NPNF2-08. Basil: Letters and Select Works - Holy Bible Institute

Reply to the suggested objection that we are baptized “into water.” Also concerningbaptism.baptism is performed, to the end that the type of death may be fully figured, and that by thetradition of the divine knowledge the baptized may have their souls enlightened. It followsthat if there is any grace in the water, it is not of the nature of the water, but of the presenceof the Spirit. For baptism is “not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answerof a good conscience towards God.” 1023 So in training us for the life that follows on theresurrection the Lord sets out all the manner of life required by the Gospel, laying down forus the law of gentleness, of endurance of wrong, of freedom from the defilement that comesof the love of pleasure, and from covetousness, to the end that we may of set purpose winbeforehand and achieve all that the life to come of its inherent nature possesses. If thereforeany one in attempting a definition were to describe the gospel as a forecast of the life thatfollows on the resurrection, he would not seem to me to go beyond what is meet and right.Let us now return to our main topic.36. Through the Holy Spirit comes our restoration to paradise, our ascension into thekingdom of heaven, our return to the adoption of sons, our liberty to call God our Father,our being made partakers of the grace of Christ, our being called children of light, oursharing in eternal glory, and, in a word, our being brought into a state of all “fulness ofblessing,” 1024 both in this world and in the world to come, of all the good gifts that are instore for us, by promise hereof, through faith, beholding the reflection of their grace asthough they were already present, we await the full enjoyment. If such is the earnest, whatthe perfection? If such the first fruits, what the complete fulfilment? Furthermore, fromthis too may be apprehended the difference between the grace that comes from the Spiritand the baptism by water: in that John indeed baptized with water, but our Lord Jesus Christby the Holy Ghost. “I indeed,” he says, “baptize you with water unto repentance; but hethat cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shallbaptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” 1025 Here He calls the trial at the judgmentthe baptism of fire, as the apostle says, “The fire shall try every man’s work, of what sort itis.” 1026 And again, “The day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire.” 1027 AndEunomius as abandoning the trine immersion, and also the invocation of the Trinity as baptizing into the deathof Christ. Jeremy Taylor (Ductor dubitantium, iii. 4, Sect. 13) says, “In England we have a custom of sprinkling,and that but once.…As to the number, though the Church of England hath made no law, and therefore thecustom of doing it once is the more indifferent and at liberty, yet if the trine immersion be agreeable to theanalogy of the mystery, and the other be not, the custom ought not to prevail, and is not to be complied with,if the case be evident or declared.”1023 1 Pet. iii. 21.1024 Rom. xv. 29.1025 Matt. iii. 11.1026 1 Cor. iii. 13.1027 id.188