Chapter 15.—28. Saturninus of Victoriana1802
| 1802 Victoriana was in ecclesiastical province of Byzacium. [The name Saturninus is found in Cypr. Epp. xxi. 4, xxii. 3, xxvii. 1, 11, lvii. ter. lxvii. bis, lxx. quinquies.
|
said: "If
heretics may
baptize, they are excused and
defended in doing
unlawful things; nor do I see why either
Christ called them His
adversaries, or the
apostle called them
antichrists."
1803
| 1803 Conc. Carth. sec. 51.
|
29. To him we answer: We say that heretics have no authority to baptize in the same sense in which we say that defrauders have no authority to baptize. For not only to the heretic, but to the sinner, God says, "What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth?" To the same person He assuredly says, "When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him."1804
How much worse, therefore, are those who did not consent with
thieves, but themselves were wont to plunder
farms with treacherous deceits? Yet Cyprian did not consent with them, though he did tolerate them in the corn-
field of the Catholic
Church, lest the
wheat should be rooted out together with it. And yet at the same time the
baptism which they themselves conferred was the very selfsame
baptism, because it was not of them, but of
Christ. As therefore they, although
the
baptism of
Christ be recognized in them, were yet not excused and
defended in doing
unlawful things, and
Christ rightly called those His
adversaries who were destined, by persevering in such things, to hear the
doom, "Depart from me, ye that
work iniquity,"
1805
whence also they are called antichrists, because they are contrary to Christ while they live in opposition to His words, so likewise is it the case with heretics.
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