Once Washed in That Name

Some authorities have assigned this treatise on re-baptism to a monk named Ursinus, who is said to have written in the fourth century. But the internal evidence seems to point to an overseer as the author, and the way he speaks of the baptismal controversy makes it very likely that he wrote while that controversy was still shaking the church. What is more, the bitter attack in the first chapter was probably aimed at Cyprian, as the leader of the party that wanted heretics baptized over again. That would hardly be so — or at least the attack would not carry this much venom — if Cyprian had already died a martyr and the quarrel had lost its bitterness and heat.

Rigaltius, who first published the treatise among his notes on the works of Cyprian, judged that it was written about Cyprian’s own time, and Fell, Cave, Tillemont, and Galland are of the same opinion. The last two even suggest that it was actually aimed at Cyprian. The translator’s work has been made hard by a loose, rambling style and a very tangled argument, and harder still by a text that is remarkably uncertain. Even so, he thinks there are things in the handling of the subject that will still interest a student of theology, though the treatise’s own immediate purpose is long past.

A treatise on re-baptism, by an anonymous writer. The argument: that those who have once been washed in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ ought not to be baptized again.

I notice that a question is being asked among the brothers: what exactly ought to be done about people who were baptized in heresy, but who were baptized in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; who then left their heresy and came as suppliants to the church of God; who repent with their whole hearts, and who now, seeing at last that their error stands condemned, beg the church for the help of salvation. The question is this. After a baptism they received outside the church, yes, but still in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, is it enough — by the most ancient custom and the church’s tradition — that the overseer should simply lay hands on them so that they may receive the Holy Spirit, that laying on of hands giving them the renewed and completed seal of faith? Or must their baptism be repeated, as though they receive nothing unless they are baptized afresh, exactly as if they had never been baptized in the name of Jesus Christ at all? [e]

And so there has been talk of things written and answered back and forth on this new question, with each side doing its utmost to tear down what the other had written. In a debate of this kind, as it seems to me, no controversy or discussion could have arisen at all if every one of us had been content with the venerable authority of all the churches and, with proper humility, had wanted to bring in nothing new, since there is no opening anywhere for contradiction. For anything doubtful and ambiguous, anything that rests on opinions that differ among sensible and faithful men, ought certainly to be condemned if it is found to run against the ancient, memorable, and most solemn practice of all those holy and faithful men who have deserved well of us. In a matter already settled and laid down, whatever is brought forward against the quiet and the peace of the church will produce nothing but discord, strife, and schism.

And no fruit can be found in it but this one: that some man or other should be proclaimed, to the vainglory of a few unsteady people, a man of great wisdom and firmness; and that, gifted with the arrogance of heretics — whose one comfort in ruin is not to appear to be sinning alone — he should be famous among the people most like himself and most agreeable to him as the man who corrected the errors and faults of all the churches. For this is what all heretics want and aim at: to frame as many slanders of this kind as they can against our most holy mother the church, and to count it a great glory to have turned up anything that can be charged against her as a crime, or even as a piece of foolishness.

No faithful man in his right mind should dare to hold such a view — least of all a man ordained to any office among the clergy, and much less one in the order of overseers. So it is like a portent when overseers themselves invent scandals of this sort, and are not afraid — against the rule of the law and of all the Scriptures, and at their own shame and risk — to lay bare, far too irreverently, the shame of their mother the church, if they suppose there is any shame in this matter. And yet the church has no shame here at all, except the shame of these men’s own error.

So the sin of such men is all the graver if the most ancient practice they blame, as though it were wrongly done, can be clearly and forcefully shown to have been rightly kept both by those who came before us and by us. Even supposing the arguments on the two sides were evenly matched, the innovation could not be established without division among the brothers and damage to the church; and so it certainly ought not — “right or wrong,” as they say, that is, against what is good and proper — to be flung recklessly at our mother the church like a stain. The disgrace of such nerve and irreverence ought fairly to stick to the men who attempt it.

But it is not in our power, as the apostle directs, “to speak the same thing, so that there may be no schisms among us.” Still, as far as we can, we are trying to show how this argument really stands, and to persuade turbulent men, even now, to mind their own business; and we shall have gained a great deal if they will at last settle for sound advice. So, as we must, we will gather into one place every passage of the holy Scriptures that bears on this subject. We will plainly bring into agreement, as far as we can, the passages that seem to differ or to point different ways. And we will examine, as well as our poor ability allows, what is useful and advantageous in each course, so that we may recommend to all the brothers the healthiest practice and the most peaceable custom for the church.

So for those who come to a discussion of the baptism that saves and is new — the spiritual baptism of the good news — the first thing that comes up is the announcement everybody knows, the one John the Baptist made and began. John moved somewhat away from the law, that is, away from the most ancient baptism of Moses, and prepared the way for the new and true grace. Little by little he took hold of the ears of the Jews with the baptism of water and repentance that he practiced for the time being, and he took possession of them with the announcement of a spiritual baptism still to come, urging them and saying: “The one coming after me is mightier than I. I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” And for that reason we too ought to begin this discussion at that point. [i]

For in the Acts of the Apostles the Lord, after his resurrection, confirmed this same word of John. He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for that promise of the Father “which,” he says, “you have heard from me; for John indeed baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” And Peter reported these same words of the Lord when he gave an account of himself to the apostles, saying: “And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John indeed baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If, then, he gave them a gift like the one he gave us who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I, that I could stand in the Lord’s way?” And again: “Men and brothers, you know that from ancient days God made a choice among us, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the good news, and believe. And God, who knows hearts, bore them witness, giving them the Holy Spirit just as he gave him to us.”

