Chapter 1.—1. Let us not be considered troublesome to our readers, if we discuss the same question often and from different points of view. For although the Holy Catholic Church throughout all nations be fortified by the authority of primitive custom and of a plenary Council against those arguments which throw some darkness over the question about baptism, whether it can be the same among heretics and schismatics that it is in the
Catholic Church, yet, since a different opinion has at one time been entertained in the unity of the Church itself, by men who are in no wise to be despised, and especially by Cyprian, whose authority men endeavor to use against us who are far removed from his charity, we are therefore compelled to make use of the opportunity of examining and considering all that we find on this subject in his Council and letters, in order, as it were, to handle at some considerable length this same question,
and to show how it has more truly been the decision of the whole body of the Catholic Church, that heretics or schismatics, who have received baptism already in the body from which they came, should be admitted with it into the communion of the Catholic Church, being corrected in their error and rooted and grounded in the faith, that, so far as concerns the sacrament of baptism, there should not be an addition of something that was wanting, but a turning to profit of what was in them. And the
holy Cyprian indeed, now that the corruptible body no longer presseth down the soul, nor the earthly tabernacle presseth down the mind that museth upon many things,1759
sees with greater clearness that
truth to which his
charity made him deserving to attain. May he therefore help us by his prayers, while we
labor in the mortality of the
flesh as in a darksome
cloud, that if the
Lord so grant it, we may
imitate so
far as we can the good that was in him. But if he thought otherwise than right on any point, and
persuaded certain of his
brethren and colleagues to
entertain his views in a matter which he now sees clearly through the
revelation of Him whom he
loved, let us, who are
far inferior to his merits, yet following, as our
weakness will allow, the
authority of the Catholic
Church of which he was himself a conspicuous and most
noble member,
strive our utmost against
heretics and schismatics, seeing that they, being
cut off from the
unity which he maintained, and
barren of the
love with which he was
fruitful, and fallen away from the
humility in which he stood, are disavowed and
condemned the more by him, in
proportion as he knows that they wish to search out his writings for purposes of treachery, and are
unwilling to
imitate what he did for the maintainance of
peace,—like those who, calling themselves Nazarene
Christians, and circumcising the foreskin of their
flesh after the fashion of the
Jews, being
heretics by
birth in that error from which Peter, when straying from the
truth, was called by
Paul1760
persist in the same to the present day. As therefore they have remained in their perversity
cut off from the body of the
Church, while Peter has been
crowned in the primacy of the
apostles through the
glory of martyrdom, so these men, while Cyprian, through the
abundance of his
love, has been received into the portion of the
saints through the brightness of his passion, are obliged to recognize themselves as exiles from
unity, and, in defence of their calumnies, set up a
citizen of
unity as an opponent against the very home of unity. Let us, therefore, go on to examine the other judgments of that Council after the same fashion.
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
