Scotus Academicus, Tomus nonus: De Sacramentis in genere

It is certain that the Sacraments of the New Law pertain to three things, namely, to things as matter, to words as form, and to the person of the Minister containing the Sacraments, as has already been said many times. And not without reason; for since the Sacraments are confected from inanimate sensible things, which cannot be joined to one another by themselves, it is necessary that some ministry intervene for their union and application, which supplies both. But it is disputed who is the suitable Minister of the Sacraments: whether only the faithful and the just, or whether any unbelievers and sinners also can confer them. Concerning this controversy, there has been error in various ways, not only among heretics, but also among men who were otherwise Catholic, before the Church determined what was to be held from the faith.

For first Tertullian, while not yet a heretic, judged around the end of the second century that there was no Baptism conferred by heretics; for in book On Baptism, chapter 17, he says: *Heretics have no fellowship with our discipline; the very deprivation of communion plainly testifies that they are outsiders: they ought not to recognize in them what has been commanded to me; for the same God is not ours and theirs, nor one Christ, and likewise not one Baptism, because he is not the same; since they do not rightly possess him, without doubt they do not possess him. &c.

Agrippinus, Bishop of Carthage, perhaps received this error from his faithful Tertullian; under the pretext of piety, he decreed that the Baptism of heretics was invalid, as though the Church ought to reject and abominate whatever belonged to them. Finally, around the year 517, having convened in Africa a Council of all the Bishops of Numidia and Africa, he confirmed the same thing, as Saint Cyprian testifies in his Letter to Jubaianus, where he says: It is not now among us, nor is it a sudden matter, that we judge those who come from the heretics to the Church ought to be baptized, since many years and a long age have passed from the time when, under Agrippinus, a man of blessed memory, many Bishops gathered together and decreed this; and from then until today, so many thousands of heretics converted to the Church in our provinces have not disdained or hesitated, but rather reasonably and willingly embraced it, so that they might obtain the grace of the saving bath of Baptism. Vincent of Lérins likewise testifies to this in the Commonitorium, no. 46, where he writes: Agrippinus, Bishop of Carthage, judged that those coming from heresy must be rebaptized, against the divine Canon, against the rule of the universal Church, against the judgment of all the Priests, and against the custom and institution of the ancestors. Nevertheless, this custom had not taken root in all the provinces of Africa from Agrippinus to the time of Saint Cyprian, as Saint Augustine clearly demonstrates in book 3, On Baptism, chapter 12: But if the custom of baptizing those coming from heretics persisted from Agrippinus to Cyprian, why were Councils afterward held by Cyprian? Why did he say to Jubaianus that he was not doing something new or sudden, but something instituted by Agrippinus? For why would Jubaianus be disturbed by the novelty, so that he had to be restored by the authority of Agrippinus, if the Church held this from Agrippinus to Cyprian? Finally, why did so many of his colleagues in the Council say that reason and truth should be preferred to custom, and not rather say that they wanted to do something else, and were acting both against the truth and against custom?

The Bishop Novatus later revived the same doctrine around the year 251. Coming from Africa to Rome, he rose up against Cornelius, the Supreme Pontiff, and by his intrigues brought it about that Novatian, formerly a Presbyter, was made the Roman Pseudo-Pontiff, from whom they derived their origin and name.

The Novatians, or Novatianists, had among their various errors this one: that they rebaptized Catholics who came over to them, as is clear from Saint Cyprian’s Letter to Jubaianus: We know, dearest brother, what you have included in your letter: that the Novatianists rebaptize those whom they entice away from us. Hence Dionysius of Alexandria, in Eusebius, book 11 of the History, chapter 11, says that Novatus, or Novatian, abolished the holy bath of Baptism, namely by rejecting the Baptism of the Catholic Church; he wanted those who defected from the Catholics to his sect to be baptized again.

Certain Arians followed the same error, as is clear from Saint Ambrose, Sermon On Not Handing over the Basilicas to Heretics, where he says: The Jew did not annul the Baptism of John; the profligate annulled the Baptism of Christ. Why then does he consider the faithful peoples whom he thinks were baptized in the name of the Trinity to be rebaptized? Does the Apostle not say: one faith, one Baptism?

Saint Augustine teaches the same in book On Heresies, heresy 19, where he says of the Arians: We know that Catholics were rebaptized by them; whether non-Catholics were also, we do not know.

The Aetians, from Aetius the Deacon, later Bishop, who were also called Anomoeans because they denied that the Son of God was not only consubstantial with the Father but also like him, even dared to rebaptize, as Saint Epiphanius reports, heresy 76: The disciples of Aetius, he says, together with his successor, who is falsely called Eunomius, survive to our times and commit another wicked and impious act; for Eunomius baptizes again those who have already been baptized—not only those who defect from Catholics or other sects, but also those who defect from the Arians themselves.

A certain Hilary the Deacon, of the Luciferian sect, followed them; in published booklets he defended the claim that those who had received Baptism from heretics ought to be rebaptized. The other Luciferians, however, did not adhere to him, since Saint Augustine asserted in book On the Christian Contest, chapter 20, that the Luciferians held a schism rather than a heresy.

A certain Basil, a physician by profession, who wished to be called Bogomil, revived this pestilential doctrine among other errors. The name comes from Bog, which means God in the language of the Bulgarians, and milus, which means to have mercy, so that Bogomil among them means one who implores the mercy of God. As Euthymius reports in the Panoply, part 2, he rebaptized those who came to him, since he considered their Baptism null.

Peter of Bruys taught the same; Peter of Cluny reports and refutes his various errors in two letters published against the Petrobrusians, and in the fuller one, not far from the beginning, he writes: A new and unheard-of crime among Christians: in our regions to rebaptize the people, to profane the Churches, &c.

In the time of Saint Bernard, certain heretics called Henricians, who wanted to be called Apostolics, as though they were successors and imitators of the Apostles, although they displayed no sign of their Apostolate, said that sinners were not suitable for giving or receiving the Sacraments, as Saint Bernard reports, Sermon 66 on the Canticle, chapter 11: Now indeed, he says, since they did not recognize the Church, it is no wonder if they disparage the orders of the Church, do not accept its institutions, despise the Sacraments, and do not obey its commands. Sinners, they say, are apostles, Archbishops, and Priests; and therefore they are suitable neither for giving nor for receiving the Sacraments. Saint Bernard thus exposes this error: Caiaphas was a Bishop, and yet what a sinner he was, who pronounced the sentence of death against the Lord? If you deny that he was a Bishop, the testimony of John will convict you, for he reports that Caiaphas even prophesied as a testimony to his Pontificate. Judas was an Apostle, and although impious and wicked, he was chosen by the Lord. Do you doubt the Apostolate of the one whom the Lord chose? Does he not say, I chose you twelve, and one of you is a devil? You hear that the same man was a chosen apostle and became a devil, and you deny that one who is a sinner can be a Bishop? The Scribes and Pharisees sat upon the Chair of Moses, and those who refused to obey them as Bishops were guilty of disobedience, even against the Lord himself who commanded and said: do whatever they say, &c.

There are many other more recent heretics who erred concerning the suitable Minister of the Sacrament, as we shall relate in the following question 2, page 160. But since the Donatists went astray above all the others, it pleases us here, under distinct headings, briefly to examine or relate what the origin and progress of their heresy and schism were.

The origin of the Donatists is asked.

When Mensurius, Bishop of Carthage, having been summoned to Rome by the tyrant Maxentius while persecution against Christians was raging, wished to safeguard the Church’s goods entrusted to him, he handed over all the gold and silver vessels to the senior Priests, giving their inventory to a certain faithful old maidservant, so that she might afterward hand it over to his successor after his death. Mensurius having died on the journey, and peace having been granted to the Churches everywhere, the Bishops gathered at Carthage to elect and appoint someone in his place. Caecilian was elected by the votes of the whole people. But a powerful and ambitious Spanish woman, Lucilla, took the election badly. While living at Carthage, she had been reproved by Caecilian, then a Deacon of the Church of Carthage, because before receiving the Eucharist she was accustomed to kiss the relics of someone whom the Church had not yet enrolled among the Saints. Impatient with correction, she sought an opportunity to avenge herself on Caecilian, as did Botrus and Caelestius, who were aspiring to the Carthaginian see.

After Caecilian had been made Bishop, the document which Optatus calls the Memorandum, as Mensurius had ordered, was given to him. Having received it, Caecilian officially found the gold and silver vessels with the elders who had received them from Mensurius. But, so that they would not be compelled to return them, at Lucilla’s instigation and with Botrus and Caelestius conspiring, they withdrew not only themselves but also the people entrusted to them from Caecilian’s communion. Thus, says Optatus, when three causes and persons came together, it happened that malice achieved its effect: at that time the schism was born from the confused anger of a woman, nourished by ambition, and strengthened by avarice.

Moreover, accusations were fabricated against Caecilian by these three persons, so that his ordination might be called defective. They therefore sent to Secundus of Tigisis, Primate of Numidia, who, together with many traitor Bishops, gathered—men who shortly before had confessed their crime in the Council of Numidia, namely, that they had handed the sacred books over to unbelievers to escape death, and had mutually granted one another indulgence and absolution. Drawn to the city of Carthage, they separated themselves from Caecilian’s communion and created Maiorinus, a reader and household servant of Lucilla, as Pseudo-Bishop of Carthage, with her support and generous expenditure of money for that purpose. Saint Augustine relates all this in book 1, Against Parmenian, chapter 3: Let those who wish read what he relates, and by what proofs he persuades us of so many things: Optatus, the Bishop of Milevis, of venerable memory and of Catholic communion; whether concerning Lucilla, then a most wealthy and factious woman, whom he had chosen on her behalf; or concerning her other factious associates, whether thieves of Church silver, or men grieving that they had not attained the Episcopate and pursuing Caecilian, set over them, with whatever plots they could; or concerning the Numidian Bishops whom this faction had consecrated for the ruin of Caecilian: so that once he was deposed, another of them might be ordained; these men, coming with their Primate, then Secundus of Tigisis, and with others whose crimes of handing over the sacred books they had confessed, judged the absent Caecilian to be a traitor without any delay for a more careful inquiry and without allowing him a place for a response, while Secundus himself had granted them peace, as the ecclesiastical proceedings testify, so that the crimes of handing over the books merely objected to the absent man might harm him, whereas they had granted pardon to themselves when present and confessing.

This, then, was the enormous beginning of the Donatist schism: For, says Optatus, addressing Parmenian in book 1, Caecilian did not proceed from Maiorinus, your grandfather, but Maiorinus from Caecilian; nor did Caecilian withdraw from the Chair of Peter or of Cyprian, but Maiorinus, whose chair you occupy, which had no origin before that Maiorinus. Moreover, it was not enough for the schismatic Bishops to have done these things against Caecilian; after gathering a Council of all the Bishops of Numidia at Carthage, they summoned Caecilian in his absence and condemned him for not appearing, because, says Saint Augustine in the Brief Account of the Collation of the Third Day, chapter 1, he was said to have entered among them as one ordained by traitors, and because, when he was a Deacon, he was said to have forbidden food to the Martyrs held in custody.

But how fabricated and false this accusation against Caecilian was, the Catholics clearly demonstrated, as Saint Augustine reports in the same place, chapter 16; and the Donatists themselves testified to it by their silence. When Caecilian challenged them that, if there were anything that could be proved against him, an accuser should come forward and prove it, at that time, says Optatus, nothing could be touched against him by so many enemies; but he deserved to be disgraced concerning his ordainer, namely Felix of Aptunga, who was falsely called a traitor by them.

Although that schism was chiefly formed by Botrus and Caelestius, who aspired to the Carthaginian see, and by the elders who denied having deposited the Church’s ornaments; and although it was increased by Secundus, Bishop of Tigisis and Primate of Numidia, and demonstrated and firmly established in the creation of Maiorinus, they did not borrow their name from these men. Rather, they preferred to be called after another Donatus—not Donatus of Masculi or of Calama, who had gathered with the other traitors against Caecilian, but another Donatus who, after the origin of the schism, had succeeded Maiorinus in the Pseudo-Episcopate of Carthage—because they considered him entirely pure from every stain, and because, with his eloquence, he had confirmed this schism together with the heresy. Hence Saint Augustine writes of the Donatists in book On Heresies, chapter 69: We believe Donatus to have been the founder of this heresy; coming from Numidia and dividing the Christian people against Caecilian, he joined to himself Bishops of the same faction and ordained Maiorinus Bishop at Carthage. Another Bishop Donatus succeeded this Maiorinus in the same division; by his eloquence he so confirmed this heresy that many think they are called Donatists rather because of him. Moreover, they refused to be named after the earlier Donatus, since it was established that he had been condemned by Pope Miltiades.

What the progress of the schism and heresy of the Donatists was.

Around the year of Christ 313, in the time of the Emperor Constantine, the Donatists gathered a Council of 270 Bishops at Carthage against Bishop Caecilian, adding Numidian Bishops to their faction, soliciting the Mauritanians, sending everywhere letters filled with accusations against Caecilian, and attracting to their communion even those who had lapsed in the persecution, wicked traitors. At this Council, as Saint Augustine reports in Letter 43, after seventy days, with all past matters set aside, a judgment was formed and decreed that those guilty of the immense crime of handing over the sacred books, if they refused to be baptized, should be admitted as though they were upright.

Yet the Donatists suppressed with the greatest care the memory of this very numerous Synod, because, Saint Augustine says, when they knew that the Synod had been gathered from bands of traitors, it would be evident that they were sullied both by the stain of handing over the books and by communion with traitors, while nevertheless they boasted themselves free from that stain; and out of love of justice they rose against Caecilian as one ordained by a traitor.

Meanwhile Caecilian, surrounded by so great a number of enemies, acted confidently because he had the Roman See as his patron. Saint Augustine declares this in Letter 162: He could disregard the conspiring multitude of enemies when he saw himself joined by letters of communion to the Roman Church, in which the primacy of the Apostolic Chair has always flourished, and to all the lands from which the Gospel came to Africa itself, &c. The Emperor Constantine likewise patronized him; for in letters given to Anulinus the Proconsul, he declared that the Clerics of the Catholic Church over which Caecilian presided were to be preserved immune from all public functions. Eusebius reports this Letter in book 10, chapter 7.

When the Donatists learned this, observing that Constantine was more favorably disposed toward Caecilian and that, with the Emperor favorable to him, they could not hope to expel him from the Carthaginian see—something they had often attempted, but in vain—they appealed to Anulinus himself to send two petitions on this matter to the Emperor, then residing in Gaul, as is recorded in the Letter of the Hipponians to Januarius, Bishop of the First See of Numidia and a Donatist, which is among Augustine’s Letters, no. 68. One of the petitions bore this title: Petition of the Catholic Church concerning Caecilian’s crimes, delivered by the party of Maiorinus.

They likewise delegated certain Bishops, together with the bearer of the letters, who asked the Emperor to give them judges, not from Africa—for, they said, there were disputes between us and the other Bishops—but from Gaul. Constantine, after reading the letters and hearing the Bishops, wisely replied, says Optatus in book 1, Against Parmenian: You ask me for judgment in this world, when I myself await the judgment of Christ?

Nevertheless, he assigned them three judges: Maternus from the city of Agrippina, Rheticus from Augustodunum, and Marinus of Arles. But afterward, realizing that the judgments of Bishops could not lawfully be heard without the Bishop of the Primary See, the Emperor referred the case to Melchiades, the Roman Pontiff, so that, in the presence of those three whom he had chosen and of other Italian Bishops from the neighboring provinces, he might settle the controversy. In order that all matters might be weighed and the lawful form of judgment observed—namely, that the defendant be present to state his case, with the accusers present—the Emperor wrote to Anulinus, ordering him to command Caecilian with ten of his supporters, and his adversaries with an equal number of Bishops, to come to Rome by the sixth day before the Nones of October.

Both parties obeyed the Emperor’s command, and all arrived in Rome on the appointed day. They met with the three Gallic Bishops, and with Melchiades there were fifteen other Bishops as judges. The witnesses brought by Donatus confessed that they had nothing to say against Caecilian. Therefore, by the votes of all, Caecilian was declared innocent, with the Supreme Pontiff Melchiades pronouncing this sentence: Since it has been established that Caecilian was not accused according to their own profession by those who came with Donatus, and that Donatus was not convicted in any respect, I rightly judge that he should be retained in his ecclesiastical communion with his status intact.

But since Caecilian had been accused by the Donatists, Donatus too, called “the Great” by many, was accused by the Catholics who stood on Caecilian’s side, because he had rebaptized and laid hands on Bishops who had lapsed. Hence this sentence was issued against him: Because he confessed that he had rebaptized and laid hands on lapsed Bishops, which is foreign to the Church. The Supreme Pontiff did not wish to act more harshly against him, although he was the author of the whole evil, hoping to recover his vanity; indeed, he was prepared to send letters of communion even to those who were known to have been ordained by Maiorinus. Thus, wherever there were two Bishops whom disagreement had doubled, he wished the one who had been ordained first to be confirmed, while provision would be made for the other to govern the other portion of the people, as Saint Augustine reports in Letter 162. Hence he exclaims there: O excellent man! O son of Christian peace, and father of the Christian people!

But the Donatists did not have the same peaceful spirit. As soon as they had returned to their homeland, they appealed from the sentence of the Roman Council to the Emperor Constantine. Hearing this, the Emperor exclaimed, as Optatus reports: O rabid audacity of fury! They lodged an appeal, as is customary in the cases of the faithful. He repeated this exclamation in a Letter to the Bishops, which appears in the Appendix to the Paris edition of Optatus.

But Constantine, moved by excessive leniency toward the most shameless and wicked men and hoping that they would at last settle down into peace by this means, arranged for a new Synod to be convened at Arles, larger in the number of attending Bishops. But since two persons had long appeared to be involved in the case itself, namely, the ordained man and the ordainer—that is, Caecilian and Felix of Aptunga, whom the Donatists falsely accused of having handed over the sacred books—so that, after both sides had been weighed, a more equitable judgment might emerge in the Synod of Arles, Constantine wrote to Aelianus the Proconsul to investigate the life of Felix of Aptunga, whether during the persecution, in order to escape death, he had handed the sacred books over to unbelievers to be burned by fire. After the matter had been investigated and witnesses who had lived with Felix during the persecution had been summoned, nothing was found in the answers of all that could stain the life of Felix the Bishop. The one thing the Donatists objected was Caecilian’s Letter to Felix, in which Caecilian seemed to order Felix, having taken the key with which he had found books and sacred codices in the chair, to remove them and hand them over to unbelievers. But when Caecilian protested that his letter had been interpolated, Ingentius, an official and public secretary who had been suborned by the Donatists and produced this Letter, was summoned. When he had been placed under fear of impending tortures so that he would confess the truth, he testified that he had in fact added these things to Caecilian’s letter.

Therefore, after receiving the judges’ sentence, the Proconsul declared Bishop Felix to be religious and free from the burning of the divine instruments. He sent this sentence to the Emperor, while keeping Ingentius in prison; the Emperor ordered him sent to himself, so that the adversaries of Caecilian, who had appealed to the Emperor in favor of Felix from the Proconsul’s sentence, might be refuted by Ingentius’s confession, in which he would publicly charge them with the Donatists’ fraud and with the interpolation he had carried out at their urging.

Meanwhile the Council of Arles was convened by order of Constantine and with the approval of the Supreme Pontiff Sylvester, who had succeeded the deceased Melchiades in the year 314. Many Bishops gathered from Gaul, Spain, Britain, Italy, and Africa; there were also the Supreme Pontiff’s Legates, the Priests Claudian and Avitus, and the Deacons Eugenius and Quiriacus. The Emperor Constantine was also present. Those three Gallic Bishops whom the Emperor had delegated as judges were likewise present, so that with Melchiades, the Roman Pontiff, they might hear Caecilian’s case. Caecilian’s and Felix’s case was again examined with the greatest exactness, both were declared innocent, and the Donatists were condemned. As a result, many Donatists returned to concord with Caecilian; but many of the more stubborn, having become more obstinate, appealed again from the Council’s sentence to the Emperor. He ordered them held in custody and taken to Milan, where, after Caecilian had been brought in and all other arbiters removed, the Emperor again investigated the case and judged Caecilian entirely innocent and them utterly wicked. Saint Augustine reports this sentence in book 2, Against Cresconius, chapter 7.

After these events, in the year 317, the schismatics returned to Africa, stirred up new disturbances, and reviled the Emperor as corrupted by favor, as Saint Augustine relates in book 1, Against the Letter of Parmenian, chapter 6. Moved by this, the Emperor ordered some of them to be led to the field, that is, to execution, as the holy Doctor relates in the same place, chapter 8. But afterward restraining his indignation, he abstained from their blood and punished them only with exile; from this he finally recalled them in the year 321, leaving their fury to God the avenger, says Saint Augustine in the book To the Collator, chapter 13.

But although the Donatists, broken by so many disputes and enticed by so many favors of the Emperor, ought at last to have rested, they nevertheless exercised new hatred against the Catholics. For then, at the urging of Donatus, Bishop of Carthage, certain defenders of the sect arose who were called Circumcellions because they wandered around the cells, as Saint Augustine observes on Psalm 132; among the Donatists they were called the harsh avengers of the Saints and of public justice.

But so that this sect would not lack a Catholic name, they sent one of their Bishops to Rome to preside over his followers and claim for them communion with the Roman Church; they called him the Roman Pontiff. Five Bishops successively replaced him; they were either sent from Africa after being ordained, or, as Saint Augustine writes in book On Heresies, chapter 69, other Donatist Bishops from Africa sought Rome in order to have them ordained. Whatever the case, it is certain that all of them were African Donatist Bishops, and none Roman, as Optatus reproaches them in book 2. Those who lived in Rome, excluded from the city itself, held their gatherings in the caves of the neighboring mountains. Hence they were called Montenses, as Optatus notes in the same book, chapter 3, and Rupitae, or Rupitani, as Saint Augustine observes in book On the Unity of the Church, chapter 3.

What the subsequent history of the Donatists was after the death of Constantine.

Constantine died in the year 337, and his three sons, Constantine, Constantius, and Constans, divided the empire among themselves. When Constans had obtained Africa and learned the wretched state of that Church, he sent to Africa two distinguished men, Paul and Macarius, to support the African Church with alms, but especially with the plan of suppressing the schism and recalling everyone to unity. Hence they were called workers of unity, says Optatus in book 3. But Donatus, the Pseudo-Bishop of Carthage, resisted them. He not only rejected the money and ecclesiastical furnishings offered by them, but also sent letters to every province so that the poor of his sect would accept nothing from them, since they were alien and sinful in relation to his communion; indeed, he stirred up against them bands of Circumcellions. Consequently, they forced armed soldiers to worship; when these were badly treated by the Circumcellions, they killed some of them, who were afterward regarded as Martyrs by the Donatists, as Optatus reports in book 3.

When these things became known, the Emperor Constans punished Donatus of Carthage and his principal followers with exile. As a result, many of the common people returned to the unity of the Church. But around that time, which Saint Augustine calls the Macarian period, the more stubborn Donatists—some, seduced by a desire for false martyrdom, hired assassins for their own destruction; others threw themselves into the waters or headlong from the peaks of high mountains, or strangled themselves with a noose. Hence Saint Augustine addresses him in book 2, Against the Letters of Petilian, chapter 49: Tell me, I beg you, when those Confessors of yours throw themselves headlong, to whom do they say they offer martyrdom: to Christ, who rejected the devil when he suggested such things, or rather to the devil himself, who suggested to Christ that such things be done? There are two especially base and customary deaths of those who kill themselves: the noose and the precipice. You certainly said at the beginning of this letter: The traitor perished by the noose; the faithful man left the noose behind. This has nothing at all to do with us, for we do not honor with the name of Martyrs those who tied their own necks. But how much more plausibly do we say this against you: the devil, the teacher of the traitor, wanted to persuade Christ to the precipice, and was rejected? What then should those be called to whom he suggested this, and was heard? What but enemies of Christ and friends of the devil? Disciples of the seducer, fellow disciples of the traitor, for both learned voluntary deaths from one teacher: the former the noose, the latter the precipice.

In the year 362, when Constans had been killed and Julian was already governing the reins of the empire, the leaders of the Donatists, driven into exile, sent an embassy to him asking to be freed from exile and to have their Basilicas restored to them. The Emperor agreed, and after being recalled from exile they raged against the Catholics and against all sacred things, so that some of their Bishops even threw the Most Holy Eucharist to dogs—a dreadful thing to say—as Optatus relates in book 2. But in the year 368,¹ when Donatus, the Pseudo-Bishop of Carthage, died, Parmenian succeeded him. Parmenian wrote a very long letter in defense of his sect, which Optatus of Milevis, Bishop in Numidia, Saint Augustine, and even a certain highly learned man named Tyconius refuted.

After Parmenian died around the year 393, Primian, guilty of many crimes, was appointed in his place. For this reason he was condemned and deposed by a Council of the Donatists convened at Caves of Susa near Carthage. His condemnation and deposition were approved in a fuller Council of the Donatists, numbering one hundred or more Bishops, who had gathered at Cebarsussi, as Saint Augustine reports in book 1, Against Cresconius, chapter 6. In Primian’s place Maximian, a Deacon of Carthage, was elected; Primian himself had previously condemned him. But Primian, recovering his strength, summoned the Bishops of Numidia to his defense. Numbering 310, they agreed and held the Council of Bagai, restored and absolved Primian, and condemned and deposed Maximian in his absence and without a hearing. Hence a great schism arose among the Donatists: very many adhered to Primian, while others adhered to Maximian, as Saint Augustine relates in the same place. Nevertheless, in this matter, which is familiar to all heretics, the Donatists agreed that they should attack the Catholics by whatever art and cruelty they could, as Optatus reproaches them in book 2, where, to show that they had been fed on bloody bites and fattened on Christian blood, he recalls their fury and impiety.

When the Church was in deep peace, he says, under Constantine, and the leaders of the Donatists had deservedly banished themselves, Julian the Apostate, asked by the prayers of the Donatists, ordered those banished to go forth according to his wish, for he understood that they would come in fury to disturb the peace. They came in anger, tearing the members of the Church, subtle in seductions, savage in their hearts. Felix of Diabum and Januarius invaded and plundered the fortress of Lemanum, and bloodied many Catholic Deacons defending the altar with tiles; they killed two. When the Donatists entered the cities of Mauritania, the people were thrown into confusion. Those who were destined to be born died in their mothers’ wombs. In the Catholic city of Tipasa in Caesarean Mauritania, trembling matrons were driven from their seats and bloodied, infants were killed, and unborn children were carried away. They ordered the Eucharist to be poured to dogs, not without a sign of divine judgment. For the same dogs, inflamed with madness, tore their own masters as though they were thieves, guilty of the Holy Body, with avenging teeth, as unknown and hostile men. They threw a flask of chrism through a window so that it would break, and when the fall aided the throwing, an angelic hand was not lacking to carry the flask down by a spiritual support; thrown down, it could not feel the fall, but settled unharmed among the rocks. Urbanus of Formae and Felix of Ilici, returning from there, found mothers whom they had made women from the consecrated virgins. The same Felix violated a girl on whom he himself had placed the mitre, and from whom shortly before he was called Father. The same Donatus, seventy years old, dared to strip a Bishop of his name, office, and episcopal honor: guilty against the innocent, sacrilegious against God’s Priest, incestuous against the chaste, &c.

Their obstinacy could not be broken. Although they were urged by various but fruitless efforts to return to the bosom of the Church, at last, after being weakened by the immense labors of Saint Augustine and by continual writings and disputations, the insolence of those wicked men was subdued by the formal edicts of the Emperor Honorius, chiefly through the action of the Tribune Marcellinus, whom Honorius had sent to Africa with full authority and military forces to restrain the madness of the Donatists.

Having omitted a fuller account and discussion of the schism of the Donatists, it must now be determined who is the suitable Minister of the Sacraments, and whether the following are required in him: first, the state of a wayfarer; second, moral probity; third, faith; fourth, intention. This will be resolved in the questions that follow.

NOTE 1. The Minister of the Sacraments can be distinguished into two kinds: one indeed ordinary, the other extraordinary. The ordinary minister is called one who, by the faculty granted to him, can minister the Sacrament whenever occasion and opportunity are given; but the extraordinary minister is one who ministers the Sacraments only by delegated authority and commission, when necessity urges, on account of the absence and lack of an ordinary Minister. It is certain, however, that human beings are ministers of the sacraments insofar as they receive delegated power from Christ the Lord. Hence the Apostle says, 1 Cor. 4: Let a man so regard us, as Ministers of Christ, and dispensers of the mysteries of God. I said, insofar as they have power delegated by Christ: for he alone and only is the Minister of the Sacraments whom Christ designated in his institution. But who this is would be resolved when treating of the Sacraments in particular. Here, however, we investigate only who in general ought to be the ordinary Minister of the Sacraments, whether a human being or an Angel.

NOTANDUM 2. Luther progressed so far—I will not say in error, but even in madness—that in the book On the Private Mass and on the anointing of Priests he attributes the ministerial power of all the Sacraments not only to all human beings, but even to demons. I do not say, he says, what the Bishops say, that none of the Angels, not even Mary herself, can consecrate; but on the contrary I say that if the devil himself should go, and I should afterward rise again, and the devil had so burst into the office of Pastor of the Church, adorned in the appearance of a human being, as to preach and publicly teach in the Church, baptize, celebrate Mass, and absolve from sins, and had performed such a ministry according to Christ's institution, then we would be compelled to confess that the Sacraments were not thereby infallible, but that we had received true Baptism, the true Gospel, true absolution, and the true Sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood. But, since heresy wars against itself, Calvin utterly contradicts Luther, for he does not even concede women the faculty of baptizing in case of necessity. For in the Antidote to Can. 10, Sess. 7, he says: In the true sense, Christians were all equal in the administration of the word and of the Sacraments: not only because he wishes all things to be done decently and in order in the Church, but also because Ministers are ordained for that purpose by the singular command of Christ. But he adds: Moreover, when they have entrusted the office of baptizing to little women, how do they permit that? But the Catholic Church, avoiding both extremes of error, establishes that only wayfaring human beings are the ordinary Ministers of the Sacraments; indeed, that all can administer Baptism when necessity presses, although it concedes that Angels too can administer the Sacraments by an extraordinary delegation of God.

NOTANDUM 3. According to the Doctor, in 4 dist. 6, q. 1, no. 2, three things must concur on the part of the Minister for the administration of the Sacraments: first, an external action, which occurs through local motion and the motive power by which the matter is applied; second, the sensible utterance of the form through articulated words; third, the intention of doing what the Church does. Whoever lacks any one of these cannot administer a Sacrament; hence those who lack hands, speech, or reason are excluded from this administration. From this the Doctor concludes that no supposit of an intellectual nature is simply excluded from the power of baptizing, except because of some such defect. Two things, therefore, are chiefly to be established here: first, that only wayfaring human beings are the ordinary ministers of the Sacraments; second, that Angels—not only good, but also evil—can be extraordinarily appointed by God to this ministry.

