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| To Cornelius, Concerning Fortunatus and Felicissimus, or Against the Heretics.
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Epistle LIV.2522
| 2522
Oxford ed.: Ep. lix. a.d.
252. |
To Cornelius, Concerning Fortunatus and
Felicissimus, or Against the Heretics.
Argument.—Cyprian Chiefly Warns Cornelius in This Letter Not to Hear
the Calumnies of Felicissimus and Fortunatus Against Him, and Not to Be
Frightened by Their Threats, But to Be of a Brave Spirit, as Becomes
God’s Priests in Opposition to Heretics; Namely, Those Who, After
the Custom Prevailing Among Heretics, Began Their Heresy and Schisms
with the Contempt of One Bishop in the Church.2523
| 2523
Indicating also by the way whence heresy and schisms are wont to take
their rise, so that the letter is with good reason inscribed by Morell
“Contra Hæreticos.” |
1. I have read your letter, dearest brother,
which you sent by Saturus our brother the acolyte, abundantly full of
fraternal love and ecclesiastical discipline and priestly reproof; in
which you signified that Felicissimus,2524
| 2524
[He was a purse-proud layman. But see Elucidation XIII,
infra.] | no new enemy of Christ, but long ago
excommunicated for his very many and grave crimes, and condemned not
only by my judgment, but also by that of very many of my
fellow-bishops, has been rejected by you there, and that when he came
attended by a band and faction of desperadoes, he was driven from the
Church with the full rigour with which it behoves a bishop to
act. From which Church long ago he was driven, with others like
himself, by the majesty of God and the severity of Christ our Lord and
Judge; that the author of schism and disagreement, the fraudulent user
of money entrusted to him, the violator of virgins, the destroyer and
corrupter of many marriages, should not, by the dishonour
of his presence and his immodest
and incestuous contact, violate further the spouse of Christ, hitherto
uncorrupt, holy, modest.
2. But yet, when I read your other letter,
brother, which you subjoined to your first one, I was considerably
surprised at observing that you were in some degree disturbed by the
threats and terrors of those who had come, when, according to what you
wrote, they had attacked and threatened you with the greatest
desperation, that if you would not receive the letters which they had
brought, they would read them publicly, and would utter many base and
disgraceful things, and such as were worthy of their mouth. But
if the matter is thus, dearest brother, that the audacity of the most
wicked men is to be dreaded, and that what evil men cannot do rightly
and equitably, they may accomplish by daring and desperation, there is
an end of the vigour of the episcopacy, and of the sublime and divine
power of governing the Church; nor can we continue any longer, or in
fact now be Christians, if it is come to this, that we are to be afraid
of the threats or the snares of outcasts. For both Gentiles and
Jews threaten, and heretics and all those, of whose hearts and minds
the devil has taken possession, daily attest their venomous madness
with furious voice. We are not, therefore, to yield because they
threaten; nor is the adversary and enemy on that account greater than
Christ, because he claims for himself and assumes so much in the
world. There ought to abide with us, dearest brother, an
immoveable strength of faith; and against all the irruptions and onsets
of the waves that roar against us, a steady and unshaken courage should
plant itself as with the fortitude and mass of a resisting rock.
Nor does it matter whence comes the terror or the danger to a bishop,
who lives subject to terrors and dangers, and is nevertheless made
glorious by those very terrors and dangers. For we ought not to
consider and regard the mere threats of the Gentiles or of the Jews,
when we see that the Lord Himself was deserted by His brethren, and was
betrayed by him whom He Himself had chosen among His apostles; that
also in the beginning of the world it was none other than a brother who
slew righteous Abel, and an angry brother pursued the fleeing Jacob,
and the youthful Joseph was sold by the act of his brethren. In
the Gospel also we read that it was foretold that our foes should
rather be of our own household, and that they who have first been
associated in the sacrament of unity2525
| 2525
[“The sacramental host of God’s
elect.”—The Task, Cowper.] | shall be they who shall betray one
another. It makes no difference who delivers up or who rages,
since God permits those to be delivered up whom He appoints to be
crowned. For it is no ignominy to us to suffer from our brethren
what Christ suffered, nor is it glory to them to do what Judas
did. But what insolence it is in them, what swelling and inflated
and vain boasting on the part of these threateners, there to
threaten me in my absence, when here they have me present in their
power! I do not fear their reproaches with which they daily wound
themselves and their own life; I do not tremble at their clubs and
stones and swords, which they brandish with parricidal words: as
far as lies in their power such men are homicides before God. Yet
they are not able to slay unless the Lord have allowed them to slay;
and although I must die but once, yet they daily slay me by their
hatred, their words, and their villanies.
