Chapter 22.—30. Accordingly we agree with Cyprian that "heretics cannot give remission of sins;"1540
but we maintain that they can give
baptism,—which indeed in them, both when they give and when they receive it, is profitable only to their
destruction, as misusing so great a
gift of
God; just as also the malicious and envious, whom Cyprian himself acknowledges to be within the
Church, cannot give
remission of
sins, while we all confess that they can give
baptism. For if it was said of those who have
sinned against us, "If ye
forgive not men their trespasses, neither
will your
Father forgive your trespasses,"
1541
how much more
impossible is it that their
sins should be
forgiven who
hate the
brethren by whom they are
loved, and are
baptized in that very
hatred; and yet when they are brought to the right way,
baptism is not given them anew, but that very pardon which they did not then deserve is granted them in their true conversion? And so even what Cyprian wrote to Quintus, and what, in conjunction with his colleagues Liberalis, Caldonius, Junius, and the
rest, he wrote to
Saturninus, Maximus, and others, is all found, on due consideration, to be in no
wise meet to be preferred as against the
agreement of the whole Catholic
Church, of which they
rejoiced that they were members, and from which they neither
cut themselves away nor allowed others to be cut away who held a contrary opinion, until at length, by the will of the Lord, it was made manifest, by a plenary Council many years afterwards, what was the more perfect way, and that not by the institution of any
novelty, but by confirming what was old.
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