First Conclusion. — ONLY WAYFARING HUMAN BEINGS HAVE THE ORDINARY POWER OF ADMINISTERING THE SACRAMENTS.

Proof of the first part: The administration of the Sacraments, like their efficacy, depends upon Christ's institution and command, which is made known chiefly through Sacred Scripture; but from it it is clear that the ordinary faculty of administering the Sacraments was not granted to Angels, but to human beings. Proof by induction: concerning the Eucharist, Luke 22:19 says not to Angels but to the Apostles, who were wayfaring human beings: Do this in remembrance of me. And concerning Baptism, Matt. ult. 19: Baptize all nations. Concerning Extreme Unction, James 5:14: Let him call the Presbyters of the Church, and let them pray over him, anointing him, etc. Concerning Penance, John 20:23: Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them. As regards the Sacrament of Orders and Confirmation, it is clear both from Scripture and from Tradition that their Minister must necessarily be a Bishop and Pontiff; he who, as we read in Heb. 5, is taken from among men, is appointed for men in the things that pertain to God. As regards Matrimony, the matter is evident, for it is entered into only between human contracting parties, who appear to be the ministers, according to Gen. 2:

This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh, etc.

The reason for this truth is clear. For there are four things in the Sacraments by which the Minister is chiefly to be assessed: namely, the institutor of the Sacraments, that is, Christ the Lord, whose place he himself takes, according to St. Paul's words, 1 Cor. 4: Let a man so account of us as Ministers of Christ, and dispensers of the mysteries of God. The second is the Church, for whose benefit the Sacraments were instituted, and whose Minister he therefore is. The third is the recipient, who holds the middle place between Christ the Lord, who ministers, and the Minister. The fourth, finally, is the Sacrament that is administered. But from this fourfold consideration the ordinary Minister of the Sacraments must necessarily be a human being, and not an Angel, because Christ the institutor, to whom he ought to be assimilated, is a true human being, and not an Angel. Likewise, the Church is a visible assembly of human beings, and not of Angels. Again, those who receive the Sacraments are human beings, not Angels. Finally, the Sacrament itself is not merely spiritual, as Angels are, but is partly constituted from the spiritual and the corporeal: spiritual, namely, through the intention of the Minister; corporeal, namely, through matter and form. This especially suits human beings, who are partly spiritual and partly corporeal. The Doctor excellently weighs these reasons in the same place, no. 3. It is fitting, he says, that Baptism be conferred upon a wayfaring human being, and not in any way by an Angel: both because Christ, who instituted it, was a human being; and because in the Sacrament there is something sensible and something spiritual, and consequently it is more fitting for a minister using sense and intellect than for one who is purely intelligible; and third, because through the reception of Baptism someone is enrolled as a member of the Church militant: therefore it is fitting that this be done by someone in that Church.

You will say 1. Whatever an inferior Minister can do, a superior can do; for whatever a Deacon can do, a Priest can do, though not conversely. But Angels are superior to all human beings in the Hierarchical order, according to St. Dionysius; therefore they can exercise the same ministry as human beings.

I distinguish the major: a superior can do the same thing in a different manner, I concede; in the same manner, I deny. For since human beings operate in an interior manner through sensible Sacraments proportioned to human nature, Angels, as superior ministers, act in a superior manner by invisibly purifying, illuminating, and perfecting, not sensibly in the human manner through the Sacraments. Hence blessed human beings, who have in heaven an indelible character by which they could administer the Sacraments, are like Angels in Matthew 22, but in participation in glory, not in the condition of nature or in the dispensation of the Sacraments.

You will say 2. The Sacraments can be administered by evil human beings, who are members of the devil; much more, therefore, by the devil, who is their head. — I deny the consequence: for evil human beings do not have the power of administering the Sacraments because they are members of the devil through wickedness, but because they are rational instruments of Christ, which does not belong to Satan, or the devil.

Proof also of the second part, namely, that the ordinary Minister of the Sacraments must be a wayfarer. I say, Proof first from that passage of Heb. 5: Every Pontiff taken from among men is appointed for men in the things that pertain to God, that he may offer gifts and sacrifices for sins, who can have compassion on those who are ignorant and erring, because he himself too is surrounded by weakness, etc. But only a wayfaring human being is such; therefore, etc. Further, he alone is the ordinary and legitimate Minister of the Sacraments whom Christ designated by his institution; but for this he designated only wayfaring human beings. For it is established neither from Scripture, nor from Councils, nor from Tradition, that a non-wayfaring human being was taken up and instituted by Christ as Minister of the Sacraments of the Church militant; therefore, etc. Finally, as Bellarmine says, book 1, On the Sacraments in General, c. 21, no. 3, the Sacraments were given to the Church so that they might be administered to those who are within the Church by the visible Church itself, through its Ministers; such are not those who are already outside the world and who are in no way subject, directly or indirectly, to the Church itself. Otherwise a Bishop condemned in body and soul could, out of hatred for God and Christ, ordain another man condemned in body and soul as a Priest; and that man, once ordained a Priest, if he had bread and wine present, could confect the Sacrament of the Eucharist. But these things are absurd; therefore it must not be asserted that the Sacraments can, by the ordinary way, be conferred by anyone other than wayfarers.

You will say 1. Thomas Stapleton, in the Collections concerning St. Thomas the Apostle, reports that in the year 1120 a certain Patriarch of the Indians, named John, came to Rome and there testified before the Supreme Pontiff Callistus II(?) and the Cardinals in consistory that St. Thomas the Apostle made himself visible every year to the faithful subject to him, and that those whom he judged worthy of the sacred assembly he communicated with his own hand; but that he kept the unworthy from the sacred table and denied them the Eucharist. — Bellarmine replies in the same place that, whatever the truth of that story may be, it cannot be inferred from it that the Apostle confected and consecrated the Eucharist, but only that he distributed what had been consecrated. But this reply does not seem to solve the objection; for from it one could at least gather that they can be called ordinary Ministers of those Sacraments that consist in the application of sensible matter and the utterance of the words of the form, such as Baptism, Extreme Unction, Confirmation, etc. Hence I answer secondly that, if it is true that St. Thomas did these things, he did not do so by the common law, but by a singular concession of God, especially since it cannot be established that the Apostle assumed his own body, rose again by a miracle repeated so many times, and then died again. Hence it is more credible that he merely appeared and did these things in an aerial body.

You will say 2. In her prayers the Church asks the blessed Apostles for the remission of sins, as in the hymn of the Apostles: You who by your word close heaven and loose its bolted gates, command, we beseech you, that we be loosed from all sins. And in the hymn of St. Peter: Release the bonds of sin, by the power entrusted to you, you who by your word close heaven to all and open it; therefore the blessed Apostles are Ministers of the Sacraments. — I distinguish the antecedent: to ask for remission by way of intercession, presenting to the blessed Apostles the power entrusted to them while they were in the Church militant, in order to move them more strongly, as we say to the Blessed Virgin in her hymn, Release the bonds of the guilty, I concede; by way of jurisdiction, as though they still retained the right and ministry of absolution, I deny.

You will say 3. If some Priests or Bishops were to rise from the dead, they could still confect certain Sacraments; therefore the Minister of the Sacraments is not necessarily a wayfarer. — I deny the consequence: for, having been raised from the dead, they would act by the power they had received as wayfarers. Hence they could validly confect those Sacraments which they confected before death without jurisdiction, such as Baptism and the Eucharist; for they act by the character and the proper state alone, not by jurisdiction. But they could not validly administer those that require jurisdiction, such as the absolution of penitents, because jurisdiction ceases through death, whereas sacramental absolution of penitents is an act of jurisdiction, since it is a true judgment.

Second Conclusion. — ANGELS CAN BE EXTRAORDINARY MINISTERS OF THE SACRAMENTS. This is common to both schools, the Angelic and the Subtle. Indeed, the Angelic Doctor, 3 p., q. 64, art. 7, says: It must nevertheless be known that, just as God has not so bound his power to the Sacraments that he cannot confer the effect of the Sacraments without the Sacraments, so too he has not so bound his power to the Ministers of the Church that he cannot also give Angels the power to minister in the Sacraments. And because good Angels are messengers of truth, if some sacramental ministry were requested of good Angels, it should be held valid, since it ought to be established that this was done by the divine will; just as certain churches are said to have been consecrated through the ministry of Angels. The Subtle Doctor has similar things in no. 2, where, after saying that every supposit of an intellectual nature can be appointed as Minister of the Sacraments, he puts forward this reason: because, he says, if a good Angel were to baptize in an assumed body, with all the conditions stated above, then his Baptism would have to be presumed true, because it would not occur except by God's command; nor would one baptized by an Angel have to be baptized again; just as Michael forbade a Bishop to dedicate his church on Mount Gargano, asserting that it had been dedicated by him. By these words the Doctor does not contend, by wrongly asserting it, that Angels have the power; but only that they can be extraordinarily delegated by God for that office.

Proof of the Conclusion: If, as we read in Acts 7 and Gal. 3, the ancient Law was ordained by Angels in the hand of the Mediator, why could not the Sacraments of the new law be administered by those same Angels? For there is no greater difficulty in applying sacramental matter and uttering the words of the form than in inscribing the law upon a stone tablet and proclaiming it aloud and publicly.

St. Augustine also clearly teaches this truth in book 2 of Against Parmenian, c. 15. There, when Parmenian objected that an unjust man could not validly administer the Sacraments, as St. Augustine reports in the same place, he said: But why then does Parmenian exult in empty boasting and say: The judgment of the divine law will never permit a dead man to give life to anyone, a wounded man to heal, a blind man to illuminate, a naked man to clothe, or a polluted man to cleanse, etc. By these words he asserted that an unjust man could not confer Baptism unto justice; and to confirm this he objected in c. 15 that passage of John 3: A man cannot receive anything unless it has been given him from heaven. Refuting its false interpretation by various arguments, St. Augustine finally concludes his and the other's perverse understanding of Scripture: No one, therefore, he says, without one who gives; but as regards the holiness of Baptism, God is present to give, and a human being to receive, whether God gives through himself, or through an Angel, or through a holy human being, or through Peter, or through John, or through an iniquitous human being, etc. In these words he clearly signifies that Baptism can be administered through an Angel. Nor does it matter that he says God sometimes confers Baptismal grace, that is, not through some Sacrament—for example, when he sanctifies either a child in the womb or an adult through martyrdom, which is neither a Sacrament nor subordinated to a Sacrament, although, as we have said, it has the power of a Sacrament. This, I say, does not matter, because these things do not prevent him from asserting that an Angel, or a just human being, or an unjust one, can confer grace through a Sacrament.

Proof furthermore from Nicephorus, book 11 of the History, c. 20, where he reports how, to Amphilochius philosophizing in desert places, because of his excellent life and teaching, God sent Angels who, by a mystical ordination and a secret episcopal blessing, consecrated him to the intellectual dignity and appointed him Hierarch of Iconium. When, shortly afterward, the Bishops of that Province who were to be ordained had come to him, and learned from him that he had received consecration from the Angels of God, they gave glory to God for so sacred and divine a grace, and reverently admitted him as God's Pontiff, herald of the Gospel, and defender of the faith; then, after the customary greeting and after placing a kiss upon him, they permitted him publicly to perform the episcopal functions and all pontifical offices without any other new inauguration.

Proof also by reason: First, because, as was just said, just as God has not bound his power to the Sacraments, but can, according to his pleasure and independently of the conferral of the Sacraments, infuse sanctifying grace into someone, so he has not delegated the administration of the Sacraments to human beings in such a way that he cannot, according to his will and command, entrust that ministry to Angels; especially since all of them are ministering spirits sent for ministry, for the sake of those who are to receive the inheritance of salvation. Further, the administration of the Sacraments is not more difficult to execute than the consecration of temples, since both offices were delegated to human beings; but the consecration of temples can be performed by Angels, and was in fact sometimes performed by them, as is clear from the consecration of the temple of Mount Gargano, which was done by St. Michael the Archangel. Finally, as we noted with the Doctor, only three things are required for the administration of a Sacrament: first, motive power, by which the Minister washes, for example, the person to be baptized with water; second, a voice, by which he utters the words of the form; third, the use of reason, by which he has the intention of Christ the Lord and the Church. But an Angel, by an extraordinary commission of God, can have these three things in an assumed body or wholly outside a body. For he can move water and apply it to the person to be baptized; it is not necessary that an Angel baptizing apply the water through a conjoined instrument, as a Priest does through his hand: a separate instrument, or none at all, is sufficient. He can also produce words, not vitally as a human being does, but distinctly signifying the same thing as vital words. Since he is also endowed with intellectual faculty, he can undoubtedly have the required intention. Thus it must be admitted that, if it were established that some Sacrament had been administered by Angels, it ought to be held valid and ratified.

You will say 1. Heb. 5 says: Every Pontiff must be taken from among men, in order to offer gifts and sacrifices; and consequently Angels cannot fulfill this ministry. Therefore they can much less administer the Sacraments, since grace is conferred through the Sacraments, but not ordinarily through sacrifices ex opere operato. — I distinguish the antecedent: this is so according to the ordinary law, I concede; it is so necessarily, so that it could not be otherwise if God were to ordain it thus, I deny. For the consecration of a Church is also a ministry of the Church, and it is established by a certain history that this was entrusted to Angels. To minister the Eucharist is a ministry of the Church through Priests and Deacons, but Angels too have sometimes performed this by special commission, as is often established from approved lives of the Saints. The promulgation of the divine Law is a ministry of human beings, but on Mount Sinai Angels performed it as God's legates, Acts 7. Why, then, could they not also, by a special commission of God, give Baptism in an assumed body, while preserving the substance of the Sacrament?

You will say 2. The administration of a Sacrament is a vital act; but Angels cannot exercise vital acts in an assumed body; therefore neither can they administer the Sacraments. — I distinguish the major: administration performed by an ordinary Minister is a vital act, I concede; administration performed by an extraordinary Minister would necessarily have to be a vital act, I deny. For, absolutely speaking, for the validity of a Sacrament it suffices that the proper matter be applied and the form be uttered sensibly and articulately through a human body, whether real or apparent. For, simply speaking, nothing else is required on the part of the form, insofar as it is sacramental, than that it be a practical sign of the effect, both in the baptized person and with respect to the Church, which must be assured of the form applied. For the Church does not attend to the manner of forming the words, but to the signification they have from divine institution and the common use of human beings. In the same way, revelation made to holy men through Angels speaking sensibly is received by them in no other way than if it were truly vital, because what is considered is not the manner of speaking, but the sense of the speech.

You will ask: Could demons also validly confer the Sacraments? — The Doctor affirms this in the same place, saying: If an evil Angel too were to baptize in an assumed body, and it were established that this occurred by God's command, he would have to be regarded as having baptized, because an evil Angel too must obey God even unwillingly. But it could not be believed, without a certain revelation on the matter, that an evil Angel would baptize in this way: both because God does not administer the Sacraments through those finally excluded from salvation, and because, if there were no certainty of the divine command, or of the contrary, it must always be presumed that he acts fraudulently, lest he complete the things necessary for the baptized person's salvation, because of the enmity proceeding from envy that he bears.

By these words the Doctor does not assert that the devil validly administers the Sacraments, as though this belonged to him by the ordinary law, as some falsely suppose when they assert that this was his position, and afterward Luther's as well. For the contrary is plainly evident from the words just expressed.

You will say. If a demon administered the Sacraments by God's ordinance, since he is in a state of mortal sin he would commit sacrilege, of which God would be the author, since he would compel the demon to this ministry. But God cannot be the author of any sin; therefore he cannot command a demon to administer some Sacrament. — I distinguish the minor: God cannot be the author of a sinful act when the malice is intrinsically joined to the malicious act, I concede; when it is joined only extrinsically, and proceeds from the malice of the one acting, I deny. This is what happens in the present case, because the ministry of a Sacrament is absolutely good; but since the demon's will is perverse, he is compelled by God unwillingly whenever he is driven by a pressing divine command to perform something good. Nevertheless, God can use this perverse will of the demon to display his goodness and power, by which he extorts obedience even from the devil, however reluctant, for the advantage and benefit of another. Hence St. Augustine says excellently, in book On Corruption and Grace, c. 10: Most beneficially we confess what we most truly believe: that God, the Lord of all things, who created all things very good and foresaw that evils would erupt from good things, pertains more to his omnipotent goodness to do good even from evils than not to permit evils to exist, etc. Hence the Doctor wisely warns that, if the devil were to administer the Sacraments in an assumed body, it would be necessary that divine revelation establish that he had been moved and impelled to this by God, so that it would be certain that that Sacrament had been validly administered.

NOTE 1. Three things come into question here: first, whether sinners can validly confect and administer the Sacraments; second, whether licitly, and without a new sin; third, whether it is licit to ask for and receive the Sacraments from them. As to the first, it must be known that a twofold administration of the Sacraments can be distinguished: one valid indeed but illicit, the other valid and licit. The first is that by which a Sacrament rightly confected—that is, with the matter, form, and requisite intention applied—does confer grace upon the recipient; but its confection and administration brings a new sin upon the one conferring it, because of the unworthy and illegitimate handling and administration of a sacred thing: the second, however, confers grace not only upon the recipient but also upon the one conferring it, because of the due disposition of both. The question, then, is whether a Minister existing in mortal sin can indeed validly, but not licitly, confect and confer the Sacraments. This can be understood both of a consecrated Minister, namely one upon whom the duty of administering the Sacrament falls by office, and of one not consecrated, namely one who can administer the Sacrament only in a case of necessity.

NOTE 2. From the Subtle Doctor, distinction 5, question 2, no. 2. A sinful and wicked Minister is considered such either secretly or manifestly, so that he appears wicked before God, though he is not regarded as such by men, especially by those to whom he ought to administer the Sacrament.

Moreover, a secretly evil Minister can be called such in two ways: either because his sin is secret and unknown to the recipient of the Sacrament; or because, although it is known to the recipient himself, it is nevertheless not notorious and manifest to others.

Similarly, a notoriously evil Minister is either tolerated in the Church and, with the Prelates knowing it and no one objecting, publicly administers the Sacraments; or he is not tolerated, but has been manifestly removed from every ecclesiastical office by excommunication, degradation, or suspension; as Martin V declared in the Council of Constance. For when he noticed that very grave scandals were arising and that many of the faithful were being called back from frequenting the Sacraments because they did not know whether certain sinful Ministers, or those bound by some ecclesiastical sentence, could validly or licitly confer the Sacrament of Penance, in 1418 he issued a constitution in these words: To avoid scandals and many dangers, and to assist fearful consciences, we establish that henceforth no one shall be bound to abstain, separate himself, or avoid association with anyone, in administering or receiving a Sacrament, or in other divine offices or outside them, on account of any sentence or ecclesiastical censure, or suspension, or prohibition promulgated generally by man or by law; nor shall an ecclesiastical interdict be observed, unless such sentence, prohibition, suspension, or censure has been published or specially and expressly denounced by a Judge against or concerning a person, College, University, Church, or definite place, or unless he is a notorious cleric who strikes, etc. This Constitution was indeed renewed in the Council of

Constance, Session 20, and in the Lateran Council under Leo X, Session 11, in the year 1516.

NOTE 3. Besides the ancient heretics mentioned at the beginning of the present Article, who asserted that sinners could not validly confect the Sacraments, certain more recent writers revived the same error, especially the Waldenses, so called from a certain man of Lyons named Waldo, around the year 1106, who, although abounding in very great riches, desired openly to profess evangelical poverty: hence his followers were called the Poor Men of Lyons, as is gathered from Trithemius in the Hirsaugiensian Chronicle. They were also called Albigenses and Toulousans, because their pestilential doctrine especially spread and was disseminated in those provinces. Among the various teachings they promulgated, they are accused of asserting that the Body of Christ could be confected not only by Priests but also by Laymen, provided that they were judged just and upright, because they denied that it could be confected even by wicked Priests, as Roger relates in the English Annals. But no one professed this error more openly and audaciously than Wycliffe: for among the various articles of his condemned in the Council of Constance, Session 8, this was the fourth, namely: A Bishop or priest who is in mortal sin does not ordain, confirm, consecrate, or baptize. Some attributed the same error to John Huss, whose errors were likewise condemned in the same Council of Constance, Session 15. And not without reason, not only because he was publishing and defending Wycliffe's pestilential doctrines in Bohemia—for this reason his twentieth article was that the condemnation of the forty-five articles of John Wycliffe made by the Doctors was irrational, unjust, and badly done—but also because in article 22 he said that the Pope, or Prelate and bishop, is only equivocally a Shepherd, and truly a thief and robber; and consequently he judged that a sinner is not a true Shepherd, and therefore cannot confer the Sacraments, which can be conferred only by true Shepherds and Ministers of the Church.

It must therefore be established in the present Question, first, that Ministers, however sinful and wicked, can validly confect the Sacraments; second, that they confer the Sacraments illicitly; third, when it is licit to ask for and receive the Sacraments from them.

First conclusion. — THE SACRAMENTS CAN TRULY AND VALIDLY BE EFFECTED AND CONFERRED BY WICKED AND SINFUL MINISTERS. This has been determined as a matter of faith in various Councils, both universal and particular: most especially in three Roman Councils under Leo IX, in the years 1049, 1050, and 1051, in which it was determined that whoever had been consecrated by a Simoniac, at the very time of his ordination, not being unaware of the Simoniac to whom he had offered himself for promotion, should do penance for 40 days, and thus minister in the office of the order received. These Councils therefore suppose that the order was validly conferred by a Simoniac Bishop. Likewise, it was defined in the Gallican Council celebrated in the year 1106, whose acts are described by Roger in the Annals of England, where it was defined against the Toulouse-men and the Albigenses that, just as a ray of the sun does not contract a stain or filth by passing through sewers, or just as pure and clear water passes to courtyards through channels that are covered, or filthy, or muddy, so the Lord's words are not dirtied, and are uttered no better or more clearly through a good man than through an evil one. — The same was defined in the Council of Constance, Session 8, in which Wycliffe's articles were condemned, and in the Salzburg Council in the year 1420, under the rubric On the Most Holy Trinity, where it is defined: if any cleric or layman should dare to preach, or secretly teach, believe, or hold, that a priest existing in mortal sin cannot effect the Body of Christ, etc., let him be held a heretic and unbeliever. The Council of Trent also plainly defines the same, Session 7, Canon 12. On the sacraments in general: if anyone should say that a minister existing in mortal sin, provided he has carried out all the essentials that pertain to effecting or conferring the Sacrament, does not effect or confer the Sacrament, let him be anathema.

The Subtle Doctor assigns an a priori reason for the Catholic truth, book 4, distinction 1, question 1, no. 1:

The truth of the question, he says, is clear from many authorities: whatever the Minister's wickedness, whether of heresy, schism, or morals, provided the unity of the Church is preserved, if he intends to do what the Church does and observes the Church's manner, he truly confers Baptism, and such Baptism truly has its effect in the baptized person, notwithstanding the Minister's wickedness, unless the wickedness of the recipient stands in the way, in that he receives from such a Minister. The truth of this solution has only one reason why, namely, that it pleased Christ to institute it in such a way that the Minister's wickedness would not impede the Sacrament or its effect.

Moreover, this good pleasure of Christ the Lord is gathered especially from the perpetual and constant tradition of the Church, which Saint Augustine pressed against the authority of Saint Cyprian alleged by the Donatists, book 2 of On Baptism, chapter 7, where he writes:

Do not therefore bring Cyprian's authority against us concerning the reception of Baptism, but hold with us Cyprian's example concerning the preservation of unity. For the question of Baptism had not yet been carefully treated, but nevertheless the Church held a most salutary custom: even among schismatics and heretics, though equivocally, not to repeat what had been given; to heal what had been wounded, not to treat what was sound. I believe this custom came from Apostolic tradition, just as many things are not found in their letters or in the Councils of later times, and yet, because they are observed throughout the Church, they are read as having been delivered and commended by the Apostles themselves, etc.

The Holy Fathers likewise teach the same by constant tradition, adducing various examples. Thus Optatus of Milevis, book 3 of Against Parmenian, around the middle: what does it matter, he says, what sort of workers they were, provided that what was worked is known to be good? For wine is both trodden and pressed by sinful workers; and from it a sacrifice is offered to God: oil too is made by filthy men.... and yet the liquid, in taste and brightness, even in the sacred chrism, is simply distributed, etc. Similarly Saint Nazianzen compares a good or evil Minister, in Oration 40, to a golden or earthen seal, which has the same effect whether it is golden or earthen. Saint Augustine also uses examples for this, especially in book 3 of Against Cresconius, chapter 5, where he uses the example of seed, for which it makes no difference whether it is sown by filthy or washed hands: provided it is fruitful of itself, and the soil is suitable and made fertile by the sun's influence, it will sprout and rise abundantly. In Treatise 5 on John: The proud Minister is reckoned with the devil, but Christ's gift is not contaminated, because through him a pure stream passes; and it does not return to fertile earth. Shortly afterward he adds: A stone cannot carry a trunk from water, and if water passes through stone channels to garden beds, nothing is generated in the stone channel, but nevertheless it brings very much fruit to the gardens: for the spiritual power of the Sacrament, like pure light, is received by those to be enlightened, but passing through the unclean it is not polluted. The same author, book 1 of On Baptism, chapter 10, having said: The water is not profane and adulterous: God's name is invoked over the water, even if it is invoked by profane and adulterous people; for neither the creature itself nor the name itself is adulterous: but the true Baptism of Christ, observed according to the Gospel, is holy both through adulterers and in adulterers, although they are impure and unclean, because its holiness cannot be defiled: and divine power attends its Sacrament, whether for the salvation of those living well or for the ruin of those using it badly. He confirms this with an example: the light of the sun or of a lamp, he says, when diffused through sewers, contracts no filth from them: and can Christ's Baptism be polluted by anyone's crimes? For if we turn our attention to the visible things themselves with which the Sacraments are handled, who does not know that they are corruptible? But if we attend to what is done through them, who does not see that it cannot be corrupted, although the men through whom it is done, according to their morals, either receive the promises or suffer the punishments!

The Doctor proves the same truth, number 4 and following, by a threefold fittingness. First he repeats it from the end of the Sacrament, because

it is reasonable that God should assist his practical sign in causing the thing signified, by a determination of his will preceding every condition of the Minister; so that, just as that determination of his by which he gives the sign to be a certain sign is immediately and altogether first from him, so also the assistance consequent upon that determination, for cooperating, should be immediately from him.

By these words the Doctor indicates that, since the Sacrament has all its efficacy from God and from Christ the Lord, its institutor, the Minister's wickedness cannot harm it. Saint Augustine also put forward this reason in many places, but especially in book 2 of Against the Letters of Petilian, chapter 2: we are not defiled by our water, he says, nor are you cleansed by yours, but the water of Baptism, when it is given to someone, is neither ours nor yours, but his of whom it was said: this is he who baptizes. Hence in Treatise 5 on John, around the middle, he says: Baptism is safe; it depends on what sort of one he is in whose power it is given, not on what sort of one he is through whose ministry it is given: so what does an evil Minister do to you where the Lord is good? What does a malicious herald impede you where the Judge is good?

The Doctor draws the second reason from the end of the Sacrament itself, namely from the salvation of men, for whose sake the Sacraments were instituted: for if the Minister's holiness and faith were required for the Sacrament's validity, the faithful would scarcely have any security concerning their salvation; for just as they would always be uncertain about the Minister's goodness, so also about the validity of the Sacrament conferred by him. For, as the Doctor admirably says:

if Baptism could be conferred only by a good man, it would not be a great remedy for the wayfarer, but almost generally a detriment. Since scarcely anyone can be certain of his own goodness, much less can he be certain of another's: therefore, if Baptism depended on the Minister's goodness, no one could ever be certain that he had truly received Baptism, which is unfitting. And if you object that even now he cannot be > certain, because he does not know his own disposition, the objection is blocked, because he can know with certainty, insofar as certainty is required, that he himself intends to receive Baptism through it: and this suffices on his part. If you say that he cannot be certain of the Minister's intention, this does not stand in the way, because it can probably be presumed that Ministers performing such an act intend to do that to which the act in itself is ordered; but certainty about the Minister's goodness or holiness could not be had in the same way. Thus the Doctor.

Saint Augustine also indicates this reason in book 1 of Against the Letters of Petilian, chapter 2, where he says: Therefore they are baptized by good men, so that they may receive faith, not guilt. But how will they be secure even concerning these men, if the conscience of the giver is considered, which is hidden from the eyes of the recipient? Thus, according to their opinion, that spiritual salvation becomes uncertain, while, contrary to the Holy Scriptures, which say: It is good to trust in the Lord rather than to trust in man (Ps. 117), and: Cursed is everyone who places his hope in man (Jer. 17), they take the hope of those to be baptized away from the Lord God and persuade them to place it in man.

The Doctor repeats the third reason from the part of the recipient:

Because, he says, it is altogether unjust for one person to be punished for another's iniquity, when the one in no way shares in the other's iniquity so that it can be imputed to him: but the person to be baptized disposes himself for grace as much as he can: therefore, if the Minister's wickedness impeded it, he would be punished on account of another's fault, in no way imputable to him.

St. Augustine presses this argument in book 2 of Against the Letters of Petilian, chapter 6: Nor is it expected from the innocence of the baptizer, he says, that the baptized person become innocent; the more innocent he will be, the more innocent the one will be whom he finds as his baptizer. But if the minister's innocence raises him up, he will bear his malice; and thus one will run more often to Baptism, not so that one's own sins may be remitted, but rather so that others' may be imposed. Hence, in book On the Unity of the Church, chapter 18: When Paul said: Thanks be to God, because I baptized none of you except Crispus and Caius, it would have to be believed that he mocked men with a better sanctification, if, the better he was, the better those who were baptized by him could be baptized; rather, it was precisely for this that the intention of the watchful, most careful, and most faithful Dispenser was that no one should therefore think himself holy because he had been baptized by a holier Minister.

The Donatists brought forward various things against the present Catholic truth and assertion, not only oracles of Scripture but also very many arguments drawn both from authority and from reason; so that all these may be dissolved in a clearer order, it is pleasing to set them forth and refute them under distinct headings.

THE AUTHORITIES OF SCRIPTURE WHICH THE DONATISTS USED IN THEIR OWN DEFENSE WILL BE PROPOSED AND REFUTED.

They objected 1. The passage of Exodus 19: The Priests who approach the Lord shall be sanctified, lest he strike them. And also that of chapter 30: Having received water, Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and feet in it, whenever they are going to enter the tabernacle of testimony and whenever they are summoned to the altar to offer incense on it to the Lord, lest perhaps they die; and furthermore Leviticus 21: Say to Aaron: A man of your offspring throughout their families who has a blemish shall not offer bread to his God, nor approach his ministry.

— Saint Augustine responds, book 2 of Against the Letter of Parmenian: first, that these divine oracles signify that God's Ministers cannot, without very grave guilt, fulfill the sacred ministry in a state of mortal sin; and consequently that the administration of a sacred thing does much for the minister, but not for the recipient.

