On Rebaptism

I observe that the question has been raised among the brothers what ought rather to be done in the case of those who, though in heresy, have been dipped in the name of our God Jesus Christ, and who afterward have left it and, fleeing as suppliants to the church of God, do penance with their whole heart and, now at last understanding the condemnation of their error, implore from her the help of salvation: whether, according to the most ancient custom and church tradition, it would be enough, after the baptism they received outside, but in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, that only a hand be laid on them by the bishop for the receiving of the Holy Spirit, and that this laying on of the hand should give them the sign of faith renewed and completed; or whether a repeated baptism would also be necessary for them, as though they would have nothing unless they had obtained this too afresh, just as if they had never been baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. And so it was being boasted that a number of writings and replies had been written on this new question, in which each side strove with the greatest zeal to demolish the other's. In this kind of question, as it seems to me, no controversy or dispute at all could have arisen, if each of us, content with the venerable authority of all the churches and with due humility, had wished to make no innovation, since he could see no ground at all for contradiction. For everything that is doubtful and ambiguous, placed among the differing opinions of wise and faithful men, if it is judged to be against the ancient, memorable, and most solemn observance of all the saints and faithful who have gone before, ought certainly to be condemned; since, in a matter long settled and ordered, whatever is brought forward against the quiet and peace of the churches will bring nothing but discord, enmity, and schism. In it no other fruit is found but this alone: that one man, whoever he may be, is proclaimed with empty glory among certain light-minded people as a man of great prudence and constancy, and, made an object of wonder to the heretics (whose one consolation in their perdition is not to seem to sin alone), is celebrated among people just like himself as having corrected the errors and faults of all the churches. For this is the zeal and purpose of all heretics: to weave as many calumnies of this kind as they can against our most holy mother the church, and to count it the highest glory to have found something that could be charged against her as a fault, however slight. Since it befits no faithful person of sound mind to hold this, least of all anyone placed in any rank of the clergy, and much less a bishop, it is monstrous that bishops themselves should contemplate such scandals and, against the precept of the law and of all the Scriptures, should not fear, most irreverently and to their own shame and danger, to uncover the shame of mother church, if they think there is any in this business; although there is no shame of the church in it, except in the error of those very men. Such men offend the more, then, if what they censure in the most ancient observance as not rightly done is shown plainly and strongly to have been rightly observed both by those before us and by ourselves, and to be observed still. So even if we met with equal arguments on both sides, yet, because the innovation could not stand without dissension among the brothers and harm to the church, it ought not to be rashly inflicted on mother church like a stain, against right and wrong, as the saying goes, that is, against what is good and fair; and the disgrace of this audacity and impiety should deservedly be ascribed to those who attempted it. But since it is not in our power, according to the apostle's precept, that we should all say the same thing and that there be no schisms among us, we nevertheless strive as far as we can to set out the state of this question, and to persuade turbulent men to begin at last to mind their own business; and we too shall gain much if they are willing at last to accept this sound counsel. And so we shall of necessity gather into one whatever chapters of the holy Scriptures pertain to this point; what seem to be different or varied we shall join together as clearly as we can; and we shall examine the usefulness and advantage of each according to our modest ability, so as to commend to all the brothers a most wholesome and peaceable form and custom of acting in the church.

As we approach the treatment of the saving and new baptism, that is, the spiritual and evangelical baptism, there first meets us the preaching best known to all, proclaimed and begun by John the Baptist. Departing somewhat from the law, that is, from the most ancient baptism of Moses, and laying down the way of the new and true grace by the baptism of water and repentance that he practiced for the time being, he gradually prepared and filled the ears of the Jews with the announcement of the spiritual baptism to come, exhorting them and saying: “He who comes after me is mightier than I; I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal. He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire.” For this reason our discourse too must begin from here. For the Lord also confirmed this same saying of John after his resurrection, in the Acts of the Apostles, when he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait for “that promise of the Father which you have heard from me: for John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” Likewise Peter recalled the same words of the Lord when giving account of himself to the apostles, saying: “But when I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as upon us at the beginning, and I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit. If then he gave them the same gift as he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could forbid the Lord?” And again: “Men, brothers, you know that from early days God chose among us that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe; and God, who knows the hearts, bore witness, giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us.” We must therefore consider what the force and meaning of this saying is. For the Lord says that those who were later to be baptized, because they would believe, were to be baptized not as John baptized, in water for repentance, but in the Holy Spirit. Since none of us can doubt this preaching, it is plain in what way people have been baptized in the Holy Spirit. For those who believed have been baptized, properly speaking, in the Holy Spirit alone, since John made the distinction, saying that he baptized in water, but that one was coming who would baptize in the Holy Spirit. They are baptized by the grace and power of God, who grants and works this too in secret; but no less also in the baptism of the Spirit and water; and moreover in the baptism of the Spirit in each one's own blood, as the holy Scriptures declare to us. For each of the things we shall relate we shall bring clear proofs from them.

