41. Let him hear another also saying: If covetousness is from heaven, it can give baptism. And yet the covetous do confer it; so therefore also may the heretics.
Chap. xxii.—42. Faustus of Timida Regia[571] said: "Let not these persons flatter themselves who favour heretics. He who interferes with the baptism of the Church on behalf of heretics makes them Christians, and us heretics."
43. To him we answer: If any one were to say that a man who, when he received baptism, had not received remission of his sins, because he entertained hatred towards his brother in his heart, was nevertheless not to be baptized again when he dismissed that hatred from his heart, does such a man interfere with the baptism of the Church on behalf of murderers, or does he make them righteous and us murderers? Let him therefore understand the same also in the case of heretics.
Chap. xxiii.—44. Geminius of Furni[572] said: "Certain of our colleagues may prefer heretics to themselves, they cannot prefer them to us: and therefore what we have once decreed we hold, that we should baptize those who come to us from heretics."
45. This man also acknowledges most openly that certain of his colleagues entertained opinions contrary to his own: whence again and again the love of unity is confirmed, because they were separated from one another by no schism, till God should reveal to one or other of them anything wherein they were otherwise minded.[573] But to him our answer is, that his colleagues did not prefer heretics to themselves, but that, as the baptism of Christ is acknowledged in the covetous, in the fraudulent, in robbers, in murderers, so also they acknowledged it in heretics.
Chap. xxiv.—46. Rogatianus of Nova[574] said: "Christ established the Church, the devil heresy: how can the synagogue of Satan have the baptism of Christ?"
47. To him our answer is: Is it true that because Christ established the well-affectioned, and the devil the envious, therefore the party of the devil, which is proved to be among the envious, cannot have the baptism of Christ?