De iis qui baptismum differunt

Of the same Gregory, to those who delay baptism. The kings of this world, whenever they compose laws that properly regulate the lives of men, entrust them to the rulers, and through them command that they be published to the subjects, so that the ordinances may be kept inviolably. But the great God gave laws to the leaders of the Churches, which, bringing forward each year at the appropriate times, we read aloud to you, and we command that the written things be observed as far as possible. Behold, then, the good steward of all things, who revolves the years and governs the cycle of times, has brought a saving day, on which it is our custom to call strangers to adoption, the needy to a share of grace, those befouled by transgressions to a cleansing of sins. And this is that ancient proclamation, which preceded the appearance of the Savior by a little: "A voice crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths." But if I am neither John nor David, let the lowliness of the servant not harm the power of the Lord's law. For we do not obey the decrees out of respect for the scribes of the laws, but fearing the authority of the Lawgiver, we submit to the ordinances. A royal grace has come, granting relief to two orders that are oppressed: release to prisoners, remission to debtors. And for this reason I also open the appropriate remedies to both orders, and with great confidence I promise the help that comes from the care.

Lest anyone think the treatment costly, I myself declare the remedies by which I heal the sick. For some I guarantee health through water and bathing, and for others I wipe away the disease with a few tears. The method is simple, the gift is sent from God, and the success is truly great, to be delivered from chronic wounds without burning or cutting, which we have suffered badly from the bites of the serpent. Come then, you who are afflicted, to your own care, and do not treat the matter with indifference. For a disease that has grown old and become chronic proves stronger than the art of healing. The poor and needy, hasten to the distribution of the royal gifts; the sheep, to the seal and the sign of the cross, the averter of evils. Give me your names, that I may engrave them in the perceptible books and write them with ink; and God may inscribe them on the imperishable tablets, writing with his own finger, as once he gave the law to the Hebrews. "Approach him and be enlightened, and your faces will not be put to shame. Wash, remove your sins." These things were written long ago; the power of the letters has not grown old, but flourishes and prevails each day. Come out of the prison, I beg you. Hate the dark dwellings of sin. Flee the devil, as a bitter jailer, who is fed and profits from the misfortune of sinners. For as God rejoices in our righteousness, so the author of sin delights in our transgressions. You are outside paradise, O catechumen, sharing in the exile of the forefather Adam.

Now the door is opening for you; enter from where you came out, and do not delay, lest death intervene and block the entrance. Your head is already turning white; the summer of life is near; the sickle is quickly being sharpened against us, and I fear that while we sleep and occupy ourselves with vain vanities, the terrible cutter may suddenly arrive. But you, the young man, will say: "I have not yet grown old." Do not be deceived; for death is not limited by the stages of age, nor does it fear those in their prime, but it holds power only over the old. Learn this from daily experience, your teacher. For you see the bier of the funeral procession, how unevenly and as chance dictates it carries away every age: today the old man, tomorrow the blooming and graceful youth, a little later the one whose beard is just growing, again the robust and vigorous one, then the old woman, and at the same time the young girl. Seeing these things, let us secure ourselves against uncertainty. For it is not laborious to empty a wineskin of its breath when the mouth is slightly opened, nor is it difficult for a man to give forth his soul in an instant.

I see that whenever an earthquake befalls life, or a famine, or an invasion of enemies, everyone rushes hastily to the baptistery, lest they depart from among men empty of grace. What then? Do the various and unexpected afflictions not have equal force with those evils? Apoplexies, fits of madness, sudden suffocations, attacks of spirits, and their consequences? Do we not see those who fall while running, those who while eating cease completely from food, those who while sleeping are unknowingly brought to death, the brother of sleep? Secure the unstable and uncertain nature of life. Do not traffic in grace, lest you fall from the gift. Owe as much as can be forgiven, as much as will not close off the philanthropy of the king. For even the rulers of the earth, when they catch someone who has excessively squandered public funds and indulged beyond measure in the royal treasury, despair of repayment, but punish bitterly, contenting themselves with penalties instead of the money. You have given many years to pleasure; give also leisure to philosophy. Strip off the old man, like a filthy garment, the shameful one, the one full of shame, the one patched together from the multitude of sins, pierced with the wretched rags of lawlessness. Receive instead the garment of incorruption, which Christ has woven and holds out to you, and do not reject the gift, lest you insult the giver. You have wallowed long in the mire; hasten, man, to my Jordan, not called by John, but urged by Christ.