3. But, dearest brother, ecclesiastical
discipline is not on that account to be forsaken, nor priestly censure
to be relaxed, because we are disturbed with reproaches or are shaken
with terrors; since Holy Scripture meets and warns us, saying,
“But he who presumes and is haughty, the man who boasts of
himself, who hath enlarged his soul as hell, shall accomplish
nothing.”2526
And
again: “And fear not the words of a sinful man, for his
glory shall be dung and worms. To-day he is lifted up, and
to-morrow he shall not be found, because he is turned into his earth,
and his thought shall perish.”2527
And again: “I have
seen the wicked exalted, and raised above the cedars of Libanus:
I went by, and, lo, he was not; yea, I sought him, and his place was
not found.”2528
Exaltation, and puffing up, and arrogant and haughty boastfulness,
spring not from the teaching of Christ who teaches humility, but from
the spirit of Antichrist, whom the Lord rebukes by His prophet, saying,
“For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I
will place my throne above the stars of God: I will sit on a
lofty mountain, above the lofty mountains to the north: I will
ascend above the clouds; I will be like the Most High.”2529
And he
added, saying, “Yet thou shalt descend into hell, to the
foundations of the earth; and they that see thee shall wonder at
thee.”2530
Whence also
divine Scripture threatens a like punishment to such in another place,
and says, “For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every
one that is injurious and proud, and upon every one that is lifted up,
and lofty.”2531
By his
mouth, therefore, and by his words, is every one at once betrayed; and
whether he has Christ in his heart, or Antichrist, is discerned in his
speaking, according to what the Lord says in His Gospel, “O
generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the
abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man out of the
good treasure bringeth forth good things; and an evil man out of the
evil treasure bringeth forth evil things.”2532
Whence also that rich sinner who
implores help from Lazarus, then laid in Abraham’s bosom, and
established in a place of comfort, while he, writhing in torments, is
consumed by the heats of burning flame, suffers most punishment of all
parts of his body in his mouth and his tongue, because doubtless in his
mouth and his tongue he had most sinned.2533
| 2533
[This idea became embedded in the minds of Western
Christians. See Southey, Roderick, xxv. note 72. The
Fabulous Chronicle which Southey gives at length is a curious
study of this subject.] |
4. For since it is written, “Neither
shall revilers inherit the kingdom of God,”2534
and again the Lord says in His Gospel,
“Whosoever shall say to his brother, Thou fool; and whosoever
shall say, Raca, shall be in danger of the Gehenna of
fire,”2535
how can they
evade the rebuke of the Lord the avenger, who heap up such expressions,
not only on their brethren, but also on the priests, to whom is granted
such honour of the condescension of God, that whosoever should not obey
his priest, and him that judgeth here for the time, was immediately to
be slain? In Deuteronomy the Lord God speaks, saying, “And
the man that will do presumptuously, and will not hearken unto the
priest or to the judge, whosoever he shall be in those days, that man
shall die; and all the people, when they hear, shall fear, and shall do
no more wickedly.”2536
Moreover, to Samuel when he was
despised by the Jews, God says; “They have not despised thee, but
they have despised me.”2537
And the Lord also in the Gospel
says, “He that heareth you, heareth me, and Him that sent me; and
he that rejecteth you, rejecteth me; and he that rejecteth me,
rejecteth Him that sent me.”2538
And when he had cleansed the
leprous man, he said, “Go, show thyself to the
priest.”2539
And
when afterwards, in the time of His passion, He had received a buffet
from a servant of the priest, and the servant said to Him,
“Answerest thou the high priest so?”2540
the Lord said nothing reproachfully against
the high priest, nor detracted anything from the priest’s honour;
but rather asserting His own innocence, and showing it, He says,
“If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but if well,
why smitest thou me?”2541
Also subsequently, in the Acts of
the Apostles, the blessed Apostle Paul, when it was said to him,
“Revilest thou God’s priest?”2542
—although they had begun to be
sacrilegious, and impious, and bloody, the Lord having already been
crucified, and had no longer retained anything of the priestly honour
and authority—yet Paul, considering the name itself, however
empty, and the shadow, as it were, of the priest, said, “I wist
not, brethren, that he was the high priest: for it is written,
Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people.”2543
5. When, then, such and so great examples,
and many others, are precedents whereby the priestly authority and
power by the divine condescension is established, what kind of people,
think you, are they who, being enemies of the priests, and rebels
against the Catholic Church, are frightened neither by the threatening
of a forewarning Lord, nor by the vengeance of coming judgment?
