On Baptism, against the Donatists 4.7–4.19

“So it is in vain,” he says, “that some who are defeated by reason set custom against us, as if custom were greater than truth, or as if in spiritual matters one ought not to follow what has been revealed for the better by the Holy Spirit.” This is plainly true, since reason and truth must be put before custom. But when truth supports custom, nothing ought to be held more firmly. Then he goes on to say: “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 acted in ignorance.’ But after inspiration and revelation have come, whoever persists knowingly and deliberately in what he had erred in sins without the excuse of ignorance. For he relies on a kind of presumption and obstinacy, though he is overcome by reason.” It is most true that the sin of one who sins knowingly is far graver than that of one who sins unknowingly. And so the holy man Cyprian, not only learned but also teachable (for he so understood this point in the apostle’s praise of a bishop as to say that this too is to be loved in a bishop, that he not only teaches with knowledge but also learns with patience), I do not doubt that if he had discussed this question, long and much debated in the church, with the most holy and learned men through whom it afterward came about that that ancient custom was confirmed even by a plenary council, he would without hesitation have shown not only how learned he was in what he had grasped with the firmest truth, but also how teachable in what he had less noticed. And yet, though it is most manifest that one who knows sins far more gravely than one who does not, I wish someone would tell me, if one man falls into heresy not knowing how great an evil it is, and another does not depart from greed knowing how great an evil it is, which of them is worse. I can also put it this way: if one man not knowing rushes into heresy, and another knowing does not depart from idolatry (since the apostle too 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 hold communion with idolaters, since among them there are both adulterers and defrauders who are held guilty of the crime of idolatry. ‘For know this, understanding that every sexually immoral or unclean person or defrauder, which is idolatry, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God’”; and again: “Put to death, therefore, your members which are on earth, sexual immorality, uncleanness, and evil desire and greed, which is the service of idols”), I ask, then, who sins more gravely, one who has fallen into heresy unknowingly, or one who knowingly has not departed from greed, that is, from idolatry? By the rule by which the sins of the knowing are ranked above sins of ignorance, the greedy man with knowledge prevails in crime. But lest perhaps the very magnitude of the crime of heresy does what knowing commission does in greed, let the ignorant heretic be made equal to the knowing greedy man; although the testimony he himself cited from the apostle does not seem to show this. For what do we detest in heretics but blasphemies? But wishing to show that sins of ignorance belong to easy pardon, he cited the apostle where he says, “I who was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and insolent, but obtained mercy, because I acted in ignorance.” But if possible, as I said, let both sins be weighed equally, the blasphemy of the ignorant and the idolatry of the knowing, and let the same sentence judge the one who, seeking Christ, fell into a plausible discourse of falsehood, and the one who knowingly resists Christ speaking through the apostle: “For every sexually immoral or unclean or greedy person, which is the service of idols, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.” Why are baptism and the words of the gospel disapproved in the one and approved in the other, when both are found strangers to the members of that dove? Or is it because the one is an open litigant outside, so that he is not let in, while the other is a crafty flatterer within, so that he is not thrown out?

As for his saying, “And let no one say, ‘We follow what we received from the apostles,’ since the apostles handed down only one church and one baptism, which is appointed only in that same church,” it does not move me so much as to dare to reject Christ’s baptism 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 some even in holy Cyprian’s time who said that that custom, against which the African councils were held, and of which he himself had said a little before, “It is in vain that some who are defeated by reason set custom against us,” had been handed down by the apostles. Nor do I find why the same Cyprian found this custom, which after Cyprian was confirmed even by a plenary council of the whole world, so strong even before, that when a man endowed with such knowledge sought an authority to follow for changing it, he found only the council of Agrippinus, held in Africa alone a few years before him. Seeing that this was not enough against the practice of the whole world, he seized on these reasons, which we now, made firm by the antiquity of the custom itself and the authority of the later plenary council, find on more careful consideration to be plausible rather than true; though they seemed true to him as he laboured in a most obscure question and wavered about the forgiveness of sins, whether it could fail to take place in Christ’s baptism and whether it could take place among heretics. If less was revealed to him on this, so that the greatness of his love, by which he did not desert unity, might be proved, no one ought therefore to dare to set himself above such strong foundations of his, above the merits of his virtues and so great an abundance of graces, because, admonished by the firmness of a universal council, he sees something that Cyprian did not see, since the church did not yet have a plenary council on this matter; just as no one is so mad as to set himself above the merits of the apostle Peter because, taught by the letters of the apostle Paul and strengthened by the very custom of the church, he does not compel the Gentiles to live like Jews, as Peter once had compelled them.

