is but one, your (the Catholic) communion is not the Church of Christ." (Ibid. 9. § 15, 16.) St. Augustine answers this partly by an appeal to their own principles, partly on his own. "What," he asks, "is the case of one who comes feignedly to Baptism? Are his sins forgiven or no?" If the Donatists were to say they were, then they could no longer urge the principle upon which they objected to Catholic Baptism, that "the Holy Spirit of discipline flees deceit;" (Wisd. i. 5.) as if the Holy Spirit could not be imparted through Baptism, when administered by an unworthy minister:—if they answered they were not forgiven, St. Augustine again asks, "is such an one then to be re-baptized, if with real grief of heart he confess his hypocrisy?—and since it were madness to say this, then they must confess that a man may be baptized with the Baptism of Christ, and yet that his heart continuing in malice or profaneness (sacrilegio) would preclude his receiving remission of sins; and so the Donatists might understand that in communions separated from the Church men might be baptized, where the Baptism of Christ was given and received according to the same form of the Sacrament, and yet this Baptism first begin to avail to the remission of sins, when one being reconciled to the unity of the Church, was freed from the sacrilege of dissent, whereby his sins were retained and could not be remitted. As in the case of the hypocritical receiver, he is not baptized again, but that sinfulness is cleansed by correction of life and faithful confession, which could not be without Baptism, so that what was before given them begins to avail to salvation, when that hypocrisy is removed by a true confession: so also he, who being an enemy of the love and peace of Christ, has received the Baptism of Christ, (which they who have separated have not lost in a heretical or schismatical communion,) by which sacrilegious guilt his sins were not remitted, when he have corrected himself and come to the communion and unity of the Church, he is not again to be baptized, because by that very reconciliation and peace, the Sacrament, which received in schism could not profit him, now in the unity (of the Church) for the first time avails to the remission of sins." (Ib. § 18.)
Another view of the Donatists gives occasion to a further explanation, which throws great light on St. Augustine's views of Baptism. "It may be," they said, (ib. § 19.) "the sins of him, who came hypocritically to Baptism, may, through the holy power of so great a Sacrament, be for that moment forgiven, but return immediately on account of his hypocrisy; so that the Holy Spirit were both present with the baptized, so that his sins should depart, and fled from his persevering hypocrisy, so that they returned; whereby both sayings would be true; 'As many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ,' and 'the Holy Spirit of discipline will flee the feigned soul,' i.e. the holiness of Baptism would clothe
