Chapter 33.—38. See now how Petilianus, to avoid answering this question, or to avoid being proved to be incapable of answering it, wanders off vainly into irrelevant matter in abuse of us, accusing us and proving nothing; and when he chances to make an endeavor to resist, with something like a show of fighting for his cause, he is everywhere overcome with the greatest ease. But yet he nowhere gives an answer of any kind to this one
question which we ask: If the conscience of one that gives in holiness is what we look for to cleanse the conscience of the recipient, by what means is he to be cleansed who received baptism while the conscience of the giver was polluted, without the knowledge of him who was to receive it? for in these words, which he quoted from my epistle, he set me forth as asking a question, while he showed himself as giving no answer. For after saying what I have just now recited, and when, on being
brought into a great strait on every side, he had been compelled to say that the baptizer ought to be examined by the candidate for baptism, and the candidate in turn by the baptizer; and when he had tried to fortify this statement by the example of John, in hopes that he might find auditors either of the greatest negligence or of the greatest ignorance, he then went on to advance other testimonies of Scripture wholly irrelevant to the matter in hand, as the saying of the eunuch to Philip,
"See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized?"2392
"inasmuch as he knew," says he, "that those of abandoned character were prevented;" arguing that the reason why
Philip did not forbid him to be
baptized was because he had
proved, in his reading of the Scriptures, how
far he believed in
Christ,—as though he had prohibited
Simon Magus. And again, he urges that the
prophets were afraid of being
deceived by false
baptism, and that therefore Isaiah said, "
Lying water that has not
faith,"
2393
as though showing that
water among faithless men is
lying; whereas it is not Isaiah but Jeremiah that says this of
lying men, calling the people in a figure
water, as is most clearly shown in the
Apocalypse.
2394
And again, he quotes as words of
David, "Let not the
oil of the
sinner anoint my head," when
David has been speaking of the
flattery of the smooth speaker deceiving with false
praise, so as to lead the head of the man
praised to
wax great with
pride. And this meaning is made manifest by the words immediately preceding in the same psalm. For he says, "Let the
righteous smite me, it shall be a
kindness; and let him reprove me: but the
oil of the
sinner shall not
break my
head."
2395
What can be clearer than this sentence? what more manifest? For he declares that he had rather be reproved in
kindness with the sharp correction of the righteous, so that he may be healed, than anointed with the soft speaking of the flatterer, so as to be puffed up with pride.
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