For neither have heresies arisen, nor have schisms originated, from any
other source than from this, that God’s priest is not obeyed; nor
do they consider that there is one person for the time priest in the
Church, and for the time judge in the stead of Christ;2544
| 2544
[i.e., in each Church the one episcopate—“the college of
priests”—is represented by the one bishop. See note,
Oxford trans., p. 155.] | whom, if,
according to divine teaching, the whole fraternity should obey, no one
would stir up anything against the college of priests; no one, after
the divine judgment, after the suffrage of the people, after the
consent of the co-bishops, would make himself a judge, not now of the
bishop, but of God. No one would rend the Church by a division of
the unity of Christ.2545
| 2545
[An illustration again of the Cyprianic theory. See the
Treatise on Unity. These notes will aid when we reach that
Treatise.] | No one, pleasing himself, and
swelling with arrogance, would found a new heresy, separate and
without, unless any one be of such sacrilegious daring and abandoned
mind, as to think that a priest is made without God’s judgment,
when the Lord says in His Gospel, “Are not two sparrows sold for
a farthing? and one of them does not fall to the ground without the
will of your Father.”2546
When He says that not even the
least things are done without God’s will, does any one think that
the highest and greatest things are done in God’s Church either
without God’s knowledge or permission, and that
priests—that is, His stewards—are not ordained by His
decree? This is not to have faith, whereby we live; this is not
to give honour to God, by whose direction and decision we know and
believe that all things are ruled and governed. Undoubtedly there
are bishops made, not by the will of God, but they are such as are made
outside of the Church—such as are made contrary to the ordinance
and tradition of the Gospel, as the Lord Himself in the twelve prophets
asserts, saying, “They have set up a king for themselves, and not
by me.”2547
And
again: “Their sacrifices are as the bread
of mourning; all that eat thereof shall be polluted.”2548
And the
Holy Spirit also cries by Isaiah, and says, “Woe unto you,
children that are deserters. Thus saith the Lord, Ye have taken
counsel, but not of me; and ye have made a covenant, but not of my
Spirit, that ye may add sin to sin.”2549
6. But—I speak to you as being provoked; I
speak as grieving; I speak as constrained—when a bishop is
appointed into the place of one deceased, when he is chosen in time of
peace by the suffrage of an entire people, when he is protected by the
help of God in persecution, faithfully linked with all his colleagues,
approved to his people by now four years’ experience in his
episcopate; observant of discipline in time of peace; in time of
disturbance, proscribed with the name of his episcopate applied and
attached to him; so often asked for in the circus “for the
lions;” in the amphitheatre, honoured with the testimony of the
divine condescension; even in these very days on which I have written
this letter to you, on account of the sacrifices which, by proclaimed
edict, the people were commanded to celebrate, demanded anew in the
circus “for the lions” by the clamour of the
populace;—when such a one, dearest brother, is seen to be
assailed by some desperate and reckless men, and by those who have
their place outside the Church, it is manifest who assails him:
not assuredly Christ, who either appoints or protects his priests; but
he who, as the adversary of Christ and the foe to His Church, for this
purpose persecutes with his malice the ruler of the Church, that when
the pilot is removed, he may rage more atrociously and more violently
with a view to the Church’s dispersion.
7. Nor ought it, my dearest brother, to
disturb any one who is faithful and mindful of the Gospel, and retains
the commands of the apostle who forewarns us; if in the last days
certain persons, proud, contumacious, and enemies of God’s
priests, either depart from the Church or act against the Church, since
both the Lord and His apostles have previously foretold that there
should be such. Nor let any one wonder that the servant placed
over them should be forsaken by some, when His own disciples forsook
the Lord Himself, who performed such great and wonderful works, and
illustrated the attributes of God the Father by the testimony of His
doings. And yet He did not rebuke them when they went away, nor
even severely threaten them; but rather, turning to His apostles, He
said, “Will ye also go away?”2550
manifestly observing the law whereby a man
left to his own liberty, and established in his own choice, himself
desires for himself either death or salvation. Nevertheless,
Peter,2551
| 2551
[Cyprian could not have written this letter to Cornelius had he
recognised in him, as a successor of Peter, any other than the gifts
which he supposed common to all bishops.] | upon whom by the
same Lord the Church had been built, speaking one for all, and
answering with the voice of the Church, says, “Lord, to whom
shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life; and we believe,
and are sure that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living
God:”2552
signifying,
doubtless, and showing that those who departed from Christ perished by
their own fault, yet that the Church which believes on Christ, and
holds that which it has once learned, never departs from Him at all,
and that those are the Church who remain in the house of God; but that,
on the other hand, they are not the plantation planted by God the
Father, whom we see not to be established with the stability of wheat,
but blown about like chaff by the breath of the enemy scattering them,
of whom John also in his epistle says, “They went out from us,
but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, no doubt they
would have continued with us.”2553
Paul also warns us, when evil men
perish out of the Church, not to be disturbed, nor to let our faith be
lessened by the departure of the faithless. “For
what,” he says, “if some of them have departed from the
faith? Hath their unbelief made the faith of God of none
effect? God forbid! For God is true, but every man a
liar.”2554
8. For our own part, it befits our
conscience, dearest brother, to strive that none should perish
going out of the Church by our fault; but if any one, of his own
accord and by his own sin, should perish, and should be unwilling to
repent and to return to the Church, that we who are anxious for their
well-being should be blameless in the day of judgment, and that they
alone should remain in punishment who refused to be healed by the
wholesomeness of our advice. Nor ought the reproaches of the lost
to move us in any degree to depart from the right path and from the
sure rule, since also the apostle instructs us, saying, “If I
should please men, I should not be the servant of
Christ.”2555
There is
a great difference whether one desires to deserve well of men or of
God. If we seek to please men, the Lord is offended. But if
we strive and labour that we may please God, we ought to contemn human
reproaches and abuse.
