And what the Lord had threatened through Moses he fulfilled, so that whoever had not separated himself from Korah and Dathan and Abiram immediately paid the penalty for the impious communion. By which example it is shown and proved that all are to be liable both to guilt and to punishment who have, with irreligious rashness, mingled themselves with schismatics against those set over them and against the priests. So also through the prophet Hosea the Holy Spirit testifies and says: 'Their sacrifices are as the bread of mourning; all that eat thereof shall be defiled' — teaching, namely, and showing that all without exception are joined in punishment with the authors, who have been defiled by their sin. What merits, then, can they have before God, on whom punishments are divinely inflicted?
Or how can such men justify and sanctify those whom they baptize, who, being enemies of the priests, attempt to usurp things alien and unlawful and granted to them by no right? Yet at these very men we do not wonder, that for their own depravity they contend. It is of necessity that each and every one defends what he does, nor are they willing, though vanquished, easily to yield, although they know that what they do is not lawful. That is the thing to be wondered at — nay rather, to be indignant at and to be grieved over — that Christians abet antichrists, and that betrayers of the faith and traitors to the Church stand within the very Church against the Church.
Since these men, otherwise obstinate and unteachable, yet at least confess this, that all, whether heretics or schismatics, do not have the Holy Spirit, and therefore can indeed baptize, but cannot give the Holy Spirit — in this very point they are held bound by us, so that we may show that they cannot baptize at all who do not have the Holy Spirit. For since in baptism each one's sins are remitted to him, the Lord proves and declares in his Gospel that sins can be remitted only through those who have the Holy Spirit. For after the resurrection, sending his disciples, he speaks to them and says: 'As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.' When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them: 'Receive the Holy Spirit.'
'Whosesoever sins you remit, they shall be remitted unto them; whosesoever sins you retain, they shall be retained.' In which place he shows that he alone can baptize and give remission of sins who has the Holy Spirit. Finally, John, who was to baptize our Lord Christ himself, received the Holy Spirit beforehand, while he was yet placed in his mother's womb, so that it might be certain and manifest that none can baptize save those who have the Holy Spirit. Therefore let those who patronize heretics or schismatics answer us, whether they have the Holy Spirit or have it not. If they have it, why, when those baptized there come to us, are hands laid on them for the receiving of the Spirit, when it would surely have been already received where, if it had been there, it could have been given?
But if all the heretics and schismatics outside do not give the Holy Spirit, and therefore among us hands are laid on, that here may be received what there neither is nor can be given, it is manifest that the remission of sins cannot be given through those who are established not to have the Holy Spirit. And therefore, that according to the divine ordinance and the evangelical truth they may be able to obtain the remission of sins and to be sanctified and to become temples of God, all without exception who come from the adversaries and antichrists to the Church of Christ must be baptized with the baptism of the Church.
You have also asked, most dear son, what seems to me concerning those who obtain the grace of God in infirmity and sickness, whether they are to be held lawful Christians, in that they have not been washed with the saving water but sprinkled. In this matter our modesty and reserve prejudge no one, so that each may hold what he thinks and may do what he has thought. We, so far as our humble understanding conceives it, judge that the divine benefits can in no way be mutilated and weakened, nor can anything less befall there, where with full and entire faith both of the giver and of the receiver that is taken which is drawn from the divine gifts.
