Deceitful Water

Cyprian to Jubaianus his brother: greetings.

You have written to me, dearest brother, wanting my mind signified to you — what I think about the baptism of heretics, people who are placed outside, settled outside the church, and who claim for themselves a thing that lies neither within their right nor within their power. We cannot count that baptism valid or lawful, since among them it is plainly unlawful. And since we have already put in writing what we thought about this, I have sent you copies of those letters, as the shortest way: what we decided in council when very many of us were present, and what I afterward wrote back to Quintus, our colleague, when he asked about the same thing. And now once more, when we had met together — overseers of the province of Africa and of Numidia, seventy-one of us — we settled this same matter again by our judgment. We decided that there is one baptism, appointed in the universal church; and that by it those people are not baptized over again but baptized by us who at any time come out of the adulterous and unhallowed water to be washed and made holy by the truth of the water that saves. [c]

What you described in your letter does not trouble us, dearest brother — that the Novatians baptize again the people they entice away from us. It makes no difference at all to us what the enemies of the church do, so long as we ourselves keep a regard for our own power, and for the steadiness of reason and truth. Novatian behaves in the manner of apes, which are not men but imitate what men do. He wants to claim for himself the authority and the truth of the universal church, while he himself is not in the church — more than that, while he has stood out until now as a rebel and an enemy against the church. Knowing that there is one baptism, he claims that one for himself, so that he can say the church is with him and can make heretics out of us. But we, who hold the head and the root of the one church, know and trust for certain that nothing there outside the church is lawful, and that the baptism which is one is among us — where he himself was baptized too, back when he still held to the wisdom and the truth of the divine unity. [f]

But if Novatian thinks that people baptized in the church are to be baptized again outside — outside the church — he ought to begin with himself, and be baptized first with an outsider’s heretical baptism, since he thinks that after the church, and even against the church, people are to be baptized outside. And what sort of thing is this, that because Novatian dares to do something, we are to think we must not do it? What then? Because Novatian also usurps the honor of the priest’s chair, ought we to give up our own chair? Or because Novatian tries wrongfully to set up an altar and to offer sacrifices, does it follow that we should stop using our altar and our sacrifices, so that we do not look as though we were celebrating the same things he does, or things like them? It is utterly empty and foolish that because Novatian claims for himself, outside the church, the image of the truth, we should let go of the truth of the church.

Among us it is no new or sudden thing to judge that people who come to the church from among the heretics are to be baptized. It is many years now, a long time ago, that under Agrippinus — a man of worthy memory — very many overseers met together and decided this. From then until today so many thousands of heretics in our provinces have turned to the church, and they have neither looked down on the chance to reach the grace of the life-giving washing and of saving baptism nor put it off; they have taken hold of it both gladly and with good reason. It is not hard for a teacher to work true and lawful things into the mind of a man who has condemned the crookedness of heresy, has found out the truth of the church, and comes for this very purpose — to learn — and who learns for this purpose: to live. We ought not to add to the dullness of heretics by backing them with our agreement, when they are glad and quick to obey the truth. [h]

In the letter whose copy you passed on to me I did find it written, “It should not be asked who did the baptizing, since the one baptized might receive forgiveness of sins according to what he believed.” I thought this point should not be passed over, especially since I noticed that the same letter also brought up Marcion, saying that “even those who came from him did not need to be baptized, because they seemed to have been baptized already in the name of Jesus Christ.” So we ought to look at the faith of those who believe outside, and ask whether on the strength of that same faith they can obtain any grace. For if we and the heretics have one faith, we may also have one grace. If the Patripassians, the Anthropians, the Valentinians, the Apelleians, the Ophites, the Marcionites, and the other pests and swords and poisons of heretics for overturning the truth confess the same Father, the same Son, the same Holy Spirit, the same church that we do, then they may also have one baptism — if they also have one faith. [i]

Rather than go through all the heresies and count up the follies or the madness of each of them — it would be wearisome, and it is no pleasure to speak of what a man either dreads or is ashamed to know — let us examine for now about Marcion alone, since he is the one mentioned in the letter you passed on to us, and ask whether the ground of his baptism can be made good. For after his resurrection the Lord sent out his disciples and instructed and taught them in what manner they ought to baptize. He said: “All power is given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, then, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” He points to the Trinity, in whose sacred sign the nations were to be baptized. Does Marcion, then, hold the Trinity? Does he assert the same Father, the Creator, that we do? Does he know the same Son — Christ born of the virgin Mary, who as the Word was made flesh, who bore our sins, who conquered death by dying, who first of all began the resurrection of the flesh in himself, and who showed his disciples that he had risen in that same flesh? [k]

The faith is a widely different thing with Marcion, and with the other heretics too; with them there is nothing but faithlessness and blasphemy and quarreling, which is at war with holiness and truth. How, then, can a man who is baptized among them seem to have obtained forgiveness of sins and the grace of God’s mercy by his faith, when he does not have the truth of the faith itself? For if, as some suppose, a man could receive something outside the church according to his faith, then certainly he has received what he believed; but if what he believes is false, he could not have received what is true. What he has received is adulterous and unholy — according to what he believed.

