Baptism Outside the Church

Cyprian to his son Magnus, greetings. With your usual care for the things of God you have put a question to my own small judgment, dearest son: whether people who come over from Novatian ought, like other heretics, to be baptized after his unholy washing, and made holy in the universal church with the lawful and true and only baptism of the church. On this my answer, as far as my faith can reach and as the holiness and truth of the divine Scriptures suggest, is that no heretics and no schismatics whatever have any power or any right. For that reason Novatian neither ought to be nor can be made an exception, and left out of the count of adversaries and antichrists, since he too is outside the church and is acting against the peace and the love of Christ. [c]

For when our Lord Jesus Christ declared in his Gospel that those who were not with him were his adversaries, he did not point to any one kind of heresy. He showed that every last person who was not with him, and who by not gathering with him was scattering his flock, was his adversary. He said: “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.”

The blessed apostle John, in the same way, marked off no particular heresy or split and singled out no one group as cut off. He called everyone who had gone out from the church and was acting against the church an antichrist. He said: “You have heard that antichrist is coming, and even now many antichrists have come; from this we know that this 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 stayed with us.” From this it appears that all who are known to have left love and the unity of the universal church are adversaries of the Lord and antichrists.

On top of that, the Lord settles it in his Gospel, where he says: “But if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” Now if people who look down on the church are counted as Gentiles and tax collectors, then rebels and enemies must all the more certainly be counted among Gentiles and tax collectors — men who manufacture false altars and unlawful priesthoods and sacrilegious sacrifices and counterfeit titles — since those who sin less, and are only despisers of the church, are by the Lord’s own sentence judged to be Gentiles and tax collectors.

But that the church is one, the Holy Spirit declares in the Song of Songs, speaking in the person of Christ: “My dove, my undefiled one, is the only one; she is the only one of her mother, the favorite of the one who bore her.” And about her he says again: “A garden shut up is my sister, my bride; a spring sealed shut, a well of living water.” But if the bride of Christ, who is the church, is a garden shut up, then a thing closed off cannot lie open to strangers and to the unhallowed. And if she is a sealed spring, a man standing outside, with no way in to the spring, can neither drink from it nor be sealed by it. And if the well of living water is one and the same well, and it is inside, then a man standing outside cannot be brought to life and made holy from that water, when only those who are inside are allowed to use it or to drink. [i]

Peter showed the same thing when he set out that the church is one, and that only those who are in the church can be baptized. He said: “In the ark of Noah a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water; and baptism, which answers to it, saves you too” — proving and attesting that the one ark of Noah stood for the one church. If, then, in that washing of the world, so purged and cleansed, a man who was not in Noah’s ark could be saved by water, then a man who is not in the church, to which alone baptism has been granted, can be brought to life by baptism now.

The apostle Paul, moreover, shows this same thing still more openly and plainly, writing to the Ephesians: “Christ loved the church and gave himself for it, to make it holy and to cleanse it with the washing of water.” But if there is one church, and it is the one Christ loves, and it alone is cleansed by his washing, how can a man who is not in the church be either loved by Christ or washed and cleansed by his washing?

So then, since the church alone has the living water and the power to baptize a man and cleanse him, whoever says that anyone can be baptized and made holy by Novatian must first show and prove that Novatian is in the church, or presides over the church. For the church is one, and being one she cannot be both inside and outside. If she is with Novatian, she was not with Cornelius. But if she was with Cornelius — who succeeded the overseer Fabian by lawful ordination, and whom the Lord honored with martyrdom as well as with the honor of the priesthood — then Novatian is not in the church. Nor can he be reckoned an overseer: a man who succeeded no one, who sprang from himself, and who thought nothing of what the Gospel and the apostles handed down. For a man who has not been ordained in the church can in no way have the church or hold on to her. [n]

For the faith of the sacred Scripture sets out that the church is not outside, and cannot be separated or divided against herself, but keeps the unity of a house that cannot be split or parted. It is written of the passover and of the lamb, the Lamb who stood for Christ: “It shall be eaten in one house; you shall not carry any of the flesh outside the house.” [p]

We see the same thing said of Rahab, who herself stood for the church. The command she received said: “You shall bring your father and your mother and your brothers and your whole father’s household to yourself, into your house; and whoever goes out of the doors of your house into the street, his blood shall be on his own head.” In this sacred sign it is declared that those who mean to live, and to escape the destruction of the world, must be gathered into one house alone, that is, into the church. But whoever, once gathered in, goes out of doors — that is, anyone who has obtained grace in the church and then leaves and goes out of the church — his blood shall be on his own head. He must charge his own ruin on himself.