To this perhaps you who are introducing something new will at once reply impatiently, as you usually do, that the Lord said in the Gospel: “Unless someone is born again of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” From this, you say, it plainly appears that baptism profits only the one in whom the Holy Spirit can also dwell; for on the Lord himself, when he was baptized, the Holy Spirit descended, and his deed and his word agree together, and this mystery cannot stand in any other way. To this answer none of us is found so mad or stubborn as to dare contradict it against right or against truth, that is, when all things are intact, and everything is to be done so in the church and always observed by us according to the order of discipline. But if in the same New Testament the things that we find united in this matter are sometimes found in some way divided and separated, and arranged as if they were single, let us see whether they can sometimes stand even singly and alone, not as maimed but as whole and complete. For the Holy Spirit is given to each believer through the laying on of the bishop's hand, as the apostles did for the Samaritans after Philip's baptism: by laying their hand on them they conferred the Holy Spirit on them in this way, having prayed for them that this might happen; for the Spirit had not yet come down on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. So also our Lord, after the resurrection, bestowed the Holy Spirit on his apostles only when he had breathed on them and said: “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Since this is found to be so, what do you think, brother? If someone has been baptized, not by a bishop, so that a hand could be laid on him at once, and he dies before receiving the Holy Spirit, do you judge that he has obtained salvation or not? For the apostles themselves and the disciples, who also baptized others and had been baptized by the Lord, did not at once receive the Holy Spirit, who had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified; they received him after his resurrection, and no small interval of time passed before this happened. So too when the Samaritans had been baptized by Philip, until the apostles, sent for from Jerusalem, came down to Samaria to lay hands on them and confer the Holy Spirit on them by the laying on of hands: in that interval of time any of them who had not yet obtained the Holy Spirit could have been cut off by death and died deprived of the grace of the Holy Spirit. And it cannot be doubted that even today this is usual and commonly happens: very many depart this world after baptism without the laying on of the bishop's hand, and yet they are regarded as complete believers. So the Ethiopian eunuch, when he was returning from Jerusalem, reading the prophet Isaiah and at a loss, heard the truth from Philip the deacon at the Spirit's prompting, believed, and was baptized; and when he came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, for he went on his way rejoicing. Yet, as you see, no hand was laid on him by a bishop that he might receive the Holy Spirit. If you admit this and believe it to be saving, and do not oppose the opinion of all the faithful, you must confess that, just as this holds more widely, so the other thing too can hold more widely: that through the laying on of the bishop's hand alone, since baptism in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord has gone before, the Holy Spirit can also be given to another person who repents and believes. For holy Scripture foretold that those who would believe in Christ must be baptized in the Spirit; so these too may not seem to have anything less than those who are complete Christians, and there is no need to ask what kind of baptism it was that they received in the name of Jesus Christ. Unless perhaps, in that earlier case too, you would decide that those who were baptized only in the name of Christ Jesus can be saved even without the Holy Spirit, or that the Holy Spirit is customarily given not in this way alone but through the laying on of the bishop's hand, or that even one who is not a bishop customarily bestows the Holy Spirit.

If this is so, and any of these things can happen without robbing a believer of salvation, you yourself also grant that the mystery of faith, as it were halved and not completed as you contend, cannot, if some necessity has intervened, take salvation away from a believing and repentant person. Or if you say that such a person cannot be saved, we take salvation away from all bishops. For you bind them with the most certain dangers, since they would have to come in person to the aid of all the people under their care who fall sick here and there throughout their scattered districts (because the other clergy, lower in rank, cannot provide the same thing to those in danger), lest the blood of those who will seem to have left the world empty be required at the bishops' hands. Moreover, as you know, the Holy Spirit is found to have been given by the Lord to believers without the baptism of water, as is contained in the Acts of the Apostles in this way: “While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word; and the believers of the circumcision who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles too. For they heard them speaking in their tongues and magnifying God. Then Peter answered: Can anyone forbid water, so that these should not be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have? And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.” As the same Peter afterward taught us most fully about these same Gentiles, saying: “And he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith.” And it will not be doubtful that people can be baptized in the Holy Spirit without water, as you see that these were baptized before they were baptized with water, so that the preaching both of John and of the Lord himself was fulfilled. For these too received the grace of the promise without the laying on of the apostles' hands and without the washing that they obtained afterward; and so God, having shortly before cleansed their hearts, also granted them at the same time, through their faith, the forgiveness of sins; so that the baptism that followed gave them this alone, that they also received the invocation of the name of Jesus Christ, lest anything should seem lacking to them for the completeness of the ministry and the faith.