Let them tell me, then, says Saint Augustine, which saint has suffered spiritual harm from an evil or blemished Priest, whether placed among Priests or among peoples? Where Moses and Aaron were, there were sacrilegious murmurers whom God always threatened to destroy from before his face; where Caiaphas and others like him were, there were Zachariah, Simeon, and the other good men; where Saul was, there was David; where Jeremiah, Isaiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel were, there were evil Priests and peoples: but each person carried his own burden.

— He responds secondly by turning the argument back against the Donatists:

Did Optatus have no blemish or fault, not to mention Parmenian himself or Donatus himself? But these men are so blinded by love of men, and with an immodest heart one does not hesitate to liken the adulterers of his own mind to the one legitimate husband, that he contends that what could be said only of the Lord Jesus Christ was also perfect in Donatus..... But let him attend again to whether Optatus at least had some blemish or some fault. They are not so blind as to answer that his life was altogether spotless and altogether free from fault. Why, then, did he approach to offer gifts to God, and did the others receive with joined hands what a blemished and faulty man had offered? Those who think most rightly understand that any human being, although in view of fellowship in human society he may not absurdly be called to live most justly, nevertheless cannot be without some fault, when the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, etc.

They objected 2. The passage of Psalm 49: God said to the sinner: Why do you recount my justice and take up my covenant through your mouth? But you have hated discipline and cast my words behind you, etc. And also that of Psalm 140: May the oil of the sinner not fatten my head. — Saint Augustine responds, in the same place, chapter 9, to the first: that the words which the Minister pronounces with his mouth profit him nothing if he himself does not do what he says; nevertheless they profit others, who hear and do even through evil men. The Lord himself teaches this in the Gospel, saying of the Pharisees: They have sat on the chair of Moses: do what they say, but do not do what they do, for they say and do not do. Then he turns the argument back against the Donatists themselves and shows that all the darts of that divine rebuke turn against the Donatists themselves:

For how do they not cast God's words behind them, he says, who proclaim peace and do not love peace? How do they not hate discipline, who dare to condemn an unheard word? etc.

— To the second text he responds in chapter 10 that by the sinner's oil is not understood sacramental Anointing, as the Donatists wrongly interpreted it, but the flatterer's blandishments; rejecting these, the royal Prophet chooses rather to be corrected and rebuked by a just man; for he says: Let the just man correct me in mercy: but the sinner's oil will not fatten my head.

Hence it is evident, says Saint Augustine, that the flatterer's blandishments are signified by the sinner's oil; rejecting and detesting these, he chooses to be corrected and rebuked by a just man, because when the just man does this not with the deceitful gentleness of flattery but with the truthful harshness of rebuke, he does it much more mercifully; hence there is also that passage in the Apocalypse, chapter 3: Those whom I love, I rebuke and chastise. And that passage in Solomon, Proverbs 27: The wounds of a friend are better than the voluntary kisses of an enemy.

They objected 3. Various oracles drawn from the words of the Book of Wisdom 1: The Holy Spirit will flee from the disguised person and will withdraw from thoughts that are without understanding. And from those of Ecclesiasticus 10: Dying flies ruin the sweetness of the perfume. And chapter 31: Who can be cleansed by the unclean? And in the same place: What does the washing profit one who is baptized by a dead man? — Saint Augustine responds to the first text, book 2 of Against the Letters of Petilian, chapter 25, that the meaning of this oracle is that one who deceitfully administers or receives divine things does not have the Holy Spirit; yet that divine Spirit flees from the Minister's deception, if he nevertheless supplies what is necessary for the confection of the Sacrament, while the Holy Spirit will be present to the recipient, who believes truly, doing both at once, namely fleeing the minister and saving the recipient; hence it follows that the Holy Spirit flees man's deception, but not the power of the Sacrament. In book 2 of Against the Letter of Parmenian, chapter 10, he turns it back against the Donatists, who boasted that none of their own were openly sinners:

It is enough for the necessary point of this case that they cannot deny that there are disguised good men among them, that is, secretly evil men. For many expose them, men who, although they lived there with ruined and wicked morals and had long been hidden by that very disguise, were eventually betrayed and expelled. Let us say, then: if they do not want any such men still to be there, those certainly who were expelled, if they were hiding in the same disguise and the Holy Spirit fled from them, of whom it is written: The Holy Spirit will flee from the disguised person; how can they baptize? Why are at least those who are living not listed, so that they may receive the Baptism which they could not have received from the disguised men whom the Holy Spirit abandoned? But if they say that the Holy Spirit was lacking for those who feigned in order to justify the recipients, but was present for the believing recipients, cleansing them through the ineffable efficacy of his power, able both to flee from the former and save the latter, to condemn the former and cleanse the latter: let them see that, in solving this question for themselves, they have at the same time solved it for us.

— Saint Jerome responds to the second in the same way: by dying flies are understood sinners who, through the folly of one sin lasting a short time, become foul and lose the sweetness of grace and reputation. Or, as Saint Augustine explains, book 2 of Against the Letter of Parmenian, chapter 10, those are understood who, returning to their vomit, lose the sweetness of sanctifying grace and destroy the good reputation of Christians by their wicked examples; they are the cause that God's name is blasphemed and that men are dragged from the path of piety to the slopes of sin:

*He says, the oil of sweetness, namely a good fragrance—that is, the good reputation of Christians—is destroyed by those who, intending to live badly and return to the death of their sins, correct a great multitude so that their sins may be forgiven them through Baptism, and then return to them again: for, because of their number, I think they are compared to flies: but these destroy the oil > of sweetness, because they look not to God's grace itself, but to human conduct.

— To the third oracle I say that its meaning is that attention should not be given to the vanity of dreams; for Ecclesiasticus says in the same place: Who will be cleansed by the unclean, and what truth will be spoken by a liar? Divination of error, omens, lies, and the dream of evildoers are vanity. By these words he signifies that, just as an unclean person cannot of himself cleanse another, so truth is not to be expected from a liar, diviner, or interpreter of dreams. Now it is certain that an unclean thing can be cleansed accidentally and through something else, for example if an unclean hand, broom, or lye is applied for cleansing: therefore unclean Ministers too can cleanse the recipient, not through their own power but through the Sacraments which they apply. — To the fourth Saint Augustine responds, in the place just cited, that by the words, what does the washing profit one who is baptized by a dead man? the Baptisms of pagans are meant:

They worship men who are dead both to justice and to this life, in whose name they are baptized. For although Priests themselves are also called dead through impiety, it is nevertheless not understood in this way because of them, but because of their dead gods, in whose sign it is said: The Lord our God is the living God. Therefore, even if among Christians there are some Prelates or Ministers who are dead through their impiety and iniquity, nevertheless he lives of whom it was said in the Gospel: This is he who baptizes; because, as the Apostle says: Christ rising from the dead now dies no more; death shall no longer have dominion over him.

— He gives the same solution in book 1 of Against the Letters of Petilian, chapter 9; hence in chapter 15 he turns the argument back against the Donatists:

If the Maximianists are not dead, why do the Donatists say in their plenary council concerning the Maximianists that the shore is full, after the manner and example of the Egyptians, of the funerals of those perishing, for whom in death itself the punishment is greater because, after their life has been forced out by avenging waters, they do not even find burial? But if they are dead, from where did the Baptism they gave come?

They objected 4. The passage of Jeremiah 15: My people have become to me like deceitful water, which has no faith. And that of Ezekiel 36: I will sprinkle clean water upon you: but, they said, water cleanses and sanctifies a murderer; how will darkness, namely sinners, bless oil, when the Lord has said in Numbers 19: Whatever the unclean person touches shall be unclean? — To the first Saint Augustine responds, book 2 of Against the Letter of Parmenian, around the middle:

Deceitful water that has no faith can be understood not as false Baptism, but as a deceitful and faithless people, not numbered among the truthful and faithful, but among those alone who are faithless and deceitful.... For thus it is said in John, Apocalypse 17: The waters which you saw, where the harlot sits, are peoples, tribes, nations, and tongues.

— To the second he responds, book 5 of On Baptism, chapter 20, that by that clean water is signified the grace of the New Testament and the spiritual abundance which is possessed through the Sacraments. Yet the Minister himself does not give this blessing from himself through baptismal water, to which he has imparted the power of cleansing: God, he says, is present with his Sacraments and words, whoever administers them, and God's Sacraments are sound everywhere, while many men, for whom they are of no benefit, are perverse everywhere.

They objected 5. The passage of Matthew 7: Do they gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles? And in the same place: A good tree cannot produce evil fruits, nor can an evil tree produce good fruits: therefore sinners cannot contribute anything to another's justification. — I deny the consequence; for, as Saint Augustine admirably responds, book 2 of Against the Letter of Petilian, chapter 6:

Every man, even if he is not guilty of his own crimes, does not make another innocent, because he is not God; and otherwise, if the innocence of the baptizer is expected to produce the innocence of the baptized, each person would be the more innocent the more innocent he found the one by whom he was baptized, and he himself would be the less innocent the more so was the one by whom he was baptized. And if perhaps he holds hatred against someone who baptizes, this too will be imputed to the one who is baptized. Why then does the wretched man run to Baptism? So that his own sins may be forgiven, or so that others' may be imposed? Is it as though a merchant's ship should take on another cargo? We customarily understand the good tree and its good fruit, and the evil tree and its evil fruit, as men and their works, as is shown consequently in the words which you too recalled: the good man brings forth good from the good treasure of his heart, and the evil man brings forth evil from the evil treasure of his heart. But when he preaches God's word, if he is evil he preaches or administers not from his own, etc.

Hence in book 1, chapter 8, he turns the argument back against the Donatists, who contended that Baptism conferred by a secret sinner was valid, but not that conferred by a manifest one:

If the good tree is a good baptizer, so that his fruit is good, namely the person whom he baptizes, whoever has been baptized by an evil man, even if he is not manifestly evil, cannot be good: for he has sprung from an evil tree; but a good tree is one thing, and a secret tree, though evil, is another. Or if, when the tree is secretly evil, whoever has been baptized by it is born not from it but from Christ, then those baptized by secretly evil men are justified more holily than those baptized by manifestly good men.

They objected 6. The passage of John 9: God does not hear sinners; but if anyone worships God and does his will, him he hears. Likewise that of Matthew 12: He who is not with me is against me; and he who does not gather with me scatters. — Saint Augustine responds, book 2 of Against the Letter of Parmenian, chapter 8, that the words:

God does not hear sinners, were not spoken by the Lord but by the man who already had the eyes of his body restored, while the eyes of his heart were not yet open; hence he still thought the Lord a Prophet, for later, having recognized him as the Son of God, he adored him. But the Lord himself, when the Pharisee and the Publican were praying in one temple, says that the Publican confessing his sins was more justified than the Pharisee boasting of his merits.... For although the justified man ceased to be a sinner, yet in order to be justified he prayed as a sinner and confessed as a sinner, and he was heard and justified so that he might cease to be a sinner; he would certainly not have ceased to be a sinner unless the sinner had first been heard. Therefore it is true not that every sinner is heard, but nevertheless not that every sinner is not heard. Add to this that the efficacy of Baptism does not depend on the merit of the baptizer but on the merits of the one in whose name Baptism is conferred. — To the second he responds, book 6 of On Baptism, chapter 31, that those words of Christ the Lord can be turned against the Donatists rather than against Catholics: For they scatter Christ's sheep, he says, who lead them by wicked imitation to the ruin of their morals; hence it is clear that they are over foreign children, since all the wicked are called so, and the offspring of Antichrist, since all who oppose Christ are such. The Holy Spirit cannot descend by the laying on of hands alone if true conversion of heart is absent, since it is manifest that the wicked, as long as they are wicked, can indeed have Baptism, but cannot have the salvation of which Baptism is the Sacrament.

They objected 7. The oracle of Christ the Lord, John 20: Receive the Holy Spirit: whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven them. Thus they argued: whoever ought to forgive sin through the conferral of a Sacrament must first himself be free from every sin and have the Holy Spirit in himself, so as to confer him on others; but a sinner does not have the Holy Spirit: therefore he can neither confer him on another through a Sacrament nor do anything toward the remission of another's sin. — Saint Augustine responds, book 2 of Against the Letter of Parmenian, chapter 11.

The Holy Spirit is so present in the Prelate or Minister in the Church that, if he is not feigned, the Holy Spirit works through him, both for his reward unto eternal salvation and for the regeneration or edification of those who through him are either consecrated or evangelized. But if he is feigned, since it is most truly written: For the Spirit of discipline will flee from the feigned person, he is deprived of his own salvation, since the Spirit withdraws from thoughts that are without understanding; nevertheless it does not abandon his ministry, through which it works the salvation of others.

THE OBJECTIONS WHICH THE DONATISTS COULD BRING EITHER FROM THE HOLY FATHERS OR FROM THEOLOGICAL REASON ARE PROPOSED.

They objected 2. If the due form, matter, or intention is lacking, the Sacrament cannot be validly confected: therefore, by similarity, if the due Minister is lacking, it likewise cannot be perfected; but that Minister is judged due and legitimate who is clean from every sin, according to Leviticus 21: A man who has a blemish shall not offer bread to his God, nor approach his ministry: therefore, etc. — I distinguish the major: if something essential is lacking in the matter, form, intention, or Minister, I concede; if something merely accidental, required only for decorum and greater fittingness, I deny. The Minister's probity is required only in this latter way, not in the former; hence Saint Augustine admirably, in a Treatise on John:

*We all say that the ministers of so great a Judge ought to be just; but if they who sit in Moses' chair are unwilling to be just, my Teacher makes me secure, of whom the Spirit said: he is the one who baptizes.... I do not fear the adulterer, the drunkard, or the murderer, because I look to the dove, through which it is said to me: he is the one who baptizes.... Judas gave Baptism, and there was no baptism after Judas; John gave it, and there was baptism after John; because what was given by Judas was Christ's Baptism: what was given by John was John's: we prefer not John's Baptism to Christ's, but Christ's Baptism, even when given through Judas's hands, to John's Baptism. Those whom John baptized, John baptized; those whom Judas baptized, Christ baptized: therefore, those whom the drunkard, adulterer, or murderer baptizes, if the Baptism is Christ's by grace, Christ baptized them, for that Sacrament is so holy that it is not defiled even when a murderer ministers it.

You will object: Saint Augustine himself, book 3 of On Baptism, chapter 18: Wicked Ministers do not give remission of sins: therefore neither do they give grace. — I distinguish the antecedent: wicked Ministers do not give remission of sins impetratorily, namely that remission which is given through the prayers of the Saints and of the dove, that is, the groaning and prayers of the Church, I concede: for that remission is given from the work of the worker, insofar as pious Ministers of the Sacraments obtain from God through holy works or prayers good movements of sanctifying and assisting grace, by which the recipients are turned toward God; they do not give the remission of sins which is conferred by the power of the Sacraments and from the work performed, I deny: for, as Saint Augustine himself teaches in book 2 of Against the Letter of Parmenian: All the Sacraments, although they harm those handling them unworthily, nevertheless profit those who worthily receive them through them, whence it was said in Matthew 23: Do what they say, but do not do what they do.

You will press: The remission of sins occurs through the conferral of grace, which is conferred through the Sacraments: but that remission and grace are given only through holy Ministers, not through wicked ones, as Saint Augustine himself teaches in many places, especially book 3 of On Baptism, chapter 18, affirming that the words of Christ the Lord, Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven them, were not spoken to robbers and undertakers. And in book 5, chapter 21: God gives the Sacrament of grace even through evil men; grace itself, however, only through himself or his Saints. — I distinguish the minor: the remission of sins and the conferral of grace do not occur through wicked and evil men decently and duly, I concede; they do not occur validly and absolutely, I deny: for, as Saint Augustine himself teaches in book 6 of On Baptism, chapter 5: It contributes nothing to the holiness of Baptism how much worse a person is who has it, or how much worse the person who gives it; he can give it while separated, just as he can have it while separated; but as harmful as it is to have it, so harmful is it to give it; yet the one to whom he gives it can receive it beneficially, etc.

You will object 3. Saint Ambrose, book 1 of On Initiation, chapter 1, where he says: In some there is deceitful water; the Baptism of the faithless does not heal or cleanse, but pollutes. And Innocent I, as reported in question 1, canon Who has perfection, where we read: Those who have lost the perfection of the spirit which they had seized cannot give its fullness, since they lost it through their faithlessness; he who did not have the honor could not give honor, nor seize anything, because there was nothing in the giver; but he gave the damnation which he had through the wicked laying on of hands: therefore wicked Ministers do not confer grace through the Sacraments. — I deny the consequence, and to the first I say that Saint Ambrose is not speaking of Sacraments duly conferred by wicked Ministers, but of heretics who celebrated Baptism not in the form of the Church but in the form of their own perversity. To the second I distinguish: when an adult knowingly and willingly receives the Church's Sacraments without necessity from Ministers separated from the Church, when he could easily receive them from legitimate Ministers, he receives damnation rather than grace because of contempt and disdain for the Church, I concede; because of the nullity and invalidity of the Sacrament, I deny.

You will object: Wicked Ministers profane and pollute the Sacraments: therefore they cannot sanctify through them. — I distinguish the antecedent: they profane them with respect to themselves, because of their perverse will and wickedness, by which, handling a sacred thing unworthily, they are more polluted while they cleanse others, I concede; on the part of the Sacraments and recipients, I deny: for according to Augustine, book 3 of On Baptism, chapter 10: The water over which God's name is invoked is not profane and adulterous; therefore neither the creature itself nor the name itself is adulterous. Christ's Baptism is preserved by the words of the Gospel, and is holy both through adulterers and in adulterers, because its holiness cannot be removed or polluted, and divine power attends its Sacrament, whether for the salvation of those living well or for the ruin of those using it badly; for the light of wax or of a lamp, when diffused through sewers, contracts no filth from them; and Christ's Baptism cannot be polluted by crimes. And from Nicholas I, To the Consultations of the Bulgarians, chapter 1: No one, however polluted, can pollute the divine Sacraments; nor can a sunbeam passing through sewers draw any contagion from them. Therefore, whatever sort of priest he is, he cannot pollute what is holy; nevertheless, if it is to be received in common, it is to be received from him until he is rejected by the judgment of the Bishops: for wicked men administering good things harm only themselves, just as a wax light when lit causes harm to itself but provides light to others in darkness.

Second Conclusion. — A CONSECRATED MINISTER COMMITS MORTAL SIN EVERY TIME HE CONFECTS AND ADMINISTERS THE SACRAMENTS IN A STATE OF MORTAL SIN.

The first part is proved: a person sins as often as he transgresses an express divine command; but when a consecrated Minister confects and administers a Sacrament in a state of mortal sin, he transgresses a divine command: therefore, etc. The major is clear: for sin is a transgression and violation of the law. The minor is proved by all those texts of Scripture in which God commands that God's Ministers handle holy things holily; especially Leviticus 21: They shall be holy to their God and shall not pollute his name; for they offer the incense of the Lord and the bread of their God, and therefore they shall be holy. And chapter 22: Say to them, the sons of Aaron, and to their descendants: Every man who approaches from your offspring to the things that have been consecrated and that the children of Israel offered to the Lord, in whom there is uncleanness, shall perish before the Lord. And Isaiah 52: Cleanse yourselves, you who carry the vessels of the Lord. Hence Psalm 49, rebuking the sinner, says: Why do you recount my justice and take up my covenant through your mouth? But you have hated discipline, etc. From these it can be inferred that if the greatest purity and cleanliness were required in the Ministers of the Old Law, and if a sinner is rebuked because he dares to utter God's covenant, the precepts of the Law, and praises, how much more is purity of conscience and spirit required in the Ministers of the New Law, so that they may worthily approach to handle the Sacraments, which are ordered to confer not only legal holiness but also internal and supernatural holiness?

The same truth is proved by the authority of the Supreme Pontiffs and the Holy Fathers; for Saint Gregory, book 1 of the Letters, Letter 21, says: It is necessary that the hands of the one who strives to wash away filth should strive to be clean, lest by touch he pollute each thing worse. For it is written: Cleanse yourselves, you who carry the vessels of the Lord. Likewise from Nicholas I in his responses to the consultations of the Bulgarians: Many, he says, by administering good things harm only themselves, just as a wax light when lit is a detriment to itself but administers light to others in darkness, and from the source of benefit to others it brings loss to itself. Urban I, Letter to Lucius: Our predecessors Nicholas and Gregory VII decreed that the faithful abstain from the Masses of priests who are found to be drunkards or adulterers, so that such men may not be deprived of the threshold of divine penance. Gregory IX, in the final chapter On the Time of Ordination, says that individual Priests are to be removed and adjured under threat of divine judgment, if they have not purified themselves, not to minister in the orders they have received. And in the final chapter On the Cohabitation of Clerics and Women: Every Priest who has bound himself by mortal sin is to be suspended, not because he has been affected by a special censure of the Church, but because by reason of his state he is impeded from doing divine things.

The Holy Fathers teach the same truth, especially Saint Augustine, book 2 of Against the Letter of Parmenian, chapter 10, where he says: The Sacraments, although they harm those handling them unworthily, nevertheless profit those who worthily receive them through them.

Reason also supports it: irreverence toward God and pollution of sacred things is a sin mortal by its kind, since it is sacrilege; but the administration of the Sacraments, when performed by a Minister who is in mortal sin, is a kind of irreverence toward God and pollution of the Sacraments themselves; for that Minister, as far as lies in him, pollutes them. He shows himself unworthy of God's presence when he thrusts himself into the sacred ministry in a state hateful to God: therefore, etc. — Furthermore, one sins in acting who does what ought not to be done; but one who administers the Sacraments in a state of mortal sin does not act as he ought, because the Minister ought to conform to his Lord, according to Ecclesiasticus 10: As is the judge of the people, so also is his Minister; but the Lord is most holy. Hence Saint Augustine, Treatise 5 on John, concludes: We all say that the Ministers of so great a Judge ought to be just, etc. — Finally, the holiness of the Sacraments, since it is a sacred thing, must also be handled holily, not profanely, that is, with the unworthiness of mortal sin, as a profane action is exercised; but when the Sacraments are administered in a state of mortal sin, such action on the Minister's part is not distinguished from a profane action, since it is hateful and injurious to God: therefore, etc.

You will say: Sinners do not incur a new sin while performing works of charity; but the administration of the Sacraments is a work of charity: therefore a sinner who administers them does not incur a new sin. — I distinguish the major: one who performs works of charity from something not consecrated, and for which he is not bound by justice, let it pass; one who performs works of charity from a sacred thing, which he is bound to exercise by reason of justice, does not commit mortal sin, I deny. And with the minor distinguished in the same way, the consequence must be denied: since the Sacraments are sacred in themselves and the Minister is bound by office to confer them, probity of life is required in him, so that he may handle holy things holily.

You will object: If it is a mortal sin to administer the Sacraments in a state of mortal sin, especially because every administration of a sacred thing in a state of mortal sin brings in a new mortal sin: but the consequent is false: therefore, etc. The major is established by what was just said. The minor, however, is proved: first, because if a Bishop in mortal sin confers the first Tonsure, effects chrism, blesses oil, or consecrates a church, he effects a sacred thing; yet he does not sin mortally. Likewise, Deacons or Subdeacons ministering in mortal sin perform a sacred thing, yet they do not thereby commit a new mortal sin. Finally, preachers announcing the Word of God by office in a state of mortal sin administer a sacred thing, yet they do not seem to sin mortally: therefore neither do those who administer the Sacraments. — I deny the minor, and to its first proof I say that, indeed, it does not seem improbable that a Bishop effecting the aforesaid things does not sin mortally, because these are merely certain sacramentals, which in themselves are not immediately instituted to confer grace, nor in them does the Minister act as the legate of God who sanctifies the soul, and consequently, in performing these things in a state of mortal sin, they do not seem to commit a new sin: for this requires not only that it be a sacred thing, but also that the action itself be consecrated in itself and ordered to immediately conferring sanctity on the soul, and furthermore that he be deputed to that action by office: nevertheless, I would not consider free from venial sin one who performed these things in a mortal state: because ministers of sacred things are bound to have holiness above other men; for they ought to be conformed to the Lord, whose legates they are. — As for the Deacon and Subdeacon carrying out their proper ministry in a state of mortal sin, they do not seem free from a new sin: since St. Paul, 1 Timothy 3, warns that Deacons likewise must be chaste, not double-tongued, not devoted to much wine, not pursuing shameful gain, holding the mystery of faith in a pure conscience. Hence Alexander II, as we read in Distinction 32, chapter Furthermore, decreed:

Whatever Priest, Deacon, or Subdeacon, after the constitution of our predecessor of blessed memory, Saint Pope Leo, and of Nicholas concerning the chastity of Clerics, has not abandoned a concubine or wife, we command on the part of Almighty God and by the authority of the blessed Apostles, and absolutely forbid him, to sing Masses, to read the Gospel or Epistle at Mass, to remain in the Presbyterium for divine offices with those who obeyed the blessed constitution, or to receive a portion from the Church.

Although he prescribes only against concubinary Deacons and Subdeacons, nevertheless the same seems to be said concerning those themselves who are guilty of any mortal sin, because they perform a sacred thing irreverently and unworthily. Hence, in chapter Quaesitum on the times of ordinations, Gregory IX says that not only adulterous priests, but also adulterous clerics, murderers, perjurers, and false witnesses are to be removed and, under threat of divine judgment, earnestly admonished not to minister in the Orders they have received as a testimony to their condemnation, unless they repent. I nevertheless judge that exercising the acts of the minor Orders in mortal sin is not a mortal sin: both because the matter is light, and because those acts are ordered only remotely to the sacrifice and the Sacrament, nor is it altogether certain that those minor Orders have the character of a perfect and complete Sacrament. — As for preachers, it appears probable that, fulfilling their ministry in mortal sin, they sin mortally: because they carry out a just and holy matter unjustly, since they depart from the holiness both of the Gospel and of Christ the Lord, whose place and ministry they undertake. Hence God also sharply rebukes their audacity in these words of the Psalm: Why do you recount my justices? etc.

Third Conclusion. — IT IS LICIT TO ASK FOR AND RECEIVE THE SACRAMENTS OF BAPTISM AND PENANCE FROM ANY MINISTER IN A CASE OF NECESSITY; IT IS ALSO LICIT TO RECEIVE THEM FROM ANY EVIL MINISTER WHEN HE IS TOLERATED IN THE CHURCH, IF SOME NECESSITY URGES; BUT NOT IF HE HAS BEEN CUT OFF, WHEN THERE IS NO PRESSING NECESSITY. This Conclusion consists of three parts, of which

The first is handed down in the Council of Trent, Session 14, chapter 7, where we read:

It has always been observed in the Church of God that there is no relaxation at the point of death; and likewise all Priests can absolve any penitents from any sins and censures in the ultimate danger of life.

The same is established in Eugene's decree at the end of the Council of Florence, where it is decreed that in a case of necessity even a Pagan or Heretic can baptize, provided he observes the Church's form and intends to do what the Church does. Saint Augustine also teaches the same, book 1 of On Baptism, chapter 2, where he says:

If extreme necessity should perhaps compel, when he has not found a Catholic through whom he may receive it, and he preserves Catholic peace in his mind, so that he has received it through someone placed outside Catholic unity, if it happens that he immediately departs this life, we regard him as Catholic and nothing else.

Reason also supports this: for the revocation and removal of jurisdiction, as regards the confection and administration of the Sacraments, is not made as a punishment of the faithful receiving the Sacraments, but as a punishment of the wicked ministers. Furthermore, the Doctor says, distinction 5, question 2, no. 3: The precept of a superior obliges more than that of an inferior; but God commands Baptism to be received and did not determine from whom in a time of necessity; the Church, however, forbids association with one whom it cuts off: therefore in that case the divine precept must be obeyed more than the Church's. That is, when an obligation of ecclesiastical law coincides with an obligation of divine law, ecclesiastical law yields to divine law, and the lesser to the greater; but the obligation to receive the Sacrament of Baptism and Penance is of divine law, whereas the prohibition against receiving Sacraments from a Minister separated from the Church is only of ecclesiastical law: therefore, etc. Finally, the Doctor says in the same place:

The excommunicated person is more bound to avoid others than others are bound to flee his company, because avoiding an excommunicated person is his punishment for his contumacy, and it binds him more to avoid others than it binds others to avoid him. But, says the Doctor, one who has been cut off or excommunicated in that case is not bound to avoid another; rather, he is bound not to avoid him. For if such a cut-off person knew that some little child, not baptized, would die immediately, he would necessarily be bound to baptize him, and thus not to avoid him in the act of baptizing. I prove this because if he found him exposed to danger of bodily life through hunger, he would necessarily be bound to help him in order to save his bodily life; but he is more bound to love his spiritual life than his bodily life: therefore, when the little child is exposed to danger of spiritual life, he is bound to confer upon him the remedy necessary for spiritual life; therefore much more is another not bound to avoid that same person by associating with him in such an act.

The second part is proved, namely, that it is permitted to ask for the Sacraments from a bad Minister who has not been cut off by the Church, but is tolerated, and upon whom it falls by office to minister the Sacrament. I say it is proved first from the decrees of the Supreme Pontiffs, especially Nicholas I, as is related in question 5, chapter Scribentibus, where, responding to the inquiries of the Bulgarians, he writes: When writing to us asking whether you ought to receive communion from a priest who has been caught in adultery, or has merely been tainted by this reputation, or not, we answer: Communion is to be received from him until he has been rejected by the judgment of the Bishops. Likewise, Lucius III, chapter Vestra on the cohabitation of clerics and women, where we read:

In some places it is said: Let no one hear the Mass of a Priest whom he knows with certainty to have a concubine. In some places it is read: No matter how polluted he may be, he cannot pollute the divine Sacraments. Therefore, the mysteries of Christ are received fearlessly from every Priest. For the rest, one distinction concerns what is notorious, another what is occult. What is notorious is defined as that concerning which a Presbyter is canonically condemned; what is occult is what is tolerated by the Church: it is one thing when a Presbyter does not deny a notorious crime, or is canonically condemned for it. It is another thing to abstain from the offices of such men, so that the license to sin may be taken away from the others, and people of this kind may be drawn to the Sacrament of Penance. It is another thing if such mysteries are rejected as though they belonged to men lying in fornication. Therefore, hold without doubt that from clerics and presbyters, as from fornicators, so long as they are tolerated and do not possess the essence of the work, the divine mysteries may lawfully be heard and the other Ecclesiastical Sacraments received. And in the same place Gregory IX, chapter Quaesitum est, says: It was asked concerning clerics who have fallen into fornication, whether their office should be heard before they have repented. Indeed, although anyone who is known, as regards himself, to be suspended for mortal sin ought not to be avoided in his offices, nevertheless, as regards others, he is not already suspended in the case proposed, unless such sin is notorious through a sentence, or a confession made in court, or through the obviousness of the matter, which cannot be concealed by any evasion.