The apostle Paul explains this when he teaches and directs that a heretic is to be avoided, as a man who is twisted and sinful and condemned by his own verdict. For a man will be guilty of his own destruction who was not thrown out by his overseer, but deserted the church of his own accord and stands condemned by his own heretical presumption.

And so the Lord, putting before us a unity that comes from God’s own authority, lays it down: “I and my Father are one.” And bringing his church back to that unity he says again: “And there shall be one flock and one shepherd.” But if the flock is one, how can a man be counted in the flock who is not among its number? Or how can a man be thought a shepherd who succeeded no one and began from himself, while the true shepherd is still there and presides over the church of God by ordination handed on in succession? Such a man is a stranger and unhallowed, an enemy of the Lord’s peace and of God’s unity, and he does not live in the house of God — that is, in the church of God, where no one lives except those who are of one heart and one mind. For the Holy Spirit says in the Psalms: “It is God who makes people of one mind live in a house.” [t]

The Lord’s own sacrifices declare, besides, that Christian oneness of mind is bound to itself by a firm love that cannot be pulled apart. For when the Lord calls bread his body — bread made one out of many grains joined together — he is pointing to our people, whom he carried, as being made one. And when he calls the wine his blood — wine pressed from many grapes and clusters and gathered into one — he is likewise pointing to our flock, bound together by the mingling of a united crowd. If Novatian is joined to this bread of the Lord, if he too is mingled in this cup of Christ, then he might also seem able to have the grace of the one baptism of the church — provided it were clear that he holds the unity of the church. [w]

In short, how inseparable the sacred bond of unity is, how hopeless those men are, and what enormous ruin they earn for themselves from the anger of God, who make a split, forsake their own overseer, and set up another, false overseer for themselves outside — Holy Scripture declares it in the books of the Kings. There ten tribes were divided from the tribe of Judah and Benjamin, and forsook their king, and appointed another one for themselves outside. Scripture says: “And the Lord was very angry with all the offspring of Israel, and removed them, and handed them over into the hands of plunderers, until he had cast them out of his sight; for Israel was torn away from the house of David, and they made themselves a king, Jeroboam the son of Nebat.” It says that the Lord was very angry and gave them up to ruin, because they had been scattered away from unity and had made another king for themselves.

And the Lord’s anger against the men who had made that split was so great that when the man of God was sent to Jeroboam to charge him with his sins and to foretell the vengeance that was coming, he was forbidden to eat bread or drink water with them. When he did not keep that order and took food against the command of God, he was struck at once by the majesty of God’s judgment: on his way back he was killed by the jaws of a lion that attacked him. And does anyone dare to say that the saving water of baptism and heavenly grace can be shared with schismatics, when not even earthly food and worldly drink ought to be shared with them?

The Lord settles the matter for us in his Gospel, moreover, and shows a still greater light of understanding: that the very people who had then divided themselves from the tribe of Judah and Benjamin, and had left Jerusalem and gone over to Samaria, were to be reckoned among the unhallowed and the Gentiles. For when he first sent his disciples out on the work of salvation, he told them: “Do not take the road to the Gentiles, and do not enter any town of the Samaritans.” Sending them first to the Jews, he commands that the Gentiles be passed over for the time being; but by adding that even the town of the Samaritans was to be left out, where the schismatics were, he shows that schismatics were to be put on the same footing as Gentiles.

But suppose someone objects that Novatian holds the same law that the universal church holds, baptizes with the same creed we baptize with, knows the same God and Father, the same Christ the Son, the same Holy Spirit, and that for this reason he can claim the power of baptizing, since he seems not to differ from us in the questions put at baptism. Anyone who thinks this can be objected should know, first of all, that the law of the creed is not one law shared by us and by schismatics, and that the questions are not the same either. For when they ask, “Do you believe in the forgiveness of sins and eternal life through the holy church?” they are lying in their own question, since they do not have the church. And then, besides, with their own voices they themselves confess that forgiveness of sins cannot be given except by the holy church; and since they do not have her, they are showing that sins cannot be forgiven among them. [aa]