The disciples of our Lord themselves obtained this from the opposite side of the question. On them, long since baptized, the Holy Spirit came at last on the day of Pentecost, not falling from heaven of his own accord but by the will of God, poured out for this very office, and he sat upon each of them, though they had long since been baptized, as we have said, with the Lord's baptism and were righteous men. So too the apostles themselves, who nevertheless are all found to have deserted the Lord on the night he was arrested; and that very Peter who boasted that he would persevere in his faith, and resisted the Lord's own prediction most obstinately, in the end nevertheless denied him. In this way it was shown to us that whatever sins they had somehow contracted in the meantime were undoubtedly forgiven them afterward, when their faith was sincere, through the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Nor, I think, had the apostles commanded those whom they addressed in the Holy Spirit to be baptized in the name of Christ Jesus for any other reason than that the power of the name of Jesus, invoked over any person in baptism, could give the one baptized no small advantage for obtaining salvation, as Peter relates in the Acts of the Apostles, saying: “For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” So too the apostle Paul discloses it, showing that God exalted Jesus our Lord and gave him a name above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord in the glory of the Father. And the person over whom the name of Jesus was invoked when he was baptized, even if he received it in some error, would still not be prevented at some later time from coming to a right mind, correcting his error, coming to the church and to the bishop, and sincerely confessing our Jesus before men; so that then, when the bishop laid his hand on him, he would also receive the Holy Spirit and would not lose that earlier invocation of the name of Jesus, which none of us may condemn. Yet this invocation, bare and alone, if it remains in error, cannot suffice to give salvation; otherwise we would believe that even pagans and heretics who misuse the name of Jesus can attain salvation without the true and complete reality. But it is most useful to believe that this invocation of the name of Jesus, once the error is corrected, the true faith acknowledged, and every stain of the former life cut away, and when the mystery of God has been duly performed for such people, gains the place it would not otherwise have had, and at last, in right faith, is no hindrance to giving the sign in its completeness, when the supplement of what was lacking is added; and it is useful to acquiesce with good reason in the authority of so many years and so many churches, and likewise of apostles and bishops. For it is the greatest harm and loss to our most holy mother the church to rise up now, suddenly, for the first time and without reason, against ancient decisions after so long a series of centuries. For there was no other reason why Peter, who had already been baptized, who had been asked by the Lord himself what he thought of the Lord, and who, when the truth of the heavenly Father's revelation had been placed in him, had confessed that our Lord was not only the Christ but also the Son of the living God, was afterward shown to have opposed that same Christ when he foretold his passion, and on that account was shown to be called Satan: except that it was going to happen that certain people, even though wavering in their own opinion and sometimes limping in faith and doctrine when they were baptized in the name of Jesus, would not for that reason fall away from salvation, if after some interval of time they could correct it; but when at some time they came to their senses, they would obtain by repentance a complete hope of salvation, especially when they received the Holy Spirit, with whom every person ought to be baptized, even if they had shown some such fault. For we find in the Gospel that not only Peter suffered this, but also all the disciples, to whom, already baptized, the Lord afterward said: “You will all be scandalized in me.” All of them, as we see, having corrected their faith after the Lord's resurrection, were baptized in the Holy Spirit; so that not without reason we believe today too that people corrected from their former error can be baptized in the Holy Spirit, even if, when they were baptized with water in the name of the Lord, they once had a rough faith. For there is a great difference between someone not having been baptized at all in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and his limping in something when he is baptized with the baptism of water, which is the lesser, provided that afterward a sincere faith is established in truth in the baptism of the Spirit, which is undoubtedly the greater.

Nor should you think that what the Lord said is contrary to this treatment: “Go, teach the nations; dip them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” For though this is true and right and to be observed in every way in the church, and has customarily been observed, yet we must consider that the invocation of the name of Jesus ought not to seem worthless to us, because of the veneration and power of that name, in which all mighty works are customarily done, and sometimes some are done even by outsiders. Otherwise, what is the point of those words of Christ, who said that he would deny and not know those who would say to him on the day of judgment: “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do great mighty works in your name?”, answering them even with an oath: “I never knew you; depart from me, you who work iniquity”, unless it were being shown to us that sometimes, through the surpassing power of the name of Jesus, these things can be done even by those who work iniquity? And therefore this invocation of the name of Jesus should be received as a kind of beginning of the Lord's mystery, common to us and to all others, which can afterward be filled up by the remaining things. Otherwise such an invocation will not profit if it has remained alone, since after the death of such a person nothing at all can be added or supplied to it, or profit him in anything on the day of judgment, when the things we mentioned above begin to be held against them by our Lord. Yet none of these people can today be prevented by anyone, so harshly and so cruelly, from being helped in the ways we have shown above.