9. But that I did not immediately write to you,
dearest brother, about Fortunatus, that pseudo-bishop, constituted by a
few, and those, inveterate
heretics, the matter was not such as ought at once and hastily to be
brought under your notice, as if it were great or to be feared;
especially since you already know well enough the name of Fortunatus,
who is one of the five presbyters who some time back deserted from the
Church, and were lately excommunicated by the judgment of our
fellow-bishops,2556
| 2556
[“Our fellow-bishops.” This council was held on
the return of Cyprian, a.d. 251, soon after
Easter.] | men both
numerous and entitled to the greatest respect, who on this matter wrote
to you last year. Also you would recognise Felicissimus, the
standard-bearer of sedition, who himself also is comprised in those
same letters long ago written to you by our co-bishops,2557
| 2557
[“Our fellow-bishops.” This council was held on
the return of Cyprian, a.d. 251, soon after
Easter.] | and who not only
was excommunicated by them here, but moreover was lately driven from
the Church by you there. Since I was confident that these things
were in your knowledge, and knew for certain that they abode in your
memory and discipline, I did not think it necessary that the follies of
heretics should be told you quickly and urgently. For indeed it
ought not to pertain to the majesty or the dignity of the Catholic
Church, to concern itself with what the audacity of heretics and
schismatics may attempt among themselves. For Novatian’s
party is also said to have now made Maximus the presbyter—who was
lately sent to us as an ambassador for Novatian, and rejected from
communion with us—their false bishop in that place; and yet I had
not written to you about this, since all these things are slighted by
us; and I had sent to you lately the names of the bishops appointed
there, who with wholesome and sound discipline govern the brethren in
the Catholic Church.2558
| 2558
[They were not appointed there by any “favour of the Apostolic
See,” and Cyprian knows much more of their existence as bishops
than Cornelius does.] | And this certainly, therefore, it
was decided by the advice of all of us to write to you, that there
might be found a short method of destroying error and of finding out
truth, that you and our colleagues might know to whom to write, and
reciprocally, from whom it behoved you to receive letters; but if any
one, except those whom we have comprised in our letter, should dare to
write to you, you would know either that he was polluted by sacrifice,
or by receiving a certificate, or that he was one of the heretics, and
therefore perverted and profane. Nevertheless, having gained an
opportunity, by means of a very great friend and a clerk, I have
written to you by Felicianus the acolyte, whom you had sent with
Perseus our colleague, among other matters which were to be brought
under your notice from their party, about that Fortunatus also.
But while our brother Felicianus is either retarded there by the wind
or is detained by receiving other letters from us, he has been
forestalled by Felicissimus hastening to you. For thus wickedness
always hastens, as if by its speed it could prevail against
innocence.
10. But I intimated to you, my brother, by
Felicianus, that there had come to Carthage, Privatus, an old heretic
in the colony of Lambesa, many years ago condemned for many and grave
crimes by the judgment of ninety bishops, and severely remarked upon in
the letters of Fabian and Donatus, also our predecessors, as is not
hidden from your knowledge;2559
who, when he said that he wished to plead his cause before us in the
council which we held on the Ides of May then past, and was not
permitted, made for himself that Fortunatus a pretended bishop, worthy
of his college. And there had also come with him a certain Felix,
whom he himself had formerly appointed a pseudo-bishop outside the
Church, in heresy. But Jovinus also, and Maximus, were present as
companions with the proved heretic,2560
| 2560 Or,
“with Privatus, the proved heretic;” or, according to the
Oxford translation, “a proud heretic.” [See p.
308.] | condemned for wicked sacrifices and crimes
proved against them by the judgment of nine bishops, our colleagues,
and again excommunicated also by many of us last year in a
council. And with these four was also joined Repostus of
Suturnica, who not only fell himself in the persecution, but cast down
by sacrilegious persuasion the greatest part of his people. These
five, with a few who either had sacrificed, or had evil consciences,
concurred in desiring Fortunatus as a false bishop for themselves, that
so, their crimes agreeing, the ruler should be such as those who are
ruled.