The Doctor clearly explains this truth, distinction 5, question 2, no. 15, where he says:

*As to the second member of the distinction, namely concerning an evil man not cut off by the Church, if he is secretly evil, so that his life is not scandalous to the people, it is sufficiently conceded that some people may, indeed ought to, receive Baptism from such a man, if otherwise they ought to receive it, because on account of a sin that is not notorious no one ought to avoid his neighbor in notorious acts. But if he is either notoriously evil, for example publicly a fornicator or something of that kind, either it falls to him by office to dispense the Sacrament of Baptism, for example because he is a Priest or Parish Curate, or, if it does not fall to him, it is nevertheless fitting by reason of his office, for example because he is a Priest assigned or called to assist the Curate. In the first way, the one who receives Baptism for himself or for his little child does not sin, because one does not sin who asks a due thing from an evil man; that Curate is a debtor to his parish in administering these Sacraments. In the second way, if he can have another whose office it is to baptize, either equally evil or better: if better, the one who receives from him sins, because it does not fall to him to administer the Sacraments; and if equally evil, he ought to receive from his own. But if no other Curate or Priest can be obtained except one equally evil with this man, while a good Layman can nevertheless be obtained, it is doubtful which should be preferred to which in this act: a good Layman to a publicly evil Priest, or an evil Priest to a good Layman. And briefly, because the offi> ce of administering the Sacraments in the Church belongs to Priests, it seems that it should be said that, as regards this act, the evil Priest is rather to be chosen.

You will say 1: From the Apostle, Romans 1: They are worthy of death not only those who do those sins, but also those who consent to those doing them; but one who asks for or receives Sacraments from an evil Minister shares in his sin, namely in the sacrilegious administration of the Sacrament: therefore, etc. — I deny the minor, for one who receives the Sacraments from an evil Minister tolerated by the Church does not share in that wicked man's sin, but rather in the holiness of the Church, by which it presents or tolerates that Minister for carrying out divine things and serving the salvation of the faithful.

You will press: One who leads another into sin shares in his sin; but one who asks for a Sacrament from a Minister whom he knows to be wicked leads him to sin, namely to commit sacrilege: therefore, etc. — The Doctor denies the minor, in the place cited above, no. 9, where he says:

I say that one who asks Baptism from an evil Priest does not cooperate with him directly in mortal sin; for he asks from him an act that is due, and in this he does not sin, because no one's wickedness excuses him from fulfilling the duty by which he is bound to another. That requested act could also be fulfilled without sin if the one who is to baptize were converted. Hence, so far as concerns the act of the one asking, the asker rather compels the Priest to repent than to perform an act of sin. But if he does not repent, nothing is to be imputed to the one who asks for that act, because he does not ask for it insofar as it is a sin, but insofar as it is a duty.

You will ask: How should one conduct himself toward a Simoniac Minister who would not confer a Sacrament without receiving a payment? — The Doctor responds, no. 7.

I say that if he were unwilling to baptize in any way unless he received payment for the act of baptizing, and thus were perfectly simoniacal, because he was selling the Sacrament, Baptism must in no way be received from him, neither for an adult, because that person would sin mortally and is not obliged to receive the Sacrament when he cannot receive it without mortal sin, nor for his own little child: even suppose that there were no one in the Province who was willing to baptize. AND IF YOU ARGUE, then he exposes his little child to the danger of damnation. — I answer: let him baptize the child himself if he can, for example if he is neither maimed nor mute, or if he cannot find anyone to baptize his little child except by buying Baptism, he ought to let his little child die without Baptism: evil things must not be done so that good may come from them, Romans, chapter 3. *and each person ought to love himself more than his neighbor, and consequently ought to avoid mortal sin in himself more than damnation in another. Nevertheless, that difficult case, or one that would never occur, is such that Baptism can be obtained without simony being committed on the part of the one baptizing or of the one offering the little child for baptism. For if that Priest wished to sell his water and would in no way grant it otherwise, the water itself may be bought, even suppose that it is consecrated; but with no regard whatsoever to the consecration, because it would be worth as much as unconsecrated water. Thus it is permitted to sell a consecrated chalice, with no regard whatsoever to buying or selling the consecration. But if the Priest endeavors to sell > the act of baptizing, the one who offers the little child may buy it, not intending to buy the act insofar as it is sacramental, but the Priest's labor in that act. Just as nowadays Priests are hired to celebrate Masses, not so that they themselves sell, and others buy, the act of celebration insofar as it is sacramental—far be it from us—but they sell their labor, and others buy it: because each person must somehow live from his labor and obtain his livelihood.

Finally, the third part is proved, namely, that it is not permitted to ask for the Sacraments from a Minister cut off by the Church: first, indeed, from the aforementioned Councils of Constance, Basel, and Lateran, in which a penalty is decreed against those who received the Order or other Sacraments from prohibited Ministers. Second, from the Supreme Pontiffs, especially Innocent I, Letter 22, chapter 8, where he writes: We say that those ordained by heretics have their head wounded by that laying on of hands. Also from Saint Gregory, Book 3 of the Dialogues, chapter 31, where he relates and praises the generous steadfastness of Saint Hermenegild, who preferred to suffer the bloody death inflicted by his father's command rather than receive the Eucharist offered by Arian Bishops. — Likewise Nicholas I, in chapter 71 on the inquiries of the Bulgarians, responds:

Whatever sort of Priest he is, he cannot pollute holy things; therefore Communion is to be received from him until he is rejected by the judgment of the Bishops: and consequently he judges that it is not to be received from those who are cut off from the Church by an episcopal sentence and judgment. — Gregory VII establishes the same in book 2 of the Letters, Letter 15, which is to Rodulf and Berthold: You, he says, are in no way to receive the office from those whom you know either to have been promoted and ordained simoniacally or to be lying in the crime of fornication. Finally Urban II clearly hands down this truth in his Letter to Lucius, where, concerning Sacraments administered by notorious sinners, he says: > They certainly have their proper powers and dignities; but for those administering or receiving these same Sacraments contrary to the constitutions of the aforesaid Pontiffs, unless perhaps only death intervenes so that someone may not depart this life without Baptism or Communion, these things, I say, are so harmful to those administering and receiving them that they are almost idolaters, since the confection of Orders and Sacraments with such men, and knowingly receiving them otherwise than permitted, are vehemently forbidden by the holy Canons.

The Holy Fathers teach the same, especially Saint Ambrose, book On Initiation, chapter 4, where he says: The Baptism of the faithless does not heal or cleanse, but pollutes. And Saint Fulgentius, book On Faith to Peter, chapter 36: Hold most firmly and do not doubt at all that the Sacrament of Baptism can exist among heretics, but that outside the Catholic Church it cannot profit. And in book 1 of On Baptism, chapter 2, and elsewhere: They can have the form separately, he says, but power cannot be present in them, just as sensation does not follow a limb when it is cut off from the body.

From all these things follow four rules to be observed by the duty of justice, religion, and charity, which our Hiquaeus sets forth and explains in his Commentary on the Doctor's cited question, number 11. The first is: in a case of extreme necessity, whether one's own or that of a child, even a Minister who has been cut off can administer Baptism, and it can be asked for and received from him; because by the duty of charity and also by the duty of religion, by reason of his Order, he is bound to the person in extreme need, and thus by the precept both of charity toward oneself and toward the child, and by the duty of religion, the one asking is bound to embrace a Sacrament given by anyone; and this rule presupposes an extreme necessity that is either real or moral.

— The second rule is: a tolerated Priest who is a Parish Priest has, beyond the duty of charity and religion, also a duty of justice to administer the Sacrament to his subjects outside necessity, when no one else is available; and the parishioner may licitly ask the Sacrament even from him when it could not be deferred without grave harm.

I understand grave harm as an omission by which ecclesiastical law and custom would not be fulfilled, or when a notable loss would be suffered through its omission; and this rule applies equally when asking for the Sacrament from another. Nevertheless, the obligation rests upon the Minister unless he is the ordinary, or at least has been appointed by a superior as Vicar and assistant; in that case he has a duty to administer not only from charity but also from justice, provided he assumes that responsibility and the care of supplying the Parish Priest's deficiency.

— The third rule is: when someone can provide for himself otherwise without harm to himself, and without spiritual harm to his Parish Priest, he is bound by the affirmative precept of charity not to ask for the Sacrament from a wicked Parish Priest, whom he knows will minister only sacrilegiously, because through the frequent exercise of the ministry he is confirmed in evil and, having been given over to a reprobate mind, he despises conversion, which perhaps would not be delayed if others withdrew from his communion; because those who are hastening¹ into evil often come to a halt through the very confusion and are converted to the good. And perhaps the Parishioner is also bound to the same by the precept of religion, and of divine honor, and of reverence for the Sacrament.

What of these things concurs in the particular case here and now must be weighed from the circumstances of the case, applying these general rules, from which individual cases can be resolved in particular, in which one may associate with a notoriously evil Minister, whether cut off or not cut off.

— The fourth rule: as regards a Minister who is secretly evil, both publicly and privately one ought to ask the Sacrament from him if no other is available or cannot conveniently be awaited, provided the rule of charity is thereby observed, the rule previously given concerning the scandal of the Pharisees, by seeking his salvation and the reverence due to the Sacrament insofar as this can conveniently be done. Thus Hiquaeus.

NOTES 1. Agrippinus, Bishop of Carthage, was the very first to judge and define that those who had received Baptism from heretics were to be rebaptized, as we already noted in the preface to this Article. For although, as we said there, Tertullian professed the same dogma in On Baptism, chapter 17, where he writes:

Heretics have no fellowship with our discipline; the very deprivation of communion plainly attests that they are outsiders. I ought not to recognize in them what has been prescribed to me, because the God is not the same for us and for them, nor is Christ one and the same; and therefore neither is Baptism one, because it is not the same: since they do not have it rightly, unquestionably they do not have it, etc.:

Nevertheless, it is not altogether probable that Tertullian was earlier than Agrippinus, because it is entirely uncertain when Agrippinus lived and how long he held office. Hence it is not established whether Agrippinus drew this error concerning the rebaptizing of heretics from Tertullian; for Tertullian himself had said shortly before, Concerning heretics, what must indeed be observed, let someone worthily reconsider. For it has been published to us. By these words he signifies that it had already been defined by some Prelate of the Church that Baptism conferred by heretics was entirely invalid. But certainly it could not have been defined by anyone other than Agrippinus: for if some other, earlier person had handed down that dogma, he would undoubtedly have been praised by St. Cyprian. Moreover, if Agrippinus had drawn it from Tertullian, Augustine and the other defenders of Baptism conferred by heretics would not have been silent. For it would have greatly supported this defense to show that the opinion of Cyprian and Agrippinus had been drawn from Tertullian, who was afflicted by many errors. But whatever the case, it is certain that Agrippinus was the first of all to give an opinion concerning repeating the Baptism conferred by heretics. For under a certain pretext of piety, thinking that whatever belonged to heretics ought to be abominated by the Catholic Church, he attempted to overthrow Baptism conferred by heretics. But lest he alone seem to hold this view, he gathered the Bishops of Africa and Numidia in the year 217 and, after celebrating a Council, without seeking the opinion of all, issued a canon concerning repeating the Baptism of heretics; St. Cyprian recalls this constitution in his Letter to Quintus in these words:

Since Agrippinus, a man of blessed memory, together with his fellow Bishops who at that time governed the Church of God in the Province of Africa and Numidia, both decided and, after weighing the matter in a common examination of counsel, confirmed it: we too have followed their opinion, both religious and legitimate, salutary for the faith, and consonant with the Catholic Church.

Moreover, whether Agrippinus did this rightly, Augustine, treating the matter in On Baptism, chapter 7, discloses in these words: I believe this custom of receiving those baptized from heretics to have come down from the Apostles, like many things which are not begun in their writings, nor in the Councils of later times, and yet, because they are observed throughout the whole Church, are believed to have been believed and commended only by the Apostles. Thus he said that St. Cyprian held that this most salutary custom had, through his predecessor Agrippinus, as it were begun to be corrected. But as the truth, more diligently investigated, has taught, which after great waves of doubt was brought to the confirmation of a plenary Council, it is more truly believed to have begun to be corrupted through Agrippinus, not corrected.

Likewise Vincent of Lérins, a contemporary of the teacher Augustine, treating the same controversy in the Commonitorium, chapter 6, has this:

Agrippinus, Bishop of Carthage, of venerable memory, was the first to judge that this movement was contrary to the divine Canon, contrary to the rule of the universal Church, contrary to the mind of all fellow priests, and contrary to the custom and institutions of the forefathers, and that they were to be rebaptized; this presumption aroused so great an evil that it supplied not only all heretics with a pattern of sacrilege, but also certain Catholics with a plausible form of error.

NOTES 2. When Donatus, Bishop of Carthage, died in the year 250, and in the twelfth year of Pope Fabian, St. Cyprian was placed in charge of the Church of Carthage; for, writing to Pope Cornelius in Letter 50,

Resolved after review per both witnesses: "Quod" opener, "anno 250.", "Fabiani Papa 12.". in the second year, from which, after Fabian had been removed by martyrdom, he had become Roman Pontiff, he testifies that the fourth year of his see had then elapsed: but when Pontiff Cornelius had been crowned with martyrdom after two years of his tenure under the Emperors Gallus and Volusianus, Lucius was appointed in his place; and when he likewise had sat for two years, as he was being led to martyrdom he gave all the power of the Church to his Archdeacon Stephen, who succeeded him in the Pontifical see. While he was sitting in the second year of his pontificate, peace having been restored to the Church through the extinction of the errors mentioned above, a great controversy arose among the Catholic Prelates on the occasion of the Novatians and Kataphrygians.

For when the Novatians, and before them the Kataphrygians, whom they had torn away from the Catholic Church, were accustomed to baptize again those whom they regarded as impure, this provoked certain Bishops, chiefly established in Africa, to emulation; and their Primate, St. Cyprian, so that those whom they received from the Novatians into the Church might baptize again as stained rather than cleansed by heretical Baptism; lest, by doing otherwise, they should seem to prove that among heretics there truly are Sacraments, and consequently a true Church, and lest they should offer heretics a free occasion to insult Catholics if Catholics approved the Sacraments of heretics: the heretics scorned as impurities what had been conferred by Catholics. Added to this and increased the stimulus was the fact that nearly all the passages of divine Scripture, drawn both from the Old and the New Testament, seemed to conspire in this very opinion, since God regards and rejects as more abominable whatever has been touched by the impious the more sacred it is.

But such a controversy did not first begin to be debated in Africa; rather, the first waves of this storm were stirred in the East, namely on the occasion that Bishops assembling at Iconium from Cappadocia, Cilicia, Galatia, and other neighboring regions had decided that none of the things done by heretics was to be received by the Catholic Church—not ordinations, not Baptism, nor any other sacred thing. Firmilian recalls this Synod in his Letter to St. Cyprian, in the words previously quoted and appended: Since some were doubting about their Baptism, who, although they receive new Prophets, nevertheless do not seem to know our Father and Son, we, many assembling together at Iconium, carefully discussed and confirmed that every Baptism whatsoever which has been constituted outside the Church must be rejected. By these words he indicates that this assembled Synod was against the Kataphrygians, who affirmed the Father and the Son, as Catholics did, but affirmed the Holy Spirit to be no one other than their author Montanus.

But I think it must be said that they rejected not only Baptism conferred by the Kataphrygians, but also that conferred by all heretics without exception: for it is clearly gathered from the Council of Nicaea, Canon 19, that the Baptism of the Kataphrygians was null and invalid. But if they had rejected Baptism conferred by heretics as invalid only because of a defect of form, and had firmly persisted in the opinion that it was to be rejected, what reason would there have been for Stephen to excommunicate them, as indeed there was?

For Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, in his Letter which is read in Eusebius, book 7, chapter 5, affirms in these words that Pontiff Stephen excommunicated all these Bishops who persisted in the opinion: *Stephen had earlier written a Letter to Helenus and to Firmilian concerning all the Bishops who were from Cilicia, Cappadocia, and Galatia, and from all the nations which were neighboring, that he could not communicate even with them. For they, he says, rebaptize heretics.

Stephen himself also proved this by deed. For when those Eastern Fathers, who by establishing these things had been deprived of communion with the Apostolic See, had sent Episcopal Legates to Stephen himself at Rome to give an account of what had been done in the Synod, Stephen neither received those Legates nor permitted them to be received by anyone, as Firmilian complains; and Firmilian, having been cut off from Apostolic communion, hurls against Pope Stephen many things unworthy of a Bishop and a Christian man in his celebrated Letter, where he says the following ironically:

For what could be more humble or gentle than to disagree with so many Bishops throughout the world: breaking with each one in a different kind of discord, now with the Easterners, as we confidently know was not hidden from us, now with us who are in the South, from whom he received Episcopal Legates quite patiently and gently, so as not even to admit them to at least a conversation of common intercourse; and, moreover, still most beloved and mindful of charity, to order the whole brotherhood that no one should receive them into his house, so that, when they came, not only peace and communion but also roof and lodging would be denied them.

That this Synod had previously been held at Iconium, before anything concerning this controversy was defined in Africa, is clearly attested by the aforementioned Dionysius in Eusebius, book 7, chapter 6, at the end.

This, nevertheless, I have learned, he says: that it was not only the Bishops in Africa who sanctioned this custom concerning rebaptizing heretics; rather, long before, in the memory of the Bishops who preceded us, in Churches celebrated with the greatest concourse of people, and in synods of the brethren, both at Iconium and in many other places where they were assembled, this decree was made; and we do not dare condemn their judgments and opinions.

Hence it is established that the sentence of excommunication meanwhile issued was not against the Africans but against the Easterners; and that those whose Legates were spurned were not the ones who came from Africa to Rome after the Synod of Carthage, but those who came from the East after those Synods had been completed.

Moreover, when Cyprian had held a Synod of his fellow Bishops at Carthage in the year 255, and in the second year of Stephen had been asked by certain Bishops of Numidia—as is clear from the Letter which he wrote to Januarius and the other Bishops of Numidia, which is Letter 70—to disclose what he and his colleagues thought about Baptism conferred by heretics, he writes to them as follows:

When we were together in Council, dearest brothers, we read your letter, which you brought back to us, concerning those who seem to have been baptized among heretics and schismatics, whether they ought to be baptized into the Catholic Church, which is one. Although in this matter you yourselves there hold the truth and firmness of the Catholic rule, nevertheless, because you consider that we should be consulted out of our common affection: we do not offer a new opinion, but join to you in equal agreement the opinion established long ago by our predecessors and observed by us, namely judging and holding with certainty that no one can be baptized outside, outside the Church, since there is one Baptism constituted in the holy Church, etc.

But when Cyprian noticed that many Bishops wished to preserve intact the traditions of their forefathers which they had received concerning this matter, thinking that they were being led astray by error, Cyprian, attempting to meet the disease with a greater remedy (which he thought he should address), held at Carthage a new but more celebrated Synod of 71 Bishops; he recalls it himself, writing to Jubaianus, Letter 73, in these words: What we had defined in the Council when many of us were present, what we had likewise written afterward to our colleague Quintus when he complained about the same matter, and what now too, when we had assembled together, we, the province of Africa, with the Numidian Bishops numbering seventy-one, have again confirmed by our opinion. But so that he might make the supreme Pontiff Stephen, still ignorant of this controversy, certain of what had been established in this fuller Council by the vote of all, he sent him by Legates previously dispatched to Rome all the decrees issued earlier, and the letters written on this matter to the Bishops of Numidia and to Quintus; as is clear from the Letter to Stephen himself, which is number 72.

Although Stephen's own letters do not survive, what he answered and wrote back can nevertheless be gathered tacitly from what Cyprian himself has in Letter 71 to Pompeius, Bishop of Sabrata in Africa, where he says:

Because you desired that what our brother Stephen wrote back to me in response to our letters should be brought to your knowledge, I have sent you a copy of his reply; when you have read it, you will mark his error more and more, for he attempts to defend the cause of heretics against Christians and against the Church of God; for among other things, either arrogant, or irrelevant, or contradictory to himself, which he wrote ineptly and imprudently, he also added this: "If therefore anyone comes to us from any heresy, let nothing be innovated except what has been handed down, etc.

St. Cyprian rebukes and assails this reply at length in that Letter, which, when Augustine had read it as written somewhat too ardently and less reverently against Stephen, and could not excuse Cyprian concerning each of the insults brought against Stephen, he preferred to cover it with silence rather than reopen it while the scars had not yet closed. Hence in book 5 of On Baptism, chapter 25, he mentions only St. Cyprian's earlier Letter to Stephen, in which there were no insults.

When Cyprian therefore saw that Stephen was resisting him, he did not hesitate to summon 87 Bishops from Africa, Numidia, and Mauritania, and with them convened a third Synod at Carthage; there, with the votes of all counted, the prior opinion concerning rebaptizing those baptized by heretics was established and confirmed. You have the complete acts of this Council in the same St. Cyprian, and in St. Augustine, books 6 and 7 of On Baptism against the Donatists, where he thoroughly recounts the individual opinions.

It is evident that this Council was celebrated after the two aforesaid ones, and after Stephen’s Epistle, first because Cyprian’s Epistle to Jubaianus and to the Bishops of Numidia, and theirs to Cyprian, are read at the beginning of the Council: but these had been issued after the two earlier ones. Then because his spirit, stirred against Stephen, sufficiently appears at the beginning of that Council, where, without naming Stephen, he accuses him of calling himself the Bishop of Bishops. It remains, he says, that each of us should state what we think about this matter, judging no one, nor removing anyone from the right of communion if he thinks differently. For none of us has constituted himself Bishop of Bishops, nor by tyrannical terror compels his colleagues to the necessity of observing.

By these words he seems to allude to what Stephen, following the custom of his forefathers, had said in his decree: that he was the Bishop of Bishops, and that he had sharply threatened with the penalty of excommunication those who thought otherwise than he had defined.

NOTED 3. Fifteen years after the consummation of the martyrdom of Saint Cyprian, who suffered in the year 261, the schism of the Donatists arose, namely in the year 306, which afterward declined into open heresy. For two principal errors of the Donatists are noted: first, that they said the Church throughout the whole world had been extinguished by the contagion of communion with the Traditores, and that it alone remained intact in Africa among the followers of Donatus; second, that against the definition of the universal Church they restored the dogma of rebaptizing not only those who had been baptized by heretics, but also those baptized by Catholics, whom they treated as betrayers of the sacred books and altars. Although they said that they did not baptize those approaching the party of Donatus, but gave Baptism, which had not previously been given, because they considered there to be none among Catholics, just as there was no other Sacrament; for they anointed again and imposed hands again, not only on lower Clerics, but also on Priests and Bishops, some of whom they reduced to the order of the Laity.

Moreover, since every heresy, when stirred up and tormented by the author of dissension, cannot preserve unity and concord, it is not surprising that, as Saint Augustine observes in Heresy 69, this sect of the Donatists was split into various parties, which also had different names, as we said. For some were called Maximianists, from Maximianus, the Pseudo-Bishop of Carthage; others Primianists, from Primianus, the Pseudo-Bishop of that same city; some Rogatists, from Rogatus, a Bishop in Caesarian Mauritania; the rest Montenses, or Rupitani, who held their assemblies around Rome in caves and clefts of mountains and rocks; they are also called Campitae or Campenses. Affiliated with this heresy was that which was called the Circumcellions, a rustic kind of people who raged with insane savagery not only against others but also against themselves. For through various deaths, especially precipices, waters, and fires, they killed themselves so that they might appear to be Martyrs, and provoked others to such madness. But since those sects boasted that the true Church existed only among themselves, they rebaptized those who approached them, even if they had been baptized elsewhere; and since they regarded the others as heretics, they rejected the Baptism conferred by them as invalid and void. All of them, however, supported and defended that perverse dogma by the authority of the teaching of Saint Cyprian, whom the universal Church venerated as a most holy Martyr.

With these matters presupposed, for greater clarity regarding what is to be said, one thing remains: namely, that we prove that faith is not a condition required in the Minister for him to confer a Sacrament validly, and consequently that Baptism conferred by heretics is not to be rejected.

One Conclusion. — THE MINISTER’S FAITH IS NOT ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY FOR THE CONSECRATION AND ADMINISTRATION OF A SACRAMENT. This has been determined as a matter of faith in various Councils, especially the First Council of Arles, celebrated under Sylvester I in the year 314, Canon 8, where we read:

Regarding Africa, whose people use their own law so as to rebaptize: it has been decided that if some from this heresy come to the Church, the priests of our faith should question them about the Creed; and if they believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, hands should be imposed on them so that they may receive the Spirit. But if, when questioned, they do not > answer this Trinity, let them be baptized.

To avoid the force of this Canon and the condemnation of their error, the Donatists are believed to have substituted of the Arians for the word of Africa. From this substitution it is gathered that, since the Arian heresy was not yet known to the Western Church in the year 314, it is more probable that the First Council of Arles was celebrated in that year than in 326, as some Acts of that same Council report.

The Africans who opposed Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, were schismatics; from the schismatics came the Anabaptists; from the Anabaptists, the Trinitarians, who arose and were called Arians shortly afterward. They are therefore ordered to be rebaptized because the required form and invocation of the Trinity had not been preserved in their Baptism. For this is clear from the aforesaid words:

If some from heresy come to the Church, the priests of our faith should question them about the Creed; and if they believe that they have been baptized in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, only hands should be imposed on them so that they may receive the Spirit. But if, when questioned, they do not answer this Trinity, let them be baptized.

The First Council of Nicaea likewise established the same thing. For, as Saint Jerome reports in the Dialogue against the Luciferians near the end, it prohibited the rebaptizing of heretics, except the Paulianists, because they did not use the required and customary form; thus it decreed in Canon 19.

If anyone should flee to the Catholic Church from the Paulianists, and Kataphrygians, it has been established that they ought to be rebaptized. Those who were Clerics among them, if they have been found blameless and irreproachable, should also be ordained again by the Bishop of the Catholic Church. And Canon 8: If anyone wishes to come to the Catholic Church from the Novatians, it has been decided that hands should be imposed on him; and if they remain in the Clergy,

the Council does not order them to be baptized again, because they baptized with the proper form and matter.

Saint Jerome also reports in the same place that the Bishops who, with Saint Cyprian, had held in the three preceding Councils of Carthage that those baptized by heretics and schismatics ought to be baptized again, returned to the ancient custom of the Church, abandoning their former opinion and issuing a new decree that those heretics should not be rebaptized.

Likewise, in the First Council of Carthage, in the time of Julius I, when the Bishop of Carthage had asked his colleagues whether it was lawful to immerse again someone once dipped in water, all the Bishops said: Far be it: we decree rebaptisms to be unlawful and foreign to sincere faith and Catholic discipline.

Furthermore, in the Second Council of Arles, celebrated in the year 330, Canon 16 decrees that the Photinians, or Paulianists, ought to be baptized according to the institution of the Fathers. But Canon 17 decrees that the Bonosians, coming from the same error, whom it is evident they baptize as Arians in the Trinity, should, when questioned, confess our faith with their whole heart; it is sufficient to receive them into the Church with chrism and the imposition of hands.

The same was defined in the Council of Capua, or Capuan Council, celebrated around the year 377, which is mentioned by Saint Ambrose in the Letters, book 1, Epistles 5 and 9. Likewise, in the Third Council of Carthage, celebrated in the year 397 under Aurelius, Bishop of Carthage, Canon 35 decrees: We also bring forward that command which seems to have been established in the plenary Council of Capua: rebaptisms, reordinations, or translations may not be performed.

Finally, this truth was defined in the Councils of Florence and Trent. The Council of Trent, Session 7, Canon 4 On Baptism, defines it thus: If anyone says that the baptism given by heretics in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, with the intention of doing what the Church does, is not true Baptism, let him be anathema.

Proof of this truth first from Saint Augustine and Optatus, from various figures of the Old Testament by which it is prefigured that Sacraments outside the Church have validity. For first, the Church is figured by the earthly Paradise, and baptismal water by that spring and river which went out from the place of delight to water Paradise, and from there was divided into four heads. For, says Saint Augustine, book 2, Against Cresconius, chapter 13:

Just as, in the case of one of those memorable waters, it cannot be denied that it is the water of Paradise, although it is not only in Paradise, since it also flowed out from there, so, although the water of Baptism belongs to the Church, it has nevertheless also benefited those outside; when it is found among those who went out from us but were not from us.

The second figure is taken from the waters of the Flood. For, says Saint Augustine, book 6, On Baptism, chapter 39:

The water of the Flood was saving for those situated inside the ark, but deadly outside the ark; yet it was the same water. Why, then, he says, do schismatics or heretics not receive something heavenly, just as thorns or weeds receive rain? Just as those who were outside the ark did indeed receive the water coming from the cataracts of heaven, for destruction, not for salvation.

The third can be taken from the sons of Jacob, some of whom were born of legitimate wives, others of handmaids, yet all were called to the same inheritance. Hence Saint Augustine, in the question On the proceedings with Emeritus: We know, he says, that the sons of Jacob were called into one inheritance; all twelve Patriarchs were counted together, and no diversity of womb separated one from another, because charity united them all. What difference, then, does it make where you receive Baptism? Do not be proud; come to the inheritance. The fourth is taken from that passage of Numbers 16, where we read that, when the earth swallowed up Korah, Dathan, and Abiron, together with the other schismatics rebelling against Moses and Aaron, the censers with which they offered incense to the Lord were not swallowed up; rather, at the Lord’s command, plates were made from them and placed in the corners of the Ark of the Testament. This is certainly a sign that, although schismatics are rejected, the Sacraments conferred by them are nevertheless not disapproved. Hence Optatus, book 6:

When, he says, the earth swallowed up those same sinners, the censers shaken from their hands remained, and plates were made from them and placed in the corners of the Ark of the Testament, because the name of God had been invoked there: thus, although schismatics are to be rejected, the Sacraments conferred by them are nevertheless not to be rejected, because the name of the most holy Trinity was invoked there.

Finally, the fifth can be taken from the Samaritans, who were among the Jews as heretics and schismatics are among Christians, and among both peoples Circumcision was in force, just as Baptism is in force among us. But the Circumcision of the Samaritans was not repeated when one of them approached the Jews. For, says Saint Augustine, in Epistle 203, which is addressed to Maximus, Bishop of the Donatists, if a Samaritan whom the Samaritans had circumcised could become a Jew, we would certainly be pleased by the boldness of repetition, and we would be compelled not to repeat, but to approve, what had been done among heresy yet had been commanded by God. Hence he concludes:

And if in the flesh of a circumcised man they would not find a place in which they would come, where they might repeat circumcision, because the same member is one and the same; much less will a place be found in one heart where the Baptism of Christ may be repeated: therefore, you who wish to duplicate Baptism, must necessarily seek double hearts.

