Presumption on baptism must not delay true repentance

So whatever our modest ability has tried to suggest about taking up repentance once and holding to it forever concerns all who are devoted to the Lord, since all are seeking salvation by winning God's favor. But it presses especially on these newcomers, who are just now beginning to let their ears be nourished by God's words. Like newborn animals still unsteady, with eyes not yet fully formed, they crawl about uncertainly. They say they renounce their former ways and they take up repentance, but they neglect to lock it in. The very goal they desire distracts them, tempting them to want something from the past—like fruit that is beginning to grow sour or bitter with age, yet still flatters them with some part of its sweetness.

Moreover, every fault of hesitation and evasion regarding repentance is brought in by presumption about baptism. Certain of undoubted forgiveness for their sins, they steal the time in between and make for themselves a holiday from sinning rather than a training in not sinning. How absurd it is not to fulfill repentance while waiting for forgiveness of sins! That is holding out your hand for the merchandise without paying the price. For the Lord has appointed forgiveness to be sold at this price; he offers freedom from punishment to be redeemed by this payment of repentance. If sellers first examine the coin with which they are bargaining to see whether it is scratched or filed or counterfeit, do we believe the Lord does not first test repentance before granting us so great a reward—eternal life?

But let us postpone the truth of repentance for a little while. Then, I suppose, it will be clear that we are reformed when we are absolved. Not at all. Rather, when forgiveness is still pending and punishment is in view, when we do not yet deserve to be set free so that we may deserve it, when God threatens—not when he forgives. What slave, after being changed by freedom, charges himself with his thefts and flights? What soldier, after being discharged from his camp, troubles himself over the marks branded on his body? A sinner ought to weep before forgiveness, because the time of repentance is the same as the time of danger and fear of God.

I do not refuse the divine benefit—the abolition of sins—to those about to enter the water; it is wholly saving. But one must labor to arrive there. Who will grant you, a man of such unfaithful repentance, a single sprinkling of any water? It is easy to approach by theft and lead the one in charge of this matter astray with your assertions, but God watches over his treasure and does not allow the unworthy to creep in. What does he say after all? "Nothing is hidden that will not be revealed" (Matthew 10:26). However much darkness you pile over your deeds, God is light.

But some think that God is obliged to provide what he promised even to the unworthy, and they make his generosity into slavery. If he grants us the symbol of death by necessity, then he does it unwillingly. Who permits what he gave unwillingly to remain? Do not many fall away afterward? Is not that gift taken away from many? These are the ones who creep in, who attack the faith of repentance and build a house about to collapse on sand.

Let no one flatter himself because he is counted among the catechumens under instruction, as if even now it were permitted to him to sin. As soon as you know the Lord, fear him; as soon as you have seen him, revere him. What good is it to have known him if you lie on the same things you did before, when you were ignorant? What separates you from a perfect servant of God? Is there one Christ for the baptized and another for catechumens? Is there one hope or reward, another fear of judgment, another necessity of repentance? That washing is the sealing of faith, and this faith begins and is commended by the faith of repentance. We are not washed so that we may stop sinning, but because we have stopped, since we have already been washed in heart. For this is the first baptism of the catechumen: complete fear of God. From then on, as long as you have felt the Lord, faith is sound and conscience has once embraced repentance.

But if we stop sinning from the waters, we put on innocence by necessity, not by choice. Who excels in goodness? The one to whom evil is not permitted, or the one to whom evil is displeasing? The one who is commanded, or the one who delights to be free from crime? So let us not turn our hands from theft unless the hardness of locks resists, nor restrain our eyes from lustful desires unless dragged away by guardians of bodies—if no one devoted to the Lord stops sinning unless bound by baptism. But if anyone thinks this way, I do not know whether the baptized person is more grieved that he has stopped sinning than glad that he has escaped.

Therefore catechumens ought to desire baptism, not presume upon it. The one who desires honors it; the one who presumes is arrogant. In the former modesty appears, in the latter insolence. The former labors, the latter neglects. The former longs to deserve it, the latter promises it to himself as a debt. The former receives, the latter seizes. Whom would you judge more worthy except the more reformed? Whom more reformed except the more fearful, and therefore the one who has performed true repentance? For he feared to sin any longer, lest he not deserve to receive. But the presumptuous one, since he promised it to himself, was of course secure and could not fear. Thus he did not fulfill repentance, because he lacked the instrument of repentance—that is, fear of God. Presumption is a portion of shamelessness: it inflates the petitioner and despises the giver. So it sometimes deceives. For it promises before it is owed, and by this the one who is about to grant is always offended.