But to this, as usual, you will object that the disciples were then baptized wholly and rightly, and not as these heretics have been baptized. This you must take from their persons and from the person of him who baptized them. And therefore we reply to this proposition of yours not as accusers of the Lord's disciples, but because we are compelled, since we must investigate by reasoning where and when and how salvation has been given to each of us. For that our Lord had been born and that he was the Christ was, not without reason, believed by his disciples on many grounds: that he had been born of the tribe of Judah, of the family of David, and in the city of Bethlehem; that he had been announced by angels to shepherds as the Savior born to them, at the same moment that, his star having been seen in the east, he was most carefully sought out and worshiped by the magi and honored with splendid gifts and notable presents; that while still a boy, sitting in the temple with the teachers of the law, he had disputed wisely, to the admiration of all; that when he was baptized he had been glorified, as had happened to no one else, by the opening of the heavens, the descent of the Holy Spirit and his remaining upon him, and the testimony also of his Father and of John the Baptist; that beyond human measure he understood the hearts and thoughts of all; that he cured and healed sicknesses, defects, and illnesses with the greatest power; that he granted forgiveness of sins with evident proof; that he drove out demons by command; that he cleansed lepers with a word; that by turning water into wine he increased a wedding feast with wonderful joy; that he restored or granted sight to the blind; that he asserted the Father's teaching with all confidence; that in a desert place he fed five thousand men from five loaves, and the leftovers and scraps filled more than twelve baskets; that in his kindness he raised the dead here and there; that he commanded the winds and the sea to be still; that he walked on the sea; that he performed every kind of mighty work.

From these deeds, and many others of the kind that belonged to his glory, it seemed to follow that the disciples too, as the Jews think about the Christ (though they do not believe it of Jesus Christ our Lord), supposed that one so great would continue for ever without undergoing death, and would possess the kingdom of Israel and of the whole world for all time, never to be taken from him. Hence the Jews too dared to seize him and anoint him king, which he had to escape; and therefore his disciples thought that he would give them eternal life in no other way than by first joining in himself this temporal life to that eternal one. Then, when they were staying in Galilee, Jesus said to them: “The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and after three days he will rise.” And they were greatly saddened, because, as we have said, they had first conceived something very different in their hearts and minds. This was also the Jews' word of contradiction against him, when he taught them about himself and announced the future, and they said: “We have heard from the law that the Christ remains for ever; how can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up?” So the disciples had this same presumption about the Christ, and Peter himself, the leader and chief of the apostles, burst out into this speech of unbelief. For when he had been asked by the Lord, together with the others, what he thought of him, that is, who he supposed him to be, he first confessed the truth, saying that he was the Christ, the Son of the living God, and was judged blessed by him for this, because he had attained it not through the flesh but by the revelation of the heavenly Father. Yet when Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and priests and scribes, and be killed, and rise after the third day, that same true confessor of Christ took him aside a few days later and began to rebuke him, saying: “Be it far from you; this shall not happen,” so that on that account he deserved to hear from the Lord: “Get behind me, Satan; you are a stumbling block to me,” because he was not minding the things of God but the things of men. This reproach against Peter showed itself more and more when the Lord was arrested: frightened by a servant girl, he said, “I do not know what you are saying, nor do I know you”; he said the same again with an oath; and a third time, cursing and swearing, he affirmed that he did not know the man. He denied him not once but repeatedly; and because this disposition of his was going to last until the Lord's passion, the Lord made it known long before, so that we too should not be ignorant of it. Then, after the Lord's resurrection, one of his disciples, Cleopas, sad in the error shared by all his fellow disciples, told the Lord himself, as though he were some stranger, what had happened, and spoke of Jesus of Nazareth, “who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, how our priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death and fixed him to the cross. But we had hoped that he was the one who would redeem Israel.” Accordingly all the disciples judged the report of the women who had seen the Lord after the resurrection to be nonsense; some of them, when they saw him, did not believe but doubted; and those who were not present then did not believe at all, until afterward they had been rebuked and reproached by the Lord himself in every way. For his death had so offended them that they thought he had not risen, since they had supposed he ought not to die, and against their expectation he had once died. So, as far as the disciples themselves are concerned, they are found in the ways we have related to have had neither a whole nor a perfect faith; and, what is much more serious, as is written in the Gospel according to John, they were even baptizing others.

