For in truth, as to that which certain men objected to Cyprian's disputations — that the Apostle says: nevertheless, in every way, whether by occasion or by truth, let Christ be preached — Cyprian rightly refuted it, showing that it does not pertain to the cause of heretics, since the Apostle was speaking of those who, with malevolent envy, dwelt within, seeking their own. They indeed preached Christ, as the truth stands by which we believe in Christ, but not with that intent with which he was preached by the good evangelists, the sons of that dove.
'For neither of heretics,' he says, 'nor of their baptism was Paul speaking in his letter, so as to be shown to have set down anything that pertains to this matter. He was speaking of brethren, whether walking disorderly and against ecclesiastical discipline, or keeping the evangelical truth out of the fear of God.'
And some of them he described as speaking the word of God steadfastly and fearlessly, but others as engaged in envy and dissension; some as keeping benevolent charity toward himself, but others as harboring malevolent dissension; yet he himself patiently endured all things, provided only that, whether in truth or by occasion, the name of Christ which Paul was preaching might come to the notice of very many, and that the new and still raw sowing of the word might grow frequent through the preaching of those who spoke. Furthermore, it is one thing for those who are within the Church to speak in the name of Christ, another for those who are outside and act against the Church to baptize in the name of Christ.
These words of Cyprian seem to admonish us to distinguish between those who are evil outside and those who are evil within. And those of whom the Apostle says that they preached the Gospel not chastely but through envy, he says were within — and he says truly. Yet this I think I say not rashly: if outside no one can have anything that is Christ's, then neither can anyone within have anything that is the devil's. For if that enclosed garden could have the thorns of the devil, why could not the fountain of Christ also flow forth outside the garden? But if it could not, whence, among those who were within even in the times of the apostle Paul himself, came so great an evil of envy and malevolent dissension? For these are the words of Cyprian.
Or is envy and malevolent dissension perhaps a small evil? How then were these men in unity, who were not in peace? For the voice was not mine, nor of any man, but of the Lord himself; nor did it sound through men, but through angels, at Christ's birth: glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will. Which surely would not have sounded from the angelic mouth at Christ's birth on earth, unless God willed this to be understood: that they are in the unity of Christ's body who are in the peace of Christ, and that they are in the peace of Christ who are of good will. Further, as in benevolence there is good will, so in malevolence there is evil will. And now envy itself, which cannot but be malevolent — how great an evil it is! Let us not seek other witnesses.