We do not, then, find any case in the apostles of someone who, baptized among heretics, was admitted in that same baptism and given communion. But neither do we find that anyone coming from heretics, who had been baptized among them, was baptized again by the apostles. But that custom, which even then men looking back did not see to have been instituted by later men, is rightly believed to have been handed down by the apostles; and there are many such things, which it would take long to repeat. So if those to whom Cyprian, wishing to persuade them of what seemed right to him, said, “And let no one say, ‘We follow what we received from the apostles,’” were saying something, how much more strongly do we now say: “What the church’s custom has always held, what this disputation could not dissuade it from, and what a plenary council has confirmed, this we follow!” Besides, when the reasons on both sides of the disputation and the testimonies of Scripture have been well examined, it can also be said: “What the truth has declared, this we follow.”

In fact, what some set against Cyprian’s arguments, that the apostle says, “Nevertheless in every way, whether in pretence or in truth, let Christ be proclaimed,” Cyprian rightly refutes, showing that it does not bear on the case of heretics, since the apostle was speaking of those who were within, seeking their own ends with malicious envy. They did proclaim Christ, as the truth is by which we believe in Christ, but not in the spirit in which he was proclaimed by good evangelists, the sons of that dove. “For Paul in his letter,” he says, “was not speaking of heretics or of their baptism, so that he could be shown to have set down anything bearing on this matter. He was speaking of brothers, whether walking disorderly and against the discipline of the church, or keeping the truth of the gospel in the fear of God. And he stated that some of them spoke the word of God steadfastly and fearlessly, but some were engaged in envy and dissension; that some kept kindly love toward him, but others had malicious dissension; yet that he bore everything patiently, so long as, whether in truth or in pretence, the name of Christ that Paul preached should come to the knowledge of very many, and the sowing of the word, still new and unformed, should spread through the preaching of those who spoke. But 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 remind us to distinguish between those who are wicked outside and those who are wicked within. And he says that those of whom the apostle says that they proclaimed the gospel not purely but from envy were within, and he speaks the truth. Yet I think I say this not rashly: if no one outside can have anything that is Christ’s, neither can anyone within have anything that is the devil’s. For if that enclosed garden could have the devil’s thorns, why could not Christ’s fountain also flow outside the garden? But if it could not, where did so great an evil of envy and malicious dissension come from in those who were within, even in the times of the apostle Paul himself? For these are Cyprian’s words. Or is envy and malicious dissension perhaps a small evil? How then were these men in unity who were not in peace? For the voice, not mine nor any man’s, but the Lord’s own, sounded not through men but through angels when Christ was born: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.” This would certainly not have sounded from an angel’s mouth when Christ was born on earth, unless God wished it understood that those are in the unity of Christ’s body who are in the peace of Christ, and that those are in the peace of Christ who are of good will. And just as good will is in benevolence, so ill will is in malevolence.