Besides, what will you say of those who are often baptized by bishops of very bad life, who nevertheless at last, when God wills it, are convicted of their crimes and deprived of their office, or even altogether of communion? Or what will you decide about those who have been baptized by bishops who think wrongly or who are rather unskilled, when they did not speak clearly and fully, or even spoke otherwise than they should, in handing on the sacrament: certainly they either asked something, or in asking heard from those who answered something that ought by no means to be asked or answered in that way? This does not much injure that right faith of ours, but these simpler men too hand on the mystery of faith, though not so elegantly and neatly as you. For you will surely say, with your singular diligence, that these too must be baptized again, since the thing itself is lacking to them, or something stands in the way of their receiving that inviolable divine mystery of faith undefiled. But, best of men, let us render and leave to the heavenly powers their own strength, let us grant to the favor of the divine majesty its own operations, and, understanding how much benefit there is in it, let us gladly rest in it. And therefore, since our salvation is founded in the baptism of the Spirit, which is generally joined with the baptism of water: if baptism is given by us, let it be conferred wholly and solemnly, with everything that is written, and given without separating anything; or if it has been given by the lower clergy out of necessity, let us wait for the outcome, so that it may either be completed by us or be left for the Lord to complete; but if it has been given by outsiders, let the matter be corrected as it can be and as it admits. For the Holy Spirit is not outside the church, and faith cannot be sound not only among heretics but also among those who are in schism. Therefore those who do penance and are corrected by the teaching of the truth, and by their own faith, since amended, their hearts having been purified, should be helped only by the spiritual baptism, that is, by the laying on of the bishop's hand and the ministering of the Holy Spirit. The sign of faith too has rightly been customarily given whole in the church in this way and on this principle, lest the invocation of the name of Jesus, which cannot be abolished, should seem to be held in contempt by us, which certainly ought not to be; although such an invocation, if none of the things we have mentioned follows, ceases from the work of salvation and is empty of it. For since the apostle says that there is one baptism, this must be so because the invocation of the name of Jesus continues, since once invoked it cannot be taken away by any man, even if we dared, against the decree of the apostles, to double it by an excess of zeal in giving, or rather adding, baptism. If the one who returns to the church is unwilling to be baptized again, it will come about that we defraud of the baptism of the Spirit one whom we think ought not to be defrauded of the baptism of water.

But what will you decide in the case of a hearer of the word who is perhaps arrested for the name of Christ, confesses at once, and is put to death before he is allowed to be baptized with water? Will you pronounce that he has perished because he was not baptized with water, or will you think that something from outside protects him for salvation, although he was not baptized with water? If you think that he has perished, the sentence of the Lord will confront you, who says: “Whoever confesses me before men, I too will confess him before my Father who is in heaven.” For it makes no difference whether the one who confesses the Lord is a hearer or one of the faithful, provided that he confesses Christ himself, whom he must confess; since the Lord, confessing in return, adorns his confessor before the Father with the honor of his own martyrdom, as he promised. This must certainly not be taken too broadly, as though it could be stretched to every case. For a heretic too, who nevertheless denies Christ himself, can confess the name of Christ, because he believes in another Christ; and when he confesses “Christ,” it can profit him not at all, since the Lord said that nothing but himself must be brought by us into confession before men, and that cannot be done without him and without his venerable name. And therefore both must stand whole and sincere, uncontaminated and inviolate, for the one who confesses, with no distinction made as to the confessor himself, whether he is righteous or a sinner, a complete Christian or still incomplete, who did not fear to confess the Lord at the greatest peril to himself. Nor is this contrary to the earlier treatment: for there, time remained to correct what was maimed or wrong, and certain things have been granted to the mere name of our Lord; but martyrdom cannot be completed except in the Lord himself and through him. And therefore no one can confess Christ without his name, nor can the name of Christ, without Christ himself, protect anyone in confession.

