Chapter 16.—Wherefore, since it is manifest that the baptism remains in the baptized person when he is separated from the Church, the baptism which is in him is certainly separated with him. And therefore not all who retain the baptism retain the Church, just as not all who retain the Church retain eternal life. Or if we say that only those retain the Church who observe the commandments of God, we at once concede that there are many who
retain baptism, and do not retain the Church.
21. Therefore the heretic is not "the first to seize baptism," since he has received it from the Church. Nor, though he seceded, could baptism have been lost by him whom we assert no longer to retain the Church, and yet allow to retain baptism. Nor does any one "yield his birthright, and give it to a heretic,"1509
| 1509 Cypr. Ep. lxxiii. 25.
|
because he says that he took away with him what he could not give lawfully, but what would yet be according to
law when given; or that he no longer has lawfully what yet is in accordance with
law in his possession. But the
birthright rests only in a holy conversation and good
life, to which all
belong of whom that
bride consists as her members which has no spot or wrinkle,
1510
| 1510 Eph. v. 27. Cp. Aug. Retract. ii. 18, quoted above, I. 17, 26.
|
or that
dove that
groans amid the
wickedness of the many crows,—unless it be that, while
Esau lost his
birthright from his
lust after a mess of pottage,
1511
we are yet to hold that it is retained by defrauders, robbers, usurers, envious persons, drunkards and the like, over whose existence in the
Church of his time Cyprian
groaned in his
epistles. Wherefore, either it is not the same thing to retain the
Church and to retain the
birthright in
divine things, or, if every one who retains the
Church also retains the
birthright, then all those
wicked ones do not retain the
Church who yet both seem and are
allowed by every one of us to give
baptism within the
Church; for no one, save the man who is wholly ignorant of sacred things, would say that they retain the birthright in sacred things.
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