Writings in Connection with the Donatist ControversyAugustine, of Hippo, Saint
ReligionChristian
Writings in Connection with the Donatist Controversy
Augustine, of Hippo, Saint
Donatists; Donatists -- Controversial literature
Heretics therefore join the Catholic Church to this end,
that what they have evil of themselves may be corrected, not that what
they have good of God should be repeated.
* * * * *
CHAP. XVI.--23. Some one says, Does it then make no difference, if two
men, rooted in like error and wickedness, be baptized without change of
life or heart, one without, the other within the Church? I acknowledge
that there is a difference. For he is worse who is baptized without,
in addition to his other sin,--not because of his baptism, however,
but because he is without; for the evil of division is in itself far
from insignificant or trivial. Yet the difference exists only if he who
is baptized within has desired to be within not for the sake of any
earthly or temporal advantage, but because he has preferred the unity
of the Church spread throughout the world to the divisions of schism;
otherwise he too must be considered among those who are without: Let
us therefore put the two cases in this way. Let us suppose that the
one, for the sake of argument, held the same opinions as Photinus[277]
about Christ, and was baptized in his heresy outside the communion of
the Catholic Church; and that another held the same opinion, but was
baptized in the Catholic Church, believing that his view was really
the Catholic faith. I consider him as not yet a heretic, unless, when
the doctrine of the Catholic faith is made clear to him, he chooses to
resist it, and prefers that which he already holds; and till this is
the case, it is clear that he who was baptized outside is the worse.
And so in the one case erroneous opinion alone, in the other the sin
of schism also, requires correction; but in neither of them is the
truth of the sacrament to be repeated. But if any one holds the same
view as the first, and knows that it is only in heresy severed from
the Church that such a view is taught or learned, but yet for the
sake of some temporal emolument has desired to be baptized in the
Catholic unity, or, having been already baptized in it, is unwilling
on account of the said emolument to secede from it, he is not only to
be considered as seceding, but his offence is aggravated, in so far as
to the error of heresy and the division of unity he adds the deceit of
hypocrisy. Wherefore the depravity of each man, in proportion as it is
more dangerous and wanting in straightforwardness, must be corrected
with the more earnestness and energy; and yet, if he has anything that
is good in him, especially if it be not of himself, but from God, we
ought not to think it of no value because of his depravity, or to be
blamed like it, or to be ascribed to it, rather than to His bountiful
goodness, who even to a soul that plays the harlot, and goes after her
lovers, yet gives His bread, and His wine, and His oil, and other food
or ornaments, which are neither from herself nor from her lovers, but
from Him who in compassion for her is even desirous to warn her to whom
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