Therefore this whole question must be divided into its parts, so that it can become clearer. For the invocation of the name of Jesus can protect only if it has afterward been duly completed, because both the prophets and the apostles preached so. For James says in the Acts of the Apostles: “Men, brothers, listen: Simon has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take from them a people for his name; and with this the words of the prophets agree, as it is written: After this I will return, and I will rebuild that tabernacle of David which has fallen; what has been torn down of it I will rebuild, and I will raise it up again, so that the rest of men may seek God, and all the nations over whom my name has been invoked, says the Lord who does these things.” So both the rest of men, that is, some of the Jews, and all the nations over whom the name of the Lord has been invoked can and must seek the Lord, because the very invocation of the name gives them the occasion, or even lays on them the necessity, of seeking the Lord; and with them we are directed to discuss the holy Scriptures, whether all or some, more boldly concerning the truth than with the Gentiles, over whom the name of the Lord Jesus, the Son of the living God, has not been invoked, as it has not over the Jews, who receive only the old Scriptures. And therefore people of both these kinds, Jews and Gentiles, when they believe fully as they should, are baptized in the same way. But heretics, already baptized with water in the name of Jesus Christ, are to be baptized only in the Holy Spirit. And in Jesus, the only name given under heaven by which we must be saved, death is rightly despised; since if they persist as they are, they cannot be saved, because they have not sought the Lord after the invocation of his name over them, like those also … who perhaps refused to believe, of whom the Lord said: “Take care that no one leads you into error. For many will come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and will lead many into error.” And again he says: “Then if anyone says to you, Look, here is the Christ, or there, do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will arise and will give great signs and wonders, so as to lead into error, if it were possible, even the elect.” These mighty works they will then doubtless do under the name of Christ. In this name some seem even now to do certain mighty works and to prophesy falsely. But it is certain that, because they themselves are not Christ's, they do not belong to Christ; just as, if anyone departs from Christ and clings to his name alone, he is not much helped, but rather is even weighed down by this name, even though he was formerly most faithful or most righteous, or honored with some distinguished office, or endowed with the dignity of a confessor. For all these, by denying the true Christ and introducing or following another, though there is no other at all, leave themselves no hope or salvation, no differently from those who have denied Christ before men, who must be denied by Christ, with no account taken of their former life or understanding or dignity, just as they themselves dared to cast off Christ, that is, their own salvation. They are condemned by this clause, since the Lord said most plainly: “Whoever denies me before men, I too will deny him before my Father who is in heaven.” So this word “whoever,” in the clause about confession as well, shows us most fully that no condition of the confessor himself can stand in his way: even if he was formerly a heretic, or a hearer, or only beginning to hear, not yet baptized, or converted from heresy to the truth of the faith, or one who left the church and afterward returned, and then, when he was returning, before the bishop laid his hand on him, was arrested and had to confess Christ before men. Just so, again, no former dignity of his own can protect for salvation one who denies Christ.

For whatever is found last in a person in this respect is what each of us will have to be judged by, all that he did before being abolished and blotted out. And therefore, since in martyrdom there is so great a change of things in a moment of time that everything can be changed in a very swift event, let no one flatter himself who has lost the occasion of a glorious salvation, if perhaps he has shut himself out of it by his own fault, like Lot's wife, who likewise, in a moment of crisis, against the angels' command, only looked back behind her and became a mound of salt. By the same reasoning, the heretic who is slaughtered for confessing the name of Christ can correct nothing afterward, if he has thought wrongly of God or of Christ, since by believing in another God or another Christ he has deceived himself: he is a confessor not of Christ but of the mere name of Christ. For the apostle too says, consistently: “Even if I hand over my body to be burned with fire, but have not love, I gain nothing.” For by this act he gains nothing who does not have love for that God and Christ who is preached through the law and the prophets and in the Gospel in this way: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” and, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. For on these two commandments hang the whole law and the prophets.” As John the evangelist also says: “And everyone who loves is born of God and knows God, because God is love.” And as God also says: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that everyone who believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” So it appears plainly that he who does not have in himself this love, the love by which he loves us and is loved by us, gains nothing by an empty confession and suffering; since it is plain and established that he is a heretic who believes in another God, or accepts another Christ than the one whom the Scriptures of the New and the Old Testament plainly preach, which proclaim without obscurity the Father almighty, creator of all things, and his Son. For it will happen to them, expecting salvation from another God, that then at last, against their expectation, they will be condemned to eternal punishment by Christ, the Son of God the Father almighty, the creator, whom they have blasphemed, when God begins to judge the secrets of men according to the gospel through Christ Jesus, because they did not believe in him, although they were washed in his name.