11. Hence also, dearest brother, you may now know
the other falsehoods which desperate and abandoned men have there
spread about, that although, of the sacrificers, or of the heretics,
there were not more than five false bishops who came to Carthage, and
appointed Fortunatus as the associate of their madness; yet they, as
children of the devil, and full of lies, dared, as you write, to boast
that there were present twenty-five bishops; which falsehood they
boasted here also before among our brethren, saying that twenty-five
bishops would come from Numidia to make a bishop for them. After
they were detected and confounded in this their lie (only five who had
made shipwreck coming together, and these being excommunicated by us),
they sailed to Rome with the reward of their lies, as if the truth
could not sail after them, and convict their lying tongues by proof of
the certainty. And this, my brother, is real madness, not to
think nor to know that lies do not long deceive, that the night only
lasts so long as until the day brightens; but that when the day is
clear and the sun has arisen, the darkness and gloom give place to
light, and the robberies which were going on through the night cease. In fine,
if you were to seek the names from them, they would have none which
they could even falsely give. For such among them is the penury
even of wicked men, that neither of sacrificers nor of heretics can
there be collected twenty-five for them; and yet, for the sake of
deceiving the ears of the simple and the absent, the number is
exaggerated by a lie, as if, even if this number were true, either the
Church would be overcome by heretics, or righteousness by the
unrighteous.
12. Nor does it behove me, dearest brother,
to do like things to them, and to go through in my discourse those
things which they have committed, and still commit, since we have to
consider what it becomes God’s priests to utter and to
write. Nor ought grief to speak among us so much as shame, and I
ought not to seem provoked rather to heap together reproaches than
crimes and sins. Therefore I am silent upon the deceits practised
in the Church. I pass over the conspiracies and adulteries, and
the various kinds of crimes. That circumstance alone, however, of
their wickedness, in which the cause is not mine, nor man’s, but
God’s, I do not think must be withheld; that from the very first
day of the persecution, while the recent crimes of the guilty were
still hot, and not only the devil’s altars, but the very hands
and the mouths of the lapsed, were still smoking with the abominable
sacrifices, they did not cease to communicate with the lapsed, and to
interfere with their repentance. God cries, “He that
sacrificeth unto any gods, save unto the Lord only, shall be rooted
out.”2561
And in the
Gospel the Lord says, “Whosoever shall deny me, him will I
deny.”2562
And in
another place the divine indignation and anger are not silent, saying,
“To them hast thou poured out a drink-offering, and to them hast
thou offered a meat-offering. Shall I not be angry with these
things? saith the Lord.”2563
And they interfere that God may
not be entreated, who Himself declares that He is angry; they interpose
that Christ may not be besought with prayers and satisfactions, who
professes that him who denies Him He will deny.
13. In the very time of persecution we wrote
letters on this matter, but we were not attended to. A full
council being held, we decreed, not only with our consent, but also
with our threatening, that the brethren should repent,2564
| 2564
Strictly, the phrase here as elsewhere is, “should do
penance,” “pœnitentiam agerent.” | and that none
should rashly grant peace to those who did not repent. And those
sacrilegious persons rush with impious madness against God’s
priests, departing from the Church; and raising their parricidal arms
against the Church, in order that the malice of the devil may
consummate their work,2565
| 2565
“That by the malice of the devil they may consummate their
work;” v. l. |
take pains that the divine clemency may not heal the wounded in His
Church. They corrupt the repentance of the wretched men by the
deceitfulness of their lies, that it may not satisfy an offended
God—that he who has either blushed or feared to be a Christian
before, may not afterwards seek Christ his Lord, nor he return to the
Church who had departed from the Church. Efforts are used that
the sins may not be atoned for with just satisfactions and
lamentations, that the wounds may not be washed away with tears.
True peace is done away by the falsehood of a false peace; the
healthful bosom of a mother is closed by the interference of the
stepmother, that weeping and groaning may not be heard from the breast
and from the lips of the lapsed. And beyond this, the lapsed are
compelled with their tongues and lips, in the Capitol2566
| 2566
Scil. Capitol of Carthage, for the provinces imitated Rome in
this respect. Du Cange give many instances. | wherein before they had sinned, to
reproach the priests—to assail with contumelies and with abusive
words the confessors and virgins, and those righteous men who are most
eminent for the praise of the faith, and most glorious in the
Church. By which things, indeed, it is not so much the modesty
and the humility and the shame of our people that are smitten, as their
own hope and life that are lacerated. For neither is it he who
hears, but he who utters the reproach, that is wretched; nor is it he
who is smitten by his brother, but he who smites a brother, that is a
sinner under the law; and when the guilty do a wrong to the innocent,
they suffer the injury who think that they are doing it. Finally,
their mind is smitten by these things, and their spirit is dull, and
their sense of right is estranged: it is God’s wrath that
they do not perceive their sins, lest repentance should follow as it is
written, “And God gave them the spirit of torpor,”2567
that is, that
they may not return and be healed, and be made whole after their sins
by just prayers and satisfactions. Paul the apostle in his
epistle lays it down, and says, “They received not the love of
the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall
send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that
they all might be judged who believed not the truth, but had pleasure
in unrighteousness.”2568
The highest degree of happiness
is, not to sin; the second, to acknowledge our sins. In the
former, innocence flows pure and unstained to preserve us; in the
latter, there comes a medicine to heal us. Both of these they
have lost by offending God, both because the grace is lost which is
received from the sanctification of baptism, and repentance comes not to
their help, whereby the sin is healed. Think you, brother, that
their wickednesses against God are trifling, their sins small and
moderate—since by their means the majesty of an angry God is not
besought, since the anger and the fire and the day of the Lord is not
feared—since, when Antichrist is at hand the faith of the
militant people is disarmed by the taking away of the power of Christ
and His fear? Let the laity see to it how they may amend
this.2569
| 2569 [The
organization of the laity into their freedom and franchises is part of
the Cyprianic system, and gave birth to the whole fabric of free
constitutions, in England and elsewhere.] | A heavier
labour is incumbent on the priests in asserting and maintaining the
majesty of God, that we seem not to neglect anything in this respect,
when God admonishes us, and says, “And now, O ye priests, this
commandment is for you. If ye will not hear, and if ye will not
lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the Lord, I will
even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your
blessing.”2570
Is
honour, then, given to God when the majesty and decree of God are so
condemned, that when He declares that He is indignant and angry with
those who sacrifice, and when He threatens eternal penalties and
perpetual punishments, it is proposed by the sacrilegious, and said,
Let not the wrath of God be considered, let not the judgment of the
Lord be feared, let not any knock at the Church of Christ; but
repentance being done away with, and no confession of sin being made,
the bishops being despised and trodden under foot, let peace be
proclaimed by the presbyters in deceitful words; and lest the lapsed
should rise up, or those placed without should return to the Church,
let communion be offered to those who are not in communion?
