Long ago there were some heretics
who said that John’s baptism was greater and better than baptism which is now
established in God’s church, because Christ was baptized with John’s baptism;
but they erred in saying this. There was no forgiveness of sin in John’s
baptism; in our baptism all sins are erased. Why then did John baptize? So that
he would baptize Christ, who needed no forgiveness of sin. Why did he never
baptize more people than Christ alone? So that we might not imagine that his
baptism was so good that no one might be baptized by it except Christ alone.
From where did baptism come to John? From Christ. All things are made through
Christ. Indeed, just as he made his own mother Mary, and was later born of her,
so also he gave baptism to John, and was afterward baptized by John. It was not
granted to anyone to have or announce his own baptism except to John only, and
for this reason he is called John the Baptist. What baptism did he give? His
own baptism, with no forgiveness of sin, but for repentance and a preparation
for Christ’s baptism. Those whom John baptized were later baptized in Christ’s
baptism, because they could not be saved through John’s baptism. Which is
the baptism in which we are baptized? I say, Christ’s baptism. Christ himself
baptized few people, but he gave the power to his apostles and to all
ordained people to baptize with God’s baptism in the name of the holy Trinity;
and anyone so baptized should not afterward be baptized a second time, that the
invocation of the holy Trinity should not be devalued. (Aelfric, “Epiphany,” in
The Old English Catholic Homilies: The Second Series [trans. Roy M.
Liuzza; Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 93; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 2026], 59, 61, emphasis in bold added)