And every such baptism of heretics can be corrected to this extent, if some interval of time intervenes and the person survives and corrects his faith, because our God spoke to his disciples in the Gospel according to Luke, saying: “But I have another baptism to be baptized with”; and likewise, according to Mark, he said on the same principle to the sons of Zebedee: “Can you drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” For he knew that people would have to be baptized not only with water but also with their own blood, so that those baptized with this baptism alone can obtain whole faith and the sincere favor of the washing, and those baptized in both ways can nevertheless obtain equally the one baptism of salvation and honor, alike and on equal terms. For what the Lord said, “I have another baptism to be baptized with,” does not signify here a second baptism, as though there were two baptisms, but shows that a baptism of another kind too, contributing to the same salvation, has been given to us. Both these kinds had first to be begun and sanctified by our Lord himself, so that for us too either kind, or both, might provide one baptism, not a double one, saving and honorable; and so that certain ways of the one baptism might be opened to us in such a way that sometimes one of them could be lacking without harm. So for martyrs who are hearers of the word, the baptism of water is lacking without harm (yet we are certain that they are usually baptized with water too, if they have any respite); and likewise for those who have been made lawful believers, the baptism of their own blood is lacking without harm, because, baptized in the name of Christ, they have been redeemed by the most precious blood of the Lord. For both these rivers of the Lord's baptism proceed from one and the same source, so that everyone who thirsts may come and drink, as Scripture says: “Rivers of living water flowed from his belly.” These rivers first appeared in the Lord's passion, when blood and water flowed from his side, pierced by a soldier's spear, so that it sent forth two rivers of different kinds, yet from one and the same side, so that whoever believes and drinks from both rivers may be filled with the Holy Spirit. For in speaking of these rivers the Lord was showing this, signifying the Holy Spirit whom those who would believe in him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. So, as to how there can be a baptism that the apostle proclaims to be one, it is surely plain on this principle: there are different kinds of one and the same baptism, flowing from one wound as water and blood; whereas in the other case there would be two baptisms of water, of which we have spoken, that is, of one and the same kind, when the baptism of each kind ought to be one, as we have said more fully.

And since we seem to have divided all spiritual baptism in three ways, let us also come to the proof of the account we proposed, lest we seem to have done this by our own judgment and rashly. For John says of our Lord, teaching us in his letter: “This is he who came through water and blood, Jesus Christ, not in water only, but in water and blood. And the Spirit is the one who bears witness, because the Spirit is truth. For there are three that bear witness, the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three are one.” From these we may gather that water customarily gives the Spirit, and that one's own blood customarily gives the Spirit to people, and that the Spirit himself also customarily gives the Spirit. For since water is poured out, and so is blood, and the Spirit too was poured out by the Lord on all who believed, people can surely be baptized both with water and no less with their own blood, and then also with the Holy Spirit. For Peter says: “But this is what was said through the prophet: It shall be in the last days, says the Lord, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and their sons and their daughters shall prophesy, and the young men shall see visions and the old men shall dream dreams; and indeed on my servants and my handmaids I will pour out of my Spirit.” This Spirit we find in the Old Testament, not everywhere or abundantly, but shared with others, or leaping of his own accord upon certain people, or clothing them, or being upon them; as we see that the Lord said to Moses about the seventy elders: “And I will take of the Spirit that is upon you and put it upon them.” Accordingly, as he had promised, God put on them some of the Spirit that had been upon Moses, and they prophesied in the camp; and Moses, as a spiritual man, rejoiced that it had so happened, although Joshua son of Nun urged him to intervene in the matter, against his will; and so he was not disturbed. Further, in the book of Judges and likewise in the books of Kingdoms we see that the Spirit of the Lord either was upon very many or leapt upon them, as upon Othniel, Gideon, Jephthah, Samson, Saul, David, and others. This is so true that the Lord taught us most plainly the freedom and power of the Holy Spirit to come of his own accord, saying: “The Spirit blows where he wills, and you hear his voice, and you do not know where he comes from or where he goes.” So the same Spirit is sometimes found to be even upon those unworthy of him, not idly, surely, nor without reason, but for the sake of some necessary work; as he was upon Saul, upon whom the Spirit of God came, and he prophesied. This was at a later time, after the Spirit of the Lord had departed from him and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him, when he had come last of all, for this purpose, after the messengers whom he had repeatedly sent ahead to kill David; and these therefore fell into the company of the prophets and prophesied, so that they could not, or would not, do what they had been ordered. We believe that the Spirit who was upon them all brought this about by a wonderful plan, through the will of God. This Spirit also filled John the Baptist even from his mother's womb, and rested on those who were with Cornelius the centurion before they were baptized with water. So, since the Spirit either accompanies people's baptism, or goes before or follows it, or rests on those who believe when the baptism of water is lacking, he gives us this counsel: either we should keep baptism duly entire from the start, or, if baptism has perhaps been given by anyone in the name of Jesus Christ, we should supply what is lacking, preserving the most holy invocation of the name of Jesus Christ, as we have most fully explained, and preserving besides the custom and authority, venerable to us, of so long a time and so many men.