For not in the same way are the contagions of sins washed away in the saving sacrament as the filth of the skin and of the body in a carnal and worldly washing, so that there should be need of soda and of other aids besides, and of a bath and a pool, by which the little body may be washed and cleansed. Otherwise is the breast of the believer washed; otherwise is the mind of man cleansed through the merits of faith. In the saving sacraments, when necessity compels and God bestows his indulgence, the divine abridgements confer the whole upon believers. Nor ought it to move anyone, that the sick seem to be sprinkled or poured upon when they obtain the Lord's grace, since the holy Scripture speaks through the prophet Ezekiel and says:
'And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be cleansed from all your uncleannesses and from all your idols; and I will cleanse you, and I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.' Likewise in Numbers: 'And the man who shall be unclean until the evening shall be purified on the third day and on the seventh day, and shall be clean. But if he shall not have been purified on the third day and on the seventh day, he shall not be clean, and that soul shall be cut off from Israel, because the water of sprinkling has not been sprinkled upon him.' And again: 'And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Take the Levites from the midst of the children of Israel, and you shall purify them. And thus you shall make their purification for them: you shall sprinkle around upon them the water of purification.' And again:
'The water of sprinkling is a purification.' Whence it appears that the sprinkling of water also obtains the likeness of the saving washing; and when these things are done in the Church, where the faith both of the receiver and of the giver is whole, all things stand and can be consummated and perfected by the majesty of the Lord and the truth of faith. Moreover, as to the fact that some call those who have obtained the grace of Christ by the saving water and by lawful faith not Christians but 'clinics,' I do not find whence they take this name — unless perhaps those who have read more and more recondite things have come upon these 'clinics' in Hippocrates or Soranus.
For I, who know the 'clinic' from the Gospel, know that the paralytic and infirm man, who lay on his bed through long courses of years, was in no way hindered by his infirmity from attaining most fully to heavenly soundness, and that he was not only raised from his pallet by the Lord's indulgence, but, his strength being restored and invigorated, himself carried away his own pallet. And therefore, so far as it is given us to conceive and to feel by faith, my judgement is this: that whoever has obtained the divine grace in the Church by the law and right of faith is to be judged a lawful Christian.
But if anyone thinks that they have obtained nothing, in that they were only sprinkled with the saving water, if they are empty and void, let them not be deceived, so that, if they have escaped the discomfort of their sickness and have recovered, they should be baptized. But if they cannot be baptized who have already been sanctified by the ecclesiastical baptism, why should they be made to stumble in their faith and in the Lord's indulgence? Or have they indeed obtained the grace of the Lord, but by a shorter and lesser measure of the divine gift and of the Holy Spirit, so that they should indeed be held Christians, yet not be made equal to the rest? Nay rather, the Holy Spirit is not given by measure, but is wholly poured out upon the believer.
For if the day arises equally for all, and if the sun is diffused over all with equal and even light, how much more does Christ, the true sun and day, in his Church bestow the light of eternal life with equal evenness? The sacrament of which equality we see celebrated in Exodus, when the manna flowed down from heaven and, by a prefiguration of things to come, showed forth the nourishment of the heavenly bread and the food of the Christ who was to come. For there, without distinction either of sex or of age, an omer was gathered equally for each.
Whence it appeared that the indulgence of Christ and the heavenly grace which should afterward follow would be equally divided among all, without difference of sex, without distinction of years, without acceptance of persons; that the gift of spiritual grace would be poured out upon the whole people of God. Plainly the same spiritual grace which is equally received by believers in baptism is afterward either diminished or increased in our conduct and conversation, just as in the Gospel the Lord's seed is sown equally, but, according to the variety of the soil, some is consumed, some, with a fruit overflowing into manifold abundance, is heaped up into the produce of thirtyfold or sixtyfold or hundredfold. But still further,
since each one is called to the same denarius, what reason is there that what is equally distributed by God should be diminished by human interpretation? But if anyone is troubled by this, that some of those who are baptized when sick were still tempted by unclean spirits, let him know that the persistent wickedness of the devil prevails up to the saving water, but in baptism loses all the venom of his wickedness. Which example we discern in king Pharaoh, who, long resisting and lingering in his perfidy, was able to resist and prevail just so long until he came to the water; and when he had come to it, he was both vanquished and destroyed. And that that sea was the sacrament of baptism, the blessed apostle Paul declares, saying:
'For I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea.' And he added, saying: 'Now all these things were figures of us.' This is enacted even today, that through the exorcists, by the human voice and the divine power, the devil is scourged and burned and tormented; and although he often says that he is going out and leaving the men of God, yet in that which he has said he deceives, and practises that same lie of stubbornness and fraud which was first enacted through Pharaoh.