Jeremiah the prophet rebukes this business of unholy and adulterous baptism plainly. He says: “Why do those who afflict me prevail? My wound is hard; where am I to be healed from? It has indeed become to me like deceitful water that has no faithfulness in it.” Through the prophet the Holy Spirit speaks of deceitful water that has no faithfulness in it. What is this deceitful and faithless water? Surely it is the water that falsely takes on the look of baptism and, by a shadowy pretense, frustrates the grace of faith. But if a man could be baptized outside on a twisted faith and obtain forgiveness of sins, then on that same faith he could also reach the Holy Spirit; and there would be no need for hands to be laid on him when he comes, so that he might obtain the Holy Spirit and be sealed. Either he could obtain both outside by his faith, or the man who has been outside has received neither. [m]

But it is plain where forgiveness of sins can be given, and by whom — the forgiveness, that is, which is given in baptism. First of all the Lord gave that power to Peter, on whom he built the church, and from whom he appointed and showed the source of unity: the power, that is, that whatever he loosed on earth should be loosed in heaven. And after the resurrection he speaks to the apostles as well, saying: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven them; if you hold anyone’s sins, they are held.” From this we see that only those who are set over the church and established in the law of the Gospel and in the Lord’s own ordering are allowed to baptize and to give forgiveness of sins; and that outside, nothing can be either bound or loosed, since there is no one there who can bind or loose anything. [o]

And we do not put this forward, dearest brother, without the authority of divine Scripture, when we say that everything is arranged by God’s direction, by a fixed law and by particular appointment, and that no one may take for himself, in defiance of the overseers and priests, anything that is not his own by right and power. Korah, Dathan, and Abiram tried to take the power of sacrificing for themselves in defiance of Moses and Aaron the priest, and they did not go unpunished for what they unlawfully dared. Aaron’s sons, too, who put strange fire on the altar, were consumed on the spot in the sight of an angry Lord. That same punishment waits for those who bring in strange water by a false baptism, so that God’s vengeance may avenge and chastise when heretics do, against the church, what the church alone is allowed to do. [q]

As for what some say about the people who had been baptized in Samaria — that when the apostles Peter and John came, only hands were laid on them so that they might receive the Holy Spirit, and that they were not baptized again — we can see, dearest brother, that the passage does not touch the case before us. Those who had believed in Samaria had believed with a true faith, and they had been baptized inside, in the church which is one and to which alone it is granted to give the grace of baptism and to forgive sins, by Philip the deacon, whom those same apostles had sent. And so, because they had obtained a lawful baptism, the church’s own, there was no need for them to be baptized any more. Only what was needed was done by Peter and John: prayer was made for them, hands were laid on them, and the Holy Spirit was called down and poured out upon them. That is done among us now as well, so that those who are baptized in the church are brought to the leaders of the church, and by our prayers and by the laying on of hands they obtain the Holy Spirit and are completed with the Lord’s seal. [r]

There is no ground, then, dearest brother, for thinking that we should give way to heretics so far as to contemplate handing over to them the baptism that is granted to the one and only church. It is a good soldier’s duty to defend his general’s camp against rebels and enemies. It is a distinguished commander’s duty to keep the standards entrusted to him. It is written, “The Lord your God is a jealous God.” We who have received the Spirit of God ought to have a jealousy for the faith God gave — the kind of jealousy by which Phinehas both pleased God and rightly turned aside his anger, when he was angry and the people were perishing. Why do we accept as allowed an adulterous and alien church, an enemy of the divine unity, when we know only one Christ and his one church? [s]

The church sets out the likeness of paradise: inside her walls she holds fruit-bearing trees, and any of them that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. She waters these trees with four rivers — that is, with the four Gospels — and by that flood out of heaven she gives the grace of saving baptism. Can anyone water from the church’s springs who is not inside the church? Can a man pass on those healthy, saving drinks of paradise to anyone else, if he has been turned aside, and condemned by his own doing, and banished outside the springs of paradise, and has dried up and failed with the dryness of a thirst that never ends?

