Letters 73.12–73.26

For it is no small or trifling thing that is conceded to heretics when their baptism is credited by us, since from it begins the whole origin of faith, the saving entrance into the hope of eternal life, and God's gracious favor for purifying and giving life to his servants. For if anyone could be baptized among heretics, he surely could also obtain remission of sins. If he obtained remission of sins, he was sanctified; if he was sanctified, he was made a temple of God. If he was made a temple of God, I ask, of which God? If of the Creator, he could not be, for he did not believe in him. If of Christ, neither can one become his temple who denies that Christ is God. If of the Holy Spirit, since the three are one, how can the Holy Spirit be at peace with one who is an enemy either of the Son or of the Father?

So it is in vain that some who are defeated by reason set custom against us, as if custom were greater than truth, or as if in spiritual matters one ought not to follow what has been revealed for the better by the Holy Spirit. For one who errs in simplicity can be pardoned, as the blessed apostle Paul says of himself: “I who was formerly,” he says, “a blasphemer and a persecutor and insolent, but I obtained mercy, because I acted in ignorance.” But after inspiration and revelation have come, whoever persists knowingly and deliberately in what he had erred in sins without the excuse of ignorance. For he relies on a kind of presumption and obstinacy, though he is overcome by reason. And let no one say, “We follow what we received from the apostles,” since the apostles handed down only one church and one baptism, which is appointed only in that same church; and we find no one who, when he had been baptized among heretics, was admitted by the apostles in that baptism and given communion, so that the apostles might seem to have approved the baptism of heretics.

As for what some say, as if it favored the heretics, that the apostle Paul said, “Nevertheless in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, let Christ be proclaimed,” we find that this too can do nothing to help the patronage of those who back the heretics and applaud them. For Paul in his letter was not speaking of heretics or of their baptism, so that he could be shown to have set down anything bearing on this matter. He was speaking of brothers, whether walking disorderly and against the discipline of the church, or keeping the truth of the gospel in the fear of God. And he stated that some of them spoke the word of the Lord steadfastly and fearlessly, but some were engaged in envy and dissension; that some kept kindly love toward him, but others had malicious dissension; yet that he bore everything patiently, so long as, whether in truth or in pretense, the name of Christ that Paul preached should come to the knowledge of very many, and the sowing of the word, still new and unformed, should spread through the preaching of those who spoke. But it is one thing for those who are within the church to speak about the name of Christ, another for those who are outside and act against the church to baptize in the name of Christ. So let one who pleads for heretics not bring forward what Paul set down about brothers, but show whether he thought anything should be conceded to a heretic, or approved their faith and baptism, or laid down that the faithless and blasphemous can receive remission of sins outside the church.

But if we consider what the apostles thought about heretics, we shall find that in all their letters they curse and detest the sacrilegious perversity of heretics. For when they say that their word creeps like a cancer, how can that word give remission of sins which creeps like a cancer into the ears of the hearers? And when they say there is no partnership between righteousness and iniquity, no communion between light and darkness, how can darkness enlighten or iniquity justify? And when they say that they are not of God but of the spirit of antichrist, how do they perform spiritual and divine acts who are enemies of God and whose breasts the spirit of antichrist has occupied? Therefore, if we leave aside the errors of human contention and return with sincere and devout faith to the authority of the gospel and the tradition of the apostles, we understand that nothing pertaining to the church's saving grace is lawful for those who, scattering and attacking the church of Christ, are called adversaries by Christ himself and antichrists by his apostles.

Nor is there reason for anyone, to get around Christian truth, to set the name of Christ against us and say that those baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, anywhere and in any way, have obtained the grace of baptism, since Christ himself speaks and says: “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven,” and again forewarns and instructs that no one be easily deceived by false prophets and false christs in his name. “Many,” he says, “will come in my name saying, I am the Christ, and will deceive many”; and afterwards he added, saying: “But you, take heed. See, I have told you all things beforehand.” From this it appears that not whatever is flaunted in Christ's name is at once to be accepted and taken up, but what is done in Christ's truth.

