against reason (71, iii. 73); (b) is not universal on side of Stephen (Ep. 71); (c) cannot be inferred from the non-baptism of restored perverts: their case differs from that of heathens, who had (to begin with) been made heretics, not Christians. (d) The practice of heretical bodies, which had always recognized any previous baptism, was no example to the church (74, iv.); nor could the Novatianist practice of rebaptism be a warning against it (73, ii.); it was either accidental coincidence or imitation (simiarum more), and, if the latter, it was evidence. (e) Casuistic difficulties upon the necessity of "regeneration within the church" as to the position of unbaptized martyrs (73, xxii.), heretics hitherto readmitted and deceased (xxiv.), cases of rebaptism where baptism had been valid, baptism by a demoniac, are met by Cyprian with a breadth of which St. Augustine (contra Crescon. ii. 41) says, in the midst of his refutation, "such simplicity is enough for me."
(D) Biblical Arguments.—The familiar ones need no more than enumeration: the one loaf; one cup; the ark; the schismatic (not heretical) gainsaying of Korah; the apostles' baptism of men who had already received the Spirit, a fortiori needed for those who confessedly had not. We may admire the ingenuity with which he treats such passages as Acts ii. 38, in Ep. 73, xvii., or Phil. i. 18, in Ep. 74, 75, 73, xiv.; but about many Cyprian might fairly be addressed in the words which Optatus (b. iv. p. 96) uses to Parmenian: "You batter the law to such purpose that wherever you find the word Water there you conjure out of it some sense to our disadvantage." He probably originated the application of Ecclus. xxxiv. 25, "Qui baptizatur a mortuo quid proficit lavatio ejus," which the Donatists constantly quote against Augustine, and which Augustine answers only by referring mortuus to a heathen priest or vicious Christian instead of a heretic. He quotes several times the LXX addition to Prov. ix. 19, "Drink not of the strange font," and Jer. xv. 18, ii. 13, "deceiving waters," "broken cisterns." In some of these applications there is poetical force, as of his favourite "garden enclosed and fountain sealed," and of the doctrines of New Birth and Sonship (Ep. 74, v. vi.); in Heresy who was never the Spotless Spouse we can never find a mother (Ep. 75). To this Stephen finely answers that she was an unnatural mother indeed (75, xiv.) who exposed her children so soon as they were born, but that the church's part was to seek them and bring them home and rear them for Christ. Dispersed as this system of Cyprian's lies, through his correspondence and tracts, it will be seen that in his mind it was not fragmentary, but logical and coherent. Over the theory promulgated by one of his powers and character, backed by an army of bishops,[1] moving as one man under him, yet independent enough each to find their own telling arguments (Conc. III.), Stephen's triumph without a council, against remonstrances from the East, and hindered by his own pretentiousness and uncharitableness,[2] was great. It was deserved also, for Rome represented freedom, comprehensiveness, and safe latitude. She decided upon one grand principle, the same on which Jerome afterwards decided the analogous question of reordination (adv. Lucif.). Cyprian's principle was the same which blinded Tertullian (de Bapt. xv.); which was extended by the Donatists to make moral defects in the minister debar grace;[3] which led Knox and Calvin to deny baptism to the infant children of "papists," and the Genevan divines to allow it, on the hope that "the grace which had adopted" the great-grandfathers might not yet be so "wholly extinct that the infants should have lost their right to the common seal" (Hooker, iii. 1, 12). Augustine (Resp. ad Episcopos) developed the categorical answer to each separate argument of Cyprian and his bishops, but the true solution was applied at once by Stephen. The grace of baptism is of Christ, not of the human baptizer.[4] He who baptizes does not "give being or add force" to the sacrament. Cyprian's language about "justifying and sanctifying" may well have shocked the church of Rome, and makes Stephen's anger partly intelligible. The child or heathen who learns Christ through the teaching of the heretic cannot be charged with "defect or disorder," in the reception of a sacrament, to which he comes with purest faith, and which it is the will of God to impart to all. Though excluded "from fellowship in holy duties with the visible church," he is still a member of such visible church. (Ep. 73, xvi. We must take the fragmentary quotation, 75, i., "Si quis ergo a quacunque haeresi venerit" with the other, "In nomine Christi baptizatus," and cf. Routh,R. S. vol. iii. p. 183.) The only real blot which Cyprian struck was the vulgar explanation of the laying on of hands at readmission. Upon that hypothesis his own view was justifiable. But the act was not really understood by the intelligent to be the imparting of the Spirit for the first time to those who had it not; it was the renewing by the Spirit, and introducing to communion of a repentant and now enlightened child of God.[5] "A son of God" in spite of any theological error, Stephen declares him in the fullest sense to be (Ep. 74, vi.; 75, xvii.). The expression seems to have been much cavilled at in Carthage, and is mentioned even in Ep. 72, after the second council. And now it ought to
- ↑ Some required exorcism (Sentt. 7, 8, 31); some declared heretics worse than heathens—a painfully early development.
- ↑ Animosus, iracundus: again, audacia, insolentia, inhumanitas are some of the sins charged to him.
- ↑ Of the use they made of Cyprian himself see Aug. contra Crescon. II. xxiii. 40: "Scripta Cypriani nobis tanquam firmamenta canonicae auctoritatis opponitis." Cf. Ep. 93, ad Vincent.; Epp. 108, 9, ad Macrob.
- ↑ Optatus, b. v. p. 99, well expresses it: "Has res unicuique non ejusdem rei operarius sed credentis fides et Trinitas praestat." By implication he answers many of the detailed difficulties, but the great name of Cyprian visibly restrains him. Again, p. 103: "Omnes qui baptizant operarios esse non dominos et sacramenta per se sancta esse non per omines."
- ↑ Besides its use in ordination the imposition of hands had three intentions: (1) Confirmation. (2) Reception of penitents. (3) Exorcism. The 2nd is what Stephen applies here. The 3rd was desired by some extreme partisans.