The river of grace flows everywhere, not having its springs in Palestine and being concealed in the neighboring sea, but encircling the whole inhabited world and emptying into paradise; it flows opposite to the four rivers that issue from there, and brings into paradise things far more precious than those carried out from there. For those rivers bear spices, agriculture, and the produce of the earth. But this one brings men, products of the spirit. Wherever you draw it, there it redirects its flow; it is channeled to the whole inhabited world, and it does not exhaust its stream in the parts that are divided off. For it has a rich spring, Christ, and flowing from him, it floods the entire world. This river is sweet and drinkable, carrying no trace of unpleasant brine. It is sweetened by the visitation of the Spirit, as the spring of Marah was by the touch of the wood; it is fordable for the pious, but deep and inaccessible for the profane. Imitate Joshua the son of Nun. Take up the Gospel as he took up the ark; leave the desert, that is, sin; cross the Jordan; hasten to the polity according to Christ, to the land fertile with fruits that gladden, flowing, according to the promise, with honey and milk; destroy Jericho, the old habit; do not leave its fortification; raze from the foundations the mother of sinful thoughts; make the treacherous Gibeonites servants of Israel, that is, make the evil thoughts slaves of the life according to the Gospel; let the sophist and covetous Achan be stoned—he who stole the golden tongue. This is the one of the precious commandment.

having destroyed the observance. All those things were a type of us, all were prefigurations of the things now manifest. Release, then, the gluttonous raven of your life; give the dove an opportunity to fly to you—the dove which Jesus first brought down from heaven in a typical manner, the guileless, the most gentle, the prolific one; which, when it finds a man purified like a well-trained kernel, settles in and, brooding, kindles the soul, and gives birth to many and pleasing children of its own. These are good deeds and reverent words: faith, piety, justice, temperance, chastity, purity. These are children of the Spirit, but possessions of ours. How long will you be a student of the first elements? Open your soul like a writing tablet, and allow us to inscribe a perfect lesson; do not always lisp with children; do not be childish in mind. I blush for you, that, having grown old, you are still expelled with the catechumens, like a senseless and indiscreet child, when a mystery is about to be spoken. Join the mystic people and learn the secret words. Utter with us those things which even the six-winged Seraphim sing with perfect Christians. Desire a food that strengthens the soul; taste a drink that gladdens the heart; fall in love with a mystery that invisibly changes the old into youth. Imitate the Ethiopian eunuch of burning desire. For he, when he took Philip, brought by the Spirit as a fellow traveler on his chariot, learned as a byproduct of the journey not only to read but also to understand the wise Isaiah.

He tasted, through interpretation, like a good puppy, of the blood and the slaughtered lamb; he barked vehemently at Philip, until he led him to the perfect quarry of the prophecy at hand; and having sought an impromptu baptism, he received it, waiting for neither a stopping-place nor a city or village, nor expecting a place of sanctification, but reasoning prudently that every place belongs to the common Master, and every water is suitable for the need of baptism, provided it finds faith in the recipient and the blessing of the sanctifying priest. Do not provoke the baptizer by delaying, nor anger him by putting off from day to day and consuming the flowing time with promises, lest he assail you with words like John’s, calling you a viper’s offspring, or a deaf asp that grows wild at the voice of the charmer, or show you the axe sharpened and gleaming, lying beside the tree and threatening the cut. It is preferable, in a choice of evils, that someone who has been deemed worthy of the saving bath should fall again into sin, than that he should end his life without a share of grace. For the former offense may chance to be deemed worthy of pardon or kindness, of which there is much hope from good people; but the latter has salvation utterly forbidden by a fixed declaration. For when I hear the truthful voice saying, “Truly, truly, I say to you: unless one is born from above, he cannot see the Kingdom of God,” I can expect nothing favorable for the uninitiated.

