On Baptism 15

I do not know whether anything more is aired in the controversy about baptism. Let me indeed take up again what I passed over above, lest I seem to break off the thoughts pressing on me. There is for us one baptism and one only, both from the Lord's gospel and from the apostle's letters, since there is “one God and one baptism” and one church in the heavens. But what is to be observed regarding heretics may well be reconsidered. For this was issued to us. Heretics, however, have no fellowship in our discipline; the very withdrawal of communion testifies that they are outsiders. I ought not to recognize in them what has been enjoined on me, because they and we do not have the same God, nor one Christ, that is, the same; and therefore not one baptism either, because it is not the same. Since they do not have it duly, they doubtless do not have it; and what one does not have cannot be counted; so neither can they receive it, because they do not have it. But this has already been set out more fully by us in Greek. We enter the washing, then, once; sins are washed away once, because they ought not to be repeated. The Jew Israel, however, washes daily, because he is defiled daily. So that this might not be practised among us too, it was defined that there is one washing. Happy the water that washes once, that is no plaything for sinners, that is not infected by the constant presence of filth and does not defile again those it has washed.