On Baptism 12

But when it is laid down as a rule that salvation belongs to no one without baptism, especially from that pronouncement of the Lord who says, “Unless one is born of water, he has not life,” there arise scrupulous, or rather rash, reconsiderations on the part of some: how, under this rule, salvation belongs to the apostles, whom we do not find dipped in the Lord, except Paul. Indeed, since Paul alone of them put on the baptism of Christ, either judgment has been passed on the peril of the others who lack the water of Christ, so that the rule stands; or the rule is annulled, if salvation is appointed even for the undipped. I have heard such things, the Lord is my witness, lest anyone think me so abandoned as to invent of my own accord, for the pleasure of the pen, things that would strike scruples into others. And now I will answer, as best I can, those who deny that the apostles were dipped. For if they had entered upon the human baptism of John and were longing for the Lord's, then, since the Lord himself had defined baptism as one, saying to Peter when he wished to be washed all over, “He who has once washed has no need to again,” he certainly would not have said this at all to one not dipped. And this is a plain proof against those who deprive the apostles even of John's baptism in order to destroy the sacrament of water. Or can it seem credible that the way of the Lord, that is, the baptism of John, was not then prepared in those persons who were destined to open the way of the Lord throughout the whole world? The Lord himself, who owed no repentance, was dipped; was it not necessary for sinners? What then of the fact that others were not dipped? They were not companions of Christ but rivals of the faith, teachers of the law and Pharisees. From this it is also suggested that, since the Lord's adversaries refused to be dipped, those who followed the Lord were dipped, and did not think like their rivals, especially as the Lord to whom they clung had exalted John with his testimony, saying, “No one among those born of women is greater than John the Baptist.” Others, rather forcedly, suggest that the apostles fulfilled the equivalent of baptism when, in the little boat, they were sprinkled and covered by the waves; and that Peter himself, walking on the sea, was plunged enough. But in my opinion it is one thing to be sprinkled or caught by the violence of the sea, another to be dipped by the discipline of religion. Moreover, that little boat displayed a figure of the church, in that it is disturbed in the sea, that is, the world, by the waves, that is, persecutions and temptations, while the Lord in his patience is as it were asleep, until, roused at the last by the prayers of the saints, he restrains the world and restores calm to his own. Now whether they were dipped in some way, or remained unwashed, so that even that saying of the Lord about the one washing, spoken in the person of Peter, concerns us only: still, to pass judgment on the salvation of the apostles is rash enough, since the prerogative either of their first calling or of the inseparable intimacy that followed could confer on them the equivalent of baptism, since they, I think, followed him who promised salvation to everyone who believes. “Your faith,” he used to say, “has saved you,” and, “Your sins will be forgiven you,” to one who believed, certainly, and yet was not dipped. If that was lacking to the apostles, I do not know by whose faith one, roused by a single word of the Lord, left the tax booth; another deserted his father and his boat and the trade by which he supported his life; another disdained his father's funeral, and fulfilled that highest precept of the Lord, “He who prefers father or mother to me is not worthy of me,” before he heard it.