Free English Translation
A Saying on Baptism
Dictum de Baptismo
~1 min read · by Rheticius of Autun
About A Saying on Baptism
Rheticius of Autun was a Gallic bishop who attended the hearing Pope Miltiades convened at Rome in 313 AD to judge the dispute between Caecilian of Carthage and his accusers. Jerome credits him with a commentary on the Song of Songs and a treatise against Novatian, but of his writings only this single sentence on baptism survives, preserved as a quotation in later collections. In it Rheticius calls baptism the Church's chief indulgence, the rite in which the whole weight of inherited sin is laid down, the offenses of a person's unenlightened past are abolished, and the old man is put off together with his inborn wickednesses. Brief as it is, the fragment offers a rare glimpse of this bishop's theology beyond his part in the Donatist affair.
By Rheticius of Autun. Collected in Patrologia Latina, Volume 6.
Of Rhetitius, Bishop of Autun, a Saying on Baptism
It escapes no one, therefore, that this is the principal indulgence in the Church, in which we lay down the whole weight of our ancient sin, and abolish the former crimes of our ignorance, where also we put off the old man together with his inborn wickednesses.
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