Chapter 23.—44.  Geminius of Furni 1822 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." 1823

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. 1824   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.

Footnotes

Furni was in ecclesiastical province of Zeugitana.  For Geminius as bishop, see Cypr. Ep. lxvii.

Conc. Carth. sec. 59.

Phil. iii. 15.