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
she should return.[278]
* * * * *
CHAP. XVII.--24. "Can the power of baptism," says Cyprian, "be greater
or better than confession? than martyrdom? that a man should confess
Christ before men, and be baptized in his own blood? And yet," he goes
on to say, "neither does this baptism profit the heretic, even though
for confessing Christ he be put to death outside the Church."[279]
This is most true; for, by being put to death outside the Church, he
is proved not to have had charity, of which the apostle says, "Though
I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me
nothing."[280] But if martyrdom is of no avail for this reason, because
it has not charity, neither does it profit those who, as Paul says,
and Cyprian further sets forth, are living within the Church without
charity in envy and malice; and yet they can both receive and transmit
true baptism. "Salvation," he says, "is not without the Church."[281] Who
says that it is? And therefore, whatever men have that belongs to the
Church, it profits them nothing towards salvation outside the Church.
But it is one thing not to have, another to have so as to be of no
use. He who has not must be baptized that he may have; but he who has
to no avail must be corrected, that what he has may profit him. Nor is
the water in the baptism of heretics "adulterous,"[281] because neither
is the creature itself which God made evil, nor is fault to be found
with the words of the gospel in the mouths of any who are astray; but
the fault is theirs in whom there is an adulterous spirit, even though
it may receive the adornment of the sacrament from a lawful spouse.
Baptism therefore can "be common to us and the heretics,"[281] just
as the gospel can be common to us, whatever difference there may be
between our faith and their error,--whether they think otherwise
than the truth about the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit; or,
being cut away from unity, do not gather with Christ, but scatter
abroad,[282]--seeing that the sacrament of baptism can be common to us,
if we are the wheat of the Lord, with the covetous within the Church,
and with robbers, and drunkards, and other pestilent persons of the
same sort, of whom it is said, "They shall not inherit the kingdom
of God,"[283] and yet the vices by which they are separated from the
kingdom of God are not shared by us.
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