Proof is given secondly, by the authority of the supreme Pontiffs, who taught that truth: first, indeed, from Stephen I in the Epistle which he sent in reply to St. Cyprian and the African Bishops, who had defined that those baptized by heretics were to be rebaptized: for although that Epistle does not survive complete, nevertheless we read a part of it in Cyprian in the Epistle to Pompeius, where he reports that Stephen wrote: If anyone comes from any heresy to them, let nothing be innovated, but let him be held as it was handed down: so that hands may be imposed on him for penance; for the heretics themselves, properly speaking, do not baptize those coming to them from one another, but only admit them to communion: Which sanction Vincent of Lérins commends most excellently in chapter 9, where he writes:

When all everywhere were protesting against the novelty of the matter (namely, that those baptized by heretics were to be rebaptized), and all the Priests in every direction, each according to his own zeal, were striving to do so, then Pope Stephen, of blessed memory, Bishop of the Apostolic See, resisted together with his other colleagues, but above all the others; judging it worthy, as I think, that if he surpassed all the rest only in devotion to the faith, he should surpass them by as much in authority of place. Finally, in the Epistle that was then sent to Africa, he sanctioned the same thing in these words: Nothing is to be innovated, except what has been handed down: for the holy and prudent man understood that the reason of piety admitted nothing else than that all things which had been received by faith from the Fathers should be entrusted by the same faith to their children, and that we ought to follow religion, not as we might wish to lead it, but as it led itself; and that this is proper to Christian modesty and gravity: not to hand down our own things to posterity, but to preserve what was received from our ancestors. What, then, was the outcome of the whole affair at that time? What indeed, if not a useful and solid one? The antiquity of the Sacrament was retained, and novelty was rejected.

— The other supreme Pontiffs decided the same, especially Siricius I in the Epistle to Himerius, Bishop of Tarragona, chapter 1.

You have indicated, he says, that very many baptized by the Arians are hastening to the Catholic faith, and that some of our brothers wish to baptize them; this is not permitted, since both the Apostle forbade this to be done, the Canons contradict it, and the general decrees sent to the provinces after the Council of Nicaea by my predecessor Liberius prohibit it; and we, as it has been established in the Synod, join them to the Catholic assembly with the Novatians and other heretics by the sole invocation of the sevenfold Spirit and the imposition of the episcopal hand, which the whole East and West likewise observes: you too must in no way henceforth depart from this path, if you do not wish to be separated by synodal sentence from our Collegium.

— Innocent I likewise decided the same, Epistle 22 to the Bishops of Macedonia, chapter 4; Leo the Great, Epistle 79 to Nicetas, chapter 7; Anastasius II, Epistle to the Emperor Anastasius, chapter 7; and Gregory the Great, book 1 of the Epistles, letter 61, to Quirinus and the other Bishops of Ireland:

“From the ancient institution of the Fathers,” he says, “we have learned that those who are baptized among heretics in the name of the Trinity, when they return to the Church, are restored either by anointing with Chrism, or by the imposition of hands, or by a profession of faith. Hence the West restores the Arians by the imposition of hands, while the East restores them by anointing with holy Chrism for entry into the Church; the Monophysites and others are received solely on the basis of a true confession, because the holy Baptism that they received among heretics then receives in them the power of cleansing. But heretics who are not baptized in the name of the Trinity, such as the Bonosians and the Cataphrygians—because the former do not believe in Christ the Lord, and the latter, in their perverse view, believe the Holy Spirit to be some wicked man Montanus— and others like them, when they come to the Church, are baptized, because there was no Baptism in what they received without the name of the Trinity. But the Nestorians, who are baptized in the name of the holy Trinity, yet, being like the Jews in their perfidy and not believing in the Incarnation, blinded by the error of heresy, are to be instructed, when they come to the Church, in the truth and confession of the faith, etc.”

You will object 1. Various Canons of Councils, by which it is prescribed that heretics coming to the Church are to be baptized and ordained, and their Baptism and Ordination are rejected. Thus the Apostles decreed in Canon 26, in these words:

We command that a Bishop or Presbyter who receives the Baptism of heretics be condemned. And if a Bishop or Presbyter, if he has held Baptism according to the truth, baptizes him again, or does not baptize one polluted by the impious, let him be deposed, as one mocking the cross and death of the Lord, and not discerning true Priests from false. And Canon 68: If any Bishop, or Presbyter, or Deacon receives a second ordination, let both he himself and the one who ordained him be deposed, unless it is established that he received ordination from heretics; for those who were baptized or ordained by such men can be neither faithful nor Clerics.

— Likewise at Nicaea, Canon 8 decrees concerning those who call themselves Cathari, that is, pure: if any come to the Catholic Church, it pleased the holy and great Council that, after receiving the imposition of hands, they should remain in the Clergy; or, as the second edition of the same Council has it: If any come to the Church from the Novatians, it was decreed that they should be ordained, and, if they remain in the Clergy. Therefore, although the Church admits their Baptism, nevertheless it rejects their ordinations as illicit and invalid. Likewise, Canon 95 of the Sixth Synod in Trullo says: Coming to the Church from heresy, we baptize them. Finally, it is established that the Carthaginian Council under St. Cyprian, and likewise the Iconian Council under Firmilian, decreed that Baptism conferred by heretics is nothing.

I deny the consequence, and I answer the Apostolic Canons: I concede that Baptism conferred by heretics who did not use the form, as the ancient heretics did, as St. Irenaeus reports in book 1 of Against Heresies, chapter 18, is rejected as invalid and null; I deny that this applies to Baptism conferred by heretics in the proper form and matter. For although that Baptism, when received by an adult through the ministry of heretics, is for the most part illicit and fruitless because of the evil disposition of the recipient, nevertheless it is valid. To the Nicene Canon I answer that by that imposition of hands an ordaining imposition is not understood, but a confirming one, which was prescribed for the Clerics of the Novatians, because the Novatians did not admit sacred Chrism and consequently neither the Sacrament of Confirmation, as Theodoret reports in book 3 of Heretical Fables. Or I say that that imposition of hands was not consecratory, but only reconciliatory, namely, a blessing by which Clerics previously unfit for ecclesiastical duties were received to perform them. This explanation certainly appears more likely: first, because St. Jerome explains the Canon in this way in the Dialogue Against the Luciferians, who denied that Arians should be received with their honors; for he writes: The Nicene Synod receives all heretics, except only the disciples of Samosata; which is a greater right: if a Bishop of the Novatians has been converted, he preserves the rank of the Presbyterate; secondly, because at the Second Council of Nicaea, Act 1, when it was doubted whether the Iconoclast Bishops ought to be received, and the aforementioned Nicene Canon had been read, Tarasius, Patriarch of Constantinople, being asked what he understood by that imposition of hands, replied that it was perhaps only a blessing, not an ordination—where the word perhaps seems to have crept in through the carelessness of the Translator; finally, because in the same Synod and session it is concluded from the opinions of the holy Fathers that Clerics returning to the Church from heresy are to be received with the imposition of hands and restored to their ranks and honors; hence the Iconoclast Bishops, who had condemned images in the Ephesian conciliabulum, sat with the other Fathers after their booklets of confession and faith had first been given and read.

— To the Trullan Canon I answer that it rejects only Baptism conferred by heretics in an improper form, not that which has been received from heretics; for thus it prescribes in that Canon:

We receive heretics coming to the Church according to the custom and order of the ancients. We receive Arians, Macedonians, Novatians who call themselves pure, Tetradites, and Apollinarists, if they bring booklets and curse every heresy. Concerning the Paulianists, a constitution was made by the Catholic Church that they be rebaptized altogether. The Eunomians, who baptize with one immersion, the Montanists, Sabellians, and the remaining plagues who proceeded from the region of Galatia, coming to the Church, we do not receive as gentiles; first we make them Christians, secondly Catechumens, thirdly we exorcize them, after we have thrice breathed upon their face and ears; thus we initiate them, make them be counted in the Church, and hear the Scriptures, and then we baptize them. But the Manichaeans, Valentinians, Marcionists, and the like must make booklets and curse the heresy; and Nestorius, Eutyches, Dioscorus, Severus, and the other leaders of heresies must do likewise, and so become participants in the holy communion.

— To the other Councils, namely the Iconian and Carthaginian, St. Augustine answers in book 2 of On Baptism, chapter 3, that they were Provincial Councils which were later proscribed by the general Council of the whole world.

The Councils themselves, he says, which are held in individual regions or provinces, should yield without any evasion to the authority of plenary Councils, which are held from the whole Christian world; and the plenary Councils themselves are often corrected by later ones, when some experience of events reveals what had been closed and what had lain hidden is recognized. Without any sacrilegious arrogance of pride, without any stiff neck of arrogance, without any contention of spiteful envy, but with holy humility, with Catholic peace, with Christian charity.

Moreover, St. Cyprian himself, after undoubtedly changing his opinion, would have condemned those Councils if he had learned that their Decrees had been proscribed by a universal Council. Furthermore, many Ecumenical Councils after him approved Baptism conferred by heretics; and consequently no force should be placed on St. Cyprian's authority in this matter, nor on the Councils celebrated by him. Hence St. Augustine, book 2 of On Baptism, chapters 8 and 9:

Cyprian, he says, at the end of his letter to Quintus, shows in what matter, as though on a little bed of authority, weary as it were, he rested: “This indeed,” he says, “Agrippinus, together with the other co-bishops, both established and confirmed after weighing the examination of the common Council; and we too have followed their religious and lawful judgment.” This testimony sufficiently shows that he would much more certainly have mentioned it if some transmarine or universal Council concerning this matter had taken place. For it had not yet been touched upon, because the whole world was held by the strength of custom, and this alone was opposed to those wishing to introduce novelty. Afterwards, however, while the matter was discussed among many on both sides and investigated, it was not only discovered, but also brought to the authority and strength of a plenary Council, after Cyprian’s passion, but before we were born.

You will object 2. Pope Anastasius was struck by divine vengeance because he admitted those baptized by heretics; for in Gratian, distinction 9, we read: Because he secretly wished to recall Acacius, and could not, he was struck by divine will. Add also that he approved the Sacraments conferred by him, as is clear in the preceding chapter, where the same Anastasius is reported, in Epistle 1, chapters 7 and 8, writing thus to Anastasius Augustus:

According to the custom of the Catholic Church, let your most sacred servant's breast acknowledge that no share of harm on account of Acacius touches any of those whom Acacius baptized, or whom he ordained Priests or Deacons according to the Canons, lest perhaps the grace of the Sacrament, handed on through iniquity, should thereby seem less firm.

— I answer that Gratian was deceived by the account of Anastasius's life taken from the Roman Pontifical, from which he drew this authority, and in which we read:

Anastasius II, a Roman by nation, lived in the time of King Theodoric; at that time many Clerics and Presbyters withdrew themselves from his communion, because he had communicated without the counsel of the Bishops, Presbyters, or Clergy of the Catholic Church with a Thessalonian Deacon named Photinus, who had communicated with Acacius, and because he secretly wished to recall Acacius and could not, he was struck by divine will:

This account, however, is wholly fabulous, and a true fiction added by the Laurentian schismatics to Anastasius's life; this is sufficiently shown even by the fact, as the Gloss notes on the aforesaid chapter, that Anastasius is said to have wished to recall Acacius, who had died long before. For from Evagrius, book 3, chapter 23, and Nicephorus, book 16, chapter 12, Acacius died in the time of Felix III, who had excommunicated him; Felix was succeeded by Gelasius, and Gelasius by Anastasius. How, then, could Anastasius think of recalling one whom he already knew to be dead? For in the aforesaid Epistle to Anastasius he himself writes that Acacius, dead, stands with Felix before Christ the Judge. Nor does he appear blameworthy as though he had agreed with the Emperor Anastasius and the other defenders of Acacius, as the Emperor Justin writes in his Epistle to Hormisdas, the supreme Pontiff; for Symmachus, the successor of Anastasius, indicates in his Apologetic letters that this is fictitious; there he says that he acts in conformity with his predecessors by excommunicating the holders of Acacius—which he certainly would not do if his predecessor Anastasius had favored them. Nor finally does he appear condemnable because he approved the Sacraments conferred by Acacius: for he did this because Acacius had administered those Sacraments in legitimate form and matter; and consequently they were not to be rejected. He proves this by six arguments: first, because in the Sacraments the power of Christ operates, which repels every stain. Second, from the rays of the sun, which, although they pass through dirty places, are nevertheless not defiled. Third, from Judas, who, although he was evil, nevertheless did many things that were held valid. Fourth, from the authority of the Lord, who commanded the words of the Scribes and Pharisees to be observed and fulfilled. Fifth, because every good thing, whoever does it, is done by God. Sixth and finally, because in the Sacraments one must not consider what sort of person or who confers them, but what he confers, because God alone supplies the increase. All these things contain Catholic doctrine; and therefore it is absurd to think that Pope Anastasius was struck by God on account of them. You will object 3. The same distinction, chapter 1, reports the authority of St. Leo the Great, taken from Epistle 37, where he writes: It is manifest that through the most cruel and insane savagery of Dioscorus and the other Heretics in the Alexandrian massacre, all the light of the heavenly Sacraments was extinguished: the offering of the sacrifice was intercepted, the sanctification of Chrism failed, and all the mysteries withdrew themselves from the murderous hands of the impious: therefore he judges that among heretics there does not remain the right to administer and confect the Sacraments;—likewise Pope Pelagius, as in the same place, chapter Schism, question 1, he says: It is not the body of Christ that a schismatic confects, if we are raised up under the guidance of charity. But he had prefaced: Those who do not have the spirit of the body of Christ cannot have the sacrifice.—Likewise from Innocent I, who in Epistle 1 to Alexander decrees that although the Baptism of the Arians is valid, nevertheless their ordinations are invalid and null. It does not seem, he says, that the Clerics of the Arians should be received with the dignity of any priestly ministry, since to those to whom alone we permit Baptism to be held valid, they have lost the presidency of the Spirit which they had received, nor can they give its fullness, in which it operates especially in Orders. Weighing this constitution, Peter Damian writes in Opusculum 6, chapter 22: In these decretal words it is plainly given to understand that in the promotions of Clerics the faith of the one ordaining is not without reason considered, since on it depends faithfully whether the ordination itself is judged valid or invalid. Finally, in distinction 1, question 1, chapter Daibertum:

From Urban II we find that Daibert, although ordained by Nezelon, a simoniac, was ordained a Deacon without simony, by his own confession; and by the judgment of blessed Pope Innocent it is established that Nezelon, ordained by heretics, had nothing and could give nothing to the one on whom he imposed hands. Strengthened by the authority of so great a Pontiff and reinforced by the testimony of Pope Damasus, who says that what was badly done ought to be repeated, we constituted Daibert, having departed from the heretics in body and spirit, a Deacon anew, as the need of the Church required; which we do not judge to be a repetition, but a complete giving of the Diaconate, because, as we have said, he who had nothing could give nothing.

Therefore, according to the judgment of the supreme Pontiffs, the conferral of the Sacraments by heretics is invalid.

I deny the consequence, and to the first I say that St. Leo speaks only of the licit, not the valid, administration of Mysteries and Sacraments: since, on account of that massacre, all the Prelates who favored Nestorius had incurred a sentence of excommunication, it was no longer lawful for them to take part in divine ministries and mysteries. — To Pelagius I say: it is not the body of Christ that a schismatic confects, with respect to the mystical signification by which the Sacrament of the Eucharist represents the unity of the members of the Church, both among themselves and with their head, from which is made one mystical body, which is the Church, according to the Apostle's saying, One bread, one body, we many are, who partake of one bread, I concede: for when this unity is severed and torn apart by schism, it cannot be represented by the Eucharist confected by him: it is not the body of Christ, with respect to the truth of the Sacrament, as though a schismatic Priest no longer had the authority and power to confect the Eucharist, I deny. — To the authority of Innocent I distinguish: I concede that he holds only the Baptism of the Arians to be valid, not their ordination as regards honor and dignity: for those baptized by them, after completing penance, were received into the assembly of the faithful and were fit to receive the other Sacraments, even Holy Orders; but the case is otherwise with those who had been ordained by them, for whom honor was not preserved, but who were reduced to the order of the Laity, nor were they permitted after their reconciliation to perform their offices and ministries: I deny that a character was imprinted in Baptism conferred by heretics but not in ordinations performed by them in the proper manner. Nor did Innocent certainly intend anything else, as is clear from Epistle 22, which is to the Bishops of Macedonia, chapter 1, where he writes: It is the law of our Church that to those coming from heretics, provided they have been baptized, we grant only lay communion through the imposition of hands, and appoint none of them to the honor or dignity of the Clergy. — The same solution satisfies the authority of St. Peter Damian. There he distinguishes heretics of two kinds: some sinned against the faith but did not depart from the faith, such as the Novatians; others departed from the faith, such as the Arians. Of the heretics of the first class he says that their ordination is valid, and that they are received in the Church with their honors and ranks. Of the Arians, however, he says that their ordination is invalid, and that they are not admitted into the Church with their honors; he proves this by the aforesaid authority of Innocent. — Regarding the touch of Daibert, ordained by Nezelon, the simoniacal Archbishop of Mainz, Urban II himself, who ordained him again, says that the prior ordination is to be evaluated according to the judgment of Pope Innocent and the testimony of Pope Damasus. Furthermore, according to the judgment of both Popes, an ordination of heretics legitimately performed is not to be repeated. Hence Daibert was reordained by Urban, because Nezelon either had not ordained him in the form of the Church or had not possessed the power of ordaining; and thus that ordination was altogether invalid, not through a defect of faith, but of order and of episcopal character, just as Damasus establishes in Epistle 1, where he decrees that those ordained by heretics are to be ordained again if they were ordained outside the form and rite of the Church, or by those who did not possess the power of ordaining. For he is inquiring concerning those who had been ordained by certain Chorepiscopi who were not Bishops; hence toward the end he gives the reason why these could not ordain: because, he says, he who did not have pontifical honor could not bestow pontifical rights.

You will object. 1. Certain of the holy Fathers seem to have disapproved of Baptism conferred by heretics: first, Dionysius, Bishop of the city of Alexandria, who, as St. Jerome testifies in his On Ecclesiastical Writers, agreeing with the doctrine of Cyprian and the Africans concerning the rebaptizing of heretics, sent many letters to various persons in which he defended that doctrine. Likewise, St. Athanasius, in Sermon 3 Against the Arians, seems to reject Baptism conferred by the Arians: “The Arians,” he says, “are in danger of losing the integrity of the mystery; I am speaking of Baptism. For an initiation that will be beneficial is given in the name of the Father and of the Son; yet they do not proclaim the Father of all things, since they deny that anything exists from him and that it is like his substance. They also deny the Son of all things, and, inventing another Son created from nonbeing, utter him in Baptism. How, then, could the Baptism they confer not be wholly vain and useless, since it is merely an appearance and an empty likeness, and by this very act they provide no solid assistance toward piety?” Then St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in the Preface to his Catecheses, says: “It is not permitted to use this Sacrament twice or three times: for there is one Lord, one faith, and one Baptism; for only heretics are rebaptized.” And Optatus of Milevis, book 1, near the beginning: “We know the churches of individual heretics to be prostituted, without any lawful Sacraments and without the right of an honorable marriage.” And below: “You said that it could not happen that one cleansed by a false Baptism should be defiled: etc.” Finally, St. Bernard, speaking in Sermon 66 on the Song of Songs about certain heretics, denies that they have the power to confect the body of the Lord Christ. Therefore the holy Fathers judge that there are no Sacraments conferred by heretics.

I deny the consequence, and to the first I say that St. Dionysius remained for some time in the position that he did not dare condemn the authority of the Councils of Iconium, Synadus, and the like; but he did not remain long in that position, since he came as mediator and suppliant and wrote to Stephen, the supreme Pontiff, to reconcile the Eastern bishops to him. This is certainly a sign that in this matter he was not obstinately hostile to Stephen. Add that he himself consulted Sixtus, Stephen's successor, whether he ought to rebaptize an old man baptized by heretics, who, having execrated their Baptism, requested to be baptized by Catholics, as is clear from his letter in Eusebius, book 7 of the History, chapter 8. Dionysius would not have acted thus unless he had embraced Stephen's position and abandoned the opinion of the African bishops; otherwise he would have baptized this man without hesitation, especially since he learned from him that he had been baptized by heretics outside the form of the Church. — To the second, I distinguish the major premise: Baptism conferred by Arians in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, is vain and useless as regards the primary effect, namely grace, I concede; as regards the secondary effect, namely the character, I deny. That St. Athanasius must be explained in this way is clear from these words: they run the risk of losing the integrity of the mystery: for if their Baptism were truly invalid as regards all its effects, they would not be said to run the risk of losing the integrity of the mystery, but would be said without any doubt to lose such integrity. Or I say that he is speaking of Arians who, although they expressed the name of the Father and of the Son, perhaps added to them the names of Creator and creature, Maker and thing made; hence he adds: The Arians do not confer Baptism in the Father and the Son, but in the Creator and creature, in the Maker and thing made: therefore, just as the creature is something different from the Son, so what they suppose to be given by them is something different from true Baptism. — To St. Cyril and Optatus I reply that although they say without distinction that heretics are strangers to Catholic Sacraments and may be rebaptized, because their previous Baptism was nothing, nevertheless they must be understood with a distinction, namely, of heretics who were thought to err in the form. For Optatus, in book 5, plainly teaches that after the Trinity it is not permitted to baptize in the Trinity: What, he says, has made us laugh, that Baptism should be doubled not after us but after the Trinity, concerning whose Sacrament no slight dispute has arisen, and it is questioned whether after the Trinity it is permitted to do it again in the same Trinity? You say, it is permitted; we say, it is not permitted; between your “it is permitted” and our “it is not permitted,” the souls of the peoples waver. — As to the second, I say that he is speaking there of certain heretics who called themselves Apostolics; since they were not ordained priests, as is gathered from his calling them rustic, ignorant, and utterly contemptible, and from his saying that they disparaged the orders of the Church and considered all Archbishops, Bishops, and Priests to be sinners; although, I say, they were not ordained, nevertheless, while stirring up the heresy of the Manichaeans and scorning common foods as unclean and unworthy to pass into a Christian stomach, they asserted that they had the power each day at their table to consecrate the body of Christ, so as to nourish and foster themselves into the body and members of Christ.

You will object. 2. The opinion that Baptism conferred by heretics is to be received rests on no legitimate foundation; therefore it is not to be preferred to the other.

Proof of the antecedent: ecclesiastical dogmas must be founded either on Sacred Scripture or on Evangelical and Apostolic Tradition; but this is not so with this opinion, since it is expressly declared in no Scriptural texts. Nor does it rest on legitimate Tradition: for every legitimate Tradition descends from divine or Apostolic authority; but this is not so with the Tradition that Pope Stephen was showing. Nowhere in the Gospel, or in the Epistles or Acts of the Apostles, is it found that baptized heretics are to be received with only the imposition of hands; therefore that Tradition was merely human, and St. Cyprian, together with the African bishops, rightly resisted it.

I deny the antecedent, and the minor of its proof: for that Tradition is truly Apostolic. For, as St. Augustine teaches excellently, book 1 of On Baptism, chapter 21:

Whatever the whole Church holds, which was not instituted by Councils but always retained, is most certainly believed to have been drawn from Apostolic authority; but the most ancient custom always and everywhere held, before Stephen, that those coming to the Church from any heresy who had been rightly baptized were to be received without a new Baptism, and this was sanctioned by no Council, but by the unanimous consent of the whole Church; before Agrippinus, and he first corrected it, or rather corrupted it: nor was the novelty introduced by Agrippinus accepted everywhere, nor did it prevail among the Africans from Agrippinus down to Cyprian, as we said above. And above, chapter 5: We do not find anyone who, having been baptized among heretics, was admitted in that Baptism and communicated in the times of the Apostles; but neither do we find anyone coming from heretics who had been baptized among them and was baptized again by the Apostles. And in the same place: What we received from the Apostles, what the custom of the Church has always held, what the plenary Council confirmed, this we follow. — And book 2 of On Baptism, chapter 6: Do not set Cyprian's authority for the repetition of Baptism against us, but hold with us Cyprian's example for the preservation of unity. The question of Baptism had not yet been carefully examined,

Although the question of Baptism had been discussed, the Church nevertheless maintained a most firmly established custom: even in the case of schismatics and heretics, to correct what is wrong, not to repeat what has been given, to heal what has been wounded, not to treat what is sound; which custom I believe comes from Apostolic Tradition.» — Add to this that Cyprian himself, as well as his colleagues in the Council, openly acknowledged that custom and Ecclesiastical Tradition were opposed to them: for they repeatedly insist that custom must yield to truth; for there Libosus, Bishop of Vaga, giving his opinion, says: In the Gospel the Lord says, “I am the truth”; he did not say, “I am custom”; therefore, once the truth is manifest, let custom yield to truth. And Castus of Sicca: Whoever, despising truth, presumes to follow custom, is either envious and malicious toward his brothers, to whom the truth is revealed, or is much more ungrateful toward God, by whose inspiration His Church is instructed. Many other bishops in the same Council make the same statements, as can be seen in St. Augustine, book 3, On Baptism, chapter 7 and following.

You will press. That Tradition cannot be considered Apostolic whose contrary prevailed in very many Churches; but so it is. For Firmilian, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, objects the contrary custom to the custom of receiving those coming from heresy without a new Baptism in his letter to St. Cyprian. Having said: As regards rejecting the custom which they seem to oppose to the truth, who would be so insane as to prefer custom to truth? Or who, having seen the light, would not abandon darkness, unless perhaps, when Christ comes—that is, when truth comes—an exceedingly ancient custom should in some way aid the blind, because it remained in antiquity after the path of the new truth had been abandoned? Indeed, against Stephen you Africans can say that, having recognized the truth, you abandoned the error of custom, he immediately adds: For the rest, we join custom to truth, and to the custom of the Romans we oppose the custom of truth, holding from the beginning what was handed down from the Apostles, nor do we remember that this began among us; for it was always observed there that we should recognize only one Church of God, and count as Holy Baptism only that of the holy Church. Moreover St. Cyprian, in his Epistle to Jubaianus: It is not new, he says, or a sudden matter among us that we judge those who come from heretics to the Church ought to be baptized, since many years and a long age have already passed since, under Agrippinus, a man dear to memory, many bishops gathered together and established this: therefore the custom on which St. Stephen, the Roman Pontiff, relied was not Apostolic or universal.

I distinguish the minor: I concede that he was objecting to a custom truly handed down by the Apostles concerning the rebaptizing of those who had not been baptized by heretics with the proper form and matter; I deny it concerning those who had received Baptism from heretics with the legitimate form and matter. To Firmilian I reply that, moved by party zeal and resentment because he had been struck with excommunication by Stephen, the supreme Pontiff, together with his colleagues, he invents many things in that very Epistle to Cyprian which were not only wholly alien to the truth, but also displayed a manifest ignorance of ecclesiastical matters. For in the same place he asserts that Hermogenes, Cerinthus, and Basilides lived long after the time of the Apostles, although it is most clearly evident from St. Ignatius's Epistle 2 to the Trallians and Epistle 10 to the Smyrnaeans that those heretics were contemporaries of the Apostles. In the same place he also condemns the Roman Church because it celebrated Easter on a different day from that handed down by the Apostles, plainly favoring the Jews and the Quartodecimans, who had already been proscribed by the Church. Finally, he falsely supposes that Stephen and the Roman Church approved the Baptism of all heretics, namely the Cataphrygians and others who did not baptize even with the legitimate form of the Church. He likewise supposes that among the Easterners there prevailed a custom of rebaptizing all heretics coming to the Church, even those who had been baptized with the proper form and matter, which was wholly contrary to the truth. — St. Augustine replies to St. Cyprian, book 3 of On Baptism, chapter 12, that his opinion conflicted with his own action; for, he says: If the custom of baptizing those coming from heretics remained from Agrippinus down to Cyprian, why were Councils held by Cyprian concerning this matter? And why does he say to the same Jubaianus that he is not doing something new or sudden, but something instituted by Agrippinus? Why would Jubaianus be disturbed by novelty, so that he needed to be healed by the authority of Agrippinus, if the Church held this from Agrippinus down to Cyprian? Finally, why did so many of his colleagues in the Council say that reason and truth should be preferred to custom, rather than say that those who wanted to do otherwise acted both against truth and against custom?

You will object. 6. From St. Cyprian: he cannot validly baptize who cannot give remission of sins; but heretics cannot give remission of sins. — St. Augustine replies, book 5, chapter 2 of On Baptism, by distinguishing the minor: heretics cannot give their followers remission of sins because of a defect of power to confer Baptism, through which sins would be remitted, I deny; because of a defect of faith and charity in those receiving it, I concede. Therefore, he says, we agree with Cyprian that heretics cannot give remission, but can give Baptism; and this is of ruin to them, both to those giving and to those receiving it, as to those who misuse so great a gift of God: just as the malicious and envious, whom he himself testifies to be inside, cannot give remission of sins, although everyone admits that they can give Baptism.

St. Cyprian was pressing: Those who do not have the Holy Spirit cannot give remission of sins, since the Lord Christ said in John 20: As the Father sent me, I also send you; when he had said this, he breathed on them and said: Receive the Holy Spirit; whose sins you forgive, etc. But heretics do not have the Spirit; therefore, etc. — St. Augustine replies, book 2 of Against the Epistle of Parmenianus, that this oracle signifies that Baptism belongs not only through a man but also to the man, if after he had said: Behold, I send you, he had immediately added: If you forgive anyone's sins, they are forgiven; and if you retain anyone's sins, they are retained. But since it is inserted, when he had said this, he breathed and said to them: Receive the Holy Spirit, and then it is stated that through them remission or retention of sins takes place, it is sufficiently shown that they themselves do not do this, but that the Holy Spirit does it through them, just as it is said elsewhere: For it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit who is in you. The Holy Spirit is present in the ruler or Minister of the Church in such a way that, if he is not a hypocrite, the Holy Spirit works through him, both for his reward unto eternal salvation and for the regeneration or edification of those who through him are either consecrated or evangelized. But if he is a hypocrite, since it is most truly written, For the Holy Spirit will flee the hypocrite, he is deprived of his salvation, so that the Spirit withdraws from thoughts that lack understanding; nevertheless, it does not abandon his ministry, through which it works the salvation of others.

St. Cyprian was pressing: He cannot confer remission of sins even upon a well-disposed man who is stained by sins; for God does not hear a sinner, and no one gives what he does not have. — St. Augustine replies, in the same place, chapter 20: If what is said in the Gospel—that God does not hear a sinner—has this force, that Sacraments are not celebrated through a sinner, how does he hear a murderer praying over the water of Baptism, or over the oil, or over the Eucharist, or over the heads of those upon whom hands are imposed? Yet all these things both take place and have effect even through murderers, that is, through those who hate their brothers, even inside the Church itself. Since no one can give what he does not have, how does a murderer give the Holy Spirit? And yet he himself also baptizes inside; therefore God gives the Holy Spirit even while he baptizes.

St. Cyprian insists: He cannot perform and confer spiritual things who has lost the Holy Spirit; but a heretic has lost the Holy Spirit; therefore, etc. — Augustine replies, in the same place, chapter 21: If no one who cannot give the Holy Spirit can baptize, why does a murderer baptize inside? Or how does a murderer have the Holy Spirit, since everyone who has the Holy Spirit is enlightened, whereas he who hates his brother is in darkness until now?

