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. XI.--12. Of these I would ask, whether by coming to their sea
they were restored to life, or whether they are still dead there? For
if still they are none the less corpses, then the laver cannot in
any way profit those who are baptized by such dead men. But if they
have been restored to life, yet how can the laver profit those whom
they baptized before outside, while they were lying without life, if
the passage, "He who is baptized by the dead, of what profit is his
baptism to him," is to be understood in the way in which they think?
For those whom Prætextatus and Felicianus baptized while they were
yet in communion with Maximianus are now retained among them, sharing
in their communion, without being again baptized, together with the
same men who baptized them--I mean Felicianus and Prætextatus: taking
occasion by which fact, if it were not that they cherish the beginning
of their own obstinacy, instead of considering the certain end of their
spiritual salvation, they would certainly be bound to vigilance, and
ought to recover the soundness of their senses, so as to breathe again
in Catholic peace; if only, laying aside the swelling of their pride,
and overcoming the madness of their stubbornness, they would take heed
and see what monstrous sacrilege it is to curse the baptism of the
foreign churches, which we have learned from the sacred books were
planted in primitive times, and to receive the baptism of the followers
of Maximianus, whom they have condemned with their own lips.
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