On Baptism.
On Baptism.
[Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall.]
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Chapter I.-Introduction. Origin of the Treatise.
Happy is our(1) sacrament Of water, in that, by washing away the sins of our early blindness, we are set free and admitted into eternal life! A treatise on this matter will not be superfluous; instructing not only such as are just becoming formed (in the faith), but them who, content with having simply believed, without full examination of the grounds(2) of the traditions, carry (in mind), through ignorance, an untried though probable faith. The consequence is, that a viper of the Cainite heresy, lately conversant in this quarter, has carried away a great number with her most venomous doctrine, making it her first aim to destroy baptism. Which is quite in accordance with nature; for vipers and asps and basilisks themselves generally do affect arid and waterless places. But we, little fishes, after the example of our Icqus(3) Jesus Christ, are born in water, nor have we safety in any other way than by permanently abiding in water; so that most monstrous creature, who had no right to teach even sound doctrine,(4) knew full well how to kill the little fishes, by taking them away from the water!
Chapter II.-The Very Simplicity of God's Means of Working, a Stumbling-Block to the Carnal Mind.
Well, but how great is the force of perversity for so shaking the faith or entirely preventing its reception, that it impugns it on the very principles of which the faith consists! There is absolutely nothing which makes men's minds more obdurate than the simplicity of the divine works which are visible in the act, when compared with the grandeur which is promised thereto in the effect; so that from the very fact, that with so great simplicity, without pomp, without any considerable novelty of preparation, finally, without expense, a man is dipped in water, and amid the utterance of some few words, is sprinkled, and then rises again, not much (or not at all) the cleaner, the consequent attainment of eternity(5) is esteemed the more incredible. I am a deceiver if, on the contrary, it is not from their circumstance, and preparation, and expense, that idols' solemnities or mysteries get their credit and authority built up. Oh, miserable incredulity, which quite deniest to God His own properties, simplicity and power! What then? Is it not wonderful, too, that death should be washed away by bathing? But it is the more to be believed if the wonderfulness be the reason why it is not believed. For what does it behove divine works to be in their quality, except that they be above all wonder?(6) We also ourselves wonder, but it is because we believe. Incredulity, on the other hand, wonders, but does not believe: for the simple acts it wonders at, as if they were vain; the grand results, as if they were impossible. And grant that it be just as you think(7) sufficient to meet each point is the divine declaration which has fore-run: "The foolish things of the world hath God elected to confound its wisdom; "(8) and, "The things very difficult with men are easy with God."(9) For if God is wise and powerful (which even they who pass Him by do not deny), it is with good reason that He lays the material causes of His own operation in the contraries of wisdom and of power, that is, in foolishness and impossibility; since every virtue receives its cause from those things by which it is called forth.
Chapter III.-Water Chosen as a Vehicle of Divine Operation and Wherefore. Its Prominence First of All in Creation.
Mindful of this declaration as of a conclusive prescript, we nevertheless proceed to treat the question, "How foolish and impossible it is to be formed anew by water. In what respect, pray, has this material substance merited an office of so high dignity? "The authority, I suppose, of the liquid element has to be examined.(10) This(11) however, is found in abundance, and that from the very beginning. For water is one of those things which, before all the furnishing of the world, were quiescent with God in a yet unshapen(12) state. "In the first beginning," saith Scripture, "God made the heaven and the earth. But the earth was invisible, and unorganized,(13) and darkness was over the abyss; and the Spirit of the Lord was hovering(14) over the waters."(15) The first thing, O man, which you have to venerate, is the age of the, waters in that their substance is ancient; the second, their dignity, in that they were the seat of the Divine Spirit, more pleasing to Him, no doubt, than all the other then existing elements. For the darkness was total thus far, shapeless, without the ornament of stars; and the abyss gloomy; and the earth unfurnished; and the heaven unwrought: water(16) alone-always a perfect, gladsome, simple material substance, pure in itself-supplied a worthy vehicle to God. What of the fact that waters were in some way the regulating powers by which the disposition of the world thenceforward was constituted by God? For the suspension of the celestial firmament in the midst He caused by "dividing the waters; "(17) the suspension of "the dry land" He accomplished by "separating the waters." After the world had been hereupon set in order through its elements, when inhabitants were given it, "the waters" were the first to receive the precept "to bring forth living creatures."(18) Water was the first to produce that which had life, that it might be no wonder in baptism if waters know how to give life.(19) For was not the work of fashioning man himself also achieved with the aid of waters? Suitable material is found in the earth, yet not apt for the purpose unless it be moist and juicy; which (earth) "the waters," separated the fourth day before into their own place, temper with their remaining moisture to a clayey consistency. If, from that time onward, I go forward in recounting universally, or at more length, the evidences of the "authority" of this element which I can adduce to show how great is its power or its grace; how many ingenious devices, how many functions, how useful an instrumentality, it affords the world, I fear I may seem to have collected rather the praises of water than the reasons of baptism; although I should thereby teach all the more fully, that it is not to be doubted that God has made the material substance which He has disposed throughout all His products(20) and works, obey Him also in His own peculiar sacraments; that the material substance which governs terrestrial life acts as agent likewise in the celestial.