He objects. 7. St. Cyprian, in his Epistle to Jubaianus: He who is baptized outside certainly receives what he believed; but one believing falsely cannot receive what is true; adulterous and profane, he receives according to what he believed. — St. Augustine replies, book 3 of On Baptism, chapter 11: When treating the integrity and holiness of the Sacrament, it does not matter what the one who receives the Sacrament believed or with what faith he was imbued. It matters very much for the path of salvation, but it does not matter at all for the question of the Sacrament. For it can happen that a man has the Sacrament intact and a perverse faith, just as it can happen that he holds the words of the Creed intact and nevertheless does not truly believe either about the Trinity itself, or about the Resurrection, or something else. Nor is it a small matter to hold the whole faith intact inside the Catholic Church, so that one believes nothing at all about any creature except what the truth contains about God himself. What, then, if someone baptized inside the Catholic Church later, by reading, hearing, and discussing peacefully, with the Lord himself revealing it, learns that he previously believed otherwise than he ought? Is he to be baptized again? Therefore, as St. Augustine rightly observes, book 6, chapter 1, St. Cyprian with his followers judged that the Baptism of Christ could not exist among heretics or schismatics for no other reason than that he did not distinguish the Sacrament from the effect or use of the Sacrament; and because its effect and use, in liberation from sins and rectitude of heart, was not found there, he also thought that the Sacrament itself was not there.

He objects. 8. In the Epistle to Pompeius: The Church and the Holy Spirit and

Baptism cannot be separated from one another; and therefore those who are separated from the Church and from the Holy Spirit must also be separated from Baptism. — St. Augustine replies, book 5 of On Baptism, chapter 23: if this is so, whenever someone has received Baptism in the Catholic Church, he remains in it as long as he himself remains in the Church; but if he departs from it, he has departed from Baptism. Yet this is not so: for that is why it is not given back to one returning, because when he departed he did not lose it. And just as evil sons do not have the Holy Spirit as beloved sons have it, although they nevertheless have Baptism, so heretics do not have the Church as Catholics have it, and yet they have Baptism. Therefore, just as Baptism can exist from which the Holy Spirit withdraws, so Baptism can exist where the Church is not.

He objects. 9. St. Cyprian: The power of Baptism cannot be greater or more effective than confession, than martyrdom; but the confession and martyrdom, or Baptism of blood, of heretics is of no benefit, although one confessing Christ was killed outside the Church; therefore Baptism cannot benefit either. — St. Augustine replies, book 1 of On Baptism, chapter 17, that the major is true as regards the effect of sanctification, but not the truth of the Sacrament: This is entirely true, he says; for one killed outside the Church is shown not to have had charity, of which the Apostle says: And if I deliver my body so that I may burn, but do not have charity, it profits me nothing. But if, because charity is lacking, martyrdom benefits nothing, it benefits neither those whom Paul said live inside in envy and ill will without charity; and yet they can both receive and confer true Baptism.

St. Cyprian presses: There is no salvation outside the Church. — St. Augustine replies, in the same place: Those who deny this therefore say that whatever belongs to the Church itself is of no avail for salvation outside the Church. But it is one thing not to have, another not to have profitably. He who does not have it must be baptized so that he may have it; but he who does not have it profitably must be corrected so that he may have it profitably.

He objects. 10. If the Baptism of heretics is approved, heretics will consequently think that they have the true Church, and therefore refuse to enter the Catholic Church; but he says:

Nor should anyone think that heretics, because Baptism is recognized in them, are delayed from coming to the Church as though scandalized by the name of a second Baptism; rather, by this very fact they are driven more strongly to the necessity of coming, by the testimony of the truth shown and approved to them. For if they see that by our judgment and decision it is decreed and established that the Baptism with which they are baptized there is counted just and legitimate, they will think that they also justly and legitimately possess the Church and the other gifts of the Church; and there will be no reason for coming to us, when, having Baptism, they seem to have the other things as well. But when they learn that there is no Baptism outside, and that remission of sins cannot be given outside the Church, they hasten to us more eagerly and promptly, and implore the gifts and endowments of the Church their mother, certain that they cannot reach the true promise of divine grace unless they first come to the unity of the Church.

— The Donatists pressed a similar argument, as St. Augustine reports, book 1 of On Baptism, chapter 11.

They also ask whether sins are forgiven through Baptism in the party of Donatus. If we say that they are forgiven, they answer: Therefore the Holy Spirit is there, because when he had been given to the disciples as the Lord breathed, this followed: Baptize the nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; if you forgive anyone's sins, they are forgiven him; if you retain anyone's sins, they are retained. And if this is so, they say, our communion is the Church of Christ. For the Holy Spirit does not work remission of sins outside the Church. And if our communion is the Church of Christ, your communion is not the Church of Christ. For there is one Church, whatever it may be, of which it was said: My dove is one, one is her mother's. Nor can there be as many Churches as there are schisms. But if we say that sins are not forgiven there, they answer: Therefore there is no true Baptism there; and for that reason you ought to baptize those whom you receive from us, and because you do not do so, you admit that you are not in the Church of Christ. — St. Augustine replies, first, book 5 of On Baptism, chapter 2. There he admits that those baptized by heretics can truly be saved; for when St. Cyprian had opposed to him: What, then, will become of those who in the past, coming from heresy to the Church, were admitted without Baptism? he replies: The Lord is powerful in his mercy to grant pardon, and not to separate from the gifts of his Church those who, simply admitted into the Church, fell asleep in the Church. St. Augustine weighs these words as follows: He rightly presumed that the charity of unity can cover a multitude of sins; but if they had Baptism and did not think rightly about other things, the charity of unity covered that error, as long as this disagreement was not diabolical but a human temptation. — He turns the argument back against them in this way: We resist them according to the Scriptures, questioning them so that they may answer for themselves what they ask from us. For I ask them to say whether sins are forgiven where there is no charity; for sins are the darkness of souls. We hear John saying: He who hates his brother is in darkness until now. But no one would create schisms if they were not blinded by hatred of their brother. Therefore, if we say that sins are not forgiven there, how is he who is baptized among them reborn? For what is to be reborn through Baptism except to be reborn from the old state, in which past sins are not forgiven? But if he has not been reborn, neither has he put on Christ; from this it follows that he seems to need to be baptized again, because the Apostle says: As many of you as have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ. If he has not put him on, he is not to be held baptized in Christ. But because we say that he was baptized in Christ, we confess that he put on Christ. And if we confess this, we confess that he was regenerated. If this is so, sins have been forgiven.

The Donatists were pressing, as St. Augustine reports, in the same place, chapter 10: Baptism of Christ conferred by heretics either generates children among those heretics or it does not generate them. If it generates them, then they have a mother Church, which was able to generate children from the Baptism of Christ; but since there ought to be one Church, it follows that they have the true Church. If we say that it does not generate them, St. Augustine says, they immediately mock: Why, then, are those who pass from us to you not reborn among you through Baptism, when they were baptized among us, if they have not yet been born? — St. Augustine replies, in the same place:

As though it generated from that by which it is separated, and not from that by which it is joined. For it is separated from the bond of charity and peace, but it is joined in the one Baptism. Therefore there is one Church, which alone is called Catholic, and whatever of its own it has in the communions separated from its unity, by the fact that it has its own in them, it itself certainly generates, not they; for their separation does not generate, but what they retained from it. But if they also abandon this, they do not generate at all. Thus she generates in all whose Sacraments are retained, from which such a thing can be generated anywhere, although not all whom she generates belong to her unity, by which she saves those who persevere to the end. For not only do those not belong to her who are manifest through the open sacrilege of separation, but also those who, bodily mixed within her unity, are separated by a most wicked life; for she herself had brought forth Simon Magus through Baptism, although it was said to him that he had no part in the inheritance of Christ. Did he lack Baptism, the Gospel, or the Sacraments? But because he lacked charity, he was born in vain, and perhaps it was expedient for him not to be born.

The Donatists pressed: If you accept our Baptism, what less do we have, so that you think we must be consulted about your communion? — St. Augustine replies, in the same place, chapter 11: We do not accept your Baptism because it is that Baptism of heretics or schismatics, but God's, wherever it is found and wherever it is transferred. What is yours, however, is only what you think perversely, act sacrilegiously, and separate yourselves impiously.

Objection 11. St. Cyprian: The Apostles, as we read in Acts 19, baptized again those who had been baptized by St. John the Baptist; but heretics are not better or greater than John the Baptist; therefore neither is their Baptism more efficacious, and consequently those who have been baptized by them must much more be baptized again. — St. Augustine replies, book 6, chapter 9, that those baptized by John were baptized again for no other reason than that John’s Baptism was not Christ’s Baptism, but one granted to John by Christ. Therefore those baptized by John had to be initiated anew by Christ’s Baptism because, as he adds in chapter 10, “Although I believe that John baptized in the water of repentance for the remission of sins in such a way that sins would be remitted in hope to those baptized by him, yet in reality this would take place in the Lord’s Baptism.” Hence, in the form of the argument, I distinguish the minor: heretics who baptize are not better than John the Baptist with respect to integrity of faith and holiness of life, I concede; with respect to the dignity and efficacy of Baptism, I deny. For heretics who baptize duly confer Christ’s Baptism, which is far better and more excellent than John’s Baptism itself.

The Donatists objected finally to the authority of St. Cyprian:

Cyprian, they say (in St. Augustine, book 1, On Baptism, chapter 1), whose great merit and great learning we know, together with many of his fellow bishops who exchanged their own opinions, decreed in a Council that heretics or schismatics—that is, all who are outside the communion of the one Church—do not possess Baptism; and therefore whoever comes to the Church baptized by them must be baptized in the Church.

— St. Augustine replies in the same place: *“I am not frightened by Cyprian’s authority, because Cyprian’s humility restores me. We indeed know the great merit of Cyprian, bishop and martyr. Concerning him, that same Cyprian speaks in his Letter to Quintus as follows: For neither did Peter, he says, whom the Lord chose first and upon whom he built his Church, when Paul disputed with him concerning circumcision,

whom the Lord first chose and upon whom he built his Church, when Paul was disputing with him about Circumcision. Afterwards he did not insolently vindicate something for himself, or arrogantly assume something, so as to say that he held primacy and that the newer and later ones ought rather to obey him. Nor did he despise Paul because he had previously been a persecutor of the Church; rather, he admitted the Council of truth and readily agreed to the legitimate reasoning Paul defended, thereby giving us an example of both concord and patience, so that we should not stubbornly love what is ours, but, if things are true and legitimate, should rather regard as our own those things that are sometimes usefully and beneficially suggested by our brothers and colleagues.» From these things St. Augustine infers:

If, then, Peter could compel the Gentiles to Judaize against the rule of truth that the Church afterward kept, why could Cyprian not compel heretics or schismatics to be baptized again against the rule of truth that the whole Church afterward kept? I think that Cyprian, the bishop, is compared with the Apostle Peter without insult, insofar as concerns the crown of martyrdom. Yet I must fear more that I may insult Peter: for who does not know that the primacy of the Apostolate must be preferred to any episcopate? But although the grace of the chairs differs, the glory of the martyrs is one, etc.”

It is asked. 1. Whether the peace and communion between Saints Stephen and Cyprian in that celebrated controversy concerning Baptism was dissolved and extinguished.

I respond, it is more probable that the controversy was debated while peace was preserved and mutual charity and fellowship remained in force, and that the bond of mutual communion and charity between the two was not dissolved: first, because St. Cyprian himself, most vigilant in mutual charity and concord, always preached that peace must be pursued in all things, as is clear from all his Letters written concerning this controversy; secondly, because on this occasion he himself wrote the book On Unity, namely to exhort all bishops to preserve peace and concord; thirdly, because at the Third Council of Carthage, which he convened on account of this controversy, he addressed the bishops at the beginning of the Council in these words: “It remains,” he says, “that each of us disclose what we think about this matter, judging no one or removing anyone from the right of communion if he thinks differently”; finally, because nowhere is it read that Stephen, the Supreme Pontiff, separated St. Cyprian or his bishops from ecclesiastical communion. Moreover, St. Augustine presses this truth with many arguments against the Donatists, schismatics and heretics; thus he writes in book 1 of On Baptism, chapter 6: “The obscurity of this question in the earlier times of the Church, before Donatus’s schism, compelled great men and bishops, fathers endowed with great charity, to debate and waver among themselves, at least somewhat, so that for a long time they altered the different decrees of Councils in their respective regions, until what was most salutarily sanctioned was established, doubts having also been removed, by a plenary Council of the whole world.” Hence in book 5 of On Baptism, chapter 20, he excuses the Letter written to Pompeius, saying:

Stephen had thought that those who tried to overturn the ancient custom concerning the reception of heretics should be avoided; but this man (he means Cyprian), moved by the difficulty of the question and endowed most generously with the entrails of charity, judged that one must remain in unity with those who thought differently. Thus, although moved, he was indignant in a brotherly way; nevertheless Christ’s peace prevailed in their hearts, so that no schism arose between them in such a debate.” Likewise, in book 1, chapter 2, he often rebukes the Donatists because they adopted Cyprian’s authority for their schism and rejected his example for the peace of the Church. And in the same book, chapter 5, he raises against himself the question of how they can hold the truth when they think differently in more obscure matters, or how they can accept the truth when they know that what they thought has been declared contrary to it. He replies: We hold the manifestation of these two things: one in Blessed Cyprian—namely, how he maintained unity with those from whom he thought differently; for at the beginning of his third Council he says: judging no one, or removing anyone from the right of communion if he thinks differently. But how could he have accepted the truth when it was discovered contrary to what he thought? And if the letters are silent, merits cry out; if the Letter is not found, the crown bears witness; if the Council does not indicate it, the fellowship of the angels does. For it is no small proof that, with a most peaceful soul, he merited martyrdom in that unity from which he did not wish to separate himself while thinking differently.

Moreover, in On the One Baptism, chapter 11, against Petilian, the leader of the Donatists, who counted St. Stephen among the Roman Pontiffs and admitted that he had conducted himself blamelessly, St. Augustine attacks him as follows: “Since Stephen not only did not rebaptize heretics, but also judged that those who did this or decreed that it should be done ought to be excommunicated, as the Letters of other bishops and of Cyprian himself show, yet Cyprian remained with him in the peace of unity: what will these men say here?” From this it is clear that both in Augustine’s view and among the Donatists it was entirely undoubted that Cyprian had not been separated from the unity of the Church by excommunication. The assertor of this truth, moreover, is not only St. Augustine, but also Vincent of Lérins against the Heresies, chapter 9, and St. Jerome in the Dialogue Against the Luciferians, where, speaking of the third Council convened by Cyprian, he says: “Let them know that he issued this matter without an anathema against those who refused to follow him; for he remained in communion with those who were opposed to his opinion.”

Moreover, he asserts in the same place that all the bishops, having returned to the ancient custom, issued a contrary and new decree. The clearest indication of this is that Firmilian himself, excommunicated along with the Easterners, sat in the famous Synod of Antioch against Paul of Samosata; and the Greeks venerate him as having died piously and holily in the peace of the Church, as is clear from their Menologion on October 28. Indeed, St. Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, testifies to them in Eusebius, book 7, chapter 3 and following, that St. Cyprian had not departed from St. Stephen in unity but in opinion, and says that he himself had been the mediator of that peace which was then established between the Easterners and the Africans with Pope Stephen in the following year, that is, in 259, when all those men had rescinded their former opinion so that they might agree with Stephen.

Nor is it valid to object to Firmilian’s words in the cited Letter, in which he repeatedly insists that Stephen was breaking peace with individuals by various kinds of disagreement, now with the Easterners ... now with you who are in the south, from whom he received legates, etc. Indeed, I have noted above that, overcome by indignation, he piles up many things against the truth there; and when Stephen had excommunicated him on account of the same opinion, he supposed from Cyprian’s complaints against Stephen that the same had been done by Stephen to the Africans. But the case was different: the Easterners, authors of this controversy, deserved a more severe rebuke, especially because, without regard for the decrees of their forefathers, they had confirmed by a formal vote a decree against the ancient custom; whereas Cyprian, although he formulated his decrees, always declared that he would preserve peace and unity.

Moreover, those legates who were rejected were not the ones Cyprian had sent, since he nowhere complains of this; indeed, he received Stephen’s letters by a messenger. I do indeed admit that Stephen threatened excommunication, but that he did not actually pronounce it is clear from what has been said.

You will ask 2. Whether St. Cyprian changed and revoked his opinion before his passion.

I respond. This appears more probable, because although that retraction does not appear in his writings, nevertheless no slight arguments persuade us of the very thing. First, because it is certain that not only the Easterners with Firmilian and Dionysius of Alexandria, but also the bishops who took part with St. Cyprian in three Councils of Carthage, revoked their opinion and adhered to the common Tradition of the Church, which Pope St. Stephen defended; but it is not probable that St. Cyprian alone would have wished obstinately to adhere to his opinion against the opinion defended and asserted by all the faithful throughout the world; therefore, etc. No one who knows St. Cyprian’s humility and piety will deny the minor: for how could a most holy man, without evident fault, oppose his private judgment to the common judgment of the Church? The major is established, first, concerning the Easterners and Dionysius of Alexandria, from Dionysius’s own Letter to Stephen, which is read in Eusebius, book 7, Letter 1, where, having changed his opinion, he calls the new depravity of Novatus the error of those who contended that persons baptized by heretics should be baptized again. The same is also clear from another Letter of his to Sixtus, Stephen’s successor, in which, as we said above, he consults him whether he could baptize a man baptized by heretics. It is also established from St. Cyprian’s colleagues; for St. Jerome writes in the Dialogue Against the Luciferians:

He attempted, he says, to flee from broken cisterns and not drink from another’s water; and therefore, rejecting the baptism of heretics, he directed an African synod on this matter to Stephen, then bishop of the city of Rome, who was twenty-sixth from Blessed Peter; but his attempt was in vain.

Finally, those very bishops who had decreed with him that heretics should be baptized again returned to the ancient custom and issued a new decree. Vincent of Lérins likewise bears witness to this in the first Commonitory, no. 51: “Finally, what force does that African Council or decree have? By God’s gift, none; but all of it, like dreams, like fables, like something superfluous, has been made obsolete, abolished, and trampled underfoot.”

It is proved secondly. From St. Augustine, who asserts the same thing in several places, especially Letter 48, which is addressed to Vincent, where after the middle he says:

Cyprian thought differently about Baptism from what the form and custom of the Church held; this is found not in the canonical writings but in his own writings and those of the Council. But Baptism cannot be separated from each other; and therefore those who have been separated from the Church and from the Holy Spirit must also be understood to be separated from Baptism.

St. Augustine replies, book 5 of On Baptism, chapter 23: If this is so, whenever someone has received Baptism in the Catholic Church, he remains in it as long as he himself remains in the Church; but if he departs from it, he has departed from Baptism—which is not so. For that is why it is not given again to one who returns: because when he departed, he did not lose it. And just as those who are evil sons do not have the Holy Spirit as beloved sons have him, although they nevertheless have Baptism, so heretics do not have the Church as Catholics have it, although they nevertheless have Baptism. Therefore, just as there can be Baptism from which the Holy Spirit withdraws, so there can be Baptism where the Church is not.

St. Cyprian objects 9. The power of Baptism cannot be greater or more efficacious than confession, which is martyrdom; but the confession and martyrdom—that is, the Baptism of blood—of heretics is not beneficial, even though one who confessed Christ was killed outside the Church; therefore Baptism cannot be beneficial either. — St. Augustine replies, book 1 of On Baptism, chapter 17, that its power is greater with respect to the effect of sanctification, but not the reality of the Sacrament:

This is entirely true, he says: for one killed outside the Church is shown not to have had charity, of which the Apostle says, “And if I deliver my body so that I may burn, but do not have charity, it profits me nothing.” But if, because charity is lacking, martyrdom profits nothing, it does not profit those either whom Paul says live within in envy and ill will without charity; Cyprian explains this, and yet they can both receive and administer true Baptism.

St. Cyprian presses the point. There is no salvation outside the Church. — St. Augustine replies in the same place:

Who denies it? And therefore whatever belongs to the Church itself is not effective for salvation outside the Church. But it is one thing not to possess something, and another not to possess it profitably. One who does not possess it must be baptized in order to possess it; but one who does not possess it profitably must be corrected in order to possess it profitably.

Objection 10. If the Baptism of heretics is approved, heretics will consequently suppose that they possess the true Church, and therefore refuse to enter the Catholic Church; but he says:

Nor should anyone suppose that heretics are delayed from coming to the Church because Baptism is administered to them, as though they were scandalized by the name of a second Baptism; rather, by this very fact they are driven all the more urgently to come, by the testimony of the truth shown and proved to them. For if they see that by our judgment and decision it is decreed and established that the true and legitimate Baptism is reckoned to be that in which they are baptized there, they will think that they also justly and legitimately possess the Church and the other gifts of the Church; and there will be no reason for coming to us, when, having Baptism, they seem to have the rest as well. But when they recognize that there is no Baptism outside, and that remission of sins cannot be given outside the Church, they hasten to us more eagerly and promptly, and implore the Church their mother for her gifts and endowments; certain that they cannot reach the true promise of divine grace at all unless they have first come to the unity of the Church.

The Donatists pressed a similar argument, as St. Augustine reports, On Baptism, book 1, chapter 11.

They also ask whether sins are forgiven through Baptism in the party of Donatus. For if we say that they are forgiven, they reply: > then the Holy Spirit is there, because when he had been given to the disciples by the Lord’s breathing upon them, this followed, and he said: “Baptize the nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”; “If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven him; if you retain anyone’s, they are retained.” And if this is so, they say, our communion is the Church of Christ. For the Holy Spirit does not work the remission of sins outside the Church. And if our communion is the Church of Christ, your communion is not the Church of Christ. For there is one Church, whatever it may be, of which it is said: “My dove is one, one is her mother.” Nor can there be as many Churches as there are schisms. But if we say that sins are not forgiven there, then, they say, there is no true Baptism there; and therefore those whom you receive from us you ought to baptize, and since you do not do this, you confess that you are not in the Church of Christ.

St. Augustine answers first, in On Baptism, book 5, chapter 2, that St. Cyprian there admits that those baptized by heretics can in fact be saved. For when St. Cyprian had objected to himself: “What, then, will become of those who in the past were admitted to the Church from heresy without Baptism?” he answers: “The Lord is able, in his mercy, to grant pardon, and not to separate from the gifts of his Church those who were simply admitted to the Church and fell asleep in the Church.” St. Augustine weighs these words as follows:

He rightly presumed that the charity of unity could cover a multitude of sins; and if they had Baptism but did not think rightly about other matters, the charity of unity covered that error in those who judged that they had to be baptized again, so long as this was not a diabolical dissension but a human temptation.

He turns the argument back in this way:

“In these circumstances,” he says, “we resist them according to the Scriptures, questioning them so that they may answer for themselves what they ask from us. For I ask them to say whether sins are forgiven where charity is absent; for sins are the darkness of souls. Indeed, we hear John saying: ‘Whoever hates his brother is in darkness until now.’ No one would make schisms if they were not blinded by hatred of a brother. If, then, we say that sins are not forgiven there, how is the one baptized among them reborn? For what is being reborn through Baptism except being reborn from the old condition, from which past sins are not forgiven? But if he has not been reborn, neither has he put on Christ; hence it follows that he appears to need to be baptized again, because the Apostle says: ‘As many as have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ.’ If he has not put him on, he is not to be held baptized in Christ. But because we say that he was baptized in Christ, we confess that he put on Christ. And if we confess this, we confess that he was regenerated. And if this is so, his sins have been forgiven.”

The Donatists insisted, as St. Augustine reports in the same place, chapter 10: The Baptism of Christ conferred by heretics either generates children among those heretics or it does not. If it generates them, then they have a mother Church, which was able to generate children from Christ’s Baptism; but since there must be one Church, it follows that they have the true Church. If we say that it does not generate them, St. Augustine says, they immediately scoff: “Why, then, are those who pass from us to you not reborn through Baptism, when they have been baptized among us, if they have not yet been born?”

St. Augustine answers in the same place:

As though it generated from that from which it is separated, and not from that to which it is joined: for it is separated from the bond of charity and peace, but is joined to it in one Baptism. Thus there is one Church, which alone is called Catholic; and whatever of its own it has in the communions separated from its unity, by the fact that it has something of its own in them, it itself certainly generates, not they, for their separation does not generate. Rather, it is what they have retained from this Church; and if they also abandon this, they generate not at all. Therefore this Church generates in all those whose Sacraments are retained, from which such a thing can be generated anywhere, although not all whom it generates belong to its unity. It saves those who persevere in that unity to the end. For not only do those who are manifest through the open sacrilege of separation fail to belong to it, but also those who, bodily mixed within its unity, are separated by a most evil life. Indeed, it had itself brought forth Simon Magus through Baptism, although it was said to him that he had no share in the inheritance of Christ. Did he lack Baptism, the Gospel, or the Sacraments? But because he lacked charity, he was born in vain, and perhaps it would have been better for him not to be born.

The Donatists urged: If you accept our Baptism, what less do we have, that you think it necessary to seek counsel for us from your communion?

St. Augustine answers, in the same place, chapter 11: We do not accept your Baptism because it is the Baptism of heretics or schismatics, but God’s, wherever it is found and wherever it is transferred; what is yours, however, is only what you think perversely, act sacrilegiously, and impiously separate yourselves.

The eleventh objection. St. Cyprian objected: The Apostles, as we read in Acts 19, baptized again those who had been washed by St. John the Baptist; but heretics are not better or greater than John the Baptist; therefore their Baptism is not more effective, and consequently those baptized by them must be baptized again all the more.

St. Augustine answers, On Baptism, book 4, chapter 9, that those baptized by John were baptized again for no other reason than that John’s Baptism was not Christ’s Baptism, but one granted to John by Christ. Those baptized by John therefore had to be initiated again in Christ’s Baptism because, as he adds in chapter 10: “Although I believe that John baptized in the water of repentance for the remission of sins, so that sins might be remitted in hope to those baptized by him, in reality this would take place in the Lord’s Baptism.” Hence I distinguish the minor premise as stated: heretical baptizers are not better than John the Baptist with respect to integrity of faith and holiness of life—I concede; with respect to the dignity and efficacy of Baptism—I deny. For heretics who baptize duly confer Christ’s Baptism, which is far better and more excellent than John’s Baptism itself.

Finally the Donatists objected to St. Cyprian’s authority:

“Cyprian,” they say (according to St. Augustine, On Baptism, book 1, chapter 1), “whose great merit and learning we know, decreed in a council, together with many of his fellow bishops who compared their own opinions, that heretics or schismatics—that is, all who are outside the communion of the one Church—do not have Baptism; and therefore anyone baptized by them who comes to the Church must be baptized in the Church.”

St. Augustine answers in the same place:

Cyprian’s authority does not frighten me, because Cyprian’s humility refreshes me. We certainly know the great merit of Cyprian, bishop and martyr. Concerning him, Cyprian himself speaks in this way in his Letter to Quintus: “For neither did Peter,” he says, “whom the Lord first chose and > upon whom he built his Church, when Paul disputed with him about circumcision, afterward vindicate anything for himself insolently or arrogate anything proudly, saying that he held primacy and that new and later men ought rather to obey him. Nor did he despise Paul because he had previously been a persecutor of the Church; but he admitted the council of truth and readily consented to the legitimate reasoning that Paul asserted, thereby giving us a lesson in both concord and patience, so that we should not stubbornly love our own opinions, but should rather regard as our own those things that our brothers and colleagues sometimes usefully and salutarily suggest, if they are true and legitimate.”

From these words St. Augustine infers:

If, then, Peter could compel the Gentiles to Judaize against the rule of truth that the Church afterward maintained, why could Cyprian not compel heretics or schismatics to be baptized again against the rule of truth that the whole Church afterward maintained? I think that, without insulting Cyprian the bishop, he may be compared with the Apostle Peter as far as concerns the crown of martyrdom. Yet I must be more afraid of insulting Peter: for who does not know that the primacy of the apostolate is to be preferred to any episcopate? But although the grace of the chairs differs, the glory of the martyrs is one, etc.

You will ask first. Whether peace and communion between St. Stephen and Cyprian remained intact and undisturbed during that celebrated controversy over Baptism?

I answer that it is more probable that the controversy was debated with peace preserved and mutual charity and fellowship still active, and that the bond of mutual communion and charity between the two was not broken. First, because St. Cyprian himself, an exceptionally vigilant guardian of mutual charity and concord, always preached that peace must be pursued in all things, as is clear from all his letters written concerning such a controversy. Secondly, because on this occasion he wrote the book On Unity, in order to exhort all his fellow bishops to preserve peace and concord. Thirdly, because in the third Council of Carthage, which he held on account of this controversy, he addressed his fellow bishops at the beginning of the council in these words: “It remains,” he says, “that each of us disclose what we think about this matter, judging no one and removing no one from the right of communion if he thinks differently.” Finally, because nowhere is it read that Stephen, the supreme pontiff, separated St. Cyprian or his fellow bishops from ecclesiastical communion.

Moreover, St. Augustine presses this truth with many arguments against the schismatic and heretical Donatists. Thus he writes in On Baptism, book 1, chapter 6: “The obscurity of this question in the earlier times of the Church, before Donatus’s schism, compelled great men and bishop-fathers endowed with great charity to dispute and waver among themselves while preserving peace, so that for a long time the differing decrees of councils in their respective regions were changed, until what was most salutarily decreed by a plenary council of the whole world was established even after doubts had been removed.” Hence, in On Baptism, book 5, chapter 20, he excuses the letter written to Pompeius, saying:

Stephen had judged that those who tried to overturn the ancient custom concerning the reception of heretics should be avoided; but this man (he means Cyprian), moved by the difficulty of the question and endowed most abundantly with the entrails of charity, judged that one should remain in unity with those who thought > differently. Thus, although he was moved and indignantly displeased in a brotherly way, the peace of Christ nevertheless prevailed in their hearts, so that no schism arose between them in such a dispute.

Likewise, in book 2, he often reproaches the Donatists for adopting Cyprian’s authority for their schism while rejecting his example for the peace of the Church. In the same book, chapter 5, he objects to himself how they can hold the truth when they think differently about more obscure matters, or how they can accept the truth when they recognize that what they thought has been declared contrary to it. He answers:

Of the two [things] we have manifested: one in Blessed Cyprian, namely, how he maintained unity with those from whom he differed in opinion; for he says (at the beginning of his third Council): “judging no one, nor removing anyone from the right of communion if he should think differently.” But the other [question is] how he could have accepted a truth discovered against what he held? And if the letters are silent, his merits cry out: if the Epistle is not found, the crown gives testimony; if the council does not point it out, the fellowship of angels does. For it is no small proof that, with a most peaceful soul, he deserved martyrdom in that unity from which he did not wish to separate himself while thinking differently.

Moreover, in On the Singular Baptism, chapter 11, against Petilian, the leader of the Donatists, who counted Saint Stephen among the Roman Pontiffs and acknowledged that he had acted blamelessly, Saint Augustine attacks him as follows:

Since Stephen not only does not rebaptize heretics, but even judges that those who do this, or decree that it should be done, ought to be excommunicated, as the Epistle of the other Bishops and of Cyprian himself shows, did Cyprian nevertheless remain in the peace of unity with him? What will these men say here?

From this it is clear that it was beyond doubt both for Augustine and for the Donatists that Cyprian had in no way been separated from the unity of the Church by excommunication. Saint Augustine is not the only defender of this truth: so too is Vincent of Lérins, Against Heresies, chapter 9, and Saint Jerome in the Dialogue Against the Luciferians, where, speaking of the third Council held by Cyprian, he says: let them know that he issued these things without anathematizing those who refused to follow him; for he remained in communion with those who were opposed to his opinion.