So we ought to consider the force and power of this saying. For the Lord tells the people who would have to be baptized later, because they would believe, that they must be baptized not in the same way as by John, in water, for repentance, but in the Holy Spirit. And about this announcement, which surely none of us can doubt, it is clear on what principle people were baptized in the Holy Spirit: it was in the Holy Spirit himself alone that those who believed were baptized. For John drew the distinction. He said that he himself baptized in water, but that one was coming who would baptize in the Holy Spirit, by the grace and power of God. And so they are baptized by the Spirit’s granting and working of hidden effects. They are baptized no less in the baptism of the Spirit and of water together. And they are baptized, besides, each one in his own blood. This is what the holy Scriptures declare to us, and out of them we will bring clear proofs for every single instance as we go through them.

To all this you — you who are bringing in some novelty — may perhaps reply at once and impatiently, as you usually do, that the Lord said in the Gospel: “Unless a man is born again of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” From this, you say, it plainly follows that the only baptism that does any good is the one in which the Holy Spirit can also dwell; that when the Lord himself was baptized the Holy Spirit came down on him; that his deed and his word agree perfectly; and that a mystery like this can hold together on no other principle. To that answer none of us is found so senseless or so stubborn as to dare, against right and against truth, to object — to object, that is, to things being done whole and entire, and done in every case in the church, and kept by us always in the order of discipline. [o]

But in that same New Testament, the things we find joined together in this matter are sometimes found divided, separated, and set out in order as though each stood by itself. So let us see whether these single instances, standing alone, may not sometimes be not defective at all, but whole and complete. For the Holy Spirit is given to every believer by the laying on of the overseer’s hands — as happened with the Samaritans, whom the apostles treated this way after Philip’s baptism, laying hands on them, and in this manner giving them the Holy Spirit. And to bring that about the apostles prayed for them, since the Holy Spirit had not yet come down on any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And our Lord, after his resurrection, breathed on his apostles and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit” — and it was in this way, and this way only, that he gave them the Spirit.

Since this is how things stand, what do you think, my brother? Suppose a man is not baptized by an overseer, and so does not have hands laid on him at once, and suppose he dies before he has received the Holy Spirit. Would you judge that he has received salvation, or not? For the apostles themselves and the disciples — who baptized others, and were themselves baptized by the Lord — did not receive the Holy Spirit at once. He had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified. And after the resurrection no small stretch of time went by before that happened. It was the same with the Samaritans: when Philip baptized them they did not receive the gift until the apostles, called from Jerusalem to Samaria, went down to lay hands on them and gave them the Holy Spirit by that laying on of hands. In that interval any one of them who had not yet obtained the Holy Spirit might have been carried off by death, and have died cheated of the grace of the Holy Spirit. [r]

And there is no doubting that in our own day this sort of thing is usual and happens often: many people leave this life after baptism without any laying on of the overseer’s hands, and are still reckoned complete believers. Take the Ethiopian eunuch. He was on his way back from Jerusalem, reading the prophet Isaiah, and he was in doubt; at the Spirit’s prompting he heard the truth from Philip the deacon, believed, and was baptized. And when he had come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more. He went on his way rejoicing — and yet, as you can see, no overseer laid hands on him so that he might receive the Holy Spirit.

But if you grant this, and believe it saves, and do not contradict what all the faithful hold, then you must admit this as well: as this principle comes to be argued out more fully, that other point can be established more broadly too — that by the overseer’s laying on of hands alone, because baptism in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ has gone before it, the Holy Spirit may also be given to another man who repents and believes. For the holy Scripture has affirmed that those who would believe in Christ must be baptized in the Spirit, so that these people too may not seem to have anything less than those who are Christians in the full sense, and so that no one need ask what sort of thing that baptism was which they received in the name of Jesus Christ. Unless perhaps, in that earlier question too — about people who have only been baptized in the name of Jesus Christ — you decide that they can be saved even without the Holy Spirit; or that the Holy Spirit is not given in this way only, by the laying on of the overseer’s hands; or even say that the overseer is not the only one who can give the Holy Spirit.

And if that is so, and none of these things happening can rob a man who believes of salvation, then you are yourself saying that when the mystery of the faith is in a sense divided, and is not carried through to the end as you insist it must be, because necessity gets in the way, this cannot take salvation away from a man who believes and repents. Or if you say that a man of this kind cannot be saved, then we are stripping every overseer of salvation. For you are binding them, at the plainest possible risk to themselves, to go in person and help everyone in their care who is in weak health, scattered here and there across their districts, since lesser men among the clergy who might venture it cannot confer the same benefit. And so the blood of everyone who appears to have left this life without that benefit would have to be required from the overseers. [u]

Besides — and you are not ignorant of this — the Holy Spirit is found to have been given by the Lord to men who believe, without baptism in water. The Acts of the Apostles records it like this: “While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter were astonished, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles too. For they heard them speaking in tongues, and they magnified God. Then Peter answered, ‘Can anyone forbid water, so that these should not be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we did?’ And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.” And Peter afterward taught us the same thing about these same Gentiles, most fully, when he said: “And he made no difference between us and them, their hearts being purified by faith.”

So there will be no doubt that people may be baptized with the Holy Spirit without water — as you can see, these people were baptized before they were baptized with water — and that the announcements of John and of our Lord himself were both satisfied in them, since they received the grace of the promise without the laying on of the apostle’s hands and without the washing, which they came to afterward. And their hearts having been purified, God granted them at the same moment, because of their faith, the forgiveness of sins. So the baptism that followed conferred this benefit alone on them: that they received also the calling of the name of Jesus Christ over them, so that nothing might appear to be wanting to the completeness of their service and their faith.