Chapter 5.—10. Petilianus said: "For everything consists of an origin and root; and if it have not something for a head, it is nothing: nor does anything well receive second birth, unless it be born again of good seed."
11. Augustin answered: Why will you put yourself forward in the room of Christ, when you will not place yourself under Him? He is the origin, and root, and head of him who is being born, and in Him we feel no fear, as we must in any man, whoever he may be, lest he should prove to be false and of abandoned character, and we should be found to be sprung from an abandoned source, growing from an abandoned root, united to an abandoned
head. For what man can feel secure about a man, when it is written, "Cursed be the man that trusteth in man?"1970
But the
seed of which we are
born again is the word of
God, that is, the
gospel. Whence the
apostle says, "For in
Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the
gospel."
1971
And yet he allows even those to
preach the
gospel who were
preaching it not in
purity, and
rejoices in their
preaching;
1972
because, although they were
preaching it not in
purity, but seeking their own, not the things which are
Jesus Christ’s,
1973
yet the
gospel which they
preached was pure. And the
Lord had said of certain of like character, "Whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not yet after their works: for they say, and do not."
1974
If, therefore, what is in itself pure is
preached in
purity, then the
preacher himself also, in that he is a partner with the word, has his share in begetting the
believer; but if he himself be not regenerate, and yet what he preaches be pure, then the believer is born not from the barrenness of the minister but from the fruitfulness of the word.
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
