Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| The Primeval Hovering of the Spirit of God Over the Waters Typical of Baptism. The Universal Element of Water Thus Made a Channel of Sanctification. Resemblance Between the Outward Sign and the Inward Grace.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter IV.—The Primeval
Hovering of the Spirit of God Over the Waters Typical of Baptism. The
Universal Element of Water Thus Made a Channel of Sanctification.
Resemblance Between the Outward Sign and the Inward Grace.
But it will suffice to have thus called at
the outset those points in which withal is recognised that primary
principle of baptism,—which was even then fore-noted by the very
attitude assumed for a type of baptism,—that the Spirit of
God, who hovered over (the waters) from the beginning, would continue
to linger over the waters of the baptized.8562
But a holy thing, of course, hovered over a holy; or else, from that
which hovered over that which was hovered over borrowed a
holiness, since it is necessary that in every case an underlying
material substance should catch the quality of that which overhangs it,
most of all a corporeal of a spiritual, adapted (as the spiritual is)
through the subtleness of its substance, both for penetrating and
insinuating. Thus the nature of the waters, sanctified by the Holy One,
itself conceived withal the power of sanctifying. Let no one say,
“Why then, are we, pray, baptized with the very waters which then
existed in the first beginning?” Not with those waters, of
course, except in so far as the genus indeed is one, but the
species very many. But what is an attribute to the genus
reappears8563
likewise in the
species. And accordingly it makes no difference whether a man be washed in a
sea or a pool, a stream or a fount, a lake or a trough;8564
nor is there any distinction between those
whom John baptized in the Jordan and those whom Peter baptized in the
Tiber, unless withal the eunuch whom Philip baptized in the midst of
his journeys with chance water, derived (therefrom) more or less of
salvation than others.8565
All waters,
therefore, in virtue of the pristine privilege of their origin, do,
after invocation of God, attain the sacramental power of
sanctification; for the Spirit immediately supervenes from the heavens,
and rests over the waters, sanctifying them from Himself; and being
thus sanctified, they imbibe at the same time the power of sanctifying.
Albeit the similitude may be admitted to be suitable to the simple act;
that, since we are defiled by sins, as it were by dirt, we should be
washed from those stains in waters. But as sins do not show themselves
in our flesh (inasmuch as no one carries on his skin the spot of
idolatry, or fornication, or fraud), so persons of that kind are foul
in the spirit, which is the author of the sin; for the spirit is
lord, the flesh servant. Yet they each mutually share the guilt: the
spirit, on the ground of command; the flesh, of subservience.
Therefore, after the waters have been in a manner endued with medicinal
virtue8566
through the
intervention of the angel,8567
| 8567 See c. vi. ad
init., and c. v. ad fin. | the spirit is
corporeally washed in the waters, and the flesh is in the same
spiritually cleansed.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