Now how great an evil envy itself is, which cannot be other than malicious! Let us not look for other witnesses. Cyprian himself is enough for us, through whom the Lord thundered so many most true things about jealousy and envy and gave such wholesome precepts. Let us read, then, Cyprian’s letter on jealousy and envy, and see how great an evil it is to envy those who are better, the origin of which evil he teaches, in words to be remembered, came from the devil himself. “To be jealous of what you see to be good,” he says, “and to envy those better than you seems to some, dearest brothers, a light and small offence.” Then a little later, seeking the head and origin of that evil, he says: “From this the devil, at the very beginning of the world, both perished first and destroyed others.” And a little later: “What an evil it is,” he says, “dearest brothers, by which an angel fell, by which that lofty and splendid sublimity could be circumvented and overthrown, by which he himself who deceived was deceived! From then on envy rages on the earth, as one who is to perish by envy obeys the master of perdition, as one who is jealous imitates the devil, as it is written: ‘But by the envy of the devil death entered into the world.’ So those who are on his side imitate him.” We recognize how true, how strong are these words of Cyprian in a letter well known to the peoples. Truly it befitted Cyprian both to rebuke and to warn gravely about jealousy and envy, whose heart was proved by so great an abundance of love to be utterly free of so deadly an evil. Guarding this love most watchfully with his colleagues, who without malice thought differently about baptism, while he too, not from malicious contention but by human temptation, thought otherwise (which God would reveal to him afterward, when he willed, as he persevered in love), he remained in the unity of communion, saying openly: “judging no one and removing no one from the right of communion if he thinks differently. For none of us sets himself up as a bishop of bishops or compels his colleagues to the necessity of obeying by tyrannical terror.” And at the end of this letter he says: “We have written this back to you briefly, dearest brother, according to our small ability, prescribing to no one and prejudging no one, so as to prevent each of the bishops from doing what he thinks, since he has the free power of his own judgment. We, for our part, do not quarrel over heretics with our colleagues and fellow bishops, with whom we keep divine concord and the Lord’s peace, especially since the apostle also says: ‘But if anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such custom, nor has the church of God.’ Love of heart, the honour of our college, the bond of faith, and the concord of the priesthood are kept by us patiently and gently. For this reason too we have now written, as far as our small ability could, with the Lord’s permission and inspiration, a little book on the good of patience, which we have sent to you out of mutual love.”

With this patience of love he bore not only good colleagues who without malice thought otherwise on an obscure question, as he too was borne with, until with the passing of time the most wholesome custom, when God willed, was confirmed by a plenary council once the truth was declared; but also manifestly wicked men, well known to him, who thought otherwise not because of the obscurity of the question but acted, by the habits of a lost life, against what they preached, as the apostle says of them: “You who preach that one must not steal, do you steal?” For of such men, bishops of his own time, his colleagues and remaining in communion with him, he says in his letter: “While brothers in the church went hungry, they wanted to have money in abundance, to seize estates by treacherous frauds, to increase their gains by multiplying interest.” Here there is no obscurity of question. Scripture cries out openly: “Neither the greedy nor robbers will possess the kingdom of God,” and, “who has not lent his money at interest,” and, “every sexually immoral and unclean and greedy person, which is the service of idols, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.” Such greedy men, then, who not only greedily hoarded their own but fraudulently seized what belonged to others, such idolaters, as he himself understands and proves, he would certainly not have rebuked unless he had known them; for he would not bear false witness against his fellow bishops. And yet, for the sake of Christ, who died for the weak, lest by rooting up the tares before the time the wheat should be rooted up with them, he bore them with the heart of a father’s and a mother’s love, imitating the apostle Paul, who with the same love for the church endured those who were malicious and envious toward him.

But since “by the envy of the devil death entered into the world,” and those who are on his side imitate him, not through what they were created by God but through the perversity they have from themselves (as Cyprian himself recalls, since the devil too, before he was the devil, was an angel and was good), how are those who are on the devil’s side in the unity of Christ? Without doubt, as the Lord himself says, “An enemy has done this,” who sowed tares over the wheat. So just as what is the devil’s is to be rebuked within, so what is Christ’s is to be recognized outside. Or does Christ not have his own outside the unity of the church, while the devil has his own within the unity of the church? This can perhaps be said of men, in the sense that outside the communion of the church God has none of his own, just as among the holy angels the devil has none of his own; whereas the devil has been allowed to mix tares, that is, wicked men, into this church, which still bears the mortality of the flesh while it is a pilgrim away from the Lord, and he has been permitted this because of the church’s pilgrimage, so that the rest of that homeland which the holy angels enjoy may be desired more ardently. But this cannot be said of the sacraments. For just as the tares within can have and handle them, not for salvation but for their ruin, for which they are destined to the fire, so too the tares outside, who received them from those within when they withdrew, because in withdrawing they did not lose them. This is shown without doubt when they are not given back to those who return, when perhaps some of those very ones who had withdrawn come back. Nor let anyone say, “What wheat do the tares have?” For if that is so, the condition is equal within and without in this respect at least. For grains of wheat are not lacking in the tares outside while being found in those within. But when the question is about the sacrament, the question is not whether the tares have anything of wheat, but whether they have anything of heaven. For the tares both outside and inside share the rain with the wheat itself, which is heavenly and sweet in itself, even if the tares grow barren from it. So too Christ’s gospel sacrament is divine and sweet, and is not to be rejected because of the barrenness of those on whom it rains even outside.

