Chapter 44.—53. Then a little after, as he had said, "This being so, brethren, what perversity must that be, that he who is guilty by reason of his own faults should make another free from guilt, whereas the Lord Jesus Christ says, ‘Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit: do men gather grapes of thorns?’2414
and again, ‘A good man, out of the good
treasure of the
heart, bringeth forth good things: and an
evil man, out of the
evil treasure, bringeth forth
evil things,’"
2415
—by which words Petilianus showed with sufficient clearness, that the man who baptizes is to be looked on as the
tree, and he who is
baptized as the fruit: to this I had answered, If the good
tree is the good baptizer, and his good fruit he whom he has
baptized, then any one who has been
baptized by a bad man, even if his
wickedness be not manifest, cannot by any possibility be good, for he is sprung from an
evil tree. For a good
tree is one thing; a
tree whose quality is
concealed, but yet bad, is another. What else did I wish to be understood by those words, except what I had stated a little above, that the
tree and its fruit do not represent him that baptizes and him that is
baptized; but that the man ought to be received as signified by the
tree, his works and his
life by the fruit, which are always good in the good man, and
evil in the evil man, lest this absurdity should follow, that a man should be bad when baptized by a bad man, even though his
wickedness were concealed, being, as it were, the fruit of a tree whose quality was unknown, but yet bad? To which he has answered nothing whatsoever.
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