On Baptism

Happy is the sacrament of our water, because, the sins of our former blindness washed away, we are set free for eternal life! This treatise will not be idle, instructing both those who are even now being formed in the faith, and those who, content to have simply believed, without examining the reasons of the traditions, carry through inexperience a faith that is plausible but untested. And indeed, a certain woman of the Cainite heresy, a viper of the most venomous kind, lately living here, carried off a great many with her doctrine, above all by destroying baptism. Quite in keeping with nature: for vipers and asps and even basilisks generally haunt dry and waterless places. But we, little fishes, after the example of our ΙΧΘΥΣ, Jesus Christ, are born in water, and only by remaining in water are we safe. So that most monstrous creature, who had no right to teach even if her doctrine were sound, knew very well how to kill the little fishes: by taking them out of the water.

But how great is the power of perversity to shake faith or to reject it altogether, that it attacks it from the very things of which it consists! There is nothing that so hardens people's minds as the simplicity of the divine works as seen in the act, and the magnificence promised in the effect. So here too: because with such simplicity, without pomp, without any novel apparatus, in short without expense, a man is let down into water and dipped with a few words and rises again not much cleaner, or not at all, it is thought all the more incredible that he attains eternity. I am lying if, on the contrary, the rites and mysteries of the idols do not build up credit and authority for themselves from their display and apparatus and expense. O wretched unbelief, which denies to God his own properties, simplicity and power! What then? Is it not marvelous that death should be washed away by a bath? Yet it is all the more to be believed if it is not believed precisely because it is marvelous. For what should divine works be like except beyond all marveling? We too marvel, but because we believe. Unbelief, however, marvels and does not believe: it marvels at simple things as though they were empty, at magnificent things as though they were impossible. And let it be just as you think: the divine pronouncement has anticipated both points sufficiently. “God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound its wisdom”; and “things very difficult with men are easy with God.” For if God is both wise and powerful, which even those who pass him by do not deny, rightly has he laid the materials of his working in the opposites of wisdom and power, that is, in foolishness and impossibility; since every power takes its occasion from the things by which it is challenged.

Mindful of this pronouncement as of a prescription, we nonetheless consider how foolish and impossible it is to be remade by water. Why, of course, did this material deserve a service of such honor? I think the authority of the liquid element must be examined. And there is abundant authority, and that from the beginning. For it is one of those things which, before the whole furnishing of the world, rested with God in a form still unshaped. “In the beginning,” it says, “God made heaven and earth. But the earth was invisible and unformed, and darkness was over the abyss, and the Spirit of the Lord was borne over the waters.” You have, O man, first of all to revere the age of the waters, because theirs is an ancient substance; then their dignity, because they were the seat of the divine Spirit, more pleasing, no doubt, than the other elements then. For the darkness was still total, formless, without the adornment of the stars; the abyss gloomy, the earth unprepared, the heaven unwrought; the liquid alone, always a perfect material, joyous, simple, pure in itself, provided a worthy vehicle for God. What of the fact that thereafter the arrangement of the world was established for God with the waters, in a manner, as regulators? For to suspend the heavenly firmament in the middle, he did it by dividing the waters; to suspend the dry land, he accomplished it by separating the waters. Then, when the world had been ordered through its elements and inhabitants were being given, the first waters were commanded to bring forth living creatures. The liquid first produced what lived, so that it should be no wonder in baptism if waters know how to give life. For was not the work of fashioning man himself also completed with the waters as partners? The material was taken from the earth, yet not fit unless moist and juicy; which, of course, the waters separated off before the fourth day into their own place had tempered into clay with the moisture that remained. If I were then to pursue all, or more, of what I could recount of the authority of this element, how great its power or grace, how many its capacities, how many its services, how much equipment it furnishes to the world, I fear I might seem to have collected praises of water rather than reasons for baptism: although I would teach all the more fully that there should be no doubt that the material which God has arranged in all his things and works he has made obedient in his own sacraments too; that what governs earthly life also procures heavenly life.