For when in the gospels and in the letters of the apostles the name of Jesus Christ is set forth for the remission of sins, it is not as though the Son alone could benefit anyone either without the Father or against the Father, but so that it might be shown to the Jews, who boasted that they had the Father, that the Father would profit them nothing unless they believed in the Son whom he had sent (for those who knew God the Creator as Father ought to know Christ the Son also), and so that they should not flatter and applaud themselves about the Father alone without the acknowledgment of his Son, who also said: “No one comes to the Father except through me.” That it is the knowledge of the two that saves, he himself makes plain, saying: “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Since, then, by the preaching and testimony of Christ himself the Father who sent must first be known, and then Christ who was sent, and there can be no hope of salvation unless both are known together, how are those who are said to be baptized in the name of Christ among the heretics judged to have obtained remission of sins, when God the Father is not known, indeed is blasphemed? For the situation of the Jews under the apostles was one thing, the condition of the gentiles another. The Jews, because they had already obtained the most ancient baptism of the law and of Moses, were to be baptized also in the name of Jesus Christ, as Peter speaks to them in the Acts of the Apostles and says: “Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children and to all hereafter whom the Lord our God shall call.” Peter mentions Jesus Christ not as though the Father were omitted, but so that the Son might be joined to the Father.

Finally, when after the resurrection the apostles are sent by the Lord to the nations, they are commanded to baptize the gentiles in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. How then do some say that a gentile baptized outside, beyond the church, indeed against the church, provided only it be in the name of Jesus Christ, by whomever and however, can obtain remission of sins, when Christ himself commands the nations to be baptized in the full and united Trinity? Unless perhaps, while one who denies Christ is denied by Christ, one who denies his Father, whom Christ himself confessed, is not denied; and one who blasphemes against him whom Christ called his Lord and God is rewarded by Christ and obtains remission of sins and the sanctification of baptism! But by what power can one who denies God, the Creator of Christ, obtain remission of sins in baptism, when Christ received from that same Father the very power by which we are baptized and sanctified, the Father whom he called greater, by whom he asked to be glorified, whose will he fulfilled even to the obedience of drinking the cup and undergoing death? What else is it, then, than to become a partner of blaspheming heretics, to want to defend and assert that one who blasphemes gravely and sins against the Father and Lord and God of Christ can receive remission of sins in the name of Christ? And then what sort of thing is it that one who denies the Son should not have the Father, but one who denies the Father should be thought to have the Son, when the Son himself testifies and says: “No one can come to me unless it has been given him by the Father”? So it is clear that no remission of sins can be received in baptism from the Son that the Father is known not to have given, especially since he repeats it again and says: “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up.”

But if the disciples of Christ are unwilling to learn from Christ how much veneration and honor is owed to the Father's name, let them learn at least from earthly and worldly examples, and know that Christ said, not without the sharpest reproach: “The sons of this world are more prudent than the sons of light.” In this world, if anyone has insulted someone's father, if, abusive and insolent, he has torn his modesty and honor with a slanderous mouth, the son is indignant and angry and tries with what strength he can to avenge the injury to his wronged father. Do you think that Christ gives impunity to the impious, the sacrilegious, and blasphemers against his Father, and forgives them their sins in baptism, when it is known that after baptism they still heap the same curses on the person of the Father and sin with the unceasing crime of a blaspheming tongue? Can a Christian, can a servant of God, conceive this in his mind, or believe it in faith, or utter it in speech? And where will the divine precepts of the law be, which say: “Honor your father and mother”? Unless perhaps the name of father, which we are commanded to honor in a man, may be violated with impunity in God. Where will be what Christ himself lays down in the gospel and says: “Whoever curses father or mother, let him die the death”? Unless he who commands that those who curse their fleshly parents be punished and put to death himself gives life to those who curse the heavenly and spiritual Father and are enemies of the mother church! Something utterly accursed and detestable is asserted by some: that he who threatens that whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will be guilty of an eternal sin is said himself to sanctify with saving baptism those who blaspheme against God the Father. And now those who think that such people coming to the church should be admitted to communion without baptism do not consider that they are sharing in others' sins, indeed in eternal sins, when they admit without baptism those who cannot lay aside the sins of their blasphemies except in baptism.

Further, how empty and perverse it is that, when the heretics themselves, having rejected and abandoned the error or crime they were in before, acknowledge the truth of the church, we should mutilate the rights and sacraments of that same truth, and tell those who come and repent that they have obtained remission of sins, when they confess that they have sinned and are coming for that reason to the church's pardon! Therefore, dearest brother, we ought both to hold firmly and to teach the faith and truth of the catholic church, and to show through all the precepts of the gospel and the apostles the principle of the divine arrangement and of unity.

