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Ethical
Here, then, those miscreants[8678] provoke questions. And so they say, “Baptism is not necessary for them to whom faith is sufficient; for withal, Abraham pleased God by a sacrament of no water, but of faith.” But in all cases it is the later things which have a conclusive force, and the subsequent which prevail over the antecedent. Grant that, in days gone by, there was salvation by means of bare faith, before the passion and resurrection of the Lord. But now that faith has been enlarged, and is become a faith which believes in His nativity, passion, and resurrection, there has been an amplification added to the sacrament,[8679] viz., the sealing act of baptism; the clothing, in some sense, of the faith which before was bare, and which cannot exist now without its proper law. For the law of baptizing has been imposed, and the formula prescribed: “Go,” He saith, “teach the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”[8680] The comparison with this law of that definition, “Unless a man have been reborn of water and Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of the heavens,”[8681] has tied faith to the necessity of baptism. Accordingly, all thereafter[8682] who became believers used to be baptized. Then it was, too,[8683] that Paul, when he believed, was baptized; and this is the meaning of the precept which the Lord had given him when smitten with the plague of loss of sight, saying, “Arise, and enter Damascus; there shall be demonstrated to thee what thou oughtest to do,” to wit—be baptized, which was the only thing lacking to him. That point excepted, he had sufficiently learnt and believed “the Nazarene” to be “the Lord, the Son of God.”[8684]
But they roll back an objection from that apostle himself, in that he said, “For Christ sent me not to baptize;”[8685] as if by this argument baptism were done away! For if so, why did he baptize Gaius, and Crispus, and the house of Stephanas?[8686] However, even if Christ had not sent him to baptize, yet He had given other apostles the precept to baptize. But these words were written to the Corinthians in regard of the circumstances of that particular time; seeing that schisms and dissensions were agitated among them, while one attributes everything to Paul, another to Apollos.[8687] For which reason the “peace-making”[8688] apostle, for fear he should seem to claim all gifts for himself, says that he had been sent “not to baptize, but to preach.” For preaching is the prior thing, baptizing the posterior. Therefore the preaching came first: but I think baptizing withal was lawful to him to whom preaching was.
I know not whether any further point is mooted to bring baptism into controversy. Permit me to call to mind what I have omitted above, lest I seem to break off the train of impending thoughts in the middle. There is to us one, and but one, baptism; as well according to the Lord’s gospel[8689] as according to the apostle’s letters,[8690] inasmuch as he says, “One God, and one baptism, and one church in the heavens.”[8691] But it must be admitted that the question, “What rules are to be observed with regard to heretics?” is worthy of being treated. For it is to us[8692] that that assertion[8693] refers. Heretics, however, have no fellowship in our discipline, whom the mere fact of their excommunication[8694] testifies to be outsiders. I am not bound to recognize in them a thing which is enjoined on me, because they and we have not the same God, nor one—that is, the same—Christ. And therefore their baptism is not one with ours either, because it is not the same; a baptism which, since they have it not duly, doubtless they have not at all; nor is that capable of being counted which is not had.[8695] Thus they cannot receive it either, because they have it not. But this point has already received a fuller discussion from us in Greek. We enter, then, the font[8696] once: once are sins washed away, because they ought never to be repeated. But the Jewish Israel bathes daily,[8697] because he is daily being defiled: and, for fear that defilement should be practised among us also, therefore was the definition touching the one bathing[8698] made. Happy water, which once washes away; which does not mock sinners (with vain hopes); which does not, by being infected with the repetition of impurities, again defile them whom it has washed!
We have indeed, likewise, a second font,[8699] (itself withal one with the former,) of blood, to wit; concerning which the Lord said, “I have to be baptized with a baptism,”[8700] when He had been baptized already. For He had come “by means of water and blood,”[8701] just as John has written; that He might be baptized by the water, glorified by the blood; to make us, in like manner, called by water, chosen[8702] by blood. These two baptisms He sent out from the wound in His pierced side,[8703] in order that they who believed in His blood might be bathed with the water; they who had been bathed in the water might likewise drink the blood.[8704] This is the baptism which both stands in lieu of the fontal bathing[8705] when that has not been received, and restores it when lost.
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