But it will be enough to have picked out first those points in which the reason of baptism is also recognized: first, that the Spirit of God, who from the beginning was borne over the waters, was already then marked out, even by his very posture, as the figure of baptism, as one who would abide over the waters of the baptized. And the holy was, of course, borne over the holy; and from that which was borne over it, that which bore it borrowed holiness, since every underlying material must seize the quality of that which hangs over it, above all a bodily material that of a spiritual one, which easily penetrates and settles in through the subtlety of its substance. Thus the nature of the waters, sanctified by the Holy One, itself conceived the power to sanctify. Let no one say, “Are we then dipped in the very waters that existed then in the beginning?” Not the very same, of course, except in the sense that the genus is one while the species are many; and what is attributed to the genus overflows into the species too. And so it makes no difference whether one is washed in a sea or a pool, a river or a spring, a lake or a trough; nor is there any difference between those whom John dipped in the Jordan and those whom Peter dipped in the Tiber, unless that eunuch whom Philip dipped on the road in water found by chance obtained more salvation, or less. All waters, therefore, from the ancient prerogative of their origin, obtain the sacrament of sanctification when God is invoked. For the Spirit immediately comes down from heaven and rests over the waters, sanctifying them from himself; and so sanctified they drink in the power to sanctify. Although the likeness fits the simple act too: since we are defiled by sins as by dirt, we are washed with water. But just as sins do not appear on the flesh (for no one carries on his skin the stain of idolatry or of fornication or of fraud), so such things make foul the spirit, which is the author of the sin. For the spirit rules, the flesh serves. Yet both share the guilt between them: the spirit because of its command, the flesh because of its service. Therefore, when the waters have been in a manner medicated by the intervention of the angel, both the spirit is bodily washed in the waters and the flesh is spiritually cleansed in the same.

But the heathen nations, strangers to all understanding of spiritual things, ascribe power with the same efficacy to their idols. But they deceive themselves with widowed waters. For they are initiated into certain rites by a washing, those of some Isis or Mithras; they even carry their gods themselves out to be washed. Moreover, they everywhere expiate country houses, homes, temples, and whole cities by sprinkling water carried around. Certainly at the Apollinarian and Eleusinian games they are dipped, and they suppose that they do this for their regeneration and the remission of the penalty of their perjuries. Likewise among the ancients, whoever had stained himself with homicide sought out purifying waters. If, then, they flatter themselves with hopes of cleansing from the mere nature of water, because it is the proper material for washing, how much more truly will waters render this through the authority of God, by whom their whole nature was constituted? If they think that water is medicated by religion, what religion is more powerful than that of the living God? Knowing this, we recognize here too the zeal of the devil, who rivals the things of God, since he too practices baptism among his own. What likeness is there? The unclean cleanses, the destroyer frees, the condemned acquits! He would, no doubt, destroy his own work by washing away sins which he himself inspires. These things are set down as a testimony against those who reject the faith, if they do not believe the things of God, whose imitations they believe in the case of God's rival. Do not unclean spirits at other times, too, without any sacrament, brood over waters, imitating that bearing of the divine Spirit in the beginning? All shady springs know it, and all remote streams, and the pools in baths, and the channels in houses, or cisterns and wells which are said to snatch people away, that is, through the force of a harmful spirit. For they call people … and frenzied and water-fearing, whom waters have killed or tormented with madness or dread. Why have we related these things? So that no one may think it too hard to believe that a holy angel of God is present to temper waters for man's salvation, when an evil angel frequents profane intercourse with the same element for man's ruin. If it seems novel that an angel should intervene in waters, an example of what was to come went before. An angel intervening used to stir the pool of Bethsaida. Those who complained of illness watched for it; for whoever had been first to go down there ceased to complain after the washing. This figure of bodily healing foretold spiritual healing, in the way in which carnal things always go before as figures of spiritual ones. So, as the grace of God advanced among men, more was added to the waters and to the angel. Those which used to remedy the defects of the body now heal the spirit; those which worked temporal health now restore eternal; those which set one person free once a year now save peoples daily, death being destroyed by the washing away of sins. For when the guilt is removed, the penalty is removed too. Thus man, who once had been in the image of God, will be restored to God, to his likeness. The image is reckoned in the form, the likeness in eternity. For he receives again that Spirit of God which he had then received from his breath, but had afterward lost through sin.

