On Baptism, against the Donatists 3.21–4.6

As for the statement that the Holy Spirit is given by the laying on of hands only in the Catholic Church, our forefathers no doubt wished this to be understood of what the apostle says: “Because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” For this is the love which those who are cut off from the communion of the Catholic Church do not have; and so, even if they speak with the tongues of men and of angels, if they know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if they have all prophecy and all faith so that they move mountains, and distribute all they have to the poor and hand over their body to be burned, it profits them nothing. But he does not have the love of God who does not love the unity of the church; and so it is rightly understood to be said that the Holy Spirit is not received except in the Catholic Church. For the Holy Spirit is not now given by the laying on of hands with temporal and perceptible miracles bearing witness, as he was given before to commend the new faith and to extend the church’s beginnings. For who now expects that those on whom hands are laid to receive the Holy Spirit will suddenly begin to speak in tongues? But invisibly and secretly divine love is understood to be breathed into their hearts because of the bond of peace, so that they can say, “Because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” But there are many workings of the Holy Spirit; when the same apostle had listed them in a certain place, as far as he thought sufficient, he concluded thus: “But all these one and the same Spirit works, distributing to each his own as he wills.” Since then the sacrament is one thing, which even Simon Magus could have; the working of the Spirit is another, which commonly takes place even in wicked men, as Saul had prophecy; and another is that working of the same Spirit which only the good can have, such as “the end of the commandment, love from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned”: whatever heretics and schismatics may receive, the love that covers a multitude of sins is the proper gift of Catholic unity and peace; and not of it in all its members, because not all belong to it, as we shall see in its place. Yet that love cannot exist apart from it, the love without which the rest, even if they can be acknowledged and approved, cannot profit and set free. But the laying on of hands, unlike baptism, can be repeated. For what else is it but prayer over a man?

For since the Lord, as a type of unity, gave Peter the power that whatever he loosed on earth should be loosed, it is plain that that unity is also called the one perfect dove. Do all the greedy, then, over whom the same Cyprian groaned deeply within the Catholic Church itself, belong to that same dove? For robbers, I think, can be called not doves but hawks. How then did they baptize, who “seized estates by treacherous frauds” and “increased their gains by multiplying interest,” if only that dove, that is, that unity which cannot be understood except in the good, simple, chaste, and perfect, baptizes? Or perhaps, through the prayers of the holy spiritual men who are in the church, as through the constant moaning of the dove, the great sacrament is administered, and a hidden dispensation of God’s mercy, so that the sins even of those are loosed who are baptized not by the dove but by the hawk, if they come to that sacrament with the peace of Catholic unity? But if this is so, why then are not the sins of anyone who comes from heresy or schism to Catholic peace loosed through their prayers? The integrity of the sacrament is recognized everywhere; but it will not avail for that irrevocable forgiveness of sins outside the unity of the church, nor will the prayers of the saints, that is, the moaning of that one dove, be able to help one placed in heresy or schism; just as they cannot help one placed within, if by a most wicked life he holds the debts of his sins against himself, not only if he is baptized by the hawk, but even if he is baptized by the devout ministry of the dove herself.