Now since the first part of this discussion seems to have been set out, we must also touch on the next part, because of the heretics; for it is very necessary not to pass over a subject that has once come into our hands, lest some heretic dare to attack the simpler of the brothers with his cunning. For because John said that we are to be baptized in the Holy Spirit and fire, since he added “and fire,” certain desperate men have dared to extend their depravity in every direction, and these very clever men therefore seek how to corrupt and violate the baptism of holiness so as even to empty it. They draw their origin from Simon Magus, practicing his manifold perversity through various errors. To this Simon Peter said in the Acts of the Apostles: “Your money perish with you, because you thought that the grace of God could be possessed by money. You have no part or share in this word, for your heart is not right before God.” And they do all these things in their desire to deceive the simpler or more curious, and some of them try to make out that they alone hand on a whole and perfect baptism, not a mutilated and truncated one like ours. They are said to confer it in such a way that as soon as the candidates have gone down into the water, fire at once appears on the water. Whether this can be done by some trick (and many such tricks are said to be those of Anaxilaus), or whether it is something natural by which this could happen, or whether they only think they see it, or whether the work of the evil one and magical poison can produce fire in water, they nevertheless proclaim such a deception and trick to be the perfect baptism. If believers have been pressed into receiving it, there will surely be no doubt that they have lost what they had; just as, if a soldier who has taken his oath should desert his own camp and wish to take a quite different oath in the enemy's far different camp, it is clear that by this he has been discharged from his old oath.

Likewise, if such a man comes back to you again, you will surely be in doubt whether he has baptism or not; and yet you will have to help him too, as he does penance, in whatever ways you can. Of this adulterous, or rather murderous, baptism, if there is any other author, there is also a book forged by these same heretics for the sake of this same error, entitled The Preaching of Paul. In this book, against all the Scriptures, you will find Christ, who alone did no wrong whatever, confessing his own sin, and being compelled by his mother Mary, almost against his will, to receive John's baptism; likewise that when he was baptized fire was seen upon the water, which is written in no Gospel; and that after so long a time Peter and Paul, after comparing the gospel in Jerusalem, and after mutual deliberation and dispute and arranging what was to be done, at last came to know each other in the City as though for the first time; and certain other things of this kind, absurdly and shamefully invented, all of which you will find gathered in that book. But those who are not ignorant of the nature of the Holy Spirit understand that what was said of fire was said of the Spirit himself. For in the Acts of the Apostles, in accordance with this same promise of our Lord, on the very day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit had come down on the disciples so that they might be baptized in him, tongues as if of fire were seen resting on each of them, so that it was clear that they had been baptized in the Holy Spirit and in fire, that is, in that Spirit who was either fire or like fire: such as the fire that burned in the bush and did not consume the bush, and such as that fire which is the spirit of the angels, as Scripture says: “Who makes his angels spirits and his ministers a burning fire.” If you are like him, or his companion or sharer, you will be able to fear no fire, not even the fire that will go before the Lord on the day of judgment and burn up the whole world, except those who have been baptized in the Holy Spirit and fire.

To people, indeed, the Spirit remains invisible today, as the Lord says: “The Spirit blows where he wills, and you do not know where he comes from or where he goes.” But at the beginning of the mystery of faith and of spiritual baptism this same Spirit was plainly seen to rest upon the disciples like fire, and, when the heavens were opened, to come down upon the Lord like a dove. For very many, indeed almost all, of the things that were to come were made manifest; things that would otherwise now be invisible have nevertheless been shown even now to people's eyes and to their unbelief, either in part, or at times, or in figure, to strengthen and confirm our faith. But I would not leave out another thing that the gospel rightly proclaims. For our Lord said to the paralytic: “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven,” to show that hearts are cleansed by faith for obtaining the forgiveness of sins. This forgiveness of sins was also obtained by the woman who was a sinner in the city, to whom the Lord said: “Your sins are forgiven.” And when those who were reclining at table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this who forgives sins?” (as the scribes and Pharisees had murmured more bitterly about the paralytic), the Lord said to the woman: “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” From all these it is shown that hearts are cleansed by faith, and souls washed by the Spirit; further, that bodies are washed by water, and that by blood one reaches the rewards of salvation more quickly, by a shorter way.

I think we have fully followed through the preaching of John the Baptist, from which we began our discourse, who said to the Jews: “I baptize you with water for repentance; but he who comes after me is mightier than I; I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal. He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire.” And I think we have also set out, not unfittingly, the teaching of the apostle John, who says: “For there are three that bear witness, the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three are one.” And, unless I am mistaken, we have also explained what our Lord said: “John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized in the Holy Spirit.” Moreover, I think we have given no weak account of the reason for the custom. Let us nevertheless defend it, even though we do so in the last place, lest anyone think that we stir up the present dispute on a single point, although this custom by itself ought to hold the chief place among people who fear God and are humble.