Not that we obtain the Holy Spirit in the waters; but, cleansed in the water under the angel, we are prepared for the Holy Spirit. Here too a figure went before: for so John was the forerunner of the Lord, preparing his ways. So too the angel, the arbiter of baptism, makes straight the ways for the Holy Spirit who is to come upon us, by the washing away of sins, which faith obtains, sealed in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. For if every word shall stand on three witnesses, how much more, since through the benediction we have the same as witnesses of our faith whom we have as sureties of our salvation, is even the number of the divine names enough for the confidence of our hope? And since both the attestation of faith and the pledge of salvation are secured under the three, mention of the church is necessarily added; for where the three are, that is, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, there is the church, which is the body of the three.

Then, having come out of the washing, we are thoroughly anointed with a blessed unction, according to the ancient discipline by which they used to be anointed with oil from a horn for the priesthood, ever since Aaron was anointed by Moses. Hence Christ is so called from chrisma, which is “anointing,” which gave its name to the Lord, having become spiritual, because he was anointed with the Spirit by God the Father, as in the Acts: “For truly they were gathered in this city against your holy Son, whom you anointed.” So in us too the anointing runs over the flesh but profits spiritually; just as the act of baptism itself is carnal, in that we are plunged in water, but its effect spiritual, in that we are freed from sins.

Next the hand is laid on, calling upon and inviting the Holy Spirit through the benediction. Indeed, human ingenuity will be allowed to summon air into water and, by hands placed over it, to animate their union with another breath of such clearness; and will God not be allowed, on his own instrument, to play a spiritual melody through holy hands? But this too comes from the ancient sacrament, in which Jacob blessed his grandsons, the sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh, with hands laid on their heads and crossed, and so turned across one another that, forming the shape of Christ, they already then foretold the blessing that was to be in Christ. Then that most holy Spirit gladly descends from the Father upon the bodies cleansed and blessed, and rests upon the waters of baptism as if recognizing his ancient seat, he who glided down on the Lord in the form of a dove, so that the nature of the Holy Spirit might be made known through a creature of simplicity and innocence, since the dove, even bodily, lacks gall. And so he says, “Be simple as doves”; and not even this without the support of a preceding figure. For just as, after the waters of the flood, by which the old iniquity was purged, after the baptism of the world, so to speak, the dove as herald announced to the earth peace from heaven's wrath, sent out from the ark and returning with the olive (a sign held out as peace even among the nations), so by the same arrangement, in its spiritual effect, the dove of the Holy Spirit flies to the earth, that is, to our flesh as it emerges from the washing after its old sins, bringing the peace of God, sent from heaven, where the church is, prefigured by the ark. But the world sinned again; in this respect baptism is ill compared to the flood. And so it is destined for fire, as is the man who after baptism renews his sins; so that this too ought to be received as a sign for our warning.

How many patronages of nature, then, how many privileges of grace, how many solemn rites of discipline, figures, preparations, and prayers have ordained the sanctity of water? First, when the people, set free from Egypt, escaped the power of the king of Egypt by crossing through water, water destroyed the king himself with all his forces. What figure is plainer in the sacrament of baptism? The nations are set free from the world, that is, through water, and leave behind the devil, their former master, overwhelmed in the water. Again, water is healed from its defect of bitterness to a use of pleasant sweetness by the wood of Moses. That wood was Christ, healing from himself the veins of a nature once poisoned and bitter into the most wholesome waters, those of baptism. This is the water that flowed for the people from the rock that went with them. For if the rock is Christ, we see without doubt that baptism is blessed by water in Christ. How great is the grace of water with God and his Christ for the confirmation of baptism! Never is Christ without water: he himself is dipped in water; when invited to a wedding he inaugurates the first beginnings of his power with water; when he speaks, he invites the thirsty to his everlasting water; when he teaches about love, he approves a cup of water offered to a poor person among the works of charity; at a well he regains his strength; he walks on water; he gladly crosses the sea; he ministers water to his disciples. The testimony of baptism continues right up to the passion: when he is handed over to the cross, water intervenes, as the hands of Pilate know; when he is wounded, water bursts from his side, as the soldier's spear knows.