Chapter IV.-The Primeval Hovering of the Spirit of God Over the Waters Typical of Baptism. The Universal Element of Water Thus Made a Channel of Sanctification. Resemblance Between the Outward Sign and the Inward Grace.
But it will suffice to have thus called at the outset those points in which withal is recognised that primary principle of baptism,-which was even then fore-noted by the very attitude assumed for a type of baptism,-that the Spirit of God, who hovered over (the waters) from the beginning, would continue to linger over the waters of the baptized.(21) But a holy thing, of course, hovered over a holy; or else, from that which hovered over that which was hovered over borrowed a holiness, since it is necessary that in every case an underlying material substance should catch the quality of that which overhangs it, most of all a corporeal of a spiritual, adapted (as the spiritual is) through the subtleness of its substance, both for penetrating and insinuating. Thus the nature of the waters, sanctified by the Holy One, itself conceived withal the power of sanctifying. Let no one say, "Why then, are we, pray, baptized with the very waters which then existed in the first beginning? "Not with those waters, of course, except in so far as the genus indeed is one, but the species very many. But what is an attribute to the genus reappears(22) likewise in the species. And accordingly it makes no difference whether a man be washed in a sea or a pool, a stream or a fount, a lake or a trough;(23) nor is there any distinction between those whom John baptized in the Jordan and those whom Peter baptized in the Tiber, unless withal the eunuch whom Philip baptized in the midst of his journeys with chance water, derived (therefrom) more or less of salvation than others.(24) All waters, therefore, in virtue of the pristine privilege of their origin, do, after invocation of God, attain the sacramental power of sanctification; for the Spirit immediately supervenes from the heavens, and rests over the waters, sanctifying them from Himself; and being thus sanctified, they imbibe at the same time the power of sanctifying. Albeit the similitude may be admitted to be suitable to the simple act; that, since we are defiled by sins, as it were by dirt, we should be washed from those stains in waters. But as sins do not show themselves in our flesh (inasmuch as no one carries on his skin the spot of idolatry, or fornication, or fraud), so persons of that kind are foul in the spirit, which is the author of the sin; for the spirit is lord, the flesh servant. Yet they each mutually share the guilt: the spirit, on the ground of command; the flesh, of subservience. Therefore, after the waters have been in a manner endued with medicinal virtue(25) through the intervention of the angel,(26) the spirit is corporeally washed in the waters, and the flesh is in the same spiritually cleansed.
Chapter V.-Use Made of Water by the Heathen. Type of the Angel at the Pool of Bethsaida.(27)
"Well, but the nations, who are strangers to all understanding of spiritual powers, ascribe to their idols the imbuing of waters with the self-same efficacy." (So they do) but they cheat themselves with waters which are widowed.(28) For washing is the channel through which they are initiated into some sacred rites-of some notorious Isis or Mithras. The gods themselves likewise they honour by washings. Moreover, by carrying water around, and sprinkling it, they everywhere expiate(29) country-seats, houses, temples, and whole cities: at all events, at the Apollinarian and Eleusinian games they are baptized; and they presume that the effect of their doing that is their regeneration and the remission of the penalties due to their perjuries. Among the ancients, again, whoever had defiled himself with murder, was wont to go in quest of purifying waters. Therefore, if the mere nature of water, in that it is the appropriate material for washing away, leads men to flatter themselves with a belief in omens of purification, how much more truly will waters render that service through the authority of God, by whom all their nature has been constituted! If men think that water is endued with a medicinal virtue by religion, what religion is more effectual than that of the living God? Which fact being acknowledged, we recognise here also the zeal of the devil rivalling the things of God,(30) while we find him, too, practising baptism in his subjects. What similarity is there? The unclean cleanses! the ruiner sets free! the damned absolves! He will, forsooth, destroy his own work, by washing away the sins which himself inspires! These (remarks) have been set down by way of testimony against such as reject the faith; if they put no trust in the things of God, the spurious imitations of which, in the case of God's rival, they do trust in. Are there not other cases too, in which, without any sacrament, unclean spirits brood on waters, in spurious imitation of that brooding(31) of the Divine Spirit in the very beginning? Witness all shady founts, and all unfrequented brooks, and the ponds in the baths, and the conduits(32) in private houses, or the cisterns and wells which are said to have the property of "spiriting away,"(33) through the power, that is, of a hurtful spirit. Men whom waters have drowned(34) or affected with madness or with fear, they call nymph-caught,(35) or "lymphatic," or" hydro-phobic." Why have we adduced these instances? Lest any think it too hard for belief that a holy angel of God should grant his presence to waters, to temper them to man's salvation; while the evil angel holds frequent profane commerce with the selfsame element to man's ruin. If it seems a novelty for an angel to be present in waters, an example of what was to come to pass has forerun. An angel, by his intervention, was wont to stir the pool at Bethsaida.(36) They who were complaining of ill-health used to watch for him; for whoever had been the first to descend into them, after his washing, ceased to complain. This figure of corporeal healing sang of a spiritual healing, according to the rule by which things carnal are always antecedent(37) as figurative of things spiritual. And thus, when the grace of God advanced to higher degrees among men,(38) an accession of efficacy was granted to the waters and to the angel. They who(39) were wont to remedy bodily defects,(40) now heal the spirit; they who used to work temporal salvation(41) now renew eternal; they who did set free but once in the year, now save peoples in a body(42) daily, death being done away through ablution of sins. The guilt being removed, of course the penalty is removed too. Thus man will be restored for God to His "likeness," who in days bygone had been conformed to "the image" of God; (the "image" is counted (to be) in his form: the "likeness" in his eternity: ) for he receives again that Spirit of God which he had then first received from His afflatus, but had afterward lost through sin.
