Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Series 2 - The Still Small ...

if we are found now further off from our salvation “than when we first believed,” 934 and
deny now what we then received? Whether a man have departed this life without baptism,
or have received a baptism lacking in some of the requirements of the tradition, his loss is
equal. 935 And whoever does not always and everywhere keep to and hold fast as a sure
protection the confession which we recorded at our first admission, when, being delivered
“from the idols,” we came “to the living God,” 936 constitutes himself a “stranger” from the
“promises” 937 of God, fighting against his own handwriting, 938 which he put on record
when he professed the faith. For if to me my baptism was the beginning of life, and that
day of regeneration the first of days, it is plain that the utterance uttered in the grace of adoption
was the most honourable of all. Can I then, perverted by these men’s seductive
words, abandon the tradition which guided me to the light, which bestowed on me the boon
of the knowledge of God, whereby I, so long a foe by reason of sin, was made a child of
God? But, for myself, I pray that with this confession I may depart hence to the Lord, and
them I charge to preserve the faith secure until the day of Christ, and to keep the Spirit undivided
from the Father and the Son, preserving, both in the confession of faith and in the
doxology, the doctrine taught them at their baptism.
934 Rom. xiii. 11, R.V.
935 The question is whether the baptism has been solemnized, according to the divine command, in the name
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. St. Cyprian in his controversy with Stephen, Bp. of Rome,
represented the sterner view that heretical baptism was invalid. But, with some exceptions in the East, the pos-
ition ultimately prevailed that baptism with water, and in the prescribed words, by whomsoever administered,
was valid. So St. Augustine, “Si evangelicus verbis in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti Marcion baptismum
consecrabat, integrum erat Sacramentum, quamvis ejus fides sub eisdem verbis aliud opinantis quam catholica
veritas docet non esset integra.” (Cont. Petil. de unico bapt. § 3.) So the VIII. Canon of Arles (314), “De Afris,
quod propria lege sua utuntur ut rebaptizent, placuit, ut, si ad ecclesiam aliquis de hæresi venerit, interrogent eum
symbolum; et si perviderint eum in Patre, et Filio et Spiritu Sancto, esse baptizatum, manus ei tantum imponantur,
ut accipiat spiritum sanctum. Quod si interrogatus non responderit hanc Trinitatem, baptizetur.” So the VII.
Canon of Constantinople (381) by which the Eunomians who only baptized with one immersion, and the
Montanists, here called Phrygians, and the Sabellians, who taught the doctrine of the Fatherhood of the Son,
were counted as heathen. Vide Bright’s notes on the Canons of the Councils, p. 106. Socrates, v. 24, describes
how the Eunomi-Eutychians baptized not in the name of the Trinity, but into the death of Christ.
936 1 Thess. i. 9.
937 Eph. ii. 12.
Against those who say that it is not right to rank the Holy Spirit with…
938 The word χειρόγραφον, more common in Latin than in Greek, is used generally for a bond. cf. Juv. Sat.
xvi. 41, “Debitor aut sumptos pergit non reddere nummos, vana supervacui dicens chirographa ligni.” On the use
of the word, vide Bp. Lightfoot on Col. ii. 14. The names of the catechumens were registered, and the Renunciation
and Profession of Faith (Interrogationes et Responsa; ἐπερωτήσεις καἰ ἀποκρίσεις) may have been signed.
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