Someone may say that the tares within are more easily turned into wheat. I grant that it is so; but what has this to do with repeating baptism? If perhaps someone converted from the heretics anticipates, by the time and ease of his conversion, one who is more slowly corrected and changed from malice within, is baptism not to be repeated for him, but to be repeated for the one who has been anticipated by the man coming from the heretics, because he was corrected more slowly? So it has nothing to do with the matter now in question who turns sooner or later from his own perversity to the uprightness of faith or hope or love. For even if the wicked within can more easily become good, yet sometimes some from the number of those outside anticipate some of those within by their conversion, and, reconciled to unity while the others remain barren, bear fruit with patience, thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold. Or if only those are to be called tares that persist in wicked error to the end, there are both much wheat outside and many tares within.

But, it is said, the wicked outside are worse than the wicked within. It is indeed a great question whether Nicolaus, already outside, was worse than Simon, still within, since the one was a heretic and the other a magician. But if division itself, being the surest sign of violated love, is held a graver evil, I grant that it is so. But many, having lost love, do not go outside for this reason: that they are held by worldly advantages, and, seeking their own, not the things of Jesus Christ, they do not wish to withdraw, not from Christ’s unity, but from their own interests. Hence it is said in praise of love: “It does not seek its own.”

Now then it is asked how men on the devil’s side can belong to the church that has no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, of which it is also said, “My dove is one.” If they cannot, it is plain that she groans among strangers, both lying in wait within and barking against her outside. Yet such men even within both receive and have and hand on baptism, which is holy in itself and is in no way violated by their malice, in which they persist to the end. Hence the same blessed Cyprian teaches us that baptism, consecrated with the words of the gospel as the church received it, is to be considered in itself, with no perversity or malice of either recipients or givers joined or mixed with it; since he himself reminds us of both points: that there were some within who did not keep kindly love but were engaged in envy and malicious dissension, of whom the apostle Paul spoke; and that the envious are on the devil’s side, as he testifies most plainly in the letter he wrote on jealousy and envy. Therefore, since it is plain that it can happen that in those who are on the devil’s side Christ’s sacrament is still holy, not for their salvation but for their judgment, not only if they are perverted after receiving baptism but even if they receive it while such, as the same Cyprian shows, “renouncing the world in words only and not in deeds”; and that, if they are afterward corrected, what they received while perverse is not therefore to be repeated; it is now, I think, clear and plain that in this question of baptism we must think not who gives but what he gives, not who receives but what he receives, not who has but what he has. For if men on the devil’s side, and so in no way belonging to the only dove, can still receive and have and give the holiness of baptism, in no way violated by their perversity, as we are reminded by Cyprian’s own letters, why do we attribute to heretics what is not theirs? Why do we say that what is Christ’s is theirs, and do not rather recognize in them the standards of our emperor and amend the deeds of deserters? So it is indeed one thing, as holy Cyprian says, “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.” But many who are within act against the church by living badly and drawing weak souls into their way of life; and some who are outside speak in Christ’s name and are not forbidden to do the works of Christ, but only to be outside, when we rebuke or reprove or exhort them so that they may be healed. For he too was outside who did not follow with the disciples and drove out demons in Christ’s name, which the Lord warned them not to forbid, though certainly he needed to be healed where he was wounded, by those words of the Lord where he says, “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.” So some things are done outside in Christ’s name not against the church, and some within, on the devil’s side, against the church.

What of the fact, remarkable as it is, which anyone who pays careful attention finds can happen, that some, with love intact, teach something unprofitable, as Peter compelled the Gentiles to live like Jews, as Cyprian himself compelled heretics to be baptized again (hence the apostle says to such good members, rooted in love but in some point not walking straight, “If in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you”); and that some, on the other hand, without love teach something wholesome, of whom the Lord says, “They sit on Moses’ seat; do what they say, but do not do what they do; for they say and do not do”? Hence the apostle too says of those envious and malicious men who still proclaimed Christian salvation, “Whether in pretence or in truth, let Christ be proclaimed.” Therefore the perversity of men is to be corrected both within and without, but the divine sacraments and oracles are not to be attributed to men. So he does not act as patron of heretics who does not attribute to them what, though it is among them, he recognizes is not theirs. We do not grant baptism to a heretic, but we recognize the baptism of him of whom it was said, “This is he who baptizes,” wherever we find it. But the faithless and blasphemous man, if he remains in faithlessness and blasphemy, receives forgiveness of sins neither outside the church nor within; or if he receives it for a moment of time because of the power of the sacrament, the same power works both outside and within, just as the power of Christ’s name worked the expulsion of demons even outside.