We have spoken, as far as our modest ability allowed, of all the things that build up the sanctity of baptism; now I will go on, as well as I can, to its remaining state, concerning certain small questions. The baptism announced by John already then raised a question, put by the Lord himself to the Pharisees: whether that baptism was heavenly or earthly? They could not answer consistently, since they did not understand because they did not believe. We, however, with what little faith we have, can with equally little understanding judge that that baptism was divine, but by commission, not also by power, because we read that John too was sent by the Lord to this office, but was human in its nature. For it conferred nothing heavenly, but ministered beforehand to heavenly things, being set over repentance, which is in man's power. In short, the teachers of the law and the Pharisees, who refused to believe, did not repent either. But if repentance is a human thing, its baptism too must have been of the same nature; otherwise, if it had been heavenly, it would have given both the Holy Spirit and the remission of sins. But no one forgives sin or grants the Spirit except God alone. Even the Lord himself said that the Spirit would not come down otherwise unless he himself first ascended to the Father. What the Lord was not yet bestowing, the servant certainly could not have supplied. So we find afterwards in the Acts of the Apostles that those who had John's baptism had not received the Holy Spirit, whom they had not even heard of. So it was not heavenly, since it did not present heavenly things; indeed, the very thing that had been heavenly in John, the spirit of prophecy, failed so far, after the transfer of the whole Spirit to the Lord, that he sent to ask whether the one he had preached, whom he had pointed out as he came, was really he. The baptism of repentance, therefore, was performed as a candidate, so to speak, for the remission and sanctification that was to follow in Christ. For when he preached a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins, it was declared for a remission to come: since repentance goes before and remission follows, and this is to prepare the way. But he who prepares does not himself complete; he arranges for another to complete it. He himself professes that heavenly things are not his but Christ's, saying, “He who is from the earth speaks from the earth; he who comes from above is over all”; and again, that he dipped only for repentance, but that one would soon come who would dip in the Spirit and fire: because true and steadfast faith is dipped with water unto salvation, but feigned and weak faith is dipped with fire unto judgment.

“But look,” they say, “the Lord came and did not dip.” For we read, “And yet he himself did not dip, but his disciples,” as though John had actually preached that he would dip with his own hands! It is certainly not to be understood so, but as said simply, in the common way of speaking, as, for example, “The emperor has posted an edict,” or “The prefect has beaten him with rods”: does he himself post it, or does he himself beat? He is always said to do a thing for whom it is done by a servant. So “He will dip you” is to be taken as meaning “You will be dipped through him,” or “into him.” But let it not disturb anyone that he himself did not dip. For into what would he have dipped? Into repentance? What then would he want with a forerunner? Into the remission of sins, which he gave by a word? Into himself, whom he was concealing by humility? Into the Holy Spirit, who had not yet come down, since he had not yet ascended to the Father? Into the church, which the apostles had not yet built? So his disciples dipped as ministers, as John the forerunner had, with the same baptism of John, lest anyone think it was with another; for there is no other except the later baptism of Christ, which could not then be given by the disciples, since the glory of the Lord was not yet fulfilled nor the efficacy of the washing established through his passion and resurrection; because neither could our death be undone except by the Lord's passion, nor life be restored without his resurrection.

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.

