3.

And to these things thou perchance, who art bringing in some novelty, mayest immediately and impatiently reply, as thou art wont, that the Lord said in the Gospel: "Except a man be born again of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven." ¹ Whence it manifestly appears that that baptism alone is profitable wherein also the Holy Spirit can dwell; for that upon the Lord Himself, when He was baptized, the Holy Spirit descended, and that His deed and word are quite in harmony, and that such a mystery can consist with no other principle. To which reply none of us is found either so senseless or so stubborn as to dare, contrary to right or contrary to truth, to object, for instance, so to the doing of things in their integrity, and by all means in the Church, and the observation of them according to the order of discipline perpetually by us. But if, in the same New Testament, those things which in that matter we come upon as associated, be sometimes found in some sort divided, and separated, and arranged, and ordered just as if they were by themselves; let us see whether these solitary instances by themselves may not sometimes be such as are not imperfect, but, as it were, entire and complete. For when by imposition of the bishop's hands the Holy Spirit is given to every one that believes, as in the case of the Samaritans, after Philip's baptism, the apostles did to them by laying on of hands; in this manner also they conferred on them the Holy Spirit. And that this might be the case, they themselves prayed for them, for as yet the Holy Spirit had not descended upon any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Moreover, our Lord after His resurrection, when He had breathed upon His apostles, and had said to them, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost," ² thus and thus only bestowed upon them the Spirit.