Cyprian & Lactantius · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Once he had risen from death, the Lord sent his apostles out among the nations, and their commission was this: baptize the gentiles, calling upon Father, Son, and Holy Spirit together as one. How, then, can certain people claim that a gentile baptized outside the church—indeed against the church—in the name of Jesus Christ alone, no matter who performs it or how, can still obtain the forgiveness of sins, given that Christ himself ordered gentiles baptized within the whole and undivided Trinity? Unless, perhaps, one who repudiates Christ finds himself unrejected by Christ; one who repudiates the Father whom Christ confessed goes unrejected as well; and one who blasphemes against him whom Christ named as his own Lord and God nonetheless earns from Christ pardon for sin and baptismal consecration. Yet by what authority might a man secure forgiveness through baptism while denying that God is the creator of Christ, seeing that Christ drew from that very Father the power by which we ourselves are washed and made holy—the Father he named greater than himself, from whom he sought glorification, whose wishes he carried out all the way to drinking the cup obediently and enduring death? What, then, is this but an attempt to shield and champion blaspheming heretics, maintaining that someone who sins gravely and speaks evil against the Father, Lord, and God of Christ might still gain forgiveness through Christ's name? And how strange this further claim is—that a man who rejects the Son thereby has no Father, while one who rejects the Father is somehow imagined to keep the Son—when the Son himself testifies, saying: no one comes to me unless the Father has granted it to him? This shows clearly that no forgiveness in baptism can come from the Son in a case where it is certain the Father withheld it, especially since the Son elsewhere states: every plant my heavenly Father did not plant will be torn out by the roots.
But suppose Christ's own disciples are unwilling to learn from Christ himself how greatly a father's name deserves reverence and esteem—let them take instruction instead from ordinary, worldly examples, recognizing that Christ laid this down with unmistakable reproach: this age's children show more shrewdness than the children of light. Consider: if in this world someone hurls abuse at another man's father, if a shameless, insolent mouth mars his honor and dignity with slander, that man's son grows angry and indignant, striving with all the strength available to him to avenge the wrong done to his father. Do you really think Christ hands out impunity to the impious, the sacrilegious, and those who blaspheme his own Father, forgiving in baptism the sins of people who, once baptized, keep piling the same insults on the Father's person, offending through the relentless malice of a slandering tongue? Could any Christian, any servant of God, so much as imagine such a thing in his mind, hold it as a matter of faith, or speak it aloud? Where, then, would the divine commandments of the law stand—the ones declaring: honor your father and mother? Unless the title 'father,' which we are ordered to honor in a human being, may be freely profaned when applied to God. Christ lays down a matching command in the gospel—whoever curses father or mother must die—so where, then, would that leave the law? Unless the very one who orders death as punishment for those who curse their earthly parents grants life instead to those who curse their heavenly, spiritual Father and stand as enemies of the church, their mother. Some go so far as to assert a thing utterly execrable and detestable—that the same Christ who warns that anyone blaspheming the Holy Spirit will be guilty of everlasting sin should be said to sanctify through saving baptism those who blaspheme the Father in that same way. And those today who suppose that such people, on coming to the church, deserve admission to communion without baptism fail to realize that they are thereby making themselves partners in sins that are not their own—indeed in everlasting sins—by letting in, without baptism, those who can lay down the guilt of their blasphemies only through baptism.
How senseless and twisted it is, then, that once the heretics themselves have thrown off and forsaken whatever error or crime once held them, and have come to acknowledge the church's truth, we ourselves should go on to hack away at the rights and sacred rites belonging to that very truth—telling those arriving and repenting that they already possess forgiveness of sins, even while they themselves admit having sinned and coming for this very reason to seek the church's mercy? For this reason, dearest brother, our duty is twofold: to hold fast to the catholic church's faith and truth and to instruct others in it, and to make plain, through every precept found in the gospels and the apostles, the logic behind the divine order and its unity.
Could the power of baptism ever outweigh or surpass confession—outweigh suffering itself—so that a man testifies to Christ before witnesses and is washed in his own blood? Yet even this kind of baptism does nothing for a heretic, even one killed outside the church while professing Christ—unless, that is, the defenders and champions of heretics choose to hail as martyrs heretics slain over a false profession of Christ, and, contrary to the apostle's own witness (who insists that being burned or killed gains such people nothing), award them the crown and glory belonging to suffering. But if, for a heretic, neither the baptism of open confession nor that of blood can bring salvation—since outside the church there is no salvation at all—how much less good will it do him if, hidden in some den of thieves and marked by the taint of adulterated water, he has not merely failed to wash away his old sins but has instead piled on fresh and worse ones? For this reason baptism among us cannot be shared with heretics, seeing that God the Father, Christ the Son, the Holy Spirit, the faith itself, and the church are none of them shared with them. That is why those coming over from heresy to the church must be baptized, so that people being readied through divine rebirth for God's kingdom, by means of the church's lawful, genuine, and sole baptism, may be brought to life through both sacraments together—since scripture says: unless one is born from water and spirit, he cannot go into God's kingdom.
