Annotation CCIX

”He that is washed needeth not, but to wash his feet, but is clean wholly.” — John 13:10

Whether after baptism original sin, and after justification other sins too, remain.

John Ferus, explaining these [words] in the commentaries, Domingo de Soto on that account warns is to be shunned — because he seems to think, in the Lutheran manner, that sins are altogether taken away neither by baptism nor by any other way, but that after justification original guilt and actual sins always remain, yet on account of faith are not imputed. And he says that this error is contained in the following words of Ferus: “But it might move someone, that Christ adds, ‘But he is clean wholly.’ For how [is he] ‘clean wholly,’ who is still bidden to wash [his] feet? Nay, how [is he] ‘clean wholly,’ who has been baptized — since Scripture everywhere asserts that no one is without sin? And indeed it is most true that no one is without sin; nevertheless it is [also] most true that whoever has been purified through faith is ‘clean wholly.’ For he, because he has been grafted into the body of Christ, participates in and possesses, through faith, the holiness and purity of Christ. Hence Paul says to believers,¹ ‘You are washed, you are sanctified, through the name of the Lord Jesus.’ And again,² ‘There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.’ Hence the same [believers], grafted into Christ, are called holy, on account of the faith, the name, and the blood of Jesus Christ. Yet meanwhile in themselves they are nothing but sinners, and have indeed much of sin still, but nothing of condemnation, because before God they are reckoned clean on account of faith in Christ. Hence Paul says, ‘With the mind I serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.’” These [things] the author [Ferus says]. Whose patronage Michael [Medina] taking up, thus speaks against Soto: “Who does not see that from these words the heretical sense is far off, by which offenses are said to remain in the sinner? For what the author here intimates is assuredly this: that even when the laver of baptism has been received, if we consider ourselves and our nature, we are nothing

—[nothing else] than sinners, if [our] offenses be not destroyed and made to vanish by true and Christian faith. For Christian faith is the sole snare [aucupium] of the divine love, by which alone — otherwise foul and abominable — we please the divine will. We sin, therefore, daily, even when baptism has been received; but through the faith of Christ [our] offenses are pardoned to us, so that the [things] which otherwise would condemn us to eternal fire effect nothing of condemnation in us — Christ saying:³ ‘He who believes in him who sent me has eternal life, and comes not into judgment, but shall pass from death to life.’ And so Christian faith, since it includes the whole business of Christian justice, includes in itself also the penance for those offenses which we commit by the frailty of the flesh — not only in the [work of the] author [Ferus], but in Paul, who a thousand times repeats that we acquire justice through faith. Otherwise, how could the author of this error be accused, who, in the same context of words, speaks so catholically of penance, saying that through it our feet are to be washed daily — since it cleanses the daily sins after baptism, and⁴ since it is the second plank after shipwreck, adducing the divine precept, ‘BE WASHED, be clean, take away the evil of your thoughts from my eyes,’ etc.? Who could be held suspect of the Lutheran dogma of the permanence of offenses, who in so many places so piously enjoins the satisfaction of sins? For truly those who are infected with this Lutheran dogma reject penance, exclude satisfaction, [and] judge the mere assent of faith, and the compliance of the understanding, to be the most sufficient medicine of sins. Does he who believes that daily offenses are cleansed and washed away through penance [really] believe the permanence of offenses in the sinner — especially [given] the metaphor taken from the washing of feet, where it was manifest that in the very washing the filth is wiped off? Why, then, did he not disclose, in that place, the difference between the bodily and the spiritual washing, if he believed that spiritual filth remains in the soul of the sinner, but that the defilements of the feet are wiped off after the washing? But what evil [is there]? He who most openly believes, from the prophecy of Isaiah, that evils are taken away from [our] hearts (that is, from the soul) through penance — is he to be reckoned to prove, with the Lutherans, the permanence of offenses? But nothing is so well and exactly said, but that to certain [men] born for this a burrow of calumniating [may] lie open.” Thou hast [things] pertaining hereto below, Annotation 216.

There comes back to my memory, [suggested by] the proposed passage of the Gospel and the occasion of the present annotation, certain words of Ambrose concerning original sin — [namely] that it still remains after the washing of the sacred font; which if I shall add here, I judge I shall do nothing alien from [my] purpose.

Whether the washing of the feet after baptism is necessary for salvation.

Ambrose, bishop of Milan, expounding the aforesaid clause of the Gospel, seems to determine that the washing of the feet, after the emersion from the font of baptism, is so necessary that no baptized [person] can be saved without it — because, just as by a certain immersion of the font actual sins are not remitted, so without the washing of the feet original sin is not relaxed. His words, in the third book On the Sacraments, are these: “Thou hast ascended from the font; what followed? Thou heardest the reading. The priest was girded — although indeed presbyters too may have done [it], yet the beginning of the ministry is from the highest priest. Girded, I say, the highest priest washed thy feet: what [is] this mystery? Thou hast indeed heard that the Lord, when he had washed the feet of the other disciples, came to Peter, and Peter said to him, ‘Dost thou wash my feet?’ See all justice, see humility, see grace, see sanctification. ‘Unless I wash thy feet,’ he says, ‘thou shalt not have part with me.’

