God, and the powers of the world to come, and yet have fallen away, to renew them again unto repentance." Some of this language is now become strange to us, and we might be perplexed to affix the precise meaning to the words "having been enlightened," and "to renew again;" and we should therefore attach the more value to the expositions of those who lived near the Apostle's time and spoke his language. These, however, all, without hesitation, explain "the being enlightened," of the light imparted to men's minds by the Holy Ghost through Baptism; the "renewal" (as in Tit. iii. 5) of the renovation of our nature then bestowed.[1] Nor can any other ground be assigned, for the title "illumination" (φωτισμός) applied even in the second century[2] to Christian Baptism, than that they even then understood St. Paul (here and x. 32) to speak of "baptized persons" as "illuminated" (φωτισθέντας): the Syriac rendering "baptized," attests the interpretation of the Eastern Church at the same period. In both passages indeed there is a manifest reference to the commencement of the Christian course; here to the "elements of the doctrine of Christ," in c. x., to the resoluteness with which, in "the former days" they, "having been enlightened," (i.e. as soon as they were enlightened,) "sustained a great struggle of afflictions." The Fathers then, i.e. the whole which we know of the early Church, uno ore, explain this whole passage of the privileges of Christian Baptism, and of the impossibility of man's again conferring those privileges upon those who had once enjoyed them and had forfeited them: nay, they urge it as at once conclusive against the
- ↑ See Suicer vv. ἀνακαινίζω, ἀνακαίνισις, ἀνακαινισμός, ἀναβάπτισις, ἀνασταυρόω, φωτισμος.
- ↑ By Justin Martyr Apolog. 2. Clemens Alex, ap Euseb. see below note E, and again Pædag. L. i. c. 6. "Baptized we are enlightened, enlightened we are adopted as sons, adopted we are perfected, perfected we are immortalized." "And Baptism," he says, "is called enlightening, because thereby we are admitted to gaze upon that holy and saving light." So the very ancient "Acta Theclæ," (see Grabe Spicileg. t. i. p. 91, 2.) St. Chrysostom, when enumerating the Scriptural names of Baptism (ad llluminand. Catech. i. § 2. t. ii. p. 228. ed. Bened.) quotes these two passages in proof that it is called "enlightening" (φωτισμα).