At this point certain people, imagining they can dismantle the truth of the gospel's proclamation through mere human argument, bring up against us the case of catechumens: suppose one of them, before being baptized within the church, is arrested and put to death while professing the Name—does he thereby forfeit the hope of salvation and the reward owed to his confession, simply because he had not yet been reborn of water? Such people, then—supporters and champions of heretics—should recognize that catechumens of this kind already hold the whole of the faith and the church's truth, and march out to battle the devil from God's own camp bearing full and genuine knowledge of the Father, of Christ, and of the Holy Spirit; and further, that they are not left without the sacrament of baptism at all, since they are washed in that most glorious and greatest baptism—the baptism of blood—the very baptism the Lord spoke of when he said he had another baptism still to undergo. That those baptized in their own blood and made holy through their suffering reach completion and secure the grace promised by God, the same Lord shows in the gospel, when, in the very moment of his own passion, he addresses the thief who believes and confesses beside him, promising that the man will be with him in paradise. Because of this, those of us set over the faith and its truth must not deceive or lead astray the people who come to that faith and truth and, in doing penance, beg forgiveness for their sins—rather, once we have corrected and reshaped them, we owe them instruction fit for heaven's kingdom, according to heaven's own discipline.
Someone may object: 'What, then, becomes of those who in earlier times came from heresy into the church and were received without baptism?' The Lord, in his mercy, has the power to grant forgiveness, and need not cut off from his church's blessings those who, having been received in all simplicity, died within her fold. Still, an error made on one occasion does not license repeating it forever, since it suits those who are wiser and who fear God far better to submit gladly and without delay to a truth once revealed and clearly recognized, rather than to fight on stubbornly and obstinately against brothers and bishops for the sake of heretics.
Let no one suppose that heretics are kept from approaching the church because baptism stands in their way, as though the label 'second baptism' offended them into staying back. Quite the opposite: this very fact pushes them still harder toward the need to come, once a truth has been demonstrated and proven to them. For if they observe that our own judgment and decree treat the baptism they underwent there as legitimate and valid, they will conclude that they likewise hold the church and its other benefits rightly and lawfully—leaving them no reason to join us, since, believing they already have baptism, they will suppose they already have everything else too. Yet once they learn instead that no baptism exists outside, and that forgiveness of sins cannot be granted beyond the church, they rush toward us all the more eagerly and quickly, pleading for the gifts and favors of the church, their mother—certain that they can never reach the genuine promise of divine grace except by first arriving at the church's truth. Nor will heretics balk at being baptized among us with the church's lawful and genuine baptism, once they discover from us that even people already baptized with John's baptism were baptized once more by Paul, exactly as we find recorded in the Acts of the Apostles.
Even now, some among our own maintain that heretical baptism should count as valid, treating it—out of a certain resentment—as monstrous to baptize afterward, as if one were rebaptizing enemies of God, though we find that even those John baptized were baptized a second time: that same John ranked highest among the prophets, filled already with divine grace while still inside his mother's womb, sustained by Elijah's spirit and strength, a man who was no foe of the Lord but rather his forerunner and herald, who announced the Lord not merely in speech but pointed him out with his own eyes, and who baptized Christ himself, through whom everyone else receives baptism. But if a heretic could gain a claim to baptism simply because he baptized first, then baptism would belong not to whoever rightfully holds it but to whoever grabbed it first; and since baptism and church can never be pulled apart or divided from each other, whoever managed to seize baptism first seized the church right along with it—so you, arriving later and thus overtaken, you who by conceding and shaking hands surrendered the right you had once received, now start to look like the heretic in his eyes. Scripture makes plain how perilous it is in matters of God for anyone to give up his own right and standing, since in Genesis Esau forfeited his birthright this way and afterward could never reclaim what he had once relinquished.
I have set these things down for you briefly, dearest brother, in keeping with our modest capacity, prescribing nothing to anyone and passing judgment on no one, so that each bishop remains at liberty to act as he sees fit, exercising his own free judgment. As far as it rests with us, we do not dispute with our colleagues and fellow bishops over heretics; with them we preserve godly harmony and the Lord's peace, all the more since the apostle himself says: should anyone suppose there is room for quarreling, that is not a custom we hold, nor one the church of God holds. We maintain, patiently and gently, love among ourselves, respect for our fellowship, the bond of faith, and harmony in the priesthood; and it is for this reason too that I have now composed, so far as our modest capacity allowed, with the Lord's permission and inspiration, a short work on the value of patience, which out of mutual affection I have sent along to you. I wish you, dearest brother, lasting good health.