Chapter VI.-The Angel the Forerunner of the Holy Spirit. Meaning Contained in the Baptismal Formula.
Not that in(43) the waters we obtain the Holy Spirit; but in the water, under (the witness of) the angel, we are cleansed, and prepared for the Holy Spirit. In this case also a type has preceded; for thus was John beforehand the Lord's forerunner, "preparing His ways."(44) Thus, too, does the angel, the witness(45) of baptism, "make the paths straight"(46) for the Holy Spirit, who is about to come upon us, by the washing away of sins, which faith, sealed in (the name of) the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, obtains. For if "in the mouth of three witnesses every word shall stand: "(47) -while, through the benediction, we have the same (three) as witnesses of our faith whom we have as sureties(48) of our salvation too-how much more does the number of the divine names suffice for the assurance of our hope likewise! Moreover, after the pledging both of the attestation of faith and the promise(49) of salvation under "three witnesses," there is added, of necessity, mention of the Church;(50) inasmuch as, wherever there are three, (that is, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, ) there is the Church, which is a body of three.(51)
Chapter VII.-Of the Unction.
After this, when we have issued from the font,(52) we are thoroughly anointed with a blessed unction,-(a practice derived) from the old discipline, wherein on entering the priesthood, men were wont to be anointed with oil from a horn, ever since Aaron was anointed by Moses.(53) Whence Aaron is called "Christ,"(54) from the "chrism," which is "the unction; "which, when made spiritual, furnished an appropriate name to the Lord, because He was "anointed" with the Spirit by God the Father; as written in the Acts: "For truly they were gathered together in this city(55) against Thy Holy Son whom Thou hast anointed."(56) Thus, too, in our case, the unction runs carnally, (i.e. on the body, ) but profits spiritually; in the same way as the act of baptism itself too is carnal, in that we are plunged in water, but the effect spiritual, in that we are freed from sins.
Chapter VIII.-Of the Imposition of Hands. Types of the Deluge and the Dove.
In the next place the hand is laid on us, invoking and inviting the Holy Spirit through benediction.(57) Shall it be granted possible for human ingenuity to summon a spirit into water, and, by the application of hands from above, to animate their union into one body(58) with another spirit of so clear sound;(59) and shall it not be possible for God, in the case of His own organ,(60) to produce, by means of "holy hands,"(61) a sublime spiritual modulation? But this, as well as the former, is derived from the old sacramental rite in which Jacob blessed his grandsons, born of Joseph, Ephrem(62) and Manasses; with his hands laid on them and interchanged, and indeed so transversely slanted one over the other, that, by delineating Christ, they even portended the future benediction into Christ.(63) Then, over our cleansed and blessed bodies willingly descends from the Father that Holiest Spirit. Over the waters of baptism, recognising as it were His primeval seat,(64) He reposes: (He who) glided down on the Lord "in the shape of a dove,"(65) in order that the nature of the Holy Spirit might be declared by means of the creature (the emblem) of simplicity and innocence, because even in her bodily structure the dove is without literal(66) gall. And accordingly He says, "Be ye simple as doves."(67) Even this is not without the supporting evidence(68) of a preceding figure. For just as, after the waters of the deluge, by which the old iniquity was purged-after the baptism, so to say, of the world-a dove was the herald which announced to the earth the assuagement(69) of celestial wrath, when she had been sent her way out of the ark, and had returned with the olive-branch, a sign which even among the nations is the fore-token of peace;(70) so by the self-same law(71) of heavenly effect, to earth-that is, to our flesh(72) -as it emerges from the font,(73) after its old sins flies the dove of the Holy Spirit, bringing us the peace of God, sent out from the heavens where is the Church, the typified ark.(74) But the world returned unto sin; in which point baptism would ill be compared to the deluge. And so it is destined to fire; just as the man too is, who after baptism renews his sins:(75) so that this also ought to be accepted as a sign for our admonition.
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