On Baptism 2

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.