Moreover, in the same place he asserts that all the Bishops had returned to the ancient custom and issued a contrary and new decree. The clearest indication of this is that Firmilian himself, though excommunicated with the Easterners, sat in the celebrated Antiochene Synod against Paul of Samosata; and the Greeks piously and solemnly honor him as one who died in the peace of the Church, as is clear from their Menologion on October 28.

Indeed, Saint Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, expressly testifies before Eusebius, book 7, chapter 3 and following, that Saint Cyprian did not depart from unity with Saint Stephen, but only from his opinion; and he says that he was the initiator of the peace which was made the following year, that is, in 259, between the Easterners and the Africans and Pope Stephen, when all of them withdrew their former opinion so that they might agree with Stephen.

Nor can one object to Firmilian’s words in the aforementioned Epistle, in which he repeatedly insists that Stephen was breaking peace with individuals by various kinds of disagreement, now with the Easterners … now with you who are in the south, from whom he received legates, etc. Indeed, I noted above that he [indiCyprianum] would have consented to the authority of the whole world if such a plenary Council had been held in his time.

I answer secondly by denying the minor: for the Council of Arles was not convened from the regions of the whole world, but from the West alone—indeed, only from certain parts of the West, namely Italy, Africa, Spain, Britain, and Gaul—and therefore only 26 Bishops appear to have subscribed to that Council; for although Ado lists six hundred, everyone rejects that number. To Saint Augustine I say that by that Transmarine Council he does not mean a Council actually held, but one which the Donatists could have requested; yet they did not do so—or, if that Council really was granted to them, which Saint Augustine nevertheless does not admit, they were condemned in it, since the whole world does not communicate with them. Hence, after the words quoted in the objection, he says:

If this was not done, the fault belongs to those by whom it ought to have been done, not to the whole world, which would not have been ignorant of something not brought before it. But if it was done, what fault did the ecclesiastical judges commit, who ought in no way to condemn crimes, even if true and reported to them, when they themselves had not found them proved? Could evil men pollute those to whom they could not be made manifest? But if they were made manifest to them, and through either negligence or restraint they did not wish to remove such men from communion, and even pronounced judgments in their favor by a perverse decision, what fault did the whole world commit, which did not know that that case had had many judges and did not believe them to have judged badly, since it could not judge those judges?

From this it is evident that by the transmarine judgment Saint Augustine did not understand the Synod of Arles; for he speaks hesitantly and waveringly about that transmarine judgment, on the hypothesis that it had taken place. But it was utterly clear to Saint Augustine that the Council of Arles had actually been convened, in which he repeatedly testifies that Caecilian had been acquitted and the Donatists who accused him condemned.

You will insist. The second Council of Arles, held in the year 330, as Peter Saxius holds, expressly signifies in Canon 18 that prelates gathered from all parts of the world sat in the first Synod of Arles; for he says: At the discretion of the Bishop of Arles, a Synod was to be convened, and we read that a Council and assembly was held in that city, to which people from all parts of the world, especially from Gaul, were gathered in the time of Saint Martin (Marinus), etc. Therefore the first Council of Arles ought truly to be considered a plenary Council of the whole world.

I deny the consequence: for that Council was convened only from the Latin world, indeed from only a certain part of the Latin world. This appears not only from what has been said, but especially from the Epistle of the Bishops of that first Council of Arles to Pope Sylvester; they do not say that they were gathered from all parts of the world, but from various parts: As the Provinces from which we have assembled are diverse, they say, so too are the concerns that affect us, which we think ought to be observed. Nor is it an objection that in Constantine’s Epistle to Crescens, Bishop of Syracuse, according to Valesius’s version, we read from diverse and almost infinite places; for in another version, found in the recent edition of the Councils, we read from many diverse places. Nor can anything else certainly be inferred from the Bishops’ own Epistle: there are only 26 Bishops who subscribed that Synodal Epistle.

You will insist. Saint Augustine, speaking of the controversy that arose between Primian and Maximian, the Carthaginian pseudo-Bishops—of whom the Donatist Bishops had condemned the former by one hundred votes, while three hundred had acquitted him—compares Caecilian, the legitimate Bishop of Carthage, with them and writes: But if perhaps the number moves you, so that you think the Bagai Council ought to prevail against the one hundred by whom Primian was condemned because there were three hundred and ten in it, why are you unwilling to agree with the greater number of Bishops of the whole world? By this he signifies that Caecilian’s case was weighed by Bishops gathered from the whole world; but Caecilian’s case was nowhere discussed or defined by a numerous gathering of Bishops except in the Synod of Arles. Therefore he truly considers the Synod of Arles a Council of the whole world.

I deny the sequel of the major: for Saint Augustine does not refer this greater number of Bishops to those who judged, but to those who believed the judges and, believing them, held that Caecilian was truly innocent and free from all the charges brought against him by the Donatists. Hence he does not say, “why are you unwilling to agree with the greater number of Bishops?” but rather, “why are you unwilling to agree with the greater number of Bishops”—namely, those who believe Caecilian to have been legitimately acquitted? In this sense he said in Against Cresconius, book 2, chapter 61:

All the Catholic Christians who then existed, whether spread near at hand or throughout distant lands, far and wide, to whom the report about Caecilian and his colleagues could reach, ought to have believed not the defeated accusers but the ecclesiastical judges; because, when we cannot all be judges, we more rightly believe those who were able to be judges, than, by believing the defeated litigants, whose judges we could not be, dare to judge those judges themselves.

You will press the point. If anything prevented the Council of Arles from being called not only universal but also ecumenical for the whole world, it would especially be the fact that Bishops from the whole world were summoned to it but did not assemble. Yet this is no obstacle: the first Council of Constantinople was constituted only by Eastern Bishops, and nevertheless it is called ecumenical and general. By the same reasoning the Council of Trent could not be called universal and ecumenical, because no one from the East attended and a large part of the West was absent. Why, then, should Arles not likewise be considered at least universal, although it was celebrated with Bishops summoned from the West, if not ecumenical?

I deny the minor, and for its proof I say that the first Council of Constantinople is called general and ecumenical because it was joined with the Roman Council held at the same time under Pope Damasus, consisting of Western Bishops who could not attend Constantinople, while the Easterners could not attend Rome; nevertheless the two Councils had approved the same things concerning matters of faith, and the decrees enacted at Constantinople were sent to Rome for approval. Regarding the Council of Trent, I say that it should not seem surprising that the prelates of the Eastern Church themselves were not present, since it was held at a time when the East was schismatic; nor were those Bishops such as could be summoned, or who would have wished to assemble when summoned, because they had withdrawn from the authority of the Pope who summoned them. For that reason it did not cease to be plenary, even though the Easterners were absent. Nevertheless, ten of them are noted as having attended by name, among them Macarius Chiensis, the Greek Archbishop of Thessalonica, who was admitted with the Latins after making a profession of faith and due submission.

Secondly, this plenary Council was neither the Alexandrian Council held in 362, nor the Constantinopolitan Council held in 381, nor the Capuan Council held in 377—or, as Baronius holds, in 380—for, as we said in the second observation, the Council in which the error of the rebaptizers was proscribed was held before Saint Augustine’s birth. Saint Augustine was born in 354, or at the latest in 357, and consequently before the aforementioned Councils were convened.

Thirdly, still less did Saint Augustine understand by the name “plenary Council” the Bagai Council held in 310 by Donatist Bishops to settle the schism that had arisen among them. For although Saint Augustine calls this Council in several places now plenary, now universal—especially in book 2 of Against the Letter of Parmenian, chapter 3, where he writes: What, then, do they put forward that cannot be twisted in that very matter, unless perhaps from the mouth of the asp, of which the Dictator of that judgment of the plenary Council, in which they had assembled with all the Provinces of Africa, remembered long before?—and a little below describes them thus: These Maximianists, shut in by the mouth of the plenary Council of thirty and ten, by the same judgment of their plenary Council, said such things. He has the same in book 2, chapter 1, and often elsewhere. Yet, I say, although he assigns the designation “plenary” to this Council, he does not call it plenary simply and absolutely, but the plenary Council of the Donatists; thus in book 3 of On Baptism, chapter 2, he says: the Maximianists condemned by their plenary Council, etc.; and in Against the Letter of Parmenian, book 2, chapter 2: they pronounced the judgment of their plenary Council, etc.; and in Against the Letters of Petilian, book 2, chapter 15: the judgment of your plenary Council is witness.

I can add that, when the Donatists asserted with perverse presumption that the Church had perished throughout the world and alone remained whole in the hands of their rulers in Africa, they wanted the passage in Song of Songs 1 to be understood of their Church alone, where the Church mystically addresses Christ, her divine Bridegroom, saying: “Tell me where you lie, where you pasture at midday,” because Africa is the southern part of the world. When, I say, the Donatists were so foolish, Saint Augustine does not seriously or in his own sense call that Council universal and plenary, but does so from the Donatists’ false imagination, because all the Donatists had assembled in it, and they called their own Church universal and plenary. Thus he writes in book 4 of Against Cresconius, chapter 8.

Since, then, I said that if you had any true documents, you ought to have had the Catholic Church approve them, so that you might be within; while those whom you convicted would be driven out, what is the meaning of your reply that the separation occurred because we were driven out, while your people remained in the Plenary and Catholic Church?

And immediately afterward, mocking this same assumed notion of their plenary Church:

If the Maximianists themselves say this to you in exactly these words, what will you answer, except that they are not worthy of refutation but only of ridicule—those who dare to assert that the Plenary Church consists of fewer than one hundred Bishops, against such a great number and multitude over which more than three hundred preside? Throughout all the regions of Africa where the Maximianists are found, the communion of Primian did not cease; but throughout the other, much more numerous and much broader parts of Africa, no one finds a single Maximianist, except perhaps a traveler. Why, then, do you dare, against the Church promised and restored by the voice of truth from the rising of the sun to its setting, to call the part of Donatus the Plenary Church, when it is nothing but Africa, whereas that Church includes so many nations and Africa as well?

From this it is clear how the Donatists recognized the Plenary Church and the Catholic Church as nothing other than their own, although it was confined within African boundaries alone. What wonder, then, if they understood “Plenary Council” in their own sense as referring to the universal Church which they imagined and shamelessly claimed to be contained only in their part? In precisely this sense Augustine used “Plenary” and “Catholic” ironically in all the places mentioned above, according to their way of thinking—not because he thought that “plenary” could be taken for a provincial, regional, or non-ecumenical Council; for otherwise, in the many places previously cited, he would not have explained this very word so clearly in his own sense of the whole world or the universal Church, so that in Against the Letters of Petilian, book 1, chapter 22, he calls the unity of the Church spread through so many nations “Plenary and Catholic.”

Fourthly, by “plenary Council” Saint Augustine did not understand the Council of Sardica: first, because no Sardican Canon is read that prohibits the repetition of Baptism; and second, because Saint Augustine does not seem to have acknowledged any Council of Sardica other than the Sardican assembly held by the Arians at the same time as the legitimate Council was being held at Sardica. This is gathered from book 3 of Against Cresconius, chapter 31. For when the Donatists boasted that the name of Donatus, Bishop of Carthage, was inscribed at the beginning of the Synodal Epistle of the Council of Sardica, and that the Eastern Bishops therefore communicated with them, Saint Augustine replies: “Learn, then, what you do not know: the Council of Sardica was Arian,” etc. Hence he adds the reason why certain Eastern Bishops communicated with the Donatists, namely, he says: “The Eastern heresy attempted to join the African heresy to itself.”

Finally, by the name “plenary Council,” St. Augustine understood none other than Nicaea. This was so clear and manifest to those who edited St. Augustine’s works that, whenever the text says “plenary,” they noted in the margin none other than Nicaea. It was so evident to Maldonado, when he discusses the Sacrament of Baptism, that from the many testimonies of St. Augustine cited by him he asserted that it must necessarily be understood of Nicaea wherever the holy Doctor speaks of the plenary Council; and it was ultimately so evident to Bellarmine that he affirmed there was no reason for doubt, since he explicitly says that the Council was celebrated before his birth and that no Council other than Nicaea could have been, or could be imagined to have been, designated by both those remarkable expressions.

It is proved further, first, because all the marks by which St. Augustine designates this Council—especially that it was a Council of the whole Christian world—fit Nicaea exceedingly well. For St. Athanasius, in the Apology 2, calls the Council of Nicaea the great Synod, and writes of it in the Letter he directs to those very Africans that it filled the whole inhabited earth, or the entire world; not only the Indians knew of it, but all the Christians known among every other people and among the barbarians. Moreover, in the Synodal Letter concerning the Synods of Rimini and Seleucia addressed to the Emperor Constantius, which he himself possesses, we read of the Council of Nicaea that its doctrine penetrated the ears or minds of everyone, or, as it was publicly proclaimed, penetrated wherever there are lands. It is therefore no slight indication that this controversy, which had divided the Africans by so dreadful and pernicious a schism, was treated in this universal Council not long after the controversy over rebaptizing heretics had arisen and after the Synod of Arles had been celebrated; especially since Caecilianus was present, whom the Donatists pretended was above all the occasion of so grave a contention.

Second, the same St. Athanasius writes in his Letter to Epictetus that all heresies had been overthrown in the Council of Nicaea:

“I thought,” he says, “that all the empty vanity of all the heretics who have existed or now exist had been restrained and laid to rest by the Council of Nicaea. For the faith handed down there by the Fathers according to the Scriptures is sufficient to overthrow every impiety and to establish the piety of the faith that is in Christ.”

Shortly below he adds: No Synod in the Catholic Church is to be esteemed except the one Nicaean Synod, which must be regarded as the trophy of all the heresies overthrown, and especially of the Arian heresy. But how is it said to be sufficient for overthrowing every heresy, not merely the Arian heresy, if it proscribed the heresy of the Donatists, or of the rebaptizers, about which so many disputes and disturbances had recently arisen, not at all? How did it crush all the empty talk of every kind of heretic, overthrow all impiety and irreligion, establish every pious faith in Christ the Lord, and finally become the general trophy of all heresies, if it decreed absolutely nothing against some of them, and especially against the rebaptizers?

Third, St. Jerome, in the Dialogue against the Luciferians, chapter 9, answering the Luciferian’s question expressed in chapter 8—“Why are those baptized by heretics received?”—after a lengthy response in which he also recalls the controversy between SS. Stephen and Cyprian, finally concludes: The Nicaean Synod also received all heretics, except the disciples of Paul of Samosata, etc. But how were absolutely all heretics, except the disciples of Paul of Samosata, received in that Council because they had not received Baptism in the name of the Trinity, if nothing at all was dealt with there concerning the Baptism of the Africans and the controversy of the Donatists?

Finally, this Council, which St. Augustine calls plenary, was general and Ecumenical, as we have already said, and was celebrated before St. Augustine’s birth. But before Augustine was born, no other general Council besides Nicaea had been celebrated that was known to St. Augustine; nor, as has been said, was he entirely ignorant of the legitimate Council of Sardica.

You will say. St. Augustine understood that Council whose Canons he knew. But the Canons of the Council of Nicaea were not known to him before the Sixth Council of Carthage; for when a dispute arose there concerning an appeal to the supreme Pontiff, which was reported to be permitted and approved in the Council of Nicaea, he ordered the Canons of the Council of Nicaea to be sought from the principal Sees—that is, Alexandria and Constantinople—in order that what had been decreed in it might become clear. Therefore St. Augustine did not know what had been decreed in the Nicaean Synod.

I answer the minor premise that, if Augustine had not known what had been decreed in the Nicaean Synod before its Canons had been sought from the principal Sees, it would follow that, after the Canons were found, he was no better informed about what had been decreed in that Synod concerning the rebaptism of heretics, because no more Canons were found in those Sees than the ones that are in circulation. Nevertheless, it is clear from the considerations we have just brought forward that something had been determined concerning this controversy. St. Augustine could therefore have known well what had been done in the Council of Nicaea concerning the controversy of the Donatists, either from its fame spread throughout the whole world, according to the testimony of St. Athanasius, and especially throughout Africa, since Caecilianus had been present at that Council and knew what had been decreed there regarding the matter that especially concerned the Africans, so that after some time it could reach Augustine’s knowledge through the tradition of others while he himself was living in Africa. Add that it appears false that he did not know the Nicaean Canons, since in the book On Heresies, heresy 41, he writes:

The Paulinists, from Paul of Samosata, say that Christ did not always exist, but asserted that his beginning was from the time he was born of Mary, and they think that he was nothing more than a man. The Council of Nicaea in the Catholic Church certainly established that these Paulinists were to be baptized. Hence it must be believed that they do not hold the rule of Baptism, which once many heretics took away when they departed from the Catholic Church, and which they preserve.

As though by contrast, at least virtually and implicitly, he were saying that those who had always observed the Catholic rule of Baptism retained in heresy were not to be rebaptized by the Council.

You will object 2. The holy Fathers Epiphanius and Basil, who indicate plainly enough that nothing had been prescribed or defined in the Council of Nicaea concerning not rebaptizing those baptized by heretics. First, St. Epiphanius, in the Anacephaleosis, after enumerating the heresies, no. 8, touching briefly on certain other errors, says:

Others, who seemed more audacious, formed into a private faction for themselves from the Catholic side, contrary to the custom of the Church and without a decree of a general Council, did not hesitate to baptize again those who passed from the Arians to their party, since, as I said, the matter had not yet been defined by universal judgment,

etc. But he would have assumed this for no reason if this question had been defined in the Council of Nicaea. For St. Epiphanius wrote this book in the eleventh year of Valentinian and Valens, as he himself indicates in the preface to the work—that is, in the year 375. The Council of Nicaea, however, was celebrated in the year 325 or 326. Nor can one object that perhaps the Canons of the Council of Nicaea were unknown to St. Epiphanius; for he himself proves the contrary, since in heresy 69, which is that of the Arians, page 11, he writes: The Emperor, consulting for the Church, gathered an Ecumenical Synod of 318 Bishops. In that same Synod certain ecclesiastical Canons were enacted, as well as concerning the celebration of Easter, etc.

Next, St. Basil admits the free choice of rebaptizing, or not rebaptizing, those baptized by the Cathari, Encratites, and Hydroparastatae, etc. For he says:

It seemed good to the ancients, with Cyprian and our Firmilianus saying so, to subject them all to one judgment: the Cathari, Encratites, etc. Therefore they ordered those who had been baptized by those very heretics to be cleansed, when they came to the Church, by our Church’s Baptism. But since it seemed entirely good to some Asians, on account of the economy and dispensation of their merits, to receive their Baptism, let it be received.

And below: It is therefore clear that, since nothing has been expressly said about these people, namely the Encratites, their Baptism must be abolished. But if this should prove an impediment to the universal economy, we must again use custom and must follow

The Fathers and those who concern us would have provided. But if that controversy had been defined in the Council of Nicaea, St. Basil would neither have announced that this dispute pertained only to economy and also to faith, nor have made it free for each person to preserve the custom of his own region in baptizing or rebaptizing heretics. Therefore, etc.

I answer St. Epiphanius that there he does not treat the question of Baptism expressly, but only mentions in passing, on another occasion, the Arians whom some were rebaptizing, although no Synod had decreed it. For he says:

They dare to arrogate something to themselves beyond the Canons, stirred up by the orthodox, and gathering a conventicle for themselves; indeed, without a decree of an Ecumenical Synod, to rebaptize those who come from the Arians; since this matter has not yet been decided by any statute or decree of a Synod; for this reason the peoples still live mixed together, associate with one another, and many are also orthodox and join themselves falsely to the sacred Ministers, until the manifest separation from this blasphemous heresy takes place, and then those things will be defined which fight against it.

By these words Epiphanius does not assert that nothing had been decreed concerning not rebaptizing those baptized by heretics. St. Augustine plainly teaches the contrary when he asserts that those who maintained the contrary had been condemned as heretics, even long before his birth—which certainly preceded Epiphanius’s episcopate by many years. He merely indicates that the Church had not yet made any distinct ruling concerning those coming from the Africans who were to be rebaptized. Regarding St. Basil, I say that he did not doubt in an undetermined way about admitting the Baptism of heretics, but only about the Baptism of those who had been born in heresy, or who did not hold inwardly the form of Baptism that they professed with their mouths. This is gathered from the first Letter to Amphilochius, where he indicates that, because the Council of Nicaea had received heretics and their Baptism given according to the ecclesiastical rule, it had not declared whether it also meant heretics who, thinking absurdly and impiously about the divine Trinity, erred concerning the legitimate form of Baptism, although they pronounced that entire and legitimate form. In short, he seems to call into doubt whether Baptism conferred by them was legitimate or not.

You will object 3. The Council of Nicaea explicitly defines nothing concerning the non-rebaptizing of heretics in general, because it deals only with the rebaptizing of the Paulinists. Therefore, by the plenary Council in which he says that the Donatist dogma was discussed and condemned, St. Augustine does not understand Nicaea, but Arles, in which this was explicitly defined.

I answer first, that although no Nicene Canon is now found which expressly defines that matter, it does not follow from this that none existed previously; since it is clear from various testimonies that some did exist. For St. Jerome says in the Preface to the Book of Judith: this book of Judith, the Nicene Synod is read to have counted among the number of the sacred Scriptures: but where is that Nicene Canon found which is said to have counted this book? St. Ambrose writes in his Letter to the Church of Vercelli of the ordination of bigamists forbidden by the Nicene Synod. St. Augustine testifies in Letter 110 that it had been defined at the Council of Nicaea that two bishops should not sit together in the same city: He says that, while Bishop Valerius, a father of blessed memory, was still alive, I, an old man, was ordained bishop, and I sat with him, which he did not know had been forbidden by the Council of Nicaea. But where are the canons of that same Council which now forbid this? St. Augustine could therefore have learned that the Donatists had been condemned at the Council of Nicaea, as the report spread throughout the whole world and gained strength among Catholics that this canon had been issued concerning that condemnation; although it may have perished, along with certain others, through the injury of time. Hence it follows that St. Augustine never expressly mentioned the name of Nicaea whenever he began speaking of a plenary Council, either because no express canon on that matter existed or because he perhaps had not seen it. That he did not have the Council of Arles in mind is also evident, besides what was said above, from the fact that he nowhere expressly cites the Canon of the Council of Arles as known to him from another source, although, concerning this controversy, he reports by name many other matters on either side from the councils of heretics themselves—how much more would he have done so from a Catholic Council, if he had seen the canon of that plenary Council? For the case of Nicaea is not the same, since it was not known to him in the same way as Arles, which was very well known to him, as he sufficiently proves by pressing it so often to defend the aforesaid case. Add that perhaps at that time those eighty Canons had not yet been translated into Latin and consequently were not known to the Latins and Africans; they had been published by Alphonsus Pisanus and Franciscus Turianus, theologians of the Society of Jesus, after they had obtained them on loan from the Patriarch of Alexandria from an Arabic exemplar and translated them into Latin. Abraham Ecchellensis, a Syrian by nation and a Maronite by religion, indeed sought to demonstrate that all these Canons were genuine. Among these Canons there is one which forbids the rebaptism of heretics; St. Augustine could have learned of that Canon as fame spread the report, but since its wording was not known to him, he therefore did not wish to cite it expressly.

You will insist. By the name “plenary Council,” St. Augustine understands that Council in which the case of the Donatists was sifted. For he says, book 2 of On Baptism, chapter 9: While it was discussed and investigated among many on both sides, the truth was not only found but also brought to the authority and strength of a plenary Council. But that matter was not weighed in the Council of Nicaea, since only Caecilianus among the African Bishops is reported to have been present there. Therefore, etc. — I answer: St. Augustine judges that the case of the Donatists was dealt with nowhere other than in a universal and plenary Council, where it is said to have been defined and brought to authority and strength. For in book 2, On Baptism against the Donatists, chapter 1, he says: That case was treated for a long time throughout the regions of the world by the disputations and conferences of many Bishops on both sides. Thus St. Augustine also does not indicate that this occurred in one and the same Council, but in the individual Councils that the Fathers or Bishops, endowed with great charity, held separately in their several Provinces and regions. For he writes, in book 1, chapter 1: The obscurity of this question in the earlier times of the Church, before the schism of Donatus, compelled great men and the Bishops who were Fathers endowed with great charity to dispute and waver among themselves while preserving peace, so that for a long time the differing statutes of Councils in their several regions were changed, until what was most salutary was confirmed, doubts having also been removed, by a plenary Council of the whole world. Add that, even if the Donatists had ever been present at the Council of Nicaea, their dogma could nevertheless have been discussed and weighed on both sides in their absence by Catholics, who proposed and resolved the objections of the absent, so that the definition might become clearer; just as, although Lutherans or Calvinists were not disputants at the Council of Trent, their dogma was nevertheless debated on both sides by

Catholic theologians, so that Catholic truth might shine forth with greater certainty.

NOTANDA 1. From the Doctor in dist. 6, q. 5, n. 2: in administering a Sacrament, two things can be considered—the Sacrament itself, a sensible sign of a sacred thing ordered to man’s sanctification, and what follows it, namely the end a minister may propose in conferring it, such as profit, grace, or overcoming temptations. Thus one intention regards confecting and validly administering the Sacrament, while another regards an end attained through it. That end is principal and remote, that the baptized become a child of the kingdom, and proximate and less principal, that he become a Christian or member of the Church militant; either may be intended universally or particularly. The question is which intention is required for valid confection and administration.

NOTANDA 2. Since a Sacrament may be considered materially, as composed of sensible things and words physically regarded, or formally and morally, as a sign of a sacred thing ordered to sanctification, so the Minister’s intention is interior or exterior. Exterior intends only to administer the Sacrament materially, employing its things and words without attention to their signification and moral efficacy. Interior intends to administer it formally, under the formal aspect of a Sacrament, knowing that the thing and words employed are ordered to man’s sanctification and salvation.

Interior intention is furthermore direct or indirect. Indirect does not intend the thing in itself but by reason of another, as homicide intended by a drunken man who directly intends only generous drinking while foreseeing the homicide; some call this interpretative. Direct intends a thing in itself and directly, as homicide intended by a man possessing mind and reason.

NOTANDA 3. Direct intention is customarily habitual, virtual, or actual. Habitual is the Minister’s facility, readiness, and inclination toward confecting the Sacrament acquired through frequent administration. Virtual is acting by virtue of a prior intention formed and neither retracted nor changed, although one does not actually attend to or think about the Sacrament. Actual is intending in fact to confect it while confecting or administering it. Actual and virtual intention may be absolute or conditional: absolute intends efficaciously to confer the Sacrament and its effect; conditional intends it under a condition concerning the future, past, or present, for example that a penitent confessed properly, truly repented with firm purpose not to sin, or would not sin thereafter. Absolute intention is determined either to present matter and subject abstractly, or to this particular subject and matter.

With these premises, it must be resolved whether and what intention is required for administering a Sacrament. Luther, Calvin, and their followers deny any necessity on the Minister’s part. Luther, in the Assertion of the Articles, says that even if a penitent were not contrite, or a Priest absolved in jest, yet if the person believed himself absolved he would truly be absolved, since the Sacrament was instituted only to arouse faith apprehending the divine promise. Calvin, in the Antidote, likewise says: However much the Sophists chatter about the intention of conferring, it was revealed by no promised reason; for if the Minister’s intention were necessary, no one among us could make his baptism certain, etc. He adds that even if an Epicurean scoffingly administered a supper according to Christ’s command, God’s rule, and lawful rite, the bread and chalice would be pledges of Christ’s body and blood, dismissing the alleged necessity of doing what the Church does.

First conclusion. — IN FACT, FOR THE CONFECTION AND VALID ADMINISTRATION OF A SACRAMENT, THE MINISTER REQUIRES THE INTENTION OF DOING A SACRED THING. This is of faith, determined at Florence: All the Sacraments of the evangelical law are perfected by three things: things as matter, words as form, and the person of the Minister conferring the sacrament with the intention of doing what the Church does; if any is lacking, the Sacrament is not perfected. Trent likewise anathematizes whoever denies at least this intention, and teaches that a penitent cannot be absolved by faith alone when contrition or the Priest’s serious intention is absent, nor is priestly absolution merely a declaration valid whether serious or in jest. Martin V’s Bull against Hussite and Wycliffite errors likewise asks whether an evil Priest with proper matter, form, and the intention of doing what the Church does truly confects, baptizes, absolves, and confers the other Sacraments.*

The Doctor proves this in dist. 6, q. 5, first because every act indifferent in itself to signifying sacred or profane things must be determined to be sacred. Sacramental actions are indifferent to many offices and ends: Baptism’s washing might serve bodily cleanliness, health, play, and the like. Nothing determines it to one sacramental effect except the minister’s intention. The determinate form of words determines the material action to its proper effect, but the sacramental form itself must be determined by the Minister’s intention; otherwise I baptize you would not order the washing to sanctification and would not be the form. The baptizer’s intention is signified by I baptize you, and likewise in the other Sacraments by their forms.

He proves it secondly, n. 3, because every sacramental action must be a human act, or one deliberated by judgment:

for, as he says, intention is required in every person acting on something not fortuitously, or exercising any human act, properly speaking of human acts caused in man by intellect and will; but the act which the Minister must exercise must be human in him, not casual or fortuitous, because obligation does not fall upon fortuitous things; the obligation itself is that a person intend that to which he is obliged.

Thus the Doctor: administering Sacraments necessarily entails the Minister’s intention because it is a human act entrusted by Christ to Ministers and dispensers of the Church’s goods. A human act needs intention directing it to its proper effect; without it things are casual and cannot be deliberate or human. Since the Minister is delegated by Christ, he must intend what was delegated and commanded; a commanded action must be intentional, because obligation does not fall upon fortuitous things: therefore, etc.

You will say 1. If intention were required, it would be because God conferred the Sacrament’s effect only according to the minister’s intention. But God often gives graces beyond the intention of the Minister or instrument, as Isaac blessed Jacob while intending Esau, and God ratified the blessing. Therefore a recipient could obtain the effect even when the Minister conferred the Sacrament contrary to his intention.

I deny the minor; the example opposes the adversaries, since Isaac intended to bless one of his sons and establish him as firstborn, though he erred about the person. Thus, although a sacramental Minister err about the person, if he truly intends to confer the Sacrament the recipient will obtain its effect.

You will say 2. Intention is no more required in administering a Sacrament than in preaching the Gospel, since Christ delegates the Apostles alike to baptize and preach: Go, teach all nations, baptizing them, etc. He did not command intention in teaching, since preaching even insincerely and from envy profits, as the Apostle says: Some preach Christ out of envy and contention, some out of good will, some out of charity; some announce Christ not sincerely, yet so long as Christ is announced I rejoice and shall rejoice. Therefore intention is not required in administering Sacraments.

I deny the antecedent; the power to baptize and preach was delegated only according to a certain comparison: Baptism was directed to all, even infants, preaching only to adults. Though both ministries are commanded, they are not commanded in the same way, but suitably to the matter and recipients. The Gospel word proposes things to be believed but does not make them believed and is speculative on the minister’s part; the sacramental word is practical and efficacious and must be determined by the minister to its ordered effect.

