Chapter 48.—58. When we ask, therefore, by what means the man is to be cleansed whom you do not baptize again in your communion, even
when it has been made clear that he has been baptized by some one who, on account of some concealed iniquity, did not at the
time possess the conscience of one that gives in holiness, what answer do you intend to make, except that he is cleansed by
Christ or by God, although, indeed, Christ is Himself
God over all, blessed for ever,24202420
or by the Holy Spirit since He too is Himself God, because this Trinity of Persons is one God? Whence Peter, after saying
to a man, "Thou hast dared to lie to the Holy Ghost," immediately went on to add what was the nature of the Holy Ghost, saying,
"Thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God."24212421
Lastly, even if you were to say that he was cleansed and purified by an angel when he is unacquainted with the pollution
in the conscience of him that gives but not in holiness, take notice that it is said of the saints, when they shall have risen
to eternal life, that they shall then be equal to the angels of God.24222422
Any one, therefore, that is cleansed even by an angel is cleansed with greater holiness than if he were cleansed by any
kind of conscience of man. Why then are you unwilling that it should be said to you, If cleaning is wrought by the hands
of a man when he is genuinely and manifestly good; but when the man is evil, but undetected in his wickedness, then since
he has not the conscience of one that 621gives in holiness, it is no longer he, but God, or an
angel, that cleanses; therefore they who are baptized by undetected evil men are justified with greater holiness than those
who are baptized by men that are genuinely and manifestly good? And if this opinion is displeasing to you, as in reality
it ought to be displeasing to every one, then take away the source from which it springs, correct the premiss to which it
is indissolubly bound; for if these do not precede as hypotheses, the other will not follow as a consequence.