Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/483

Rh receive it with a wrong disposition, either unholiness in those within or without the Church, or want of love in those who separate themselves from her; 2d, those who having received it fall back into their evil courses. He imagines then no other obstacles than the whole Church would account such, want of sincerity and of charity: and these the whole Church would regard as precluding the grace of Baptism, as well as of the Communion; as the whole Church (with the exception of a very small section) would suppose that all grace, and so that of Baptism might be forfeited; but St. Augustine does not in the least imply that does not make His own Sacraments effectual means of grace in those, who place no such obstacle. St. Augustine's views on this point were particularly brought out by the Donatist controversy The Donatists, namely, proceeding on their principle that the purity of the minister was essential to the validity of the Sacraments, contended that the Catholic Baptism was invalid, since their communion was not pure; and that their own communion must by the Catholics be allowed to be pure, and themselves to be the true Church, since these admitted the Baptism administered by Donatists to be valid, (c. Donat. L. 1. § 13. 15.) The Donatists also had the further object to show that it was safer to receive Baptism among them than in the Church; since the Catholics also allowed that their Baptism was valid, while they disallowed that of the Catholics: thus they sought to draw people over to their schism, by inviting people to accept as truth what both parties were agreed in, the validity of Donatist Baptism, and not to notice what was alleged by one only, either the actual invalidity of the Catholic Baptism, which the Donatists asserted, or the unprofitableness of valid Baptism in schism, which was maintained by the Catholics, (Ib. § 4.) St. Augustine answered, that the Sacrament had its validity not of men but of ; and that therefore it was a valid Baptism, if rightly administered, but that it followed not that it was efficacious to those who received it; for that its benefits might be intercepted or suspended. "Can a dead man give life to any—a wounded heal—a blind enlighten—a naked clothe—a polluted cleanse?" asked Parmenian, wishing from these effects of Baptism, administered through them, to prove that they were neither dead, wounded, blind, naked, nor polluted, but the true Church. St. Augustine answered, "Why claims he what is not man's to give? For the raiseth the dead, the  healeth the wounded, the  enlighteneth the blind, the  cleanseth the polluted." (c. Epist. Parmeniani, L. 2. § 32). Again they urged him, "If one receiving Donatist Baptism, receives the Baptism of, he puts on ; and if so, he is regenerate, and if regenerate, his sins are forgiven, and if this, then the is there present, (Mat. xxviii. 19. Job. xx. 22.) and then our communion is the Church of , (since the  does not work the forgiveness of sins except in the Church,) and then also, since the Church of