Here, then, those most wicked people raise questions. They go so far as to say, “Baptism is not necessary for those for whom faith is enough; for Abraham too pleased God by the sacrament of no water, but of faith.” But in all things later things are decisive, and what follows prevails over what went before. Granted that in the past there was salvation through bare faith, before the Lord's passion and resurrection. But when faith was enlarged to believing in his birth, passion, and resurrection, an amplification was added to the sacrament: the sealing of baptism, a clothing, as it were, of faith, which was formerly bare and now has no power without its own law. For the law of dipping has been imposed and its form prescribed. “Go,” he says, “teach the nations, dipping them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” The definition joined to this law, “Unless one is reborn of water and the Spirit, he will not enter the kingdom of heaven,” has bound faith to the necessity of baptism. Accordingly, all believers from then on were dipped. Then Paul too, when he believed, was dipped. And this is what the Lord had commanded in that affliction of blindness, saying, “Arise and go into Damascus; there it will be shown you what you must do,” namely, be dipped, which alone was lacking to him. Otherwise he had learned and believed enough: that the Nazarene was the Lord, the Son of God.

But they turn over the case of the apostle himself, because he said, “For Christ did not send me to dip,” as though by this argument baptism were done away with. Why then did he dip Gaius and Crispus and the household of Stephanas? Although, even if Christ had not sent him to dip, he had nevertheless commanded the other apostles to dip. But these things were written to the Corinthians according to the circumstances of that time, since schisms and dissensions were being stirred up among them, one attributing himself to Paul, another to Apollos. For this reason the peaceable apostle, lest he seem to claim everything for himself, says that he was sent not to dip but to preach. For preaching comes first, dipping afterward; and preaching had come first. But I think one who was permitted to preach was permitted also to dip.

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.

We have, indeed, a second washing too, itself also one: that of blood, of which the Lord said, “I have a baptism to be dipped with,” when he had already been dipped. For he had come “by water and blood,” as John wrote, so as to be dipped with water and glorified with blood, and likewise to make us called by water, chosen by blood. These two baptisms he sent out from the wound of his pierced side, so that those who believed in his blood might be washed with water, and those who had washed in water might also bear blood. This is the baptism which both stands in for the washing when it has not been received and restores it when it has been lost.

It remains, to conclude this little subject, to call to mind also the rules for giving and receiving baptism. The right of giving it belongs to the high priest, who is the bishop; then to presbyters and deacons, yet not without the bishop's authority, for the honor of the church, which being preserved, peace is preserved. Otherwise, even laymen have the right; for what is received equally can be given equally. Unless bishops, or presbyters, or deacons are already the ones called disciples. The word of the Lord ought not to be hidden by anyone. Likewise baptism too, equally God's property, can be administered by all. But how much more does the discipline of reverence and modesty lie upon laymen, since these things belong to their superiors, that they should not take upon themselves the office dedicated to bishops! Rivalry for the episcopate is the mother of schisms. The most holy apostle said that all things are lawful but not all things are expedient. Let it be enough, then, that you use this right in cases of necessity, wherever the circumstances of place or time or person compel it. For then the boldness of one who comes to help is accepted, when the situation of one in danger presses, since he will be guilty of a man's perdition if he refrains from giving what he freely could. But the impudence of the woman who has usurped the right to teach will certainly not beget for her the right of dipping too, unless some new beast should arise like the former one, so that, just as that one took baptism away, so some woman should confer it by herself. But if those who read the writings wrongly ascribed to Paul put forward the example of Thecla as license for women to teach and to dip, let them know that the presbyter in Asia who composed that writing, as though heaping up the reputation of Paul with something of his own, was convicted, confessed that he had done it out of love for Paul, and was removed from his office. For how credible would it seem that he should give a woman power to teach and dip who did not even permit a woman to learn with confidence? “Let them be silent,” he says, “and consult their husbands at home.”