For what forgiveness is truly just to grant to such people, who have insulted the royal grace, not accepting the cancellations of debts, nor worshipping and embracing the freedom that came to them unsolicited from the heavens, and through contempt for the gift, dishonoring the giver? An unilluminated soul, not adorned with the grace of regeneration, I do not know whether even angels receive after the separation from the body. For how could they receive the unsealed one, the one bearing no mark of lordship? Or is it likely that it wanders and roams in the air, unsettled and masterless, desiring rest and abode, and finding none, lamenting in vain and repenting fruitlessly, like the rich man whom purple and fine linen clothed, and every luxury and delicate enjoyment nourished, fuel for the unquenchable fire? I wish to tell you also a story of a wretched man, who failed in his great hope and sought water in a dry time. For recently, when the incursion of the nomadic Scythians devastated much of the inhabited land, and the suburbs of this neighboring city of Comana were being plundered by the barbarians, a certain young man of noble birth, named Archias, whom I myself knew well, being distressed by both the private and public calamities of his homeland, went out of the city and the fortress to observe precisely how many barbarians were plundering and what sufferings were occurring, and falling among the enemies, he was shot with arrows. Falling and being pressed toward death, as he had strength, he cried out (for he was among the uninitiated):

Mountains and glens, baptize; trees, rocks, and springs, give the grace. And with these pitiable cries he died. When the city learned of this, it mourned more than for the calamity of war. Similar to this are those who are suddenly oppressed by diseases. For when the one who yesterday was healthy and drew out for himself long spans of life suffers the fate of that ancient fool, and it is said to him in despair that this night your soul is loosed from the body, then there is uproar and shouting; and in a moment of time everything is sought hastily—the vessels, the water, the priest, the word that prepares for the grace, which need demands but illness obscures, making the breath violent and unyielding. And it creates a tumult no less than that of a battle's press; all in the house, meeting one another, burst out; and there is pushing, confusion, and a wailing, indistinct noise, as in a night battle where slaves, relatives, friends, children, and wife are entangled with one another. Therefore, while there is still a time of peace, let us prudently arrange our own affairs. In the leisure and calm of life receive the gift of Christ, when both the one receiving the high and incomparable benefit is joyfully enrolled in the list of the adopted, and all his acquaintances make his transformation for the better a special cause of joy and gladness. But I fear, he says, the ease of our nature toward sin, and because of this I delay the grace of regeneration.

The pretext of your cowardice is plausible, and you cleverly disguise yourself with the mask of piety; but a brief question put to you will easily strip away the pretense. For since you, who claim to fear sin, are a catechumen, what kind of life do you live that is blameless—the sinless one, or the one steeped in sins? If indeed the sinless one, why do you shrink from baptism, preserving the prescribed strictness even before it? But if your life is impure and unguarded, lingering in lawlessness and acquiring a habit of evil through long custom, it is clear that you are waiting for your last breath, so that your life may be completed with baptism received at the final hour. This is a novel and paradoxical trade, not of gold or clothing, but a meddlesome trafficking in a multitude of lawlessnesses concerning the purification of the soul. And just as pigs move from mud to mud and make the mire their dwelling, so those who live in impurities string together one lawlessness after another. For either they are defiled by fornication, or they contrive the ill-named adultery, or they practice drunkenness, the fuel of evil desires, or they pursue the sister and kindred sins of these. They fear baptism as an obstacle to pleasures and an abstention from foul enjoyments. Therefore, when one who makes excuses in sins says, "I am afraid," it is clear that he is not revering sin, but wishes to prolong his sojourn in sins. Those who harbor this evil intention deep within are not even deemed worthy of the grace.

But they, beguiling themselves with empty hopes, are unexpectedly carried off, as death, like a stealthy thief, overtakes them noiselessly and suddenly. And even if God, in his abundant forbearance and goodness, deigns to grant the mysteries to the sin-lover on his last day, the profit from this transaction is not as great as they suppose. For they imagine that the kingdom will at once be opened to them, that they will receive some place filled with wonderful goods, and that they will be deemed worthy of honors equal to those of the righteous. But this is an empty hope, bewitching the soul with a false opinion. For it seems to me that men will be divided into three orders in the life to come, to speak generally for now without subdivisions. The first order is that of the praiseworthy and righteous; the second, of those who are neither honored nor punished; the third, of those who pay the penalty for their transgressions. Where, then, shall we place those who have received the benefit of the bath as a shroud? It is evident that they will be among the second, and this with indulgence, so that we may assign them according to God's own philanthropy. For he who has betrayed the achievements of virtue through hesitation is not free from loss and condemnation, since willful wrongdoing is subject to accusation, and hatred of the good has an obvious proof of wickedness. What great profit, then, will you gain by falling outside the kingdom and those promises which no eye has seen and no ear has heard? "I am not punished," he says, "nor do I fear the threats; I am content with not suffering anything terrible, nor being shown to have accomplished anything noble.

