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| Of Preparation For, and Conduct After, the Reception of Baptism.
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Chapter XX.—Of
Preparation For, and Conduct After, the Reception of
Baptism.
They who are about to enter baptism ought to pray with
repeated prayers, fasts, and bendings of the knee, and vigils all the
night through, and with the confession of all by- gone sins, that they may express the
meaning even of the baptism of John: “They were
baptized,” saith (the Scripture), “confessing their own
sins.”8744
| 8744 Matt. iii. 6. [See the collection of Dr. Bunsen
for the whole primitive discipline to which Tertullian has reference,
Hippol. Vol. III. pp. 5–23, and 29.] | To us it is matter
for thankfulness if we do now publicly confess our iniquities or
our turpitudes:8745
for we do at the
same time both make satisfaction8746
| 8746 See de Orat.
c. xxiii. ad fin., and the note there. | for our former
sins, by mortification of our flesh and spirit, and lay beforehand the
foundation of defences against the temptations which will closely
follow. “Watch and pray,” saith (the Lord), “lest ye
fall into temptation.”8747
And the reason, I
believe, why they were tempted was, that they fell asleep; so
that they deserted the Lord when apprehended, and he who continued to
stand by Him, and used the sword, even denied Him thrice: for withal
the word had gone before, that “no one untempted should
attain the celestial kingdoms.”8748
| 8748 What passage is
referred to is doubtful. The editors point us to Luke xxii. 28, 29; but the reference is
unsatisfactory. |
The Lord Himself forthwith after baptism8749
temptations surrounded, when in forty days He had kept fast.
“Then,” some one will say, “it becomes us,
too, rather to fast after baptism.”8750
| 8750 Lavacro. Compare the
beginning of the chapter. | Well, and who forbids you, unless it be the
necessity for joy, and the thanksgiving for salvation? But so far as I,
with my poor powers, understand, the Lord figuratively retorted upon
Israel the reproach they had cast on the Lord.8751
For the people, after crossing the sea, and
being carried about in the desert during forty years, although they
were there nourished with divine supplies, nevertheless were more
mindful of their belly and their gullet than of God. Thereupon the
Lord, driven apart into desert places after baptism,8752
showed, by maintaining a fast of forty days,
that the man of God lives “not by bread alone,” but
“by the word of God;”8753
and that
temptations incident to fulness or immoderation of appetite are
shattered by abstinence. Therefore, blessed ones, whom the grace
of God awaits, when you ascend from that most sacred font8754
of your new birth, and spread your
hands8755
| 8755 In prayer: comp. de
Orat. c. xiv. | for the first time in the house of your
mother,8756
| 8756 i.e. the Church: comp.
de Orat. c. 2. | together with your
brethren, ask from the Father, ask from the Lord, that His own
specialties of grace and distributions of gifts8757
may be supplied you. “Ask,”
saith He, “and ye shall receive.”8758
Well, you have asked, and have received; you have
knocked, and it has been opened to you. Only, I pray that, when
you are asking, you be mindful likewise of Tertullian the
sinner.8759
| 8759 [The translator,
though so learned and helpful, too often encumbers the text with
superfluous interpolations. As many of these, while making the reading
difficult, add nothing to the sense yet destroy the terse, crabbed
force of the original, I have occasionally restored the spirit of a
sentence, by removing them.] | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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