Can the power of baptism be greater or stronger than confession, than suffering, when one confesses Christ before men and is baptized in his own blood? And yet not even this baptism profits a heretic, even though, having confessed Christ, he was killed outside the church; unless the patrons and advocates of heretics proclaim as martyrs heretics killed in a false confession of Christ, and, against the testimony of the apostle, who says that it can profit them nothing even if they are burned and killed, assign them the glory and crown of suffering. But if not even the baptism of public confession and of blood can profit a heretic for salvation, because there is no salvation outside the church, how much more will it profit him nothing if, dipped in a hiding place and a den of robbers with the contagion of adulterous water, he has not only not put off his old sins but has rather heaped up new and greater ones! Therefore baptism cannot be common to us and the heretics, with whom neither God the Father nor Christ the Son nor the Holy Spirit nor faith nor the church itself is common. And so those who come from heresy to the church must be baptized, so that those who by the lawful, true, and only baptism of the holy church are prepared by divine regeneration for the kingdom of God may be born of both sacraments, because it is written: “Unless one has been born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”

At this point some, as if they could empty the truth of the gospel's preaching by human argument, set catechumens against us: if one of them, before being baptized in the church, is arrested for confessing the name and killed, does he lose the hope of salvation and the reward of confession, because he has not first been reborn of water? Let such people, the backers and patrons of heretics, know then, first, that those catechumens hold the whole faith and the truth of the church, and go out from the divine camp to fight down the devil with a full and sincere knowledge of God the Father and of Christ and of the Holy Spirit; and next, that they are not deprived of the sacrament of baptism, since they are baptized with the most glorious and greatest baptism of blood, of which the Lord also said that he had another baptism to be baptized with. And that those baptized in their own blood and sanctified by suffering are perfected and obtain the grace of the divine promise, the same Lord declares in the gospel, when he speaks to the thief who believed and confessed in the very hour of his suffering, and promises that he will be with him in paradise. Therefore we who preside over faith and truth ought not to deceive and mislead those who come to faith and truth and, doing penance, ask that their sins be forgiven them, but, corrected and reformed by us, to train them for the kingdom of heaven by heavenly disciplines.

But someone says: “What then will become of those who in the past, coming from heresy to the church, were admitted without baptism?” The Lord is able by his mercy to grant pardon, and not to separate from the gifts of his church those who, admitted to the church in simplicity, have fallen asleep in the church. Yet it does not follow that because there was error once, there must always be error, since it better befits the wise and those who fear God to obey gladly and without hesitation the truth once laid open and perceived, than to struggle obstinately and stubbornly for heretics against brothers and against priests.

Nor let anyone think that heretics, because baptism is set before them, are put off from coming to the church, as if offended by the word “second baptism.” On the contrary, by this very thing they are driven all the more to the necessity of coming, by the testimony of the truth shown and proved to them. For if they see it decided and settled by our judgment and sentence that the baptism with which they are baptized there is counted just and lawful, they will think that they possess the church too and the other gifts of the church justly and lawfully, and there will be no reason for them to come to us, since, having baptism, they will seem to have the rest as well. But when they learn that there is no baptism outside, and that remission of sins cannot be given outside the church, they hasten to us more eagerly and readily and beg for the gifts and endowments of the mother church, certain that they cannot at all attain to the true promise of divine grace unless they first come to the truth of the church. Nor will heretics refuse to be baptized among us with the lawful and true baptism of the church, when they learn from us that those also were baptized by Paul who had already been baptized with the baptism of John, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles.

And now among some of our own the baptism of heretics is asserted, and, out of a sort of odium attached to “rebaptizing,” it is counted a crime to baptize after the enemies of God; though we find that those were baptized whom John had baptized: that John who was held greatest among the prophets, who was filled with divine grace while still in his mother's womb, who was upheld by the spirit and power of Elijah, who was not an adversary of the Lord but his forerunner and herald, who not only foretold the Lord in words but also showed him to the eyes, who baptized Christ himself, through whom the rest are baptized. But if a heretic could obtain the right of baptism for the reason that he baptized first, baptism will now belong not to the one who possesses it but to the one who seizes it. And since baptism and the church cannot at all be separated and divided from each other, he who could seize baptism first has likewise seized the church; and you begin to seem a heretic to him, since, forestalled, you have come to be second, and by yielding and giving up you have abandoned the right you had received. But how dangerous it is in divine matters for anyone to yield his right and power, holy Scripture declares, when in Genesis Esau lost his birthright in this way and could not afterwards recover what he had once yielded.

We have written this back to you briefly, dearest brother, according to our small ability, prescribing to no one and prejudging no one, so as to prevent each of the bishops from doing what he thinks, since he has the free power of his own judgment. We, for our part, do not quarrel over heretics with our colleagues and fellow bishops, with whom we keep divine concord and the Lord's peace, especially since the apostle also says: “But if anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such custom, nor has the church of God.” Love of heart, the honor of our college, the bond of faith, and the concord of the priesthood are kept by us patiently and gently. For this reason too we have now written, as far as our small ability could, with the Lord's permission and inspiration, a little book on the good of patience, which we have sent to you out of mutual love. I pray, dearest brother, that you may always be well.