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VI. Neither Is There Straitness with God, nor Anything That Is Not Absolutely Perfect.—From Manuscript of the Writings of Justin · XXI. But He Does Not Give, as Christ Did, by Means of Breathing, Because He Is Not the Fount of the Spirit

XXXIV

Page 813 of 830

"And4854 dipped himself," says [the Scripture], "seven times in Jordan."4855 It was not for nothing that Naaman of old, when suffering from leprosy, was purified upon his being baptized, but [it served] as an indication to us. For as we are lepers in sin, we are made clean, by means of the sacred water and the invocation of the Lord, from our old transgressions; being spiritually regenerated as new-born babes, even as the Lord has declared: "Except a man be born again through water and the Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."4856

Notes

  1. 4854

    This and the next fragment first appeared in the Benedictine edition reprinted at Venice, 1734. They were taken from a ms. Catena on the book of Kings in the Coislin Collection.

  2. 4855

    .

  3. 4856

    .

Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 1, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson and A. Cleveland Coxe (1885–96). Public domain. Text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.