But that they are said to have the same God the Father as we do, and to know the same Christ the Son and the same Holy Spirit, can do men like these no good at all. Korah, Dathan, and Abiram knew the same God as Aaron the priest and Moses did. They lived under the same law and the same religion, and they called on the one true God, the God who is to be called on and worshiped. Yet because they overstepped the ministry of their own office in opposition to Aaron the priest — who had received the lawful priesthood by God’s own stooping favor and by the Lord’s appointing — and claimed the power of sacrificing for themselves, they were struck by God and suffered punishment at once for their unlawful attempt. Sacrifices offered without reverence and without lawful right, against the terms God had appointed, could not be accepted and could do them no good. [ab]

The very censers in which incense had been unlawfully offered were melted down and purified by fire at the Lord’s command, beaten out into flexible plates, and fastened to the altars, so that the priests should never use them again, and so that they should stand instead as a reminder of God’s vengeance and anger, to set later generations straight. As Holy Scripture says, they were to be “a reminder to the children of Israel, so that no outsider who is not of Aaron’s offspring should come near to offer incense before the Lord, and so that he should not become like Korah.”

And yet those men had made no split. They had not gone outside and risen against God’s priests in shameless open hostility — which is exactly what these men are doing now, who divide the church, and who, as rebels against the peace and unity of Christ, try to set up a throne of their own and to seize the first place, and to claim the right of baptizing and of offering. How can they carry through what they are doing, or get anything from God by unlawful attempts, when what they are attempting against God is not lawful for them? So the men who take the side of Novatian, or of other schismatics like him, argue in vain that anyone among them can be baptized and made holy with a saving baptism, when it is plain that the man doing the baptizing has no power to baptize.

And to make it better understood what the judgment of God is against boldness of this kind: we find that in wickedness of this sort not only the leaders and the men who started it are marked out for punishment, but those who took part as well, unless they have separated themselves from fellowship with the wicked. This is what the Lord commands through Moses: “Separate yourselves from the tents of these hardened men, and touch nothing of theirs, or you will be destroyed along with their sins.” And what the Lord had threatened through Moses he carried out: everyone who had not separated himself from Korah and Dathan and Abiram suffered punishment at once for his unholy fellowship. This example shows and proves that everyone will be liable to the guilt and to the punishment alike who, with irreverent boldness, mixes himself in with schismatics against those set over the churches and against the priests. So too the Holy Spirit bears witness through the prophet Hosea: “Their sacrifices will be to them like the bread of mourning; everyone who eats of it will be defiled.” He is plainly teaching and showing that all who have been stained by the crime of their leaders are joined with those leaders, absolutely, in the punishment. [ad]

What, then, can such men deserve in the sight of God, when God himself pronounces punishments against them? Or how can men like this make the baptized righteous and holy, when they are enemies of the priests and are trying to seize things that are not theirs and not lawful, and that have been granted to them by no right at all? And we are not surprised that they argue for these things, in keeping with their own wickedness. Each of them has to defend what he does, and once beaten they will not give in easily, though they know that what they are doing is not lawful. What is to be wondered at — no, rather to be angry and grieved over — is that Christians should support antichrists, and that traitors to the faith and betrayers of the church should be standing inside the church itself. Yet even these men, stubborn and unteachable as they are otherwise, at least admit this much: that all heretics and schismatics alike are without the Holy Spirit, and can therefore baptize, but cannot give the Holy Spirit. And it is exactly here that we have hold of them, since we can show that men who do not have the Holy Spirit cannot baptize at all. [af]

For since in baptism each person has his own sins forgiven, the Lord proves and declares in his Gospel that sins can be taken away only by those who have the Holy Spirit. For after his resurrection, when he sent his disciples out, he spoke to them and said: “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; if you hold anyone’s sins, they are held.” In that place he shows that only the man who has the Holy Spirit can baptize and give forgiveness of sins. And John, who was to baptize Christ our Lord himself, had received the Holy Spirit beforehand, while he was still in his mother’s womb, so that it might be certain and plain that no one can baptize except those who have the Holy Spirit. [ag]

So those who take the side of heretics or schismatics must answer us this: do they have the Holy Spirit or not? If they do, why are hands laid on people who were baptized among them when they come over to us, so that they may receive the Holy Spirit — since he must surely have been received over there, where, if he was present, he could be given? But if heretics and schismatics who baptize outside do not have the Holy Spirit, and hands are therefore laid on them among us so that here they may receive what there is not there and cannot be given there, then it is plain that forgiveness of sins cannot be given by men who certainly do not have the Holy Spirit. And so, if they are to be able to obtain forgiveness of sins according to God’s arrangement and the truth of the Gospel, and to be made holy, and to become temples of God, then absolutely all who come from adversaries and antichrists to the church of Christ must be baptized with the baptism of the church.