14. To these also it was not sufficient that
they had withdrawn from the Gospel, that they had taken away from the
lapsed the hope of satisfaction and repentance, that they had taken
away those involved in frauds or stained with adulteries, or polluted
with the deadly contagion of sacrifices, lest they should entreat God,
or make confession of their crimes in the Church, from all feeling and
fruit of repentance; that they had set up2571
| 2571
“Unless they had set up,” v. l. | outside for themselves—outside the
Church, and opposed to the Church, a conventicle of their abandoned
faction, when there had flowed together a band of creatures with evil
consciences, and unwilling to entreat and to satisfy God. After
such things as these, moreover, they still dare—a false bishop
having been appointed for them by heretics—to set sail and to
bear letters from schismatic and profane persons to the throne of
Peter, and to the chief church whence priestly unity takes its
source;2572
| 2572 [The
Apostolic See of the West was necessarily all this in the eyes of an
unambitious faithful Western co-bishop; but the letter itself proves
that it was not the See of one who had any authority over or apart from
his co-bishops. Let us not read into his expressions ideas which
are an after-thought, and which conflict with the life and all the
testimony of Cyprian.] | and not to
consider that these were the Romans whose faith was praised in the
preaching of the apostle, to whom faithlessness could have no
access.2573
But what
was the reason of their coming and announcing the making of the
pseudo-bishop in opposition to the bishops? For either they are
pleased with what they have done, and persist in their wickedness; or,
if they are displeased and retreat, they know whither they may
return. For, as it has been decreed by all of us2574
| 2574
[Note this decree, “by all of us,” and what follows.] | —and is
equally fair and just—that the case of every one should be heard
there where the crime has been committed; and a portion of the flock
has been assigned to each individual pastor, which he is to rule and
govern, having to give account of his doing to the Lord; it certainly
behoves those over whom we are placed not to run about nor to break up
the harmonious agreement of the bishops with their crafty and deceitful
rashness, but there to plead their cause, where they may be able to
have both accusers and witnesses of their crime; unless perchance the
authority of the bishops constituted in Africa seems to a few desperate
and abandoned men to be too little,2575
| 2575 [Only
“desperate and abandoned men” could make light of other
bishops, by carrying their case from their own province to Rome.
This was forbidden by canons. Cyprian’s respect for the
mother See was like that felt by Anglo-Americans for Canterbury,
involving no subjection in the least degree. See Elucidation
XIII.] | who have already judged concerning them,
and have lately condemned, by the gravity of their judgment, their
conscience bound in many bonds of sins. Already their case has
been examined, already sentence concerning them has been pronounced;
nor is it fitting for the dignity of priests to be blamed for the
levity of a changeable and inconstant mind, when the Lord teaches and
says, “Let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay,
nay.”2576
15. If the number of those who judged
concerning them last year be reckoned with the presbyters and deacons,
then there were more present to the judgment and hearing than are those
very same persons who now seem to be associated with Fortunatus.
