Chapter 16.—24. Some one says, Does it then make no difference, if two men, rooted in like error and wickedness, be baptized without change of life or heart, one without, the other within the Church? I acknowledge that there is a difference. For he is worse who is baptized without, in addition to his other sin,—not because of his baptism, however, but because he is without; for the evil of division is in itself far from insignificant
or trivial. Yet the difference exists only if he who is baptized within has desired to be within not for the sake of any earthly or temporal advantage, but because he has preferred the unity of the Church spread throughout the world to the divisions of schism; otherwise he too must be considered among those who are without. Let us therefore put the two cases in this way. Let us suppose that the one, for the sake of argument, held the same opinions as Photinus 1439
| 1439 Various Synods from 345 on anathematized Photinus, the bishop of Sirmium. The two of Sirmium, 351 and 357, accused him of constituting two Gods.
|
about
Christ, and was
baptized in his
heresy outside the
communion of the Catholic
Church; and that another held the same opinion but was
baptized in the Catholic
Church, believing that his view was really the Catholic
faith. I consider him as not yet a heretic, unless, when the
doctrine of the Catholic
faith is made clear to him, he chooses to
resist it, and prefers that which he already holds; and till this is the case, it is clear that he who was
baptized outside is
the worse. And so in the one case erroneous opinion alone, in the other the
sin of
schism also, requires correction; but in neither of them is the
truth of the sacrament to be repeated. But if any one holds the same view as the first, and knows that it is only in
heresy severed from the
Church that such a view is taught or
learned, but yet for the sake of some temporal emolument has desired to be
baptized in the Catholic
unity, or, having been already
baptized in it, is
unwilling on account
of the said emolument to secede from it, he is not only to be considered as seceding, but his offense is aggravated, in so
far as to the error of
heresy and the
division of
unity he adds the
deceit of
hypocrisy. Wherefore the
depravity of each man, in proportion as it is more
dangerous and wanting in straightforwardness, must be corrected with the more earnestness and energy; and yet, if he has anything that is good in him, especially if it be not of himself, but from
God, we ought not to
think it of no value because of his
depravity, or to be
blamed like it, or to be ascribed to it, rather than to His bountiful
goodness, who even to a
soul that plays the
harlot, and goes after her
lovers, yet gives His
bread, and His
wine, and His
oil, and other food or ornaments, which are neither from herself nor from her lovers, but from Him who in compassion for her is even desirous to warn her to whom she should return.
1440
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
