36. Through the Holy Spirit comes our
restoration to paradise, our ascension into the kingdom of heaven, our
return to the adoption of sons, our liberty to call God our Father, our
being made partakers of the grace of Christ, our being called children
of light, our sharing in eternal glory, and, in a word, our being
brought into a state of all “fulness of
blessing,”
Rom. xv. 29. both in this
world and in the world to come, of all the good gifts that are in
store for us, by promise hereof, through faith, beholding the
reflection of their grace as though they were already present, we
await the full enjoyment. If such is the earnest, what the
perfection? If such the first fruits, what the complete
fulfilment? Furthermore, from this too may be apprehended the
difference between the grace that comes from the Spirit and the
baptism by water: in that John indeed baptized with water, but
our Lord Jesus Christ by the Holy Ghost. “I
indeed,” he says, “baptize you with water unto
repentance; but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose
shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the
Holy Ghost and with fire.”
Matt. iii.
11. Here
He calls the trial at the judgment the baptism of fire, as the
apostle says, “The fire shall try every man’s work, of
what sort it is.”
1 Cor. iii.
13. And again,
“The day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by
fire.”id. And ere
now there have been some who in their championship of true religion
have undergone the death for Christ’s sake, not in mere
similitude, but in actual fact, and so have needed none of the
outward signs of water for their salvation, because they were
baptized in their own blood. On the
martyrs’ baptism of blood, cf. Eus. vi. 4, on the
martyrdom of the Catechumen Herais. So St. Cyril, of Jerusalem
(Cat. Lect. iii. 10), “If a man receive not baptism, he
has not salvation; excepting only the martyrs, even who without the
water receive the kingdom. For when the Saviour was ransoming
the world through the cross, and was pierced in the side, He gave
forth blood and water, that some in times of peace should be
baptized in water; others in time of persecution, in their own
blood.” So Tertullian (In Valentin. ii.)
of the Holy Innocents, “baptized in blood for Jesus’
sake” (Keble), “testimonium Christi sanguine
litavere.” Thus
I write not to
disparage the baptism by water, but to overthrow the
arguments Τοὺς
λογισμοὺς
καθαιρῶν.
cf. 2 Cor. x.
4. of those who
exalt themselves against the Spirit; who confound things that are
distinct from one another, and compare those which admit of no
comparison.