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| Chapter LXI.—Christian baptism.
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I will also
relate the manner in which we dedicated ourselves to God when we had been
made new through Christ; lest, if we omit this, we seem to be unfair in
the explanation we are making. As many as are persuaded and believe that
what we teach and say is true, and undertake to be able to live
accordingly, are instructed to pray and to entreat God with fasting, for
the remission of their sins that are past, we praying and fasting with
them. Then they are brought by us where there is water, and are
regenerated in the same manner in which we were ourselves regenerated.
For, in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our
Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the
washing with water. For Christ also said, “Except ye be born again,
ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”1894
Now, that it is impossible for those who have once been born to
enter into their mothers’ wombs, is manifest to all. And how those
who have sinned and repent shall escape their sins, is declared by Esaias
the prophet, as I wrote above;1895
he thus speaks: “Wash you,
make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from your souls; learn
to do well; judge the fatherless, and plead for the widow: and come and
let us reason together, saith the Lord. And though your sins be as
scarlet, I will make them white like wool; and though they be as crimson,
I will make them white as snow. But if ye refuse and rebel, the sword
shall devour you: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”1896
And for this [rite] we have learned from the apostles
this reason. Since at our birth we were born without our own knowledge or
choice, by our parents coming together, and were brought up in bad habits
and wicked training; in order that we may not remain the children of
necessity and of ignorance, but may become the children of choice and
knowledge, and may obtain in the water the remission of sins formerly
committed, there is pronounced over him who chooses to be born again, and
has repented of his sins, the name of God the Father and Lord of the
universe; he who leads to the laver the person that is to be washed
calling him by this name alone. For no one can utter the name of the
ineffable God; and if any one dare to say that there is a name, he raves
with a hopeless madness. And this washing is called illumination, because
they who learn these things are illuminated in their understandings. And
in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and
in the name of the Holy Ghost, who through the prophets foretold all
things about Jesus, he who is illuminated is washed. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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