The choice is that of a wicked slave, worthy of the mill, the chain, and the lash, who is eager only to escape punishments, but does not in the least lay claim to the glory of freedom and the honors that come from nobility. This voice is hostile to all the saints, contrary to the holy ones from ages past. For all of them loved the dangers incurred for the sake of free speech, and offered their bodies to those who wished to cut and kill in various ways, and were softened by no labor pains for any prize, expecting the honor in the kingdom of heaven for their blood and brave deeds. Through them, Abraham, when commanded, sacrificed his son; and Moses toiled amid the terrors of the desert; and Elijah lived a solitary and uncared-for life; and all the prophets lived in sheepskins, in goatskins, oppressed, ill-treated. For that cause, the evangelists suffered the marks of the Gospel, and the martyrs contended with the tortures inflicted by tyrants, and every one who is truly rational and an image of God, and has kinship with the lofty and heavenly things, neither wishes to exist nor to be raised up with the men who will be revived, unless he is about to be praised by God as a good servant and to be deemed worthy of some rewards. With this choice, David also makes the thirst of the deer a fitting example of his own desire for God, and prays to see the face of God, so that he may delight in the intellectual greetings. And Paul prays, having stripped off the flesh as a heavy and burdensome garment, to depart and be with Christ.

Both alike picture the blessed and unchangeable joy. But if there is no desire for that, then truly all else, according to Ecclesiastes, is vanity of vanities. Flee, therefore, Christian men, partakers of a heavenly calling, from every thought worthy of robbers and malefactors; do not consider it a blessing to escape punishment, but fall in love with gifts and crowns, which God has prepared for the athletes of righteousness. Desire baptism without guile; take the talent, and add the labor; for thus, according to the parable, you will become governors of ten cities. But he who buried the talent with his baptism, hiding it in the earth, will surely hear those words spoken to the idle and slothful slave. The neophyte, if he joins the commandment to his faith, has nothing further beyond the blameless one. He was a prisoner liable to countless charges, fearing the tribunal, trembling at the time of accountability. Suddenly the emperor’s philanthropy came, opened the prison, released the wicked. Let the giver of the grace be hymned and worshipped, as one who by his abundance of goodness saved those who did not hope for life; but let the recipient know himself, let him live in humility, let him not be disposed as though he had accomplished something, because he was freed from his bonds. For remission of charges bears witness to the mercy of the one who granted it, not to the merit of the one released. He who receives the bath of regeneration is like a new soldier recently enrolled in the military lists, but who has as yet displayed nothing soldierly or noble.

Just as that man, having taken up his belt and fastened his cloak, does not immediately consider himself a champion, nor approaches the king with boldness and converses as an acquaintance, nor asks for the rewards due to those who have labored and toiled, so neither should you, having received the grace, think that you will live with the righteous and be led to their inheritance, unless you endure many dangers for piety, and war against the flesh, and with it against the devil, and nobly withstand all the arrows of the evil spirits. Or rather, if it seems good, let us take the very voice of the Lord, which will be uttered at the common judgment, as the teacher of our subject. For what does he say? "Come, the blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you." Why? Not because you have put on the garment of incorruption, nor because you have washed away your sins, but because you have achieved love. And immediately the list is subjoined of those who have been fed, those who have been given drink, those who have been clothed. And rightly does the unerring judge decide thus. For the grace is the gift of the Master; but the conduct is the achievement of the one honored. And no one demands a reward for the grace he has received, but rather owes the opposite. And for this reason, when we are illuminated by baptism, we owe goodwill to the benefactor. And our goodwill toward God is gratitude toward our fellow servants, our own salvation, and the cultivation of virtue. Therefore, put aside your vain opinion, you who keep baptism as a shroud, knowing that faith seeks its sister, good conduct.

of which we might be deemed worthy by good intention and the help of God, to whom worship is due now and for all ages. Amen.