For you ought to know, dearest brother, that after he was made a
pseudo-bishop by the heretics, he was at once deserted by almost
all. For those to whom in past time delusions were offered, and
deceitful words were given, to the effect that they were to return to
the Church together; after they saw that a false bishop was made there,
learned that they had been fooled and deceived, and are daily returning
and knocking at the door of the Church; while we, meanwhile, by whom
account is to be given to the Lord, are anxiously weighing and
carefully examining who ought to be received and admitted into the
Church. For some are either hindered by their crimes to such a
degree, or they are so obstinately and firmly opposed by their
brethren, that they cannot be received at all except with offence and
risk to a great many. For neither must some putridities be so
collected and brought together, that the parts which are sound and
whole should be injured; nor is that pastor serviceable or wise who so
mingles the diseased and affected sheep with his flock as to
contaminate the whole flock with the infection of the clinging
evil. (Do not pay attention to their number.2577
| 2577
[Exod. xxiii. 2. The best comment on
Cyprian’s system is to be found in the Commonitory of
Vincent of Lerins (a.d. 450), who lays down the
rule, that if the whole Church revolts from the faith save only a few,
those few are the Catholics.] | For one who fears God is better
than a thousand impious sons, as the Lord spoke by the prophet, saying,
“O son, do not delight in ungodly sons, though they multiply to
thee, except the fear of the Lord be with them.”2578
) Oh, if
you could, dearest brother, be with us here when those evil and
perverse men return from schism, you would see what labour is mine to
persuade patience to our brethren, that they should calm their grief of
mind, and consent to receive and heal the wicked. For as they
rejoice and are glad when those who are endurable and less guilty
return, so, on the other hand, they murmur and are dissatisfied as
often as the incorrigible and violent, and those who are contaminated
either by adulteries or by sacrifices, and who, in addition to this,
are proud besides, so return to the Church, as to corrupt the good
dispositions within it. Scarcely do I persuade the people; nay, I
extort it from them, that they should suffer such to be admitted.
And the grief of the fraternity is made the more just, from the fact
that one and another who, notwithstanding the opposition and
contradiction of the people, have been received by my facility, have
proved worse than they had been before, and have not been able to keep
the faith of their repentance, because they had not come with true
repentance.
16. But what am I to say of those who have
now sailed to you with Felicissimus, guilty of every crime, as
ambassadors sent by Fortunatus the pseudo-bishop, bringing to you
letters as false as he himself is false, whose letters they bring, as
his conscience is full of sins, as his life is execrable, as it is
disgraceful; so that, even if they were in the Church, such people
ought to be expelled from the Church. In addition, since they
have known their own conscience, they do not dare to come to us or to
approach to the threshold of the Church, but wander about, without her,
through the province, for the sake of circumventing and defrauding the
brethren; and now, being sufficiently known to all, and everywhere
excluded for their crimes, they sail thither also to you. For
they cannot have the face to approach to us, or to stand before us,
since the crimes which are charged upon them by the brethren are most
grievous and grave. If they wish to undergo our judgment, let
them come. Finally, if they can find any excuse or defence, let
us see what thought they have of making satisfaction, what fruit of
repentance they bring forward. The Church is neither closed here
to any one, nor is the bishop denied to any. Our patience, and
facility, and humanity are ready for those who come. I entreat
all to return into the Church. I beg all our fellow-soldiers to
be included within the camp of Christ, and the dwelling-place of God
the Father. I remit everything. I shut my eyes to many
things, with the desire and the wish to gather together the
brotherhood. Even those things which are committed against God I
do not investigate with the full judgment of religion. I almost
sin myself, in remitting sins2579
more than I ought. I embrace with
prompt and full love those who return with repentance, confessing their
sin with lowly and unaffected atonement.2580
| 2580 [What
a contrast to the hierarchical spirit of the Middle Ages, this
primitive compassion for penitents! Think of Canossa.] |
17. But if there are some who think that
they can return to the Church not with prayers but with threats, or
suppose that they can make a way for themselves, not with lamentation
and atonements, but with terrors, let them take it for certain that
against such the Church of the Lord stands closed; nor does the camp of
Christ, unconquered and firm with the Lord’s protection, yield to
threats. The priest of God holding fast the Gospel and keeping
Christ’s precepts may be slain; he cannot be conquered.
Zacharias, God’s priest, suggests and furnishes to us examples of
courage and faith, who, when he could not be terrified with threats and
stoning, was slain in the temple of God, at the same time crying out
and saying, what we also cry out and say against the heretics,
“Thus saith the Lord, Ye have forsaken the ways of the Lord, and
the Lord will forsake you.”2581
For because a few rash and wicked
men forsake the heavenly and wholesome ways of the Lord, and not doing
holy things are deserted by the Holy Spirit, we also ought not
therefore to be unmindful of the divine tradition, so as to think that
the crimes of madmen are greater than the judgments of priests; or
conceive that human endeavours can do more to attack, than divine protection avails
to defend.
18. Is the dignity of the Catholic Church,
dearest brother, to be laid aside, is the faithful and uncorrupted
majesty of the people placed within it,2582
| 2582
[Cyprian’s love for the people is always thus conspicuous.
Here the majesty and dignity of the Catholic Church is identified with
all estates of men therein.] | and the priestly authority and power
also, all to be laid aside for this, that those who are set without the
Church may say that they wish to judge concerning a prelate in the
Church? heretics concerning a Christian? wounded men about a whole man?
maimed concerning a sound man? lapsed concerning one who stands fast?
guilty concerning their judge? sacrilegious men concerning a
priest? What is left but that the Church should yield to the
Capitol, and that, while the priests depart and remove the Lord’s
altar, the images and idols should pass over with their altars into the
sacred and venerable assembly of our clergy, and a larger and fuller
material for declaiming against us and abusing us be afforded to
Novatian; if they who have sacrificed and have publicly denied Christ
should begin not only to be entreated and admitted without penance
done, but, moreover, in addition, to domineer by the power of their
terror?