“As the Father has sent me,” he says, “I also send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you remit anyone’s sins, they will be remitted to him; if you retain anyone’s, they will be retained.” If then they bore the person of the church, and this was said to them as if it were said to the church itself, the peace of the church forgives sins and estrangement from the church’s peace retains sins, not according to the will of men but according to the will of God and the prayers of the holy spiritual men, who judge all things but are themselves judged by no one. For the rock retains, the rock forgives; the dove retains, the dove forgives; unity retains, unity forgives. But the peace of this unity is only in the good, whether already spiritual or advancing toward spiritual things by harmonious obedience; it is not in the wicked, whether they make an uproar outside or are tolerated within with groaning and baptize and are baptized. But just as those who are tolerated within with groaning, though they do not belong to the same unity of the dove and to that glorious church that has no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, yet, if they are corrected and confess that they came to baptism in great wickedness, are not rebaptized, but begin to belong to the dove, through whose groaning their sins are loosed, which were retained while they were estranged from its peace; so too those who are more openly outside, if they have received the same sacraments, when they come corrected to the unity of the church are set free not by repeated baptism but by the same law of love and bond of unity. For if “only the leaders in the church, grounded on the law of the gospel and the Lord’s ordination, may baptize,” were those who seized estates by treacherous frauds and increased their gains by multiplying interest such men? For I think that those are grounded on the Lord’s ordination to whom the apostle, giving a pattern, says: “not greedy, not seeking base gain.” Yet such men baptized in Cyprian’s own times, men whom he confesses with great groaning to have been his fellow bishops, and whom he bears with great reward for his endurance. Yet they did not give the forgiveness of sins, which is given through the prayers of the saints, that is, through the moaning of the dove, whoever baptizes, if those to whom it is given belong to its peace. For the Lord would not have said to robbers and usurers, “If you forgive anyone’s sins they will be forgiven him; if you retain anyone’s, they will be retained.” Outside indeed “nothing can be either bound or loosed, where there is no one who can either bind or loose”; but he is loosed who has made peace with the dove, and he is bound who does not have peace with the dove, whether he is openly outside or seems to be within.

As for Dathan and Abiram, who tried to usurp for themselves the right to sacrifice against the unity of God’s people, and the sons of Aaron, who put strange fire on the altar, we know that they did not go unpunished. Nor do we say that such crimes remain unpunished unless such men correct themselves, if the patience of God, leading to repentance, grants them time for correction.

Those, however, who say that baptism must not be repeated because only a hand was laid on those whom Philip the deacon had baptized say nothing to the point, and God forbid that we should use such arguments when seeking the truth. So we do not yield the more to heretics if we say that what they have of Christ’s church is not theirs, and if we will not, because of the crimes of deserters, refuse to recognize the standards of our emperor; rather, since the Lord our God is a jealous God, whatever of his we recognize in anyone, let us in no way grant him that he should think it his own. Certainly God himself, being jealous, reproaches the woman who committed fornication against him, as a figure of the transgressing people, and says that she gave what was his to her lovers, and received back from them what was not theirs but his. Between the adulterous woman and her adulterous lovers, God, as a jealous and angry husband, still recognizes his own gifts. And shall we say that baptism consecrated by the words of the gospel belongs to heretics, and, moved by their deeds, wish to attribute to them even what is God’s, as if they could defile it, or make what is God’s their own because they themselves would not be God’s?

