Sunday, February 18, 2024

Baptismal Regeneration in Prosper of Aquitaine, The Call of All Nations (c. A.D. 450)

  

And if you direct the attention of your mind to those who, growing old in shameful deeds and crimes, are renewed by Christ’s sacrament of Baptism at the very end of their life, and, without any good works to plead for them, are transferred to the assembly of the kingdom of heaven, how will you understand this divine judgment, unless you acknowledge that God’s gifts are undoubtedly gratuitous? And just as there are no crimes so detestable that they can prevent the gift of grace, so too there can be no works to eminent that they are owed in condign judgment that which is given freely. Would it not be a debasement of redemption in Christ’s blood, and would not God’s mercy be made secondary to human works, if justification, which is through grace, were owned in view of preceding merits, so that it were not the gift of a Donor, but the wages of a laborer? (Prosper of Aquitaine, The Call of All Nations 1.17, c. A.D. 450, The Faith of the Early Fathers, 3 vols. [trans. William A. Jurgens; Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1979], 3:195)