The Lord cries aloud that whoever is thirsty should come and drink of the rivers of living water that flowed out of his breast. Where is the thirsty man to come? Is he to come to the heretics, where there is no spring and no river of living water at all? Or to the church, which is one, and is founded on the one man who received the keys of it at the Lord’s own word? She is the one who holds and possesses, alone, all the power of her husband and Lord. In her we preside; for her honor and her unity we fight; her grace and her glory alike we defend with faithful devotion. [u]

By God’s leave we water the thirsting people of God; we guard the boundaries of the living springs. If, then, we hold the right to what is ours, if we acknowledge the sacred bond of unity, why are we counted traitors against the truth? Why are we judged betrayers of unity? The faithful and saving and holy water of the church cannot be corrupted and adulterated, just as the church herself is uncorrupted and chaste and modest. If heretics are devoted to the church and settled in the church, they may use both her baptism and her other saving benefits. But if they are not in the church — more than that, if they act against the church — how can they baptize with the church’s baptism?

For it is no small or insignificant matter that is conceded to heretics when their baptism is recognized by us. Out of baptism springs the whole origin of faith, and the saving approach to the hope of eternal life, and God’s own stooping down to cleanse his servants and make them alive. For if anyone could be baptized among heretics, then certainly he could also obtain forgiveness of sins. If he obtained forgiveness of sins, he was also made holy. If he was made holy, he was also made the temple of God. I ask: of what God? Of the Creator? He could not be, since he has not believed in him. Of Christ? He could not become Christ’s temple, since he denies that Christ is God. Of the Holy Spirit? Since the three are one, how can the Holy Spirit be at peace with a man who is the enemy either of the Son or of the Father? [w]

So it is in vain that some, beaten by reason, set custom against us, as though custom were greater than truth, or as though what the Holy Spirit has revealed to be better were not the thing to be sought after in spiritual matters. A man who goes wrong out of simplicity may be pardoned, as the blessed apostle Paul says of himself: “I who at first was a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man all the same obtained mercy, because I did it in ignorance.” But once inspiration and revelation have been given him, a man who deliberately and knowingly keeps on in the course in which he had gone wrong sins with no pardon for his ignorance; for he holds out with a kind of presumption and stubbornness after reason has beaten him. And let no one say, “We follow what we received from the apostles,” when the apostles handed down only one church and one baptism, which is not appointed anywhere except in that same church. And we cannot find anyone who, having been baptized by heretics, was received by the apostles in that baptism and admitted to fellowship in such a way that the apostles could be shown to have approved the baptism of heretics. [x]

Some bring forward, as though it tended to favor the heretics, the declaration of the apostle Paul: “Only, in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, let Christ be preached.” We find that this too can be of no benefit to those who support and applaud heretics. For in that letter Paul was not speaking about heretics or about their baptism, so that anything could be shown to have been alleged that bears on this matter. He was speaking about brothers — some of them walking out of line and against the discipline of the church, others keeping the truth of the Gospel with the fear of God. He said that certain of them spoke the word of God steadily and bravely, but that some acted out of envy and division; that some kept up a kindly love toward him, but that some gave in to a spiteful and quarrelsome spirit. Yet he bore all of it patiently, so long only as the name of Christ that Paul preached came to the knowledge of many, whether in truth or in pretense, and the sowing of the word — as yet new and not yet regular — grew through the preaching of the speakers. [y]

Besides, it is one thing for those who are inside the church to speak about the name of Christ; it is another for those who are outside, and who act against the church, to baptize in the name of Christ. So let those who favor the heretics stop putting forward what Paul said about brothers. Let them show instead that he thought anything was to be conceded to a heretic, or that he approved their faith or their baptism, or that he laid it down that faithless and blasphemous men could receive forgiveness of their sins outside the church.

But if we consider what the apostles thought about heretics, we will find that in all their letters they cursed and detested the sacrilegious wickedness of heretics. When they say that “their word spreads like gangrene,” how is a word like that able to give forgiveness of sins — a word that spreads like gangrene into the ears of those who hear it? And when they say that there can be no partnership between righteousness and unrighteousness, no fellowship between light and darkness, how can darkness give light, or unrighteousness count anyone righteous? And when they say that “they are not from God, but are of the spirit of Antichrist,” how can men handle spiritual and divine matters who are the enemies of God, and whose hearts the spirit of Antichrist has taken over? [z]

So if we lay aside the errors of human dispute and come back, with a sincere and reverent faith, to the authority of the Gospel and to the tradition handed down from the apostles, we will see that they can do nothing toward conferring the church’s saving grace — men who scatter and attack the church of Christ, and who are called adversaries by Christ himself, but by his apostles, antichrists.