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II. To the Initial Arguments
25. To the first [n.8] I say that either the heretic baptizes a child in the form and intention of the Church, and in this there is no obstacle for the child either as concerns the sacrament or as concerns its effect; or the heretic baptizes an adult, and still he confers the sacrament and effect on him, provided there is no evil movement in the adult (as his consent to the heresy of the baptizer or intention to become his disciple). And about such an adult [sc. one who does consent to the heresy] the authority of Ambrose [n.8] is to be understood, and likewise the authority of Augustine that follows [n.9], because the virtue of the sacrament is life, therefore life does not remain in a cut-off member; for it does not follow that life through his sacrament could be in the receiver, as is plain from the response immediately following [n.26].
26. Hence to the reason [n.10] it must be at once replied that in the whole human body there is one life for all the parts, and it is participated by them in a certain order, because it is first in the heart and second in the other parts according as these are more closely related to the principle of life. And so life cannot there be derived from one part to another unless the part from which it derives is alive with the same life in its own perfect way first. Things are not so in the mystical body that is the Church, because there is not in them [sc. members of the mystical body] numerically one life, nor is it necessary that the member who gives life, as minister, to another be closer to the principle of life in participating life but only in rank of ministering. An example would be if the veins in the body were not formally alive, yet they would be the means of ministering life to the other parts.
27. To the next argument [n.11], the point about sanctification in water was denied above in Ord. d.1 nn.309-326; nor does it seem very probable that the supernatural virtue is generated and corrupted so many times, nor even that after generation in baptismal water it remain while the water remains.
28. To the authority of Ambrose [n.11] - look for it.29, a
a.a [Interpolated text] above. It can be said, as was said in d.1 qq.4-5, nn.300, 315, that there is in the water no virtue that is active according to any absolute form, but there is only the virtue that is the ultimate of power, namely to signify grace efficaciously.
29. To the next about Cyprian [n.12] I say that there are some things there that are simply thus of the substance of the faith, because perhaps all recipients of baptism (some little time after the use of reason) are held explicitly to believe them, as are now the articles about the incarnation (as ‘Christ was born and died’), for which there are special solemnities in the Church, and which the people are able to conceive, because they are about Christ as man. Other things are explicitly requirements of the substance of the faith, to be observed by seniors in the Church (as that God is triune, and things belonging to these sort of spiritual and imaginable things). And this distinction is plain from Augustine On the Trinity 14 ch.1 n.3. Other things there are which are not explicitly to be believed by either the former or the latter, because they have not yet been declared by the Church, of which sort are the many conclusions necessarily included in articles that are believed; but before they have been declared by the Church it is not necessary that one believe them, but one ought to think soberly about them, namely so that a man be ready, for the time when the truth will have been declared, to hold them.
30. I say that in this way the statement ‘baptism is a sacrament of the New Law necessary for salvation’ was immediately of the truth of the Christian faith because it is express in the Gospels. But that it could be conferred by a heretic was not immediately express, indeed was not declared even in the time of Cyprian. For this reason, Augustine labored much on declaring that truth in his books, as is plain in his book On the Sole Baptism ch.5-15, and On Baptism Against the Donatists I [also Against Cresconius I ch.25-34].
31. Hence if Cyprian [n.12] so thought, namely that there is no baptism among heretics, yet because he was ready in his mind to think about it what the Church declared, he erred in nothing - save perhaps by sinning venially, because he too much asserted that for which he had neither authority nor compelling reason. For his reasoning is not valid, namely that what one does not have one cannot give, because he who baptizes does not give grace but gives the sacrament, and he has that in his power because he has [clerical] order. And in this way perhaps Augustine indicated that Cyprian had sinned venially when he adds in the before cited passage [n.12], “While he detested them too much,” he says, “if there was anything that needed purging [in him], it would be taken away by the scythe of his passion.”
32. And in this way can Abbot Joachim be excused, because although he held an erroneous opinion, as is plain in Decretals I tit.1 ch.2 ‘About the Supreme Trinity and the Catholic Faith’ [the Fourth Lateran Council], namely that ‘the Three Persons are not some one thing that neither generates nor is generated, neither spirates nor is spirated’ [cf. Ord. I d.5 n. 1230] - because it is not said that he stubbornly defended it, but that he left all his books to be corrected according to the judgment of the Church.30,31