Baptism

" Again, man is created through baptism, for "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

But we exhort those who have set their hope on Christ to busy themselves about nothing beyond the ancient faith, but, as we believe, so also to be baptized, and as we are baptized, so also to give glory.

For the flesh is washed, that the soul may be cleansed;

We were buried, then, with Him through baptism into death, that, as Christ rose from the dead, so we too may walk in newness of life.

" And, "This is the will of God, your sanctity, that you abstain from fornication, that each one know how to possess his own vessel in sanctity and honour, not in the passion of lust, like the nations which know not God.

Bringing in too, "But these things indeed you were, but you have been washed, but you have been sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God" — by how much he sets these offences to account before the laver, by so much after the laver he constitutes them irremissible, since to be washed again is not lawful.

Now since in all his epistles he both forbids such a one to be admitted after the faith, and thrusts the admitted from communion, without hope of any condition or time, he assists rather our view, showing that the Lord prefers that penitence which is before the faith, which is before baptism, to be held better than the death of the sinner — of one to be washed once for all by the grace of Christ, …

So that neither is baptism any longer reasonable, nor the blessed seal, nor the Son, nor the Father;

It is written that once, when Peter—who was also called the chief of the apostles—was teaching the people, they were pricked to the heart, just as you are today;

' Therefore, before all things, I beg you to receive the faith in your soul, and to come at once to baptism with the most fervent longing, and by no means to put it off;

"The root, and as it were the secure foundation, of this holy and faultless faith of the Christians is the grace of divine baptism, which has the cleansing of all sins from birth, and the complete washing away of the defilements that have come upon us from evil.

For to what end is baptism too exacted with him?

With him the flesh is not baptized, unless it be virgin, unless widow, unless celibate, unless it has purchased baptism by divorce — as though even eunuchs were not born of marriage.

As though by this argument baptism were taken away.

What figure more manifest in the sacrament of baptism?

Is it not a thing to be wondered at, that death should be washed away by a bath?

the second, virginity from the second birth, that is, from the bath, which either, by compact, purifies in marriage, or, by choice, perseveres in widowhood;

Moreover, the presumption of baptism imports every fault of delay and shuffling with regard to repentance.

Foreseeing therefore these poisons of his, God, although the door of pardon be shut and the bar of baptism made fast, has permitted something yet to lie open.

We and they have one faith, one God, the same Christ, the same hope, the same sacraments of the laver;