But those whose office it is know that baptism is not to be entrusted rashly. “Give to everyone who asks you” has its own heading, belonging properly to almsgiving. Rather, this is to be considered: “Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine”; and, “Do not lay hands on anyone quickly, lest you share in another's sins.” If Philip so readily dipped the eunuch, let us reflect that a manifest and express approval of the Lord intervened. The Spirit had commanded Philip to go on that road; the eunuch himself was found not idle, nor one who suddenly desired to be dipped, but having gone to the temple to pray, intent on the divine Scripture: so it was fitting that he be found, to whom God of his own accord had sent an apostle, whom the Spirit again ordered to join himself to the eunuch's chariot. The Scripture meets his faith at the right moment; he is exhorted and taken up; the Lord is shown; faith does not delay; water is not waited for; the apostle, his business done, is snatched away. And Paul too was in fact dipped quickly; for Simon his host had quickly learned that he was appointed a vessel of election. God's approval sends its own credentials ahead; every request can both deceive and be deceived. And so, according to each person's condition and disposition, and also age, delay of baptism is more profitable, especially, however, in the case of little children. For what need is there, if it is not so necessary, for the sponsors too to be thrust into danger, since they themselves may fail of their promises through death, or be deceived by the growth of a bad disposition? The Lord does indeed say, “Do not forbid them to come to me.” Let them come, then, while they are growing up; let them come while they are learning, while they are being taught where they are coming; let them become Christians when they have become able to know Christ. Why does the age of innocence hurry to the remission of sins? Shall we act more cautiously in worldly matters, so that divine substance is entrusted to one to whom earthly substance is not? Let them know how to ask for salvation, so that you may seem to have given to one who asks. For no lesser reason the unmarried too should be put off, in whom temptation lies in wait, for virgins through their maturity as for widows through their freedom, until they either marry or are strengthened for continence. If any understand the weight of baptism, they will fear its obtaining more than its delay: sound faith is secure of salvation.

Passover provides the more solemn day for baptism, since then too the Lord's passion, into which we are dipped, was accomplished. Nor will it be interpreted inappropriately as a figure that, when the Lord was about to keep the last Passover, having sent the disciples to prepare, he said, “You will meet a man carrying water”: he showed the place for celebrating the Passover by the sign of water. After that, Pentecost is a most joyful period for arranging baptisms, in which the Lord's resurrection was repeatedly made known among the disciples, the grace of the Holy Spirit was bestowed, and the hope of the Lord's coming was hinted, because then, when he had been taken back into heaven, the angels told the apostles that he would come in the same way as he had gone up into heaven, that is, at Pentecost. And when Jeremiah says, “And I will gather them from the ends of the earth on a feast day,” he means the day of Passover and of Pentecost, which is properly a feast day. For the rest, every day is the Lord's; every hour, every time is suitable for baptism: if there is a difference in solemnity, there is none in grace.

Those about to enter baptism ought to pray with frequent prayers, fasts, kneelings, and vigils, and with the confession of all their past sins, so that they may also display the baptism of John: “They were dipped,” it says, “confessing their sins.” We have cause for thankfulness if we now confess our iniquities or disgraces publicly. For at the same time we both make satisfaction for our former sins by the struggle of flesh and spirit, and build defenses beforehand against temptations to come. “Watch and pray,” he says, “that you may not fall into temptation.” And so, I believe, they were tempted because they fell asleep, so that they deserted the Lord when he was arrested; and he who stood by him and used the sword even denied him three times. For the saying had gone before that no one untempted would attain the heavenly kingdom. The Lord himself, immediately after his washing, was beset by temptations, having kept a fast of forty days. “Then,” someone will say, “we too ought rather to fast after the washing.” And who forbids it, except the necessity of joy and thanksgiving for salvation? But the Lord, as far as I judge, turned back upon himself the reproach arising from the figure of Israel. For the people, having crossed the sea and been brought into the wilderness, though fed there for forty years with divine abundance, were nonetheless more mindful of belly and gullet than of God. Then the Lord, set apart in the desert after the water, completed a forty days' fast and showed that the man of God lives not by bread but by the word of God, and that temptations incident to fullness and immoderation of the belly are crushed by abstinence. Therefore, blessed ones, whom the grace of God awaits, when you come up from that most holy washing of the new birth and for the first time spread out your hands with your mother, together with your brothers, ask from the Father, ask from the Lord, that the special gifts of grace, the distributions of spiritual gifts, may be granted you. “Ask,” he says, “and you shall receive.” For you have sought and have found; you have knocked and it has been opened to you. Only this I ask: that when you ask, you also remember Tertullian, a sinner.