Yet when one comes to the saving water and to the sanctification of baptism, we ought to know and to trust that there the devil is crushed and the man, dedicated to God, is set free by the divine mercy. For if scorpions and serpents, which prevail on dry ground, when cast into the water cannot prevail nor retain their venom, neither can the wicked spirits—which are called scorpions and serpents, and which nevertheless are trodden underfoot by us through the power given by the Lord—remain any longer in the body of a man, in whom, once he is baptized and sanctified, the Holy Spirit begins to dwell.
This indeed we also prove by experience in actual cases: that those who, under pressing necessity, are baptized in sickness and obtain grace, are freed from the unclean spirit by which they were formerly agitated, and live praiseworthily and approvedly in the Church, and day by day advance the more in the increase of heavenly grace through the growth of faith; whereas, on the contrary, it often happens that some of those who are baptized while in health, if they afterward begin to sin, are shaken by the return of the unclean spirit—so that it is plain that the devil is shut out in baptism by the faith of the believer, and returns if the faith afterward fails.
Unless perhaps it seems just to some that those who outside the Church, among adversaries and antichrists, are defiled by profane water should be judged baptized, while these who are baptized in the Church should be deemed to have obtained less of the divine mercy and grace; and that so great an honor should be shown to heretics that those coming from them are not asked whether they were washed or merely sprinkled, whether they were clinics (baptized lying in bed) or peripatetics (who walk about)—while among us the integrity of the truth of the faith is disparaged, and from ecclesiastical baptism its own majesty and holiness are taken away.
I have written back, dearest son, to your letter as far as our small mediocrity availed, and I have shown what we, as far as in us lies, hold; prescribing to no one, so as to prevent each one of those set over the Church from determining what he thinks, since each is to render to the Lord an account of his own action, according to what the blessed apostle Paul writes and says in his epistle to the Romans: each one of us shall give account for himself; therefore let us not judge one another. I pray, dearest son, that you may ever be in good health.
When we were together in council, dearest brethren, we read your letter which you composed concerning those who appear to have been baptized among heretics and schismatics—whether, on coming to the catholic Church, which is one, they ought to be baptized. And on this matter, although you yourselves there hold the truth and firmness of the catholic rule, yet because out of common love you thought we should be consulted, we set forth our opinion—not a new one, but one already long ago established by our predecessors and observed by us—and we join it to yours in equal agreement; judging assuredly, and holding for certain, that no one can be baptized outside, beyond the Church, since there is one baptism appointed in the holy Church, and since it is written, the Lord saying:
They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have hewn out for themselves broken cisterns that can hold no water. And again the divine Scripture admonishes and says: Abstain from strange water, and drink not from a strange fountain. It is fitting, indeed, that the water first be cleansed and sanctified by the priest, so that by its baptism it may be able to wash away the sins of the man who is baptized; for through Ezekiel the Lord says: And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be cleansed from all your uncleannesses and from all your idols; and I will cleanse you, and I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit will I put within you. But how can he cleanse and sanctify the water who is himself unclean, and with whom the Holy Spirit is not? since the Lord says in Numbers:
And everything whatsoever an unclean person touches shall be unclean. Or how can one who baptizes give to another the remission of sins, when he himself cannot lay aside his own sins outside the Church? Moreover the very question that is put in baptism is a witness of the truth. For when we say, 'Do you believe in eternal life and the remission of sins through the holy Church?'—we understand that the remission of sins is given only in the Church, while among heretics, where the Church is not, sins are not remitted. Therefore let those who assert the cause of heretics either change the question or vindicate the truth—unless indeed they also grant a Church to those whom they contend to have baptism.
It is also necessary that he who is baptized be anointed, so that, having received the chrism—that is, the anointing—he may be God's anointed and may have in himself the grace of Christ. Moreover, it is from the Eucharist that the baptized are anointed: the oil sanctified upon the altar. But he who has neither altar nor Church could not sanctify the creature of oil. Hence neither can there be a spiritual anointing among heretics, since it is established that oil cannot be sanctified nor the Eucharist made among them at all. And we ought to know and remember that it is written: Let not the oil of the sinner anoint my head. This the Holy Spirit foretold beforehand in the Psalms, lest anyone going astray and wandering from the way of truth should be anointed among heretics and adversaries of Christ.