Who is that adulterous woman whom the prophet Hosea describes, who said, “I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my clothes and my linen and all that is fitting for me”? It may indeed be understood of the transgressing nation of the Jews. But whom else do false Christians imitate (for that is what all heretics and schismatics are) but false Israelites? For there were also true Israelites, as the Lord himself bears witness to Nathanael, saying, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile.” And who are true Christians but those of whom the same Lord says, “He who loves me keeps my commandments”? And what is it to keep his commandments but to persist in love? Hence he also says, “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another,” and again, “By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” And who doubts that this was said not only to those who then heard the words of one present in the flesh, but also to those who now learn through the gospel the words of one seated in heaven? For he came not to abolish the law but to fulfil it. And the fullness of the law is love, in which Cyprian was so strong that, though he thought differently about baptism, he still did not desert unity, and was a fruitful branch rooted in the Lord’s vine, which the heavenly husbandman pruned with the knife of his suffering so that it might bear more fruit. But the enemies of this brotherly love, whether they are openly outside or seem to be within, are false Christians and antichrists. For when they find occasions they go outside, as it is written: “He who wishes to depart from his friends seeks occasions.” But even if occasions are lacking, while they seem to be within, they are separated from that invisible structure of love. Hence John says: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us.” He does not say that they became strangers by going out, but declared that they went out because they were strangers. The apostle also speaks of some who had strayed from the truth and were overturning the faith of some, whose word was spreading like a cancer; and when he says they are to be avoided, he yet indicates that they were in one great house, but as vessels for dishonour, I believe because they had not yet gone outside. Or if they had already gone out, how does he say they were in the same great house with vessels of honour, unless perhaps because of the sacraments themselves, which have not been changed even in the separated conventicles of heretics, he says that all belong to one great house, but with different deserts, some for honour, some for dishonour? For so he speaks, writing to Timothy: “But avoid profane novelties of words; for they will advance greatly in ungodliness, and their word spreads like a cancer. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have strayed from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already taken place, and they overturn the faith of some. But God’s firm foundation stands, having this seal: The Lord knows those who are his, and let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity. Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and of earthenware, and some for honour, some for dishonour. If anyone, then, cleanses himself from such things, he will be a vessel for honour, sanctified, useful to the Lord, prepared for every good work.” And what is it to cleanse oneself from such things but what he said a little before: “Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity”? And lest anyone think he could perish with such men, as being in one great house, he most watchfully said beforehand, “The Lord knows those who are his,” namely those who by departing from iniquity cleanse themselves from the vessels made for dishonour, so as not to perish with those whom they are forced to tolerate in the great house.

So the wicked and criminal, carnal, natural, and devilish, think that things are given them by their seducers which are nothing but gifts of God, whether sacraments or some spiritual workings concerning present salvation. But these men do not have love for God, but are taken up with those by whose pride they are seduced; and they are compared to the woman committing fornication whom the prophet records as saying, “I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my clothes and my linen and my oil and all that is fitting for me.” For so heresies and schisms arise, when the carnal people that is not founded in the love of God says, “I will go after my lovers,” with whom it shamefully commits fornication, whether by corruption of faith or by the elation of pride. But for the sake of those who, having suffered difficulties and straits and obstacles in the vain reasonings of those who seduce them, are pierced with fears and return to the way of peace and to seeking God sincerely, he goes on to say: “Therefore, behold, I will fence her way with stakes and build thorns in her way, and she will not find her path. And she will pursue her lovers but not overtake them, and she will seek them and not find them, and she will say: I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better with me then than now.” Then, lest the things which the seducers have entire, and which come from the teaching of truth, through which they seduce to the falsehoods of their dogmas and dissensions, lest those entire things, I say, be thought theirs, he at once added: “And she did not know that it was I who gave her the grain and the wine and the oil, and multiplied silver for her. But she made gold and silver things for Baal.” For he had said above, “I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread,” and so on, certainly not understanding that whatever the seducers too hold entire and lawful is God’s, not men’s. Nor would they claim these things for themselves and assert them as their own, were they not in turn seduced by the seduced peoples, when they are believed and given such honours that through them they have the power to say such things and claim such things for themselves, so that their error is called truth and their crime is thought righteousness, because of the sacraments and scriptures which they hold for show, not for salvation. And so through Ezekiel too it is said to the same harlot: “And you took some of the vessels of your glory, of my gold and my silver which I gave you, and made yourself male images, and committed fornication with them. And you took my many-coloured garment and covered your idols, and set my oil and my incense before your idols, and my bread which I gave you. With fine flour and honey and oil I fed you, and you set these before your idols for a pleasing odour; and you did all this.” For the carnal soul turns all the sacraments and words of the holy books into the images of its phantasms, with which it delights to wallow. Yet, though those images are false and are “doctrines of demons in the hypocrisy of liars,” the sacraments and divine oracles are not therefore to be so dishonoured as to be counted theirs, since the Lord says, “of my gold and my silver,” and “my many-coloured garment,” and “my oil and incense and my bread,” and so on. Or, because those who err think these things belong to those by whom they are seduced, must we therefore not recognize whose they are, when he himself says, “And she did not know that it was I who gave her the grain and the wine and the oil, and multiplied silver for her”? For he did not say that she did not have these things because she was a harlot; she is said to have had them, and not as her own nor her lovers’, but God’s, whose alone they are. Although, then, she had her own fornication, the things with which she adorned that 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 God’s commandment in order to establish their own traditions, so that together with a people abandoning God they committed fornication in a certain way; and yet such fornication among the people of that time, which the Lord exposed by rebuking it, did not make the sacraments theirs, which were not theirs but God’s, who says, speaking to the harlot, that all those things are his (which is why the Lord himself sent even those he cleansed from leprosy to those same sacraments, to offer sacrifice for themselves to the priests, because there had not yet succeeded to them the sacrifice which he himself afterward willed to be celebrated in the church in place of all those, since in all those he himself was foretold): how much more ought we, finding the sacraments of the new covenant among any heretics or schismatics whatever, not attribute them to those men, nor reject them as if unrecognized, but, though in the house of a harlot, recognize the gifts of the lawful husband, and with the word of truth amend that fornication which belongs to the unchaste woman, not blame those gifts which belong to the merciful Lord!

