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
CHAP. V.--6. We ask, therefore, since he says, "He who receives faith
from the faithless receives not faith, but guilt," and immediately adds
to this the further statement, that "everything consists of an origin
and root; and if it have not something for a head, it is nothing;"--we
ask, I say, in a case where the faithlessness of the baptizer is
undetected: If, then, the man whom he baptizes receives faith, and not
guilt; if, then, the baptizer is not his origin and root and head,
who is it from whom he receives faith? where is the origin from which
he springs? where is the root of which he is a shoot? where the head
which is his starting-point? Can it be, that when he who is baptized
is unaware of the faithlessness of his baptizer, it is then Christ who
is the origin and root and head? Alas for human rashness and conceit!
Why do you not allow that it is always Christ who gives faith, for
the purpose of making a man a Christian by giving it? Why do you not
allow that Christ is always the origin of the Christian, that the
Christian always plants his root in Christ, that Christ is the head of
the Christian? Do we then maintain that, even when spiritual grace is
dispensed to those that believe by the hands of a holy and faithful
minister, it is still not the minister himself who justifies, but that
One of whom it is said, that "He justifieth the ungodly?"[645] But
unless we admit this, either the Apostle Paul was the head and origin
of those whom he had planted, or Apollos the root of those whom he had
watered, rather than He who had given them faith in believing; whereas
the same Paul says, "I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the
increase: so then neither is he that planteth anything, nor he that
watereth, but God that giveth the increase."[646] Nor was the apostle
himself their root, but rather He who says, "I am the vine, ye are the
branches."[647] How, too, could he be their head, when he says, that
"we, being many, are one body in Christ,"[648] and expressly declares
in many passages that Christ Himself is the head of the whole body?
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