“But we find that the apostles in all their letters curse and detest the sacrilegious perversity of heretics, so that they say that their word creeps like a cancer.” What then? Does not Paul show that those who said, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die,” were corrupters of good morals through evil conversations, adding at once, “Evil conversations corrupt good morals”? And yet he indicated that they were within when he said, “How do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” And where does he not detest the greedy? Or could anything be said more forcefully than that greed was called the service of idols, as the same apostle put it, and as Cyprian understood it no otherwise and inserted it in his letters where needed? Yet he admits that in his times there were in the church greedy men, and not of any sort, but robbers and usurers, and not just any men, but bishops. And yet I would gladly understand those of whom the apostle says, “Their word creeps like a cancer,” to have been outside; but Cyprian himself does not let me. For when, writing to Antonianus, he showed that before the time of the final separation of the righteous and the wicked there must be no withdrawal from the unity of the church because of the mixture of the wicked, where he declares how holy he is and how most worthy of that glory of martyrdom which he obtained, he says: “How great is the swelling of arrogance, how great the forgetfulness of humility and gentleness, how great the boasting of his arrogance, that anyone should either dare or believe himself able to do what the Lord did not grant even to the apostles: to think that he can distinguish the tares from the wheat, or, as if it had been granted to him to carry the fan and cleanse the threshing floor, to try to separate the chaff from the wheat; and, whereas the apostle says, ‘In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and of clay,’ to seem to choose out the vessels of gold and silver and to despise, cast away, and condemn those of wood and clay, when only on the day of the Lord will the vessels of wood be burned by the blaze of divine fire, and those of clay be broken by him to whom the rod of iron has been given.” Thus Cyprian, rebuking those who had broken away from unity as if to avoid the company of the wicked, showed that by the great house the apostle spoke of, where there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, he understood nothing but the church, where there are good and bad until at the end it is cleansed like a winnowed threshing floor. If this is so, in the church itself, that is, in the great house itself, there were vessels for dishonour whose word crept like a cancer. For when the apostle spoke of them he taught this: “And their word,” he says, “creeps 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.” If then these too, whose word crept like a cancer, were in the great house as vessels for dishonour, by which great house Cyprian understands the unity of the church itself, did their cancer violate Christ’s baptism? So then, neither outside nor within can anyone who is on the devil’s side stain, either in himself or in anyone else, the sacrament that is Christ’s. So it is not the word that creeps like a cancer into the ears of the hearers that gives forgiveness of sins; but when baptism is given with the words of the gospel, with whatever perversity the one through whom it is given or the one to whom it is given may understand them, it is holy in itself because of him whose it is. And if someone receiving it through a perverse man does not receive the minister’s perversity but only the holiness of the mystery, being joined to the unity of the church in good faith and hope and love, he receives forgiveness of sins, not through words that creep like a cancer but through the gospel sacraments that flow from the heavenly fountain. But if the recipient himself is perverse, what is given does not profit the perverse man for salvation, and yet what is received remains holy in him and is not repeated for him if he is corrected.

So there is no partnership between righteousness and iniquity, not only the iniquity that is outside but also that which is within. For “the Lord knows those who are his, and let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.” There is no communion either between light and darkness, not only the darkness outside but also that within. For “he who hates his brother,” says John, “is in darkness even until now.” And certainly those hated Paul who, proclaiming Christ in envy and malice and dissension, thought to stir up affliction for him in his chains; yet the same Cyprian understands that they were within. Since then darkness cannot enlighten nor iniquity justify, as he also says, I ask how these men could baptize within the church itself; I ask how those vessels which the great house holds not for honour but for dishonour could, within that great house itself, administer what is holy for sanctifying men, unless because the holiness of the sacrament cannot be polluted even by the unclean, whether when it is given through them or when it is received by those who are not changed for the better in heart and life. Of these, placed within, he himself says: “renouncing the world in words only and not in deeds.”