19. If they desire peace, let them lay aside
their arms. If they make atonement, why do they threaten? or if
they threaten, let them know that they are not feared by God’s
priests. For even Antichrist, when he shall begin to come, shall
not enter into the Church because he threatens; neither shall we yield
to his arms and violence, because he declares that he will destroy us
if we resist. Heretics arm us when they think that we are
terrified by their threatenings; nor do they cast us down on our face,
but rather they lift us up and inflame us, when they make peace itself
worse to the brethren than persecution. And we desire, indeed,
that they may not fill up with crime what they speak in madness, that
they who sin with perfidious and cruel words may not also sin in
deeds. We pray and beseech God, whom they do not cease to provoke
and exasperate, that He will soften their hearts, that they may lay
aside their madness, and return to soundness of mind; that their
breasts, covered over with the darkness of sins, may acknowledge the
light of repentance, and that they may rather seek that the prayers and
supplications of the priest may be poured out on their behalf, than
themselves pour out the blood of the priest. But if they continue
in their madness, and cruelly persevere in these their parricidal
deceits and threats, no priest of God is so weak, so prostrate, and so
abject, so inefficient by the weakness of human infirmity, as not to be
aroused against the enemies and impugners of God by strength from
above; as not to find his humility and weakness animated by the vigour
and strength of the Lord who protects him. It matters nothing to
us by whom, or when we are slain, since we shall receive from the Lord
the reward of our death and of our blood. Their
concision2583
is to be
mourned and lamented, whom the devil so blinds, that, without
considering the eternal punishments of Gehenna, they endeavour to
imitate the coming of Antichrist, who is now approaching.
20. And although I know, dearest brother,
from the mutual love which we owe and manifest one towards another,
that you always read my letters to the very distinguished clergy who
preside with you there,2584
| 2584
[Note this significant language. Our author has no conception of
a pontifical system excluding the presbytery from its part and place in
the councils and regimen of the Church.] | and to your very holy and large
congregation,2585
| 2585
[Elucidation XV.; also Elucidation XIII.] | yet now I both
warn and ask you to do by my request what at other times you do of your
own accord and courtesy; that so, by the reading of this my letter, if
any contagion of envenomed speech and of pestilent propagation has
crept in there, it may be all purged out of the ears and of the hearts
of the brethren, and the sound and sincere affection of the good may be
cleansed anew from all the filth of heretical disparagement.
21. But for the rest, let our most beloved
brethren firmly decline, and avoid the words and conversations of those
whose word creeps onwards like a cancer; as the apostle says,
“Evil communications corrupt good manners.”2586
And
again: “A man that is an heretic, after one admonition,
reject: knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth,
being condemned of himself.”2587
And the Holy Spirit speaks by
Solomon, saying, “A perverse man carrieth perdition in his mouth;
and in his lips he hideth a fire.”2588
Also again, he warneth us, and
says, “Hedge in thy ears with thorns, and hearken not to a wicked
tongue.”2589
And
again: “A wicked doer giveth heed to the tongue of the
unjust; but a righteous man does not listen to lying
lips.”2590
And although
I know that our brotherhood there,2591
| 2591 [It
must be seen what all this implies as to the position of Cornelius and
(“our brotherhood there”) his comprovincial bishops, i.e.,
in their relations to Cyprian.] | assuredly fortified by your foresight, and
besides sufficiently cautious by their own vigilance, cannot be taken
nor deceived by the poisons of heretics, and that the teachings and
precepts of God prevail with them only in proportion as the fear of God
is in them; yet, even although needlessly, either my solicitude or
my love persuaded me
to write these things to you, that no commerce should be entered into
with such; that no banquets nor conferences be entertained with the
wicked; but that we should be as much separated from them, as they are
deserters from the Church; because it is written, “If he shall
neglect to hear the Church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a
publican.”2592
And the
blessed apostle not only warns, but also commands us to withdraw from
such. “We command you,” he says, “in the name
of Jesus Christ our Lord, that ye withdraw yourselves from every
brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he
received of us.”2593
There can be no fellowship between
faith and faithlessness. He who is not with Christ, who is an
adversary of Christ, who is hostile to His unity and peace, cannot be
associated with us. If they come with prayers and atonements, let
them be heard; if they heap together curses and threats, let them be
rejected. I bid you, dearest brother, ever heartily
farewell.2594
| 25943 [Had such
a letter been sent by Cornelius to Cyprian,—so full of warning,
advice, and even direction,—what would not have been made of it
as a “Decretal”? a.d.
252.] | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