You will say 3. St. Augustine remains doubtful and defines nothing certainly about the Minister’s intention, so its necessity was not always settled in the Church. In On Baptism 1, 53, while asking whether one who baptizes in feigned purpose, jest, or play truly baptizes, he says: It is safe not to advance rashly where no Catholic regional or plenary council has determined the matter; but we confidently assert what the universal Church’s consent has strengthened under Christ’s governance. He adds that, if pressed to say what he thought, he would not doubt that those have Baptism who received it with evangelical words, without their own pretense and with some faith, though without charity it would not profit them spiritually. Thus he seems to hold Baptism valid without the baptizer’s intention, goodness, or end.

I deny the antecedent: Augustine was doubtful because no general Council had defined the matter. Now the necessity of intention has been defined at Constance, Florence, and Trent, and he would have accepted the definition. Saying that Baptism consecrated with evangelical words is valid means only that it is valid whether conferred by heretics or Catholics, not that validity requires washing and the form’s words while excluding the Minister’s intention.

You will insist. Augustine judges heretical Baptism valid, yet heretics cannot have legitimate sacramental intention; therefore he does not judge intention necessary. The major follows; the minor follows from his preface to Psalm 82, where legitimate intention is directed by faith, which heretics cannot have.

I deny the minor, for Augustine there speaks not of intention required to confect and administer a Sacrament but of that desired to complete a meritorious good work; he says:

Let no one count his works before faith: where faith was not, there was no good work; for intention makes a good work, faith directs intention. Do not attend too closely to what a man does, but to what he looks toward when he does it, toward what goal he directs the efforts of the best governance.

You will urge: in Tractate 5 on John Augustine says he does not fear an adulterous, drunken, or murderous Minister baptizing, but looks to Christ, whose name and power give Baptism: I do not fear the adulterer, drunkard, or murderer, because I look to the dove, through which it is said: this is he who baptizes. But a drunk man cannot have determinate intention, being without mind and reason.

The Doctor responds, no. 10. Augustine speaks of an ebriosus, a man accustomed and prone to drunkenness, not of one deprived of reason. A habitual drunkard, like an adulterer, can have a right intention of baptizing despite his vicious disposition. Augustine intended nothing else, for he is discussing Sacraments conferred by a wicked Minister, which he declares valid.

You will say 4. The Fathers teach that in administering Sacraments one attends not to the giver’s conscience but only to Christ’s power, in whose name and authority the Sacrament is conferred; otherwise salvation would be uncertain. The same uncertainty would arise if intention were required. Therefore, as goodness is not required in the Minister, neither is intention.

I respond, granting the major and denying the minor. Some uncertainty exists, but far less than if the Minister’s goodness were required for validity. Someone so wicked as not to intend conferring the Sacrament can scarcely be found, while Ministers in mortal sin are common. Since intention is easy to have and its absence would entail grave malice, not easily suspected in a Church Minister, we should be morally certain he had it, as we are certain of less evident facts such as our parentage. Nor would certainty be greater if only matter and form were required, since who can know that natural water and the complete form were used in his Baptism?

You will say 5. Sacraments relate to the Minister as medicines to the physician: they are remedies of the soul as medicines are of the body. Bodily medicines do not need the physician’s intention for their effects; therefore Sacraments do not need the Minister’s intention.

I deny the major: conferral of Sacraments is truly a human act, operating only from divine intention. Therefore they cannot exist without the agent’s intention or operate ex opere operato, since the Minister’s intention is contained in that opus operatum, which is a human work.

You will say 6. Sacraments are sensible signs and therefore must consist of sensible things; the Minister’s intention is not sensible, so it contributes nothing to validity or integrity.

I distinguish the major: that they are sensible signs signifying speculatively, I deny; practically, I concede. Practical signification requires the intention of the agent and Minister, because sacramental action must be human and therefore deliberate. Or, with the Doctor, q. 5, n. 7: if sensible things have the character of matter and form, I concede; if they determine matter and form to sacramental being, I deny. Or, as the Doctor speaks,

I say that some things pertain to Baptism as intrinsic and some as extrinsic; nothing intrinsically pertains to it or its foundation unless sensible. Nevertheless, just as an efficient cause is necessarily required for it > as an extrinsic cause, so also that which is as it were the principle of such a cause’s action. The ultimate principle determining an intellectual agent to act is intention, because by the command of the will it moves the other powers subject to that command. Thus the claim that nothing belongs to the Sacrament unless it is something of the Sacrament or its reality is true of what is intrinsic to it or its signified reality; intention is intrinsic in neither way, though required on the agent’s part.

This is the Doctor’s statement: matter and form, which intrinsically constitute the Sacrament, must be sensible; the same is not true of what is extrinsic and belongs to the agent confecting and conferring it.

Second conclusion. — EXTERIOR INTENTION ALONE DOES NOT SUFFICE FOR VALIDITY; INTERIOR INTENTION IS ALSO REQUIRED, EITHER OF DOING WHAT THE CHURCH DOES, WHAT CHRISTIANS CUSTOMARILY DO, OR WHAT CHRIST COMMANDED, OR AT LEAST OF DOING A CHRISTIAN THING IN THE BAPTIZED. Thus the Doctor, n. 1:

I say, therefore, that intention of the ultimate end is in no way required in one baptizing, because Pagans do not intend to order the baptized to eternal life. Intention regarding the proximate end is required, either particularly or generally: particularly, if he intends this person to enter the law observed by Christians; generally, if he intends to do toward him what Christians customarily do toward their own.

The Conclusion is proved by the same considerations as the preceding one. The cited Councils plainly teach that validity requires the Minister’s intention of doing what the Church does; this is not exterior only but interior.

It is confirmed: if only exterior intention were required, one who baptized or absolved in play or jest would confer validly. This is false and contradicts Trent, Session 14, chapter 6: The penitent ought not flatter himself concerning his faith so that, even without contrition or the Priest’s serious intention of truly absolving, he should believe himself absolved. It adds: Nor would he be anything but negligent of salvation if he recognized a Priest releasing him in jest and did not diligently seek another acting seriously.

Nor is it valid to reply that the Council speaks only of exterior mockery, not merely of interior mockery unexpressed by external signs.

— The contrary appears. First, exterior intention to observe the Church’s rites can coexist with exterior mockery just as with interior mockery. Second, someone can truly be baptized amid exterior mockery if the Minister has interior intention to baptize; exterior mockery therefore hinders the Sacrament only because of interior mockery. If the latter does not harm it, neither can the former.

Secondly, the required intention is that by which the Minister conforms to the principal agent and determines otherwise-indifferent things and words to sacramental being. Intention to do what the Church or Christians do conforms him to Christ and determines the matter and form to the Sacrament. Someone could wash a child for health in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, invoking them to restore health; though the matter and form were those used in Baptism, it would not be a Sacrament because he lacked intention to do what the Church does or what Christ instituted for Baptism: therefore, etc.

You will say 7. The Minister is an instrument of Christ and God, not the principal agent of the Sacrament’s effect. An action is perfected by the principal agent’s intention, not the instrument’s; therefore a Sacrament can be valid without the Minister’s interior intention.

The Doctor responds, in the cited question, n. 9, concerning the major,

that the Minister is a secondary cause with respect to the washing, not only as washing but as sacramental, and therefore has his own intention, being voluntary rather than natural, namely the intention belonging to a knowing agent. Regarding Baptism’s principal effect, grace, he may be called an instrument with respect to God, as a dispositive agent is an instrument with respect to the perfecting agent. Such an agent intends not the principal agent’s term but its own. Thus it is not necessary for the baptizer to intend Baptism’s ultimate end, but he must intend Baptism.

This is the Doctor’s statement: the Minister is a secondary cause with respect to the Sacrament, but only a dispositive instrument with respect to grace. The one conferring Baptism need not intend to produce grace; it suffices to intend what the Church or Christians do. I distinguish the minor: an inanimate irrational instrument, such as a brush moved only by the painter’s intention, does not need its own intention, I concede; but an animate rational instrument, such as a household servant or a royal prefect and judge administering justice, does, I deny. The King leaves particular actions to their judgment, so they need prudence, intention, and deliberation. The sacramental Minister is such an instrument: not merely moved by God and Christ, but also in some way moving and acting himself, since Christ entrusts determinate sacramental administration to his prudence. Ministers are dispensers of God’s mysteries, and 1 Corinthians 4 requires a dispenser to be faithful; therefore he needs deliberation and intention to fulfill his ministry.

You will urge. Even a rational instrument does not require a special intention for the principal cause to perform properly the action for which it is employed; therefore the Minister’s intention is not needed for sacramental validity. Someone can by another’s commission buy or sell, contract marriage with an absent bride, or serve as interpreter for another’s confession before a Priest. Whatever his attitude—whether he approves or disapproves, is inwardly willing or unwilling—the action is considered valid: therefore, etc.

I respond, something can be done through a minister in two ways: first, so that he merely carries the mind and will of the man who, since he cannot take part in the matter to be done, assumes and appoints him as a delegate, intermediary, and interpreter; second, so that the delegate sustains and acts in the person of his master, yet fulfills the ministry entrusted to him by his own judgment, as a steward or dispenser of the affairs of a household. Thus I distinguish the antecedent: an instrument endowed with reason can validly do something without intention when it does not execute the matter by its own judgment, nor does that matter depend on its will, but it has merely the role of an intermediary or interpreter, I concede; otherwise, I deny. But the minister of a sacrament has a part in the making of the sacraments, of which he is the steward and dispenser, and he dispenses and administers them by his own decision and judgment: therefore the consequence must be denied.

You say 8. An interior intention of doing what the Church does is not required if a baptism conferred in jest and play is considered valid; but this is so; therefore, and so on. The major is clear: for one who acts merely mimetically and in play has no other intention than to play and to give others laughter and pleasure. But the minor is proved by the case of St. Genesius, Roman Martyr; for, as Ado testifies in his Martyrology on August 25: when Genesius was acting a mime in the theater before Diocletian, to provide entertainment for the emperor, he pretended to be ill and proposed to be baptized. Therefore two other mimes were summoned, who, taking the part of a presbyter and an exorcist, washed him with water. When asked by them whether he believed, he replied that he believed from his heart; and immediately he saw a hand coming from heaven above, and angels of God shining around him, who washed away all his sins in that very water. Thus wonderfully strengthened by the vision, he freely and steadfastly professed before the emperor that he was a Christian and began to curse the worship of idols. Therefore, torn by various tortures, he finally underwent a glorious martyrdom by beheading.

I deny the minor, and in proving it I say, first, that St. Genesius can be said to have been baptized not by the ministry of a man, but by that of one of the angels who stood around him. Second, when he was suddenly changed and seriously requested baptism, he could have taught the pseudo-presbyter the legitimate rite of administering baptism; and so, although such an action appeared to the spectators in the theater as mockery, it could nevertheless truly be considered baptism conferred seriously. Hence in the Roman Martyrology we read: while Genesius was mocking the mysteries of the Christians, inspired by God he was suddenly converted to the faith and baptized. Finally, it could be said that it was perhaps not true baptism: for although Genesius was not baptized again, he could nevertheless have been justified by that faith formed by charity, with which he courageously professed the Catholic religion and underwent martyrdom; and so perhaps he was baptized only insofar as he was baptized by the baptism of man, but truly flooded by the baptism of desire and of blood.

You will insist. In fact, baptism conferred in jest and play, without any true intention, was approved by the Church; therefore the solution just given is worthless. The antecedent is proved: for the baptism conferred for amusement by Athanasius, while still a boy, on other boys was regarded as genuine and valid by Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, and by a council of priests it was judged that those boys were not to be rebaptized, as is clear from Rufinus, book 1 of Ecclesiastical History, chapter 14. Alexander, he says, is reported to have decided, after conferring with a council of clerics, that for those upon whom water had been poured with complete questions and answers, baptism ought not to be repeated, but that what is customarily administered by priests should be completed. Socrates, book 1, chapter 11; Sozomen, book 2, chapter 14; and Nicephorus, book 3, chapter 14, testify to the same. That this baptism was conferred with only an exterior intention is clear: what other intention could there have been in a boy playing with boys and pretending to be a bishop? Therefore, and so on.

I respond first that the antecedent and its proof can be denied; for that story does not appear so certain. First, it was committed to writing by Rufinus; but he holds it as doubtful, as something circulated through the report of others, and so, when relating it, he says: “There were,” and so on. Second, the authors who relate the aforesaid story do not agree with one another: Socrates says that Alexander, passing by, saw Athanasius playing; Sozomen says that he noticed it while waiting for clerical guests; but Nicephorus says that, seated in a higher place, he observed this game. Third, Socrates himself, in telling this childish game, omits what concerns baptism and makes no mention at all of any boys baptized by Athanasius.

Nevertheless, since Rufinus says that he received that story from those who lived with Athanasius himself, therefore, so as not to deny credence to so many and such great authors, supposing the truth of the matter itself, one must respond that Athanasius, in baptizing, had the intention of doing what the Church does. This can certainly be inferred both from the fact that although Athanasius is called a boy at that time, he was nevertheless not of so immature an age that he could not have an interior legitimate intention, and because Sozomen specifically relates of Athanasius that Alexander not long afterward made him his fellow student and secretary. Nicephorus adds that not much later he raised him to the order of deacons. Socrates agrees with this, for he writes: when Athanasius had already endured [this], Alexander ordained him deacon and took him with him to Nicaea, so that he might assist him in disputation at the council. Hence it follows that Athanasius was at least twelve years old when he performed this baptism: for Alexander left him as his successor in the Alexandrian episcopate. Baronius testifies that he died in the year of the Lord 326. But, as Rufinus relates, that game occurred in the year 311; and consequently Athanasius was at least a twelve-year-old boy. Since he was also endowed with outstanding keenness of intellect and ability, he could easily understand what was necessary for baptism. This is confirmed by the fact that Rufinus says in the same place that the boys baptized by Athanasius were

catechumens, and therefore already instructed in matters of faith: so much more did Athanasius himself know them. Moreover, the same Rufinus relates:

the boys were summoned, and he asked what their game was, what they had done, and how; at first, frightened, as is natural at that age, they denied it; then they disclosed the matter in order and confessed that some catechumens had been baptized by Athanasius, who had pretended to be a bishop in a childish game: Alexander carefully asked those who were said to have been baptized what questions had been put to them and what they had answered; and likewise he asked the one who had questioned them. When he saw that everything conformed to the rite of our religion, he decided with the council of clerics that baptism should not be repeated for those upon whom water had been poured, but that what priests customarily do should be completed.

This is Rufinus.

But Alexander undertook this examination only to determine whether the baptizer had had the intention of doing what he had seen done in the Church by the bishop who was baptizing: therefore, and so on. Nor does it stand in the way that that baptism was conferred in play: for play and jest can be distinguished in two ways. One is that in which no serious thing is intended, but only a pretense—namely, pretending to do what in reality is not done, as when in a comedy someone pretends to eat and weep, though in reality he neither eats nor weeps. The other is that in which the game is intended as an extrinsic end of the action, while nevertheless what is done is done seriously, just as actors sometimes set up a dinner in theaters to celebrate a wedding, where they really drink and eat, although they do so to entertain the spectators. Athanasius baptized while playing in this latter way: for he directed his intention of baptizing toward recreation and play, just as avaricious ministers perform the sacraments for the sake of obtaining money. The same solution answers the case related by Nicephorus, book 3, final chapter, where he writes:

a Hebrew boy, he says, was familiar with the children of Christians, and when a desire to swim arose in them as they played at the sea, a Jew followed them. Then, in play, the boys baptized the naked boy standing at the sea, initially not unwilling. After they had named the third invocation of the divine name and at the same time performed the third immersion, they tore the edge of the texture of his garment and, touching his head with an imaginary covering, sketched a secret and mystical helmet. Then, arming his right hand with a slender piece of wood instead of a candle, they completed all the mysteries that belong to the sacred rite. Finally, singing, they walked around the neighboring temple, and even entered the true temple and received the holy offering. The same thing was done by the boy who had thus been initiated into baptism. When the one who presided over the sacred rites there learned of this through careful inquiry, he reported it to the Church of Constantinople. The boy was also summoned, although certain Jews made great efforts to prevent it. There too it was decreed that only what was lacking according to the execution of the mystery should be completed by him. And so it was done; when the boy reached the proper age, he was admitted to the order of priests and made sacristan, or keeper, of the great temple, where he still lives.

The same solution, I say, recurs here as in the preceding case: for from this account it is gathered that these boys were already grown, since they were engaged in swimming, and moreover that the recipient had the intention of truly receiving baptism; for he is said to have received it willingly. Consequently that baptism was valid, since neither matter nor intention was lacking in the recipient or the conferer.

You say 3. If an interior intention of doing what the Church does were required in the minister of a sacrament, that intention would especially have to be directed toward what the true Church does. But baptism conferred by one who does not intend to do what the true Church does is nevertheless valid; therefore such an intention is not required for the validity of a sacrament. The major is clear. The minor is proved: heretics baptize validly, but they do not intend to do what the Roman Church does, which alone is the true Church. Calvinists, for example, intend only to do what is customarily done in their sect and assembly, which is not the true Church but rather the synagogue of Satan; therefore, and so on.

I deny the minor, and distinguish its proof: Calvinists do not have the intention of doing what the true Roman Church does with respect to the effect of the sacrament, namely, the imprinting of the character, the infusion of sanctifying grace, and the real remission of sins. I concede this: for they do not think that all these things occur and are conferred through baptism; they do not intend to do what the true Church does. — I distinguish the major: that the true Church intends this primarily and formally, I deny; for in this way it intends only the sacred work, act, and sacramental rite instituted by Christ, which the true Church administers and celebrates, I deny. For although Calvinists do not believe the Roman Church to be the true Church, nor intend in administering baptism to do what it performs, and consequently have an intention materially opposed to the intention of the true Church, they nevertheless have an intention formally conformed to it. For they intend to do what Christ instituted and commanded to be done; but this is precisely what the Roman Church intends in administering baptism. Therefore Calvinists, or other heretics, wish to do formally what the true Church does: they wish to do what the Church of Christ does, although they err in thinking that this Church of Christ is none other than their own assembly.

You will object: The true Church intends not only the act of baptism but also its effect, namely the remission of sin and the infusion of sanctifying grace; but heretics do not intend this, as has been conceded; therefore they do not intend to do what the true Church does.

I distinguish the major: that the true Church intends this primarily and formally, I deny; for in this way it intends only the sacred work, act, and sacramental rite. That it intends it materially, consequently, or secondarily, I concede. And with the minor distinguished in the same way, the consequence must be denied: it is not necessary that the ministers of the Church intend to do directly everything that the Church intends, although this is praiseworthy. Hence baptism conferred by the Pelagians was accepted by the Church, although in conferring baptism they did not intend the remission of original sin, which they did not acknowledge.

Third conclusion. — HABITUAL INTENTION IS NOT SUFFICIENT FOR THE VALID ADMINISTRATION OF A SACRAMENT, WHEREAS VIRTUAL INTENTION IS SUFFICIENT, AND ACTUAL INTENTION IS THE MOST PERFECT. This is common among theologians; and the Subtle Doctor teaches it in book 4, distinction 6, number 3, where he says:

I say that habitual intention alone does not suffice in baptism, since because of it the act is not said to be his, although, conformed to that habit, it is a human act. For if someone has a habit inclining him to a desire for health, and is healed while in no way intending health but only play, he is not said to obtain health through any human act, but casually or fortuitously, no more than if he had had no intention toward health. Therefore habitual intention alone does not suffice with respect to the end of a human act, insofar as it is human. Nor is actual intention always required in the baptizer, because God has not obliged man to what is impossible or excessively difficult, such as not being distracted; for, according to Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will, book 3, it is not in our power not to be touched by laughter. Nor did he oblige the minister to anything more in that act than in performing the acts of the other sacraments. In consecrating the Eucharist, however, which is the most excellent sacrament, he did not oblige a man not to be distracted, because if he first intends to celebrate, although he is distracted while uttering the sacramental words, he nevertheless truly consecrates. From these things I conclude that virtual intention suffices in the baptizer—that is, that at some time he had an actual intention, from which the act of baptizing then truly proceeds, whether in that act he has an actual intention, or one descending from it, or not. I understand, however, that this act proceeds without any contrary movement of the will intervening. Thus, if someone, while dressing for Mass and intending to celebrate according to the usage of the Roman Church, proceeds continuously, perhaps according to some habit left in the imagination, with great distraction, he truly does those things necessary for that sacramental act, which is consecration.

The conclusion is proved as follows: as we have said, the minister in the sacraments must act in a human manner, that is, with deliberation and judgment. But something done with merely habitual intention is not always done with deliberation and judgment, for a drunk or madman can execute many things from a habit acquired elsewhere. Moreover, habitual intention is indifferent to this or that effect, and cannot be determined to one rather than another unless some actual attention of mind and deliberation of will is added. For if someone endowed with the habit of mercy, thinking nothing about almsgiving, throws money which a poor person receives, that throwing and taking up of the money is not considered an act of mercy, because it is done without the attention of reason and deliberation of will. Hence it follows that if someone, asleep or insane from an acquired habit, were to baptize or utter the consecratory words over due matter, there would be neither baptism nor consecration, since he would be acting rather from impulse and operating like nature, not in a human and voluntary manner.

You say 1. Habitual intention suffices for receiving a sacrament; therefore it also suffices for conferring one. The antecedent is proved: if a furious or insane person requests baptism during a lucid interval and is then seized by fury or insanity, baptism not only can but ought to be conferred on him, because he is considered to have the habitual intention of receiving baptism; therefore, and so on.

I deny the consequence: for more is required for conferring a sacrament than for receiving one, because the recipient has the character of a patient, not of an agent; therefore what is required in him is only that he not place an obstacle through resistance of the will. But the one who administers the sacrament has the character of an agent, and therefore is bound to administer the sacrament through a human operation and to determine its matter and form to the being of a sacrament. This cannot be done unless there is in him an act of will joined to the sacramental action, by which he wills, implicitly or explicitly, to do what the true Church does; and consequently it is necessary that his action either have that intention attached to it or at least proceed from its power.

You say 2. If a drunk person, from habit, strikes someone, his intention suffices for the act to be attributed to him as a sin and for him to be subjected to punishment; therefore, by equal reasoning, that habitual intention will suffice for performing some good work and consequently for the valid conferral of a sacrament.

I deny the consequence: for that striking does not become a vice, nor is it imputed as guilt, during the time when the drunk or mad person produces it in madness or drunkenness, but only because of the evil habit and voluntary custom and pleasure. These things cannot be said of a sacramental action, for it must be evaluated from the time at which it is elicited, since its matter and form, indifferent in themselves, must be determined to the being of a sacrament by the intention of the conferer.

The second part is proved, namely, that actual intention is the most sufficient and the best of all: every intention sufficient for the reality of a sacrament is founded on the actual intention and receives its force from it. Therefore the minister should strive to have it while administering, since he ought to aim at the perfection of his ministry. Nevertheless, it is not altogether necessary; for God is more just than to oblige anyone to impossibilities. But it is impossible for the minister always to have an actual intention in the administration of a sacrament, since wandering of mind cannot be prevented; for the human intellect is so slippery and inconstant that it cannot long retain its thought on one thing. It is not in our power, moreover, not to be affected from time to time by various sensible objects and not to be drawn toward different phantasms.

Finally, the third part is established, namely, that virtual intention suffices. For an action to be sacramental in the proper manner, it is sufficient that it be done with the deliberation required for an action to be moral and human. Virtual intention is sufficient for this, as all admit, and consequently it also suffices for the legitimate administration of a sacrament. The Doctor proves this truth in the same distinction 6, question 6, number 2, where he says:

If someone intends at the beginning of Mass to celebrate Mass, and afterward is distracted, he does not have actual intention when he is distracted; this is clear, because he does not then understand it in act, and therefore he does not will it in act. Nor does he have merely habitual intention, since a sleeping person has that. Therefore he is disposed in an intermediate way; and I call this disposition virtual intention, because by virtue of an intention previously actually had, he does everything he does from it as from a root. Thus that actual intention was an ordered principle for all these acts, and it contains virtually the proper intention for each of these acts, just as the intention of an end contains virtually the proper intention of everything ordered to the end. As long as the intention of whatever is ordered to the end remains, this first actual intention remains virtually in all these things. In this way, one intending to go to St. James orders many other things necessary for that end from the intention of this end. In carrying out those ordered things, however, he does not always think of St. James or of reverence for him. Nevertheless, he is said always to merit, because either he has the intention of those things which are directed to the end, of which the first intention is the intention, or he has certain acts following from those intentions, although with those acts there concur some distracting acts, both from that first intention and from the proper intentions of the things directed to that end. This was explained in book 2, distinction 11, and book 3, distinction 15, where it was said that perhaps the martyrs, in the act of enduring martyrdom, had no intention except this virtual one, because the immensity of the sufferings perhaps absorbed the use of reason. Nevertheless, this endurance of sufferings was a certain effect derived from the intention of preserving the faith of God; and therefore, while the passion lasted, that intention always lasted virtually, as an affection.

It follows from this that, for the validity of a Sacrament, a direct intention is required in the Minister, by which he wills to perform and celebrate the sacramental action and the sacred and religious rite; for the Minister in the Sacraments must act in a human manner, and consequently with deliberation and judgment. But that which is done with merely indirect intention is not considered to be done in a human manner. Therefore, one who intended only a sacramental action in another thing—for example, Baptism in a larger drink of wine, because he has discovered by experience that he is moved to baptize as often as he drinks more generously—would not baptize.

It follows secondly that some sacraments can be validly administered under a condition concerning the present or the past. For canon law decrees, in chapter 2, On Baptism, that conditional baptism is valid: those about whom there is doubt whether they have been baptized are baptized with these words prefixed: If you have been baptized, I do not baptize you; but if you have not yet been baptized, I baptize you, and so on. The reason for this assertion is that a condition concerning the present or the past passes into an absolute condition, according to the statement in the Institutes, On Verbal Obligations, section Conditions that refer to the present or the past either immediately invalidate the obligation or do not differ from it at all. For example: If Titius was consul, or if Saint Naevius is alive, do you promise to give? For if these things are not so, the stipulation is worth nothing; but if they are so, it is valid immediately. For things that are certain by the nature of things do not change the obligation, although they are uncertain to us. So it is with the civil law used by the Church, unless it contradicts the sacred canons, in chapter 1, On the Notification of a New Work, where it says: For just as laws do not disdain to imitate the sacred canons, so the statutes of the sacred canons are also strengthened by the constitutions of princes.

But the case is different with a conditional intention concerning the future, especially with a condition that cannot be known in a human manner—for example, if a priest absolved a penitent on this condition: I absolve you if you are predestined, or if you will not sin again. For such conditions suspend the sacramental act: what, in order to exist, depends on the occurrence of some effect to be posited cannot be said to exist so long as the positing of that effect is suspended. But this is how it is with such a conditional intention concerning a contingent future; therefore, and so on. Nor does it matter that a condition concerning a contingent future is no less certain in itself than one concerning the past or present; for a condition concerning the future, whatever it may be, suspends the intention, and such a condition cannot be called efficacious so long as the effect is not posited. For according to the common way of conceiving things, a condition concerning the future is added to suspend the effect until it is fulfilled.

It follows thirdly that the minister’s intention must be determinate regarding the matter and the subject, at least in species. It is not required, however, that it be determined to the subject or person in particular, except in the case of the sacrament of marriage.

The first part is clear, because the sacramental action must proceed from the minister’s intention; but it would not proceed in this way unless it concerned determinate matter and a subject capable of receiving that sacramental action. Otherwise that action would be entirely vague and without deliberation or judgment.

I add that the forms of the sacraments designate some present subject, as is clear from these words: I baptize you, and so on; I absolve you, and so on; This is the Body, and so on. For the particles “you” and “this” point to some present person or thing. Hence if a priest has two formulas before him and intends to consecrate only one, without determining which one it is, he will consecrate neither, because the intention is not determinate but vague and indifferent. But if he thinks he has one before him while in reality he has two, provided he wishes to consecrate what he has before him, he will consecrate both.

The second part is also evident, because the nature of sacramental intention cannot be inferred better than from the forms of the sacraments. But from these it does not appear that the intention must be determined in the individual, since that form is valid with respect to any subject capable of receiving the sacrament. Hence if Paul approaches a priest to lay down his sins, and the priest thinks he is Peter, although the priest intends to absolve the one whom he thinks to be Peter, the absolution will nevertheless be valid.

Finally, the third part is apparent: since in marriage the spouses mutually hand over power over their bodies for an undivided partnership of life, the reason and equity of a human contract require that the determination of the intention be directed to the subject in particular. For it would be unjust for someone to be joined by the most binding bond of marriage, until his own death or that of his spouse, to a person whose affections and character he had in no way known.

You ask: whether those who approach the Bishop to be ordained with a legitimate impediment—for example, lack of the required prior examination, irregularity, dimissorial letters, patrimony, or a benefice, etc.—really receive Orders when, as most often happens, the Bishop publicly announces through the Minister that he does not intend to ordain them.

I respond that if that intention is not merely a threat but absolute, such persons do not receive orders, because the intention prerequired for the validity of the sacrament, namely actual or virtual intention, is absent here. It is not actual, because regarding them the bishop has a contrary intention, namely not to ordain them. Nor is it virtual, because this is founded on a preceding actual intention that has not been revoked; for a special intention determined in the individual overrides a general one. But the bishop’s intention concerning the ordination of those who are presented as candidates is merely general, whereas his intention not to ordain those rejected is special, and determines the bishop so that he specifically does not will this effect. Therefore their ordination is considered null.

Nor does it matter that the bishop performs the same act of ordination by laying on hands, presenting the instruments, and pronouncing the form both over the rejected and over the accepted: for he performs this only materially, not formally. It is like a priest who says the sacred rites of the Mass and pronounces the same consecratory words over due present matter, yet does not consecrate, because he does not pronounce them formally, that is, with the formal intention of consecrating. The same must be said, with still greater force, of the bishop regarding those whom he not only does not intend to ordain, but absolutely and positively does not wish to confer orders upon.

But you may ask from what it can be judged whether that episcopal declaration is merely threatening or absolute.

I respond that this must be considered above all by the bishop himself, if he is still alive. But if he has died, his intention must be gathered from the words by which he declared his mind. If his mind cannot be certainly gathered from them, the aforesaid ordination must be regarded as doubtful, and the ordained man must abstain from the office until he is ordained again conditionally.

I had intended here to resolve what the revival of the sacraments is, and what dispositions on the part of the recipient are desired for receiving a sacrament properly. But since the efficacy of the sacraments differs and they seem to require different dispositions, I judged it more suitable to defer the explanation of these questions to special disputations on each sacrament. Consequently, what has been said here about the sacraments in general will suffice.

IMPRIMATUR: Fr. ALBERTUS LEPIDI O. P. S. P. A. Magister. IMPRIMATUR: IOSEPH CEPPETELLI, Archbishop of Myrensis, Vicar General.