But also, what prayer can a sacrilegious and sinful priest make on behalf of the baptized? since it is written: God does not hear a sinner; but whoever worships God and does His will, him He hears. And who can give what he himself does not possess? or how can he perform spiritual things who has himself lost the Holy Spirit? And therefore he who comes raw and untaught to the Church must be baptized and renewed, that within he may be sanctified by the holy—because it is written: Be holy, for I also am holy, says the Lord—so that he who has been seduced into error and dipped outside, may in the true and ecclesiastical baptism lay aside this very thing: that, being a man coming to God, while he sought a priest, he fell by the deceit of error upon a sacrilegious one.
Furthermore, to approve the baptism of heretics and schismatics is to consent to that which they have baptized. For neither can the part there be void and the part prevail. If he could baptize, he could also give the Holy Spirit. But if he cannot give the Holy Spirit—because, being established outside, he is not with the Holy Spirit—neither can he baptize one who comes; since both the baptism is one and the Holy Spirit is one and the Church is one, founded by Christ our Lord upon Peter, by the source and principle of unity. So it comes about that, since all things among them are void and false, nothing of what they have done ought to be approved by us.
For what can be ratified and firm in the Lord's sight that is done by those whom the Lord calls His enemies and adversaries, declaring it in His Gospel: He who is not with me is against me, and he who gathers not with me scatters? And the blessed apostle John too, keeping the Lord's commands and precepts, set down in his epistle: You have heard that antichrist comes; but now many antichrists have arisen, whence we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us. Whence we also ought to gather and consider whether those who are the Lord's adversaries and are called antichrists can give the grace of Christ.
Wherefore we who are with the Lord, who hold the unity of the Lord, and who according to His condescension administer His priesthood in the Church, ought to repudiate and reject and hold as profane whatever His adversaries and antichrists do; and to those who, coming from error and depravity, acknowledge the true faith of the one Church, we ought to give in all things the sacraments of divine grace, the truth of unity and of faith. We desire, dearest brethren, that you may ever be in good health. Cyprian to his brother Quintus, greeting. Lucianus, our fellow-presbyter, has reported to me, dearest brother, that you desired us to signify to you what we hold concerning those who appear to have been baptized among heretics and schismatics.
And that you might know what very many of our fellow-bishops, together with the fellow-presbyters who were present, recently decided in council on this matter, I have sent you a copy of that same letter. For I know not by what presumption certain of our colleagues are led, that they think those who have been dipped among heretics ought not, when they come to us, to be baptized—on the ground that they say there is one baptism: which one, indeed, is in the catholic Church, because the Church is one, and there cannot be a baptism apart from the Church. For since there cannot be two baptisms, if the heretics truly baptize, they themselves have baptism.
And he who, by his own authority, affords them this patronage, yields to them and consents that an enemy and adversary of Christ should appear to have the power of washing and purifying and sanctifying a man. But we say that those who come thence are not rebaptized among us, but baptized. For neither do they receive anything there, where there is nothing, but they come to us in order that here they may receive, where both grace and all truth are—since both grace and truth are one. Moreover, certain of our colleagues prefer to give honor to heretics rather than to consent with us; and while, by the affirmation of one...
...the affirmation of one baptism refuse to baptize those who come, they thus either themselves make two baptisms, while they say that baptism exists also among heretics; or certainly—which is more grievous—they strive to set the filthy and profane dipping of heretics before and above the true and only and lawful baptism of the catholic Church, not considering that it is written: He who is baptized by a dead man, what does his washing profit him? And it is plain that those who are not in the Church of Christ are reckoned among the dead, and that one cannot be made alive by another who does not himself live—since the Church is one, which, having obtained the grace of eternal life, both lives forever and makes alive the people of God.
And they say that in this they follow ancient custom: that among the ancients, when the beginnings of heresy and schism were still in their first stages, there were there men who had withdrawn from the Church and had previously been baptized here; whom then, when they returned to the Church and did penance, it was not necessary to baptize. This we too observe today: that those whom it is established were baptized here and passed over from us to heretics, if afterward—their sin recognized and their error cleared away—they return to the truth and to the mother, it is enough to lay hands on them in penance; so that, since it was already a sheep, the shepherd may receive this stray and wandering sheep back into his own fold.
