Chapter 48.—58. When we ask, therefore, by what means the man is to be cleansed whom you do not baptize again in your communion, even when it has been made clear that he has been baptized by some one who, on account of some concealed iniquity, did not at the time possess the conscience of one that gives in holiness, what answer do you intend to make, except that he is cleansed by Christ or by God, although, indeed, Christ is Himself
God over all, blessed for ever,2420
or by the
Holy Spirit since He too is Himself
God, because this
Trinity of Persons is one
God? Whence Peter, after saying to a man, "Thou hast
dared to
lie to the Holy
Ghost," immediately went on to add what was the
nature of the Holy
Ghost, saying, "Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto
God."
2421
Lastly, even if you were to say that he was cleansed and
purified by an
angel when he is unacquainted with the
pollution in the conscience of him that gives but not in
holiness, take notice that it is said of the
saints, when they shall have risen to
eternal life, that they shall then be equal to the
angels of
God.
2422
Any one, therefore, that is cleansed even by an
angel is cleansed with greater
holiness than if he were cleansed by any
kind of conscience of man. Why then are you
unwilling that it should be said to you, If cleaning is
wrought by the
hands of a man when he is genuinely and manifestly good; but when the man is
evil, but undetected in his
wickedness, then since he has not the conscience of one that gives in
holiness, it is no longer he, but
God, or an
angel, that cleanses; therefore they who are baptized by undetected evil men are justified with greater holiness than those who are baptized by men that are genuinely and manifestly good? And if this opinion is displeasing to you, as in reality it ought to be displeasing to every one, then take away the source from which it springs, correct the premiss to which it is indissolubly bound; for if these do not precede as hypotheses, the other will not follow as a consequence.
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
