A. Reasons of Others against the Repeatability of Baptism, and Rejection of Them

159. Now two reasons are set down for this:

One is [Thomas Aquinas ST IIIa q.66 a.9] that Christ baptized, suffered, and died once; and baptism gets its virtue from the passion of Christ, according to the Apostle’s remark, “We were baptized in his death” [Romans 6.3].

160. But this reason does not prove the conclusion, because penitential confession too has its virtue from the passion of Christ, and absolutely is the first grace only given to an enemy through the merit of a Mediator; and yet confession is repeated.

161. Again, another reason [Aquinas ibid., Bonaventure et al.] is set down, that in baptism a character is impressed that is indelible.

162. But this reason proves the proposed conclusion through something more obscure than the conclusion is. For from the beginning, when baptism was instituted, the fact that it was not licit to repeat it was manifest about it. But that a character is impressed was not known from the first institution of it, nor from the whole of Scripture, nor from many evident authorities of the saints, as will be touched on directly in the questions about character [infra. n.238]. And this chiefly seems to be so because, if there had been much treatment of this matter by the saints, the Master of the Sentences [Lombard] would have made some mention of it; but he is not found to have said any word about it in the sense in which we use it. For in his whole treatment of baptism [Sent. IV d.2 ch.2 - d.6] he names character only once, in the second chapter of this distinction at the end, saying, “Those who have been baptized by heretics, since Christ’s character has been preserved, are not to be rebaptized.” There baptism’s form is called Christ’s character, as is plain from the aforesaid authority of Augustine [n.156], from which the Master infers that statement.