But if one who comes baptized from the heretics was not previously in the Church, but comes wholly a stranger and profane, he must be baptized that he may become a sheep; because the water in the holy Church, which makes sheep, is one. And therefore, because there can be nothing in common between falsehood and truth, between darkness and light, between death and immortality, between antichrist and Christ, we ought in all things to hold the unity of the catholic Church and to yield in nothing to the enemies of faith and truth. Now this is not to be prescribed from custom, but to be overcome by reason.
For not even Peter, whom the Lord chose first and upon whom He built His Church, when Paul afterward disputed with him about circumcision, claimed anything for himself insolently or arrogantly assumed, so as to say that he held the primacy and that he ought rather to be obeyed by novices and those who came later; nor did he despise Paul because he had formerly been a persecutor of the Church, but admitted the counsel of truth and readily consented to the lawful reasoning which Paul vindicated—thereby giving us a lesson of both concord and patience: that we should not obstinately love our own opinions, but should rather reckon as our own those things which are at any time usefully and wholesomely suggested by our brethren and colleagues, if they be true and lawful.
Foreseeing this very thing, and faithfully consulting for concord and peace, Paul also set down in his epistle, saying: Let the prophets speak, two or three, and let the others judge; but if anything be revealed to another who is seated, let the first be silent. In which passage he taught and showed that many things are revealed to individuals for the better, and that each one ought not to contend obstinately for that which he had once imbibed and held, but, if anything better and more useful should appear, should gladly embrace it. For we are not vanquished when better things are offered to us, but are instructed—especially in those things which pertain to the unity of the Church and to the truth of our hope and faith.
So that we, the priests of God and of His Church, set over it by His own condescension, may know that the remission of sins cannot be given except in the Church, and that the adversaries of Christ can claim nothing for themselves concerning His grace. This indeed Agrippinus, a man of good memory, together with the rest of his fellow-bishops who at that time governed the Lord's Church in the province of Africa and Numidia, established and confirmed by the weighed examination of common counsel; whose opinion—religious and lawful, salutary to the faith and agreeing with the catholic Church—we too have followed.
And that you might know what sort of letter we have written on this matter, we have transmitted a copy of it, out of common love, to your notice and to that of our fellow-bishops who are there. I pray, dearest brother, that you may ever be in good health. Cyprian and the rest to their brother Stephen, greeting. To arrange certain matters and to refine them by the examination of common counsel, we found it necessary, dearest brother, with several priests gathering into one, to convene and to hold a council; in which many things indeed were brought forward and dealt with.
But concerning that especially it was necessary to write to you and to confer with your gravity and wisdom—the matter which pertains the more both to priestly authority and to the unity, as well as the dignity, of the catholic Church, coming from the appointment of the divine arrangement: namely, that those who are outside, beyond the Church, dipped and stained among heretics and schismatics with the defilement of profane water, when they come to us and to the Church which is one, ought to be baptized; for the reason that it is too little to lay hands on them for receiving the Holy Spirit, unless they receive also the baptism of the Church. For then at last they can be fully sanctified and be the sons of God, if they are born of both sacraments—since it is written:
Unless a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. For we find in the Acts of the Apostles that this was kept by the apostles and preserved by the truth of saving faith: that when, in the house of Cornelius the centurion, the Holy Spirit had descended upon the Gentiles who were present there, glowing with the warmth of faith and believing in the Lord with their whole heart—filled with whom they blessed God with diverse tongues—nonetheless the blessed apostle Peter, mindful of the divine precept and of the Gospel, commanded that those same ones who had already been filled with the Holy Spirit should be baptized; so that nothing might seem to be omitted whereby the apostolic teachers might in all things observe the law of the divine precept and of the Gospel.
But that what the heretics use is not baptism, and that nothing among those who oppose Christ can avail anything through the grace of Christ, was carefully expressed recently in the letter which was written on this matter to Quintus, our colleague stationed in Mauretania; likewise in the letter which our colleagues made before to the fellow-bishops presiding in Numidia—copies of both of which letters I have appended below.