is not always enough. Some girls and boys at Carthage had asked to be
baptized, and there were some who urged the granting of their request on
the score that Christ said: "Forbid them not to come unto Me" (Matt. xix.
14), and: "To each that asketh thee give" (Luke vi. 30). Tertullian replies
that "We must beware of giving the holy thing to dogs and of casting pearls
before swine." He cites 1 Tim. v. 22: "Lay not on thy hands hastily, lest
thou share in another's sins." He denies that the precedents of the eunuch
baptized by Philip or of Paul baptized _without hesitation_ by Simon (to
which the other party appealed) were relevant. He dwells on the risk run by
the sponsors, in case the candidates for whose purity they went bail should
fall into sin. It is more expedient, he concludes, to delay baptism. Why
should persons still in the age of innocence be in a hurry to be baptized
and win remission of sins? Let people first learn to feel their need of
salvation, so that we may be sure of giving it only to those who really
want it. Especially let the unmarried postpone it. The risks of the age of
puberty are extreme. Let people have married or be anyhow steeled in
continence before they are admitted to baptism. It would appear from the
homilies of Aphraates (_c._ 340) that in the Syriac church also it was
usual to renounce the married relation after baptism. Cyril of Jerusalem,
in his _Catecheses_, insists on "the longing for the heavenly polity, on
the goodly resolution and attendant hope" of the catechumen (_Pro. Cat._
ch. 1.). If the resolution be not genuine, the bodily washing, he says,
profits nothing. "God asks for nothing else except a goodly determination.
Say not: How can my sins be wiped out? I tell thee, by willing, by
believing" (ch. viii.). So again (_Cat._ 1. ch. iii.) "God gives not his
holy treasures to the dogs; but where he sees the goodly determination,
there he bestows the seed of salvation.... Those then who would receive the
spiritual saving seal have need of a determination and will of their
own.... Grace has need of faith on our part." In Jerusalem, therefore,
whither believers flocked from all over Christendom to be buried, the
official point of view as late as A.D. 350 was entirely that of Tertullian.
Tertullian's scruples were not long respected in Carthage, for in Cyprian's
works (_c._ 250.) we already hear of new-born infants being baptized. In
the same region of Africa, however, Monica would not