5.1 Now if they attribute the efficacy of baptism to the power of the
Name, so that he who is baptized in the Name of Jesus Christ, no matter where
nor in what manner, is judged renewed and sanctified, why then, among heretics,
are not hands laid, in the Name of the same Christ, upon the person baptized so
that he may receive the Holy Spirit?17 Why does the same power of
the same Name, which they maintain had efficacy in the sanctification of
baptism, have no efficacy in the laying-on of hands?
5.2 If it is possible for a man born outside the Church to become a
temple of God, why should it not also be possible for the Holy Spirit to be
poured out upon that temple? One who, having cast off his sins in baptism, has
been sanctified and formed spiritually into a new man, has certainly been made
fit for receiving the Holy Spirit. As the Apostle says: All of you who have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ.
5.3 A man, then, baptized among heretics, who is able to put on
Christ, can all the more easily receive the Holy Spirit, for Christ was the one
who sent the Spirit. Otherwise, for it to be possible that a person baptized
outside might indeed put on Christ but be unable to receive the Holy Spirit,
the one who is sent would have to be greater than the one who sends. As if,
indeed, one could put on Christ without the Spirit or the Spirit could be
separated from Christ!
5.4 And given the fact that our second birth is a spiritual birth and
by it we are born in Christ through the waters of regeneration, it is equally
absurd for them to argue that anyone can be thus born spiritually among
heretics, while still denying that the Spirit is with them. Water by itself
cannot cleanse sins and sanctify man unless it possesses the Holy Spirit as
well. Thus either they have to allow that the Spirit is also to be found where
they argue there is baptism, or there is no baptism where there is no Spirit,
for there cannot be baptism without the Spirit. (Cyprian, Letter
74.5-4, in The Letters of St. Cyprian of Carthage, 4 vols. [trans.
G. W. Clarke; Ancient Christian Writers 4; New York: Newman Press, 1989], 4:72-73)