From considering these and such things, our fathers, not only before Cyprian or Agrippinus but also afterward, held the most wholesome custom: whatever divine and lawful thing they found entire in any heresy or schism, they approved rather than denied; but whatever was foreign and proper to that error or dissension, they truly rebuked and healed. But the remaining points to be considered from the letter written to Jubaianus must, because of the length of this volume, be taken up and treated, I think, from another beginning.

The church, compared with paradise, shows us that men can indeed receive its baptism even outside, but that no one either obtains or keeps the salvation of blessedness outside it. For the rivers from the fountain of paradise, as Scripture testifies, flowed abundantly even outside. For they are named, and the lands through which they flow are mentioned, and all know that these lie outside paradise. Yet in Mesopotamia or in Egypt, where those rivers came, there is not the happiness of life that is recorded in paradise. So it happens that, though the water of paradise is outside paradise, blessedness is only within paradise. So then the church’s baptism can be outside the church, but the gift of the blessed life is found only within the church, which is also founded on the rock, which has received the keys of binding and loosing. This is the one that holds and possesses all the power of her bridegroom and Lord, through which marital power she can bear sons even from handmaids; and these, if they are not proud, are called to the lot of the inheritance, but if they are proud, they will remain outside.

All the more, then, since we fight for the honour and unity of the church, let us not attribute to heretics whatever of the church’s we recognize among them; but let us teach them by rebuking them that what they have from unity does not avail for salvation unless they come to that same unity. For the water of the church is faithful and saving and holy for those who use it well, but no one can use it well outside the church. For those who use it badly, both outside and inside, it is borne to their punishment, not to their reward. And so baptism cannot be corrupted and adulterated, even if it is possessed by the corrupt and adulterous, just as the church itself is incorrupt and chaste and modest; and so the greedy, robbers, and usurers do not belong to it, though Cyprian himself testifies in many passages of his letters that they are not only outside but also within; and yet they are baptized and baptize without a changed heart.

For he says this too in a letter of his to the clergy about entreating God, taking on himself, like holy Daniel, the sins of his people. For among the many evils he lists he also says this: “renouncing the world in words only and not in deeds,” as the apostle says of some: “For they profess that they know God, but in deeds they deny him.” So blessed Cyprian charges that these men are found within the church itself, who are baptized without their heart changed for the better, since they renounce the world in words, not in deeds; while the apostle Peter says, “So baptism saves you too in a like form, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the appeal of a good conscience to God,” which those certainly did not have of whom it is said, “renouncing the world in words only and not in deeds.” And yet he does this rebuking and reproving them, so that they may at some time walk in the way of Christ and prefer to be his friends rather than the world’s.

