But let us now reply to those who promise deliverance from eternal fire, not to the devil and his angels (as neither do they of whom we have been speaking), nor even to all men whatever, but only to those who have been washed by the baptism of Christ, and have become partakers of His body and blood, no matter how they have lived, no matter what heresy or impiety they have fallen into.  But they are contradicted by the apostle, where he says, “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variances, emulations, wrath, strife, heresies, envyings, drunkenness, revellings, and the like:  of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, for they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”¹⁵⁶⁵

1565 Gal. v. 19–21.

And therefore we may reasonably inquire how we are to understand these words of the Lord Jesus:  “This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die.  I am the living bread which came down from heaven.  If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever.”¹⁵⁶⁶

1566 John vi. 50, 51.

1567 1 Cor. x. 17.

But again, even those who sufficiently understand that he who is not in the body of Christ cannot be said to eat the body of Christ, are in error when they promise liberation from the fire of eternal punishment to persons who fall away from the unity of that body into heresy, or even into heathenish superstition.  For, in the first place, they ought to consider how intolerable it is, and how discordant with sound doctrine, to suppose that many, indeed, or almost all, who have forsaken the Church catholic, and have originated impious heresies and become heresiarchs, should enjoy a destiny superior to those who never were catholics, but have fallen into the snares of these others; that is to say, if the fact of their catholic baptism and original reception of the sacrament of the body of Christ in the true body of Christ is sufficient to deliver these heresiarchs from eternal punishment.  For certainly he who deserts the faith, and from a deserter becomes an assailant, is worse than he who has not deserted the faith he never held.  And, in the second place, they are contradicted by the apostle, who, after enumerating the works of the flesh, says with reference to heresies, “They who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”

And therefore neither ought such persons as lead an abandoned and damnable life to be confident of salvation, though they persevere to the end in the communion of the Church catholic, and comfort themselves with the words, “He that endureth to the end shall be saved.”  By the iniquity of their life they abandon that very righteousness of life which Christ is to them, whether it be by fornication, or by perpetrating in their body the other uncleannesses which the apostle would not so much as mention, or by a dissolute luxury, or by doing any one of those things of which he says, “They who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”  Consequently, they who do such things shall not exist anywhere but in eternal punishment, since they cannot be in the kingdom of God.  For, while they continue in such things to the very end of life, they cannot be said to abide in Christ to the end; for to abide in Him is to abide in the faith of Christ.  And this faith, according to the apostle’s definition of it, “worketh by love.”¹⁵⁶⁸

1568 Gal. v. 6.

1569 Rom. xiii. 10.

1570 John vi. 56.

E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH