Anyone who is outside this Church,
which received the keys of the kingdom of heaven, is walking a path not to
heaven but to hell. He is not approaching the home of eternal life; rather, he
is hastening to the torment of eternal death. And this is the case not only if
he remains a pagan without Baptism, but even if, after having been baptized in
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, he continues as a
heretic. . . . For he is saved by the Sacrament of Baptism, whom the unity of
love holds within the Catholic Church up to his passing from this present life.
(Fulgentius of Ruspe, The Forgiveness of Sins, 1.19.2, c. A.D. 512-523, The
Faith of the Early Fathers, 3 vols. [trans. William A. Jurgens;
Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1979], 3:292)
From that time at which our Savior
said: “if anyone is not reborn of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into
the kingdom of heaven,” no one can, without the Sacrament of Baptism, except
those who, in the Catholic Church, without Baptism pour out their blood for
Christ, receive the kingdom of heaven and life eternal Anyone who receives the
Sacrament of Baptism, whether in the Catholic Church or in a heretical or
schismatic one, receives the whole Sacrament; but salvation, which is the
strength of the Sacrament, he will not have, if he has had that Sacrament
outside the Catholic Church. he must, therefore, return to the Church, not so
that he might receive again the Sacrament of Baptism, which no one dare repeat
in any baptized person, but so that he may receive eternal life in Catholic
society, for the obtaining of which no one is suited, even with the Sacrament
of Baptism, remains estranged from the Catholic Church. (Fulgentius of Ruspe,
The Rule of Faith 43, c. A.D. 523-526, The Faith of the Early Fathers, 3
vols. [trans. William A. Jurgens; Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press,
1979], 3:297)