If they had obeyed him and had begun now to live rightly, not as false Christians but as true Christians, would he have ordered them to be baptized again? Certainly not; but true conversion would have granted them this: that the sacrament, which while they were unchanged availed for ruin, would begin, once they were changed, to avail for salvation. For neither are those devoted to the church who seem to be within and live against Christ, that is, act against Christ’s commandments; nor are they at all to be judged to belong to that church which he himself so cleanses with the washing of water in the word, as to present to himself a glorious church, not having 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 anyone who can assert that those who renounce the world in words, not deeds, are members of this dove. Meanwhile, as to what we see: hence, I think, it was said, “He who regards the day regards it to the Lord”; for God judges every day. But according to the foreknowledge of him who knows whom he 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, we do not know what they will be tomorrow. And to God, with whom things to come are present, even what they will be they already are; but we ask, according to what each man is at present, whether those are today to be counted among the members of that church which is called the only dove and the bride of Christ without spot or wrinkle, of whom Cyprian says, in the letter I have mentioned, that they “do not keep the way of the Lord nor observe the heavenly commands given us for salvation,” that they do not do the Lord’s will, “being eager for property and gain, pursuing pride, given over to rivalry and dissension, careless of simplicity and faith, renouncing the world in words only and not in deeds, each pleasing himself and displeasing everyone.” But if that dove does not recognize them among her members, and the Lord, if they remain in the same perversity, will say to such men, “I do not know you; depart from me, you who work iniquity,” they seem to be in the church but are not; indeed they act against the church. How then can they baptize with the church’s baptism, which profits neither themselves nor those who receive it, unless they are changed within by true conversion, so that the sacrament itself, which did not profit them when they received it, while they renounced the world in words and not in deeds, may begin to profit them when they begin to renounce it in deeds too? So it is also with those whose separation is open; for neither these nor those are members of that dove today, but some of them perhaps will be.

So we do not accept the baptism of heretics when we do not baptize after them; but what we recognize to be Christ’s, even in wicked men, whether openly separated outside or secretly separated within, we receive with due reverence, once they have been corrected in that in which they went astray. And just as I seem to be pressed when it is said to me, “Then a heretic forgives sins?”, so I too press when I say, “Then does one who does not keep the heavenly commandments, greedy, a robber, a usurer, envious, renouncing the world in words, not in deeds, forgive sins?” If by the power of God’s sacrament, then the one as well as the other; if by his own merit, neither the one nor the other. For that sacrament is recognized as Christ’s even in wicked men, but in the body of the only dove, incorrupt, holy, chaste, without spot and wrinkle, neither the one nor the other is found. And just as baptism does not profit the one who receives it while renouncing the world in words, not in deeds, so it does not profit one who is baptized in heresy or schism; but for both, when corrected, what did not profit before, yet was present, begins to profit.

So one baptized in heresy does not become a temple of God. Is he therefore to be held as unbaptized? For neither does a greedy man baptized within become a temple of God, if he does not depart from greed. For those who become a temple of God certainly possess the kingdom of God; but the apostle says, among many things, “Neither the greedy nor robbers will possess the kingdom of God.” For in another place the same apostle compares greed with the service of idols: “And greed,” he says, “which is the service of idols.” This sense the same Cyprian so amplified in his letter to Antonianus that he did not hesitate to compare greed with the sin of those who in time of persecution had declared by certificates that they would offer incense. So then one baptized in heresy in the name of the Holy Trinity does not become a temple of God, if he does not depart from heresy, just as one baptized in greed in the same name does not become a temple of God, if he does not depart from greed, which is the service of idols. For the same apostle also says this: “What agreement has the temple of God with idols?” So let no one ask us of what god he becomes the temple, who we say does not become the temple of God. Yet he is not therefore unbaptized, nor does his unclean error cause the sacrament he received, consecrated with the words of the gospel, not to be holy; just as the other’s greed, which is the service of idols and great uncleanness, cannot cause the baptism he receives not to be holy, even if he is baptized by another equally greedy man with the same words of the gospel.