We are not ignorant that the Roman church does not have this custom — whose type and form we follow in all [things]; yet it does not have this custom, that [the priest] should wash the feet: see, then, whether perhaps on account of the multitude it has declined [it]. Yet there are [some] who say, and try to excuse [it], that this is to be done in a mystery, not in baptism, not in regeneration, but as [if] the feet of a guest are to be washed. One thing belongs to humility, another to sanctification. Finally, hear that it is a mystery and a sanctification: ‘Unless I wash thy feet, thou shalt not have part with me.’ This I say, not that I may reprehend others, but that I may commend my own duties. In all [things] I desire to follow the Roman church, but yet we too are men, [and] have judgment. Therefore [in] that which is elsewhere more rightly observed, we too rightly keep [it]. We follow the Apostle Peter himself; we cleave to his devotion. To this, what does the Roman church answer? Assuredly Peter the Apostle himself is the author of this assertion to us, who was the priest of the Roman church. Peter himself said, ‘Lord, not only [my] feet, but also [my] hands and head.’ See the faith. That he before excused himself, was of humility; that afterward he offered himself, was of devotion and of faith. The Lord answered him, because he had said ‘hands and head’: ‘He who is washed has not need to wash again, except to wash [his] feet.’ Why this? Because in baptism all guilt is washed away. Guilt, therefore, recedes; but because Adam was supplanted by the Devil, and venom was poured out upon him above the feet, therefore thou washest the feet — that in that part in which the serpent lay in wait, a greater help of sanctification may come, so that afterward he cannot supplant thee: thou washest, therefore, [thy] feet, that thou mayest wash away the venoms of the serpent.” The same opinion he more clearly approves in the book On those who are initiated in the mysteries [On the Mysteries], chapter 6, writing thus: “Thou hast ascended from the font; remember the evangelical reading. For the Lord Jesus washed the feet of his disciples; and when he came to Simon Peter, Peter said, ‘Thou shalt not wash my feet forever.’ To whom the Lord answered, ‘If I wash not thy feet, thou shalt not have part with me.’ Which having been heard, Peter [said]: ‘Lord, not only [my] feet,’ he says, ‘but also [my] hands and head.’ The Lord answered: ‘He who is washed has not need except to wash [his] feet, but is clean wholly.’ He was clean wholly, but he had to wash the sole [of his foot]: for he had, from the succession of the first man, sin, when the serpent supplanted him and persuaded [him to] error; therefore his sole is washed, that hereditary sins may be taken away — for our own [sins] are relaxed through baptism.” Thus far he [Ambrose]. This opinion is exploded by the inveterate custom of all the churches, [and] by the common assent of the theologians, to whom it is agreed that all sins are remitted at once, in the same moment of time, and that, one being dismissed, the other cannot remain. Because both the discourse and the action of Christ plainly show that he washed the feet of the disciples not to this end, that [it should be] a sacrament of

—[a sacrament] of baptism, which he had before conferred on them entirely and absolutely, as if he were completing, by a new washing of the feet, [something] not yet completed; but that he might set before them, to be imitated, an example of his eminent humility. And to this tends that last epilogue of Christ’s words: “If I, [your] Lord and master, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet; for I have given you an example, that as I have done, so you also may do.” But [as to] what had before been said by the Savior, “He who is washed has not need except to wash [his] feet,” it is not to be referred to the bodily washing of the feet, but — as it pleases Augustine — to the spiritual cleansing of the human affections, by which we continually cleave to the ground and are defiled by the filth of the earth. But, that we may interpret the Ambrosian sayings kindly, as is fitting: it is likely that Ambrose, by that sin which he calls hereditary from the succession, and [which] he calls the venom of the serpent poured upon the feet of Adam, did not signify the guilt of original sin, but the tinder [fomes] of the same sin, which — the guilt being blotted out — still remains in the baptized. For this too Paul frequently designates by the appellation of “sin,” especially when, [speaking] of himself as already regenerated and sanctified, he repeats again and again, “I know that sin dwells in me.” It is also credible that he [Ambrose] thought the washing of the feet to be necessary [as a sequel] from baptism, and not to be received for that sanctification which is given in baptism, but for the protection and increase of the sanctification already received in baptism; nor does the author himself seem to reject this sense, when he says, “In baptism all guilt is washed away; guilt